Tuna shook himself angrily. "Do you think I am nothing? This day is your last."
Roko replied: "Perhaps so. If the sky falls, I shall die."
Tuna leaped upon Roko and bit him. Then came the mighty battle of the coral caves. Roko broke Tuna into several pieces—and the red blood poured in boiling bubbles upward through the clear ocean waters, and the boatmen cried: "The blood is red—the blood is red—Tuna is dead by the hand of Roko."
Roko lived for a time in Fiji, where his descendants still find their home. The people use this chant to aid them in difficulties:
"My load is a red one.
It points in front to Kawa (Roko's home).
Behind, it points to Dolomo—(a village on another island)."
In the Hawaiian legends, Hina was Maui's mother rather than his wife, and Kuna (Tuna) was a mo-o, a dragon or gigantic lizard possessing miraculous powers.
Hina's home was in the large cave under the beautiful Rainbow Falls near the city of Hilo. Above the falls the bed of the river is along the channel of an ancient lava flow. Sometimes the water pours in a torrent over the rugged lava, sometimes it passes through underground passages as well as along the black river bed, and sometimes it thrusts itself into boiling pools.
Maui lived on the northern side of the river, but a chief named Kuna-moo—a dragon—lived in the boiling pools. He attacked Hina and threw a dam across the river below Rainbow Falls, intending to drown Hina in her cave. The great ledge of rock filled the river bed high up the bank on the Hilo side of the river. Hina called on Maui for aid. Maui came quickly and with mighty blows cut out a new channel for the river—the path it follows to this day. The waters sank and Hina remained unharmed in her cave.
Wailuku River—the Boiling Pots.