Pikoi shot an arrow at the doorstep and killed a rat which had been hiding underneath.
Then Pikoi shot a bent-over, old-man rat in one corner; then pointed to the ridge-pole and chanted his usual chant, ending this time: [[170]]
“Straight the arrow strikes
Hitting the mouth of the rat,
From the eye of the arrow to the end
Four hundred—four hundred!”
The king said: “Shoot your ‘four hundred—four hundred.’ Mainele shall pick them up, but if the eye of your arrow fails to find rats, you die.”
Pikoi shot his arrow, which glanced along the ridge-pole under the thatch, striking rat after rat until the arrow was full from end to end,—hundreds and hundreds.
The high chief Pawaa knew his brother-in-law, embraced him, and wailed over his trouble. Then, grasping his war-club, he stepped out of the house to find the men who had struck Pikoi and torn off his malo. He struck them one after the other on the back of the neck, killing twenty men. The king asked his friend why he had done this. Pawaa replied, “Because they evilly handled my brother-in-law,—the only brother of my wife, ‘The Beauty of Manoa.’ ”
The king said, “That is right.”