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HINA, THE HELEN OF HAWAII.

CHARACTERS.

HAKALANILEO, a chief of Hawaii.

HINA, wife of Hakalanileo.

ULI, a sorceress, mother of Hina.

KAMAUAUA, King of Molokai.

NUAKEA, wife of Keoloewa.

MOI, brother of Nuakea.

HINA, THE HELEN OF HAWAII.

A STORY OF HAWAIIAN CHIVALRY IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY.

I.

THE story of the Iliaa is a dramatic record of the love and hate, wrong and revenge, courage and custom, passion and superstition, of mythical Greece, and embraces in a single brilliant recital events which the historic bards of other lands, lacking the genius of Homer, have sent down the centuries in fragments. Human nature has been substantially the same in all ages, differing only in the ardor of its passions and appetites, as affected by the zone of its habitat and its peculiar physical surroundings. Hence almost every nation, barbarous and civilized, has had its Helen and its Troy, its Paris and its Agamemnon, its Hector and its demi-gods; and Hawaii is not an exception. The wrath of no dusky Achilles is made the thesis of the story of the Hawaiian abduction, but in other respects the Greek and Polynesian legends closely resemble each other in their general outlines.

The story of Hina, the Hawaiian Helen, and Kaupeepee, the Paris of the legend, takes us back to the twelfth century, near the close of the second and final era of migration from Tahiti, Samoa, and perhaps other islands of Polynesia—a period which added very considerably to the population of the group, and gave to it many new chiefs, a number of new customs, and a few new gods. That the tale may be better understood by the reader who may not be conversant with the legendary history of the Hawaiian Islands, it will be necessary to refer briefly to the political and social condition of the group at that time.

Notwithstanding the many sharply drawn and wonderfully preserved historic legends of the Hawaiians, the early settlement of the little archipelago is shrouded in mystery. The best testimony, however, warrants the assumption that the islands were first discovered and occupied by a people who had drifted from southern Asia to the islands of the Pacific in the first or second century of the Christian era, and, by migratory stages from the Figis to Samoa and thence to Tahiti, had reached the Hawaiian group in about A.D. 550. The first discovery was doubtless the result of accident; but those who made it were able to find their way back to the place from which they started—either Tahiti or Samoa—and in due time return with augmented numbers, bearing with them to their new home pigs, fowls, dogs, and the seeds of such fruits and vegetables as they had found to be wanting there.

The little colony grew and prospered, and for nearly five hundred years had no communication with, or knowledge of, the world beyond. At the end of that time their geographical traditions had grown so faint that they spoke only of Kahiki, a place very far away, from which their ancestors came. First landing on the large island of Hawaii, they had spread over the eight habitable divisions of the group. The people were ruled by district chiefs, in fief to a supreme head on some of the islands, and on others independent, and the lines dividing the masses from the nobility were less strictly drawn than during the centuries succeeding. Wars were frequent between neighboring chiefs, and popular increase was slow; but the tabus of the chiefs and priests were not oppressive, and the people claimed and exercised a degree of personal independence unknown to them after the eleventh century.

In about A.D. 1025, or perhaps a little earlier, the people of the group were suddenly aroused from their long dream of six centuries by the arrival of a large party of adventurers from Tahiti. Their chief was Nanamaoa. Their language resembled that of the Hawaiians, and their customs and religions were not greatly at variance. They were therefore received with kindness, and in a few years their influence began to be felt throughout the group. They landed at Kohala, Hawaii, and Nanamaoa soon succeeded in establishing himself there as an influential chief. His sons secured possessions on Maui and Oahu, and on the latter island one of them—Nanakaoko—instituted the sacred place called Kukaniloko, in the district of Ewa, where it was the desire of future chiefs that their sons should be born. Even Kamehameha I., as late as 1797, sought to remove his queen thither before the birth of Liholiho, but the illness of the royal mother prevented. This became the sacred birth-place of princes, as Iao, in Wailuku valley, on the island of Maui, became their tabu spot of interment.

It was at Kukaniloko that Kapawa, the son of Nanakaoko, was born. His principal seat of power was probably on Hawaii, although he retained possessions on Maui and Oahu. It was during his life that the celebrated chief and priest Paao made his appearance in the group. He came from one of the southern islands with a small party, bringing with him new gods and new modes of worship, and to him the subsequent high-priests of Hawaii traced their sacerdotal line, even down to Hevaheva, who in 1819 was the first to apply the torch to the temples in which his ancestors had so long worshipped. Paao was a statesman and warrior as well as a priest, but he preferred spiritual to temporal authority; and when Kapawa died and was buried at Iao, leaving his possessions without a competent ruler and his subjects in a state bordering upon anarchy, Paao did not assume the chieftaincy, as he manifestly might have done, but despatched messengers—if, indeed, he did not go himself—to the land of his birth, to invite to Hawaii a chief capable of restoring order.

