In this company there were eight famous warriors, who seemed to think themselves invulnerable. They had often faced danger and returned chanting victory.
The night shadows were falling around the camp when these eight men, one by one, crept away from the other chiefs. Word had been passed from one to the other and a secret expedition partially outlined. Therefore each man was laden with his spear, club, and javelins. When free from all chance of interference they encouraged each other to undertake an expedition, as Fornander says, “on their own account and inflict what damage they could.”
Those who have known the Waikiki beach of to-day with its splendidly wooded shores, the luxuriant park inland, the plains covered with trees, [[151]]and the lower mountain ridges choked with lantana bushes, cannot realise the desolate wastes of the past. The tropical luxuriance of the region around Honolulu belongs to to-day and not to a hundred years ago.
It was over this arid plain dotted here and there by cocoanut trees and across a few streams bordered by taro patches that the eight famous chiefs picked their way. It was not smooth walking. Lava had been poured out from the craters in the mountains and foothills. The softer parts of the petrified streams had dissolved and the surface of the land was covered with the hard fragments which remained. The trail which they followed led in and out among great boulders until they came to the sandy slopes of Diamond Head.
With the coming of morning light they found themselves not far from the old temple, which had been used for ages for most solemn royal ceremonies, a part of which was often the sacrifice of human beings, and here, aided by their gods, they thought to inflict such injuries upon the Maui men as would make their names remembered in the Maui households.
Fornander says: “It was a chivalrous undertaking, a forlorn hope, wholly unauthorised but fully within the spirit of that time for personal valour, audacity, and total disregard of consequences. The names of these heroes were: Pupuka, [[152]]Makaioulu, Puakea, Pinau, Kalaeone, Pahua, Kauhi and Kapukoa.”
Several hundred warriors from Maui were stationed near this temple at the foot of Diamond Head. Probably some of them had carelessly watched the approach of eight chiefs of Oahu. “Into the valley of death rode the six hundred,” but this was not an impetuous torrent of six hundred mounted cavalry men sweeping through Russian ranks. It was a handful of eight against what was said to be a force of at least six hundred.
Into these hundreds the eight boldly charged. The conflict was hand to hand, and in that respect was favourable to the eight men well skilled in the use of spear and javelin. Side by side, striking and smiting all before them, the little band forced its way into the heart of the body of its foes. The Maui warriors had expected to take these men, as a fire without trouble swallows up splinters cast into it. They had thought that this little company would afford them an excellent sacrifice for their war gods, and had hoped to take them alive, even at the expense of the lives of a few men. But quickly the formidable character of the eight fighters was appreciated.
Wave upon wave of men from Maui beat against the eight, but each time the wave was shattered and scattered and destroyed. Large numbers were killed while the eight still fought side by side apparently uninjured. [[153]]
It has been said that this was a fight “to which Hawaiian legends record no parallel.” Eight men attacked an army and for some time were victorious in their onslaught.