He flew rapidly along the path to the outside world. In his haste he struck the leaves of the groves of trees and the noise was that of strong winds thrashing the branches and leaves back and forth, up and down. The sound swept through the land of the water of life like rolling thunder.
The brother of Pele and his servants awoke and followed, but he fled through the heavens to the place where the ghosts of his brothers lay in the [[33]]sunken ship by the home of the goddess of the sea.
They all went down to the sea. The chiefess told her husband to pour the water of life in his hand. She put her fingers in the water and sprinkled drops over the sea.
Out in the ocean under the moving surface was a boat, its mast coming up through the waves. In a little while they saw men standing in the boat. These were the brothers of Aukele. After the welcome, he gave them lands and homes.
In that strange far-off land of the ancestors—the mysterious “Floating Island”—the “Hidden Island of Kane,” it is said they still live under the rule of their younger brother.
Aukele thought he would like to see his parents once more, so he went to the far-away Helani—but the land was desolate. The parents were gone, the people had disappeared, the houses had all decayed, and the land was covered with a forest.
Only a dragon was left—one of the family of the “Self-reliant Dragon.” He discovered her body fast in the coral reef near the shore. He thought she was dead, but he stood up and stamped with full strength and broke the coral so that the dragon was free. He saw the body moving, but the dragon was very weak and near death.
He was sorry for her, remembering that it was by the aid of dragon powers he had gone into the heavens and from the deep pit of the skies secured the water of life. Therefore he provided food [[34]]and gave new life to the dragon. He asked about his parents and their gods, and the desolation of the land.
The dragon told him how the entire household of gods, dragons and men had found a new home, in the Islands of Oahu and Hawaii. She told how “the child adopted or brought up by the gods,” and the Maiden of the Golden Clouds, had been taken by the Self-reliant Dragon to Oahu, and how all the rest had gone, leaving her as a guard in the old land of his birth and childhood.
Aukele went back to the legendary land, the “Hidden Island of Kane,” and there lived among the ghost gods who welcome the dead as they escape from wandering over the islands and fly by the path of the sunset back to the home of the most distant ancestors—the mysterious lands in the skies of the western seas.