Fly! Fly! Fly!
Leaping in the dust of Kaumaea.”
The egg began to change until it became a full-grown chicken.
Kauilani told his bird-sister to go out before the people thus: “Go all around the fighting-place. Go to the feet of Maui-nui, and look upon him; then go to the middle and stand there looking into the face of your ancestor. He will then know you perhaps, and will put on many kinds of bird bodies. If he puts on red, you must become white. You have more bird bodies than he. You will win. Then if he changes his body again I will tell you what to do until he becomes weary; then you put on your spotted body and kill him.” [[239]]
The bird then left him and went out before the people. They made a great noise, laughing and crying out: “A hen! A hen! To fight the great rooster!”
But she was very beautiful in her shining coat of feathers as she waited for the battle. Then the rooster came in, and Kauilani saw that he did not recognize his grandchild. Lepe-a-moa clucked and moved her head and wings like a hen calling to her young chickens. Ke-au-hele-moa was angry. His feathers rose as he came up and he changed their color into red. His antagonist became white.
Then he struck at her, leaped at her, and tried to overthrow her with his wings, but was not able to touch her, while she lightly flew over his head, striking his face and beating him with claws and wings.
Then he became moa-nene (a goose form), but Kauilani uttered a prayer and his sister became a swift aloe-bird, a small mud-hen. The battle again was fought, whirling, striking, leaping and flying, but the bird-girl was not injured in the least, while the rooster’s face was bleeding and his eyes suffering from the terrific and swift blows dealt by Lepe-a-moa. She tore him to pieces, until the battle was in a thick cloud of flying feathers.
The people thought he was dead, but his [[240]]magic power was still in the fragments of his body, torn and thrown up, floating far up among the clouds. He rested in some mist-clouds above, and put on a body having the color of the yellow blossoms of the hau-tree.
Before this the day had been quiet, but now, with the return of that rooster, the chill of snow and ice came down in a cold mist like the snow mists on the tops of the mountains. The rooster sent this icy, fine rain in a stream like a flowing river over Kakuhihewa and his people.