Such a leader was found in Pilikaekae, of Samoa, who migrated to Hawaii with a goodly number of retainers, and was promptly established in the vacant sovereignty, while Paao continued in the position of high-priest. Pili extended his authority over the six districts of Hawaii; but beyond Kohala and the northern part of the island the recognition of his sovereignty was merely nominal, and internal wars and revolts were frequent.

The next arrivals of note from the southern islands were the two Paumakua families, one of which settled in Oahu and Kauai and the other in Hawaii and Maui. Whether, as averred by conflicting traditions, they arrived contemporaneously or two or three generations apart, is a question in nowise pertinent to our story. The legend is connected with the Hawaii branch alone, and the order of their coming need not, therefore, be here discussed.

The Paumakua family, which became so influential in Hawaii and Maui, arrived during the early part of the reign of Pili, in about A.D. 1090. A large party accompanied the family, and they brought with them their gods, priests, astrologers and prophets. They first landed and secured possessions in Maui; but the sons and other relatives of Paumakua were brave and ambitious, and soon by conquest and marriage secured an almost sovereign footing both in Maui and Hawaii.

One of the nephews of Paumakua, Hakalanileo, who was the son of Kuheailani, as an entering wedge to further acquisitions became in some manner possessed of a strip of land along the coast in the district of Hilo, Hawaii. It was a large estate, and the owner availed himself of every opportunity to extend its boundaries and increase the number of his dependents. His wife was the beautiful Hina of Hawaiian song and daughter of the seeress Uli, who had migrated from Tahiti with some one of the several expeditions of that period-possibly with the Paumakua family, although tradition does not so state.

At that time Kamauaua, a powerful chief of the ancient native line of Nanaula, held sway over the island of Molokai. He proudly traced back his ancestry to the first migration in the sixth century, and regarded with aversion and well-founded alarm the new migratory tide which for years past had been casting upon the shores of the islands a flood of alien adventurers, whose warlike and aggressive chiefs were steadily possessing themselves of the fairest portions of the group. He had sought to form a league of native chiefs against these dangerous encroachments; but the wily invaders, with new gods to awe the masses and new customs and new traditions to charm the native nobility, had, through intermarriage and strategy rather than force, become the virtual rulers of Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, and Kauai, and he had abandoned all hope of seeing them supplanted. Molokai alone rem tined exclusively under native control, and its resolute old chief had from their infancy instilled into his sons a hatred of the southern spoilers and a resolution to resist their aggressions to the bitter end.

The eldest of the sons of Kamauaua was Kaupeepee. He was a warlike youth, well skilled in arms and mighty in strength and courage, and so profound was his detestation of the alien chiefs that he resolved to devote his life to such warfare as he might be able to make upon them and their subjects. With this view he relinquished his right of succession to his first brother, Keoloewa, and, gathering around him a band of: warriors partaking of his desperation and courage, established a stronghold on the promontory of Haupu, on the north side of the island, between Pelekunu and Waikolo. At that point, and for some miles on each side of it, the mountains hug the ocean so closely as to leave nothing between them and the surf-beaten shores but a succession of steep, narrow and rugged promontories jutting out into the sea, and separated from each other by gorge-like and gloomy little valleys gashing the hills and, like dragons, for ever swallowing and ejecting the waves that venture too near their rocky jaws.

One of the most rugged of these promontories was Haupu. It was a natural fortress, precipitously fronting the sea with a height of five hundred feet or more, and flanked on the right and left by almost perpendicular declivities rising from narrow gulches choked with vegetation and sweetening the sea with rivulets of fresh water dashing down from the mountains seamed by their sources. It was connected with the range of mountains back of it by a narrow and rising ridge, which at a point something less than a mile inland, where opposite branches of the two flanking gulches approached each other closely, was contracted to a neck of not more than fifty paces in width. The summit of the point abutting the ocean was a comparatively level plateau, or rather series of three connecting terraces, embracing in all an area of nearly a hundred acres. Surrounded on three sides by almost perpendicular walls, and accessible on the fourth only by a narrow and easily-defended ridge extending to the mountains, little engineering skill was required to render the place well-nigh impregnable.

