The king listened to this man and then he charged Namaka with trying to make his relative Hinai so skilful in leaping down high places that he could always escape any attempt to injure him.
The favorite said: “This man, Namaka, can [[125]]fly over mountains and streams and precipices and plains and not be killed. He is a rebel against your kingdom.”
Kalaniopuu commanded some men to go and kill this stranger from Kauai, telling them to begin war upon Hinai if he opposed their attempt to take the stranger.
Namaka had prepared himself for escape by digging in the ground and making a pit under his house, with a tunnel and an opening some distance away.
The warriors from Kalaniopuu surrounded the house, thinking he was inside. They consulted about the best method of killing him, and decided to burn him up. They set fire to the house and destroyed it and went away, believing this stranger had been burned to death.
Namaka easily escaped from Hawaii and crossed over to Maui, where he remained some time, but he found no one whom he wished to take as his lord. Then he went to Oahu, and at last returned to his home on Kauai.
There prophesying about the chiefs of Hawaii, whom he had considered superior to those on Maui and Oahu, but not equal to the royal family of Kauai, he spoke thus: “There is no ruling chief in Hawaii who can step his foot on the tabu sand of Kahamaluihi [Kauai]. There is no war canoe or divine chief who can come [[126]]to Kauai unless a treaty has been made between the two ruling chiefs.”
The natives call this a prophecy of the skilled chief who could fly from Nuuanu Pali, and think it was fulfilled because Kamehameha never conquered Kauai, but secured it by concession from its king.
Note: History repeats itself the world over. Recently the bird-men visited Hawaii and gave exhibitions of flying in aëroplanes. According to old Hawaiian traditions, however, there were bird-men in Hawaii before the white man came, as the foregoing translation from one of the old legends illustrates.
