Nathaniel Bright Emerson

“ It was almost an article of Pele-ula’s creed that in the pleasures and distractions of the hula was [236] to be found a panacea for all the wounds of the spirit; and Pele-ula, as if taking her cue from the lady of the Venusberg, offered her consolations generously to every comfort-needing soul that fared her way.
Hiiaka stepped into the life at Pele-ula’s court as if she had been absent from it for only a day. Madame Pele-ula, good sport that she was, bore no grudge against the woman who had outplayed her at every turn, and would do it again. She received Hiiaka with open arms. ”

“ I summon you, Kane-kapoléi;
Pray gather, ye Wilderness Host;
Come Kane, and come Kanaloa;
Hiiaka, prophet and priest, am I:
It is mine to inspire, to perform:
I have striven for life and life came—
Your life, Lohiau of Haena—
Aye, life, life indeed;
Life in its fullness, life in detail;
Life to stand at the temple shrine:
Such life be yours, beloved Lohiau!
Urge on; let the cure work!
Hiiaka chanted also another prayer:
E Lono, e Lono, e Lono-ku-lani,
E Lono noho i ka wai,
O houlu oe, o inana oe ”

“ On landing in Kohala, Hiiaka took the road that led up through the thickly wooded wilderness of Mahiki, the region that had been the scene, now some months gone, of the most strenuous chapter in her warfare to rid Hawaii of the mo’o—that pestilent brood of winged and crawling monsters great and small that once infested her wilds and that have continued almost to the present day to infest the imagination of the Hawaiian people. ”

“ At the proper psychological moment, with the wreath of victory crowning her brow, while Pele-ula was vainly intent on an effort to turn the tide of her own defeat and gain the shadow of a recognition as mistress of the game of Kilu, Hiiaka, with a significant gesture to her companions, spat upon the ground and, her example having been imitated by Wahine-oma’o and Lohiau, their physical bodies were at once transported to a distance while their places continued to be occupied by unsubstantial forms that had all the semblance of reality. ”

“ And to bask in the sun at Oma’o-lála.
Those seeming friends, they went with us,
And then, they left us in Puna—
Land dear to the heart of Kane:
Who eats of your soul is your true friend.
Woe is me, woe is me!
Hiiaka, not yet come back from her adventures in the underworld, heard this lament of Paoa and wondered at his performance—that he, a handsome man, should be standing out in the open with not even a malo about his loins to hide his nakedness, “I wonder what is his name,” she said aloud. ”

“ The Heroes, too, who dwell in the mountains,
Our Comrades they, who range the forest;
Women-gods of the ether who heal—
Powers that hold with thee, God Laká:
He gives men the rich-ripe mountain-apple.
The Gods pour out their healing water;
The bunchy thatch-grass waves in awe;
God Echo whose voices rumble afar;
And the Landscapist Ku and the Princess
Who plucked and ate the fateful ulei.
The women who sit in the outskirts,
All clad in robes of funeral black—
Great love has prompted their coming.
I Hiiaka, the shadow, have come,
From love to my birth-mate, my sister. ”

“ As she spoke the fire-lake in Hale-ma’u-ma’u took on a ruddier hue, lifted in its cauldron and began to boil furiously, spouting up a score of red fountains.
“Men, gods, take these fires and pour them upon the man,” said Pele, addressing Lono-makua, Ku-pulupulu, Ku-moku-halii, Ku-ala-na-wao, Kupa-ai-ke’e, Ka-poha-kau, Ka-moho-alii, Kane-milo-hai and many others. ”

“ The smart of love o’erwhelms me;
It rages in heart and mind—
This hurt, ah, this hurt!
That Lohiau of all men standing on Hawaiian soil should fail utterly in a game of kilu was incredible—the man whose art availed to hit a grass-top teetering in the breeze, to crush the [179] nimble ant speeding on his way, to swat the buzzing fly flitting through the air! The audience was dumbfounded. In the failure to find excuse sufficient for the occasion, it took refuge in silence.
It only remains for Hiiaka to pluck the fruit which her skill has put within reach of her hand. ”

“ The gods ascend to the highlands;
The goddess Pele tears in a frenzy;
She raves and beats about in the Pit:
Its crumbled walls float like boats in the gulf:
An ash-heap is Puna, melted its sand—
Crisp-done by thy fire, Thine, O Woman!
When Hiiaka recognized the desperate strait of her friend and lover she urged him to betake himself again to prayer. [208]
“Prayer may serve in time of health; it’s of no avail in the day of death,” was his answer.
It was not now a band of women with firebrands, but a phalanx of fire that closed in upon Lohiau. The whole land seemed to him to be a-flame. ”

