The spear replied, “Sit down on me and in a little while we shall be at a place where you can see her.” Then it carried the complaining chief to the beach of Kou. There it lay on the [[223]]ground and said: “You see a tree, a wiliwili-[2]tree, standing alone near the sea and looking out over the waters? Go you to that tree and climb it and look along the beach until you see a rainbow rising over the waves. Under that rainbow you will see a girl catching squid and shellfish and gathering sea-moss. She is doing this for her old people. She is your sister.”
The chief said, “I will go and see, but if no one is there I will punish you for deceiving me, and break you into little pieces.”
He went to the tree, climbed to the top branches and looked along the beach as the spear had directed. He saw a very strange thing out over the water: red mist and bloody rainclouds moving back and forth over the dark-blue waves, extending far out toward the horizon and also covering the place where he was to see the girl. He called down to the spear that he could not see any rainbow or any girl.
The spear replied: “Everything is changing rapidly on the face of the sea. Look again.”
He watched the whirling mist and rain, and as it moved slowly he saw an immense bird with many red feathers on its body and wings. When it flew up from the sea it hid the light from the sun and cast a dark shadow over all that beach. [[224]]He called to the spear, “What is this great bird flying over the ocean?”
The spear replied: “That is one of your ancestors, a kupua. She has a double body, sometimes appearing as a bird and sometimes in human form. Her name is Ka-iwa-ka-la-meha. She has dwelling-places in all the islands, and even in Kahiki. She has come to your sister, Lepe-a-moa, over the seas of the gods Ka-ne and Kanaloa.”
Kauilani watched the great bird as it rose from the sea and flew in mighty circles around the heavens, rising higher and higher until it was lost in the sky.
Soon the atmosphere began to clear, and he saw the rainbow and the girl in the far distance. He came down and told the spear that all its words were true. The spear again asked the young chief to sit on it. He did so, and was carried rapidly to the group of houses where Kapalama was living with her husband and grandchild.
That same day, after Lepe-a-moa had taken her basket and gone to the shore, Kapalama looked along the road toward the sunset and saw a small cloud hastening along the way. Watching it carefully, she saw a rainbow in the cloud and called to her husband: “O Honouliuli, this is a very strange thing, but from the rainbow in the [[225]]cloud I know that our grandchild from Kauai is coming to this place. You must quickly fire the oven and prepare food for this our young grandchild.”
He made the oven ready, and soon had chicken, fish, and sweet-potatoes cooking for their visitor.