“ The warriors of Pana-ewa, who—in imitation of their chief—had for the most part taken the guise of trees and other natural objects, found themselves from the first fettered and embarrassed by a tangle of parasitic vines, so that their thrusts against Hiiaka were of little avail. Now comes the onset of the Pele gods in the tempest-forms of hurricane, lightning, hail, and watery cloud-bursts that opened heaven’s flood-gates. ”

“ The sea is the home of the gods.
I lay in a swoon from hunger
What time I awoke from love’s dream,
Love, salt with the brine of our tears.
Let us mingle our tears.
It was a question with Hiiaka whether to follow the Koolau or the Kona side of the island. The consideration that turned the scale in favor of the Koolau route was that thus she would have sight of a large number of aunts and uncles, members of the Pele family, whose ghosts still clung to the dead volcanic cones and headlands which stood as relics of their bygone activities, and where they eked out a miserable existence. ”

“ He is all for pleasure. Honor, constancy, ordinary prudence, are not in his purview. Hiiaka’s immediate presence suffices to restrain and guide him; in her absence, his passion, a rudderless bark, is the sport of every wind that blows.
Hiiaka, on arriving at the halau, sat by herself. Lohiau, as she observed, was sitting with Wahine-oma’o and Waikiki. Pele-ula, who was sitting alone on her side of the hall, now showed her hand by sending one of her men, named A’ala, to invite Lohiau to come over and sit with her. At this Hiiaka spoke up: “I will sit by you.” ”

“ Pana-ewa’s rain beats down the lehuas,
A rain by the sea smites the halas of Puna.
My love, my pity go out to Koloa;—
Her fare, wilted herbs at Malei.
Hiiaka—true poet that she was, and alive to every colorable aspect of nature—as she trudged on her way, came upon a sight that touched her imagination ”

“ Weighted with wreaths of lehua
From Bird-beak clean down to the feet.
Catch and bind these robbers of men;
Bind them fast, lest they slip through your hands
And escape to the robber-pit—
These mortals, who call themselves gods!
The meaning of the figure in the first two verses, though obscure, seems to be that Hilo, so rich in natural beauty, is by that very fact robbed of the energy to defend herself and cast off the incubus that oppresses her.
As the creatures fled from Hiiaka’s pursuit, their human disguise fell from them and their real character as mo’o was evident. ”

“ Kilauea breaks forth: smoke blurs the day;
A bitter rain blots out one half the Pit;
Heëia is whelmed by a tidal wave;—
Dread day of the fiery Goddess!
The face of the cliff is splintered away;
The lowlands are littered with fragments;
Her besom spares other land, not the park.
The screw-palms are rent, the rock-plates shattered;
The bowlders grind, the mamanes groan;
I hear the pitiful sob of the trees.
The tree-gods weep at their change into stone.
Man, like the roof-pole, strangles in smoke;
Puna chokes with the steam of the Woman ”

“ According to Hawaiian myth, Pele, the volcanic fire-queen and the chief architect of the Hawaiian group, was a foreigner, born in the mystical land of Kuai-he-lani, a land not rooted and anchored to one spot, but that floated free like the Fata Morgana, and that showed itself at times to the eyes of mystics, poets and seers, a garden land, clad with the living glory of trees and habitations—a vision to warm the imagination. The region was known as Kahiki (Kukulu o Kahiki) , a name that connotes Java and that is associated with the Asiatic cradle of the Polynesian race. ”

“ If it had been only a battle with enemies in the open Hiiaka would have made short work of the job. Her foes lay ambushed in every wood and brake and assumed every imaginable disguise. A withered bush, a bunch of grass, a moss-grown stone, any, the most innocent object in nature, might prove to be an assailant ready to spit venom or tear with hook and talon. Hiiaka had need of every grain of wit and every spark of courage in her nature. Nothing could withstand her onset and the billows of attack against her person were broken as by a solid rock. ”

“ Thus chanting their battle-mele (mele ka’i kaua) , these gods of an old-time mythology marched, or flew, with resolute purpose to their task of rescuing Hiiaka and her little band and of ridding the land, at one and the same stroke, of their old entrenched foe, Pana-ewa. Heaven and earth stirred at their onset. ”

“ Above the horizon-line swell the broad-based shapes of Mauna-kea, Mauna-loa and Hualalai. In the immediate foreground, overlooking the caldera—where are Pele’s headquarters—we see two figures, standing, crouching, or reclining, the lovers whose stolen bliss has furnished Pele with the pretext for her fiery discipline. Measured by the forces in opposition to them, their human forms shrink into insignificance. Measured by the boldness of their words and actions, one has to admit the power of the human will to meet the hardest shocks of fortune. ”

“ Where art thou, Kane-hoa-lani?
O Father Kane, where art thou?
Hail to thee, O Father, and hail to me!
When rose the pilot-star we sailed away.
Hail, girl who beats out tapa for women—
The home-coming wife who watches the wind,
The haunting wind that searches the house!
The survey of Oahu completed, and Ka-moho-alii having resumed command of the canoe, Pele uttered her farewell and they voyaged on to the cluster of islands of which Maui is the center:
Aloha, Oahu, e-e!
E huli ana makou i ka aina mamua aku,
Kahi a makou e noho ai. ”

“ First came those who eagerly credited the report of Lohiau’s resurrection; scattering along after them, strangers and those who were in any degree skeptical of this great mystery. Each hour saw a bunch of new arrivals, not from Niihau alone but from all parts of Kauai.
When Kahua-nui and her husband had first wept over Lohiau, embracing and kissing him, uttering their welcome in joyous cries of wailing, they turned to the two women, the strangers, for Lohiau bade them extend their welcome to “these two women who have brought me to life again.” ”

“ It matters not whether the poet-philosopher, deep pondering on the hot things of love, hit upon Pele as the most striking and appropriate character to serve his purpose and to wear his garment of passionate song and story, or, whether his mind, working more objectively, took Nature’s suggestion and came to realize that, in the wild play of the volcanic forces, he had exemplified before him a mighty parable of tempestuous love. ”

“ Hiiaka kisses Lohiau! She kisses your lover, Lohiau!”
The excitement rises to fever heat. Pele is the coolest of the lot. At the first outcry—“they kiss”—Pele remarks with seeming indifference, “The nose was made for kissing.”1 (The Hawaiian kiss was a flattening of nose against nose) . But when Hiiaka and Lohiau sink to the earth wrapped in each other’s arms, and the women of Pele’s court raise the cry, “For shame! they kiss; they embrace!” At this announcement, the face of Pele hardens and her voice rings out with the command: “Ply him with fire.” ”

“ Hiiaka now openly denounced the two sorcerers as being simply mo’o in disguise, entirely wanting in those generous feelings that belong to godhood. “These creatures are simply mo’o. If I attack them, they will run for their lives.”
The people, failing to recognize Hiiaka as their deliverer, spiritless from long habituation to the fraudulent dominion of these imposters, fearful also of their vengeance, stoutly opposed Hiiaka, affirming that Pili-a-mo’o and Noho-a-mo’o were gods in reality, having great power and capable of doing many wonderful things. ”

“ The “child in the heart that has grown to be a man” is Lohiau’s old love for Pele-ula, which now wakes up into new life at the sight of his old flame. The old love has, however, in a sense become a burden. It stands in the way of the new-born affection that has sprung up in his heart for Hiiaka.
It was after the chanting of this mele that Lohiau threw his kilu. ”

“ The gods well knew on what perilous ground they stood, with whom they had to deal, the fierceness of Pele’s wrath when it was stirred; yet, in their hatred of a great wrong, they moved with one purpose to push back the fires that were threatening Lohiau. With their immortal hands they flung away the embers and masses of flame until the heavens were filled with meteor-fragments. ”

“ With universal wailing, amid the waving of kahilis, with tender care and the observance of all due rites, his people anointed the dear body of their chief with perfumed oil, wrapped it in scented robes of choicest tapa, and laid it to rest in the sepulcher.
The favorite dog of Lohiau, who was greatly attached to his master, took his station at the grave and would not be persuaded to leave. ”

“ Hiiaka’s chief weapon of attack seems to have been her magical paú. With this as a besom she beat them down as a husbandman might beat down a swarm of locusts. The Mahiki and the Mo’o-lau had ceased to exist as organized bodies. But from the rout and slaughter of the armies many individuals had escaped with their lives, and these had hid themselves away in caves and secret places, some of them even, presuming apparently upon their power of disguise, had taken refuge in the remote scattered habitations of the people. ”