Setting himself earnestly to the task, Kaupeepee soon transformed the promontory of Haupu into one of the strongest fortresses in all the group. He surrounded the plateau with massive stone walls overlooking the declivities, and across the narrow neck leading to the mountains raised a rocky barrier ten feet in thickness and twenty feet in height, around which aggression from without was rendered impracticable by the excavation of precipices leading to, and in vertical line with, the ends of the wall. Instead of a gate, a subterranean passage-way led under the wall, the inside entrance being covered in times of danger with a huge flat stone resting on rollers.

Although the passage was rough and in unfavorable weather attended with danger, canoes could enter the mouths of both gulches and be hauled up beyond the reach of the waves, and beyond the reach of enemies as well; for above the entrances, and completely commanding them, frowned the broad battlements of Haupu, from which might be hurled hundreds of tons of rocks and other destructive missiles. With ingenuity and great labor narrow foot-paths were cut leading from the middle terrace to both gulches, some distance above their openings, and affording a means of entering and leaving the fortress by water. These paths connected with the terrace through narrow passage-ways under the walls, and a single arm could defend them against a host.

Within the walls buildings were erected capable of accommodating in an emergency two or three thousand warriors, and on the lower terrace, occupied by Kaupeepee and his household, including his confidential friends and captains, a small heiau overlooked the sea, with a priest and two or three assistants in charge. Mountain-paths led from the fortress to Kalau,papa and other productive parts of the island; and as fish could be taken in abundance, and Kaupeepee and many of his followers controlled taro and other lands in the valleys beyond, it was seldom that the stronghold was short of food, even when foraging expeditions to the neighboring islands failed.

The services of the courageous alone were accepted by Kaupeepee, and it was a wild and daring warfare that the little band waged for years against the alien chiefs and their subjects. They could put afloat a hundred war-canoes, and their operations, although usually confined to Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii, sometimes in a spirit of bravado extended to Kauai. Leaving their retreat, they hovered near the coast selected for pillage until after dark, and then landed and mercilessly used the torch and spear. This part of their work was quickly done, when they filled their canoes with the choicest plunder they could find or of which they were most in need, and before daylight made sail for Haupu. Women were sometimes the booty coveted by the buccaneers, and during their raids many a screaming beauty was seized and borne to their stronghold on Molokai, where in most instances she was so kindly treated that she soon lost all desire to be liberated. Occasionally they were followed, if the winds were unfavorable to their retreat, by hastily-equipped fleets of canoes. If they allowed themselves to be overtaken it was for the amusement of driving back their pursuers; but as a rule they escaped without pursuit or punishment, leaving their victims in ignorance alike of the source and motive of the assault.

A prominent chief of Oahu, whose territory had been ravaged by Kaupeepee, traced the retiring fleet of the plunderers to the coast of Molokai, when it suddenly disappeared. He landed and paid his respects to the venerable Kamauaua, then at Kalau-papa, and craved his assistance in discovering and punishing the spoilers, who must have found shelter somewhere on the island. The old chief smiled grimly as he replied: "It is not necessary to search for your enemies. You will find them at Haupu, near the ocean. They are probably waiting for you. They do not disturb me or my people. If they have wronged you, land and punish them. You have my permission."

The Oahu chief offered his thanks and departed. He made a partial reconnoissance of Haupu, ascertained that it was defended by but a few hundred warriors, and shortly after returned with a large fleet of canoes to capture and retain possession of the place. Arriving off the entrance to the gulches, and discovering a number of war-canoes drawn up on their steep banks, he opened the campaign by ordering their seizure. Sixty canoes filled with warriors rode the surf into the gulches, where they were met by avalanches of rocks from the walls of the fortress, which dashed the most of them in pieces. The chief was startled and horrified, and, believing the gods were raining rocks down upon his fleet, he rescued such of his warriors as were able to reach him from the wrecked canoes, and hastily departed for Oahu, not again to return.

It is said that Kamauaua watched this assault upon Haupu from the hills back of the fortress, and, in token of his pleasure at the result, sent to Kaupeepee a feather cloak, and gave him the privilege of taking fish for his warriors from one of the largest of the royal ponds on the island. He also quietly presented him with a barge, than which there were few larger in the group. It would accommodate more than a hundred warriors and their equipments, and was intended for long and rough voyages.

These barges were constructed of planks strongly corded together over a frame, and calked and pitched. They were sometimes ten or more feet in width, and were partially or wholly decked over, with a depth of hold of six or eight feet. It was in vessels of this class, and in large double canoes of equal or greater burden, that distant voyages were made to and from the Hawaiian Islands during the migratory periods of the past, while the single and double canoes of smaller dimensions, hollowed from the trunks of single trees, were used in warfare, fishing, and in general inter-island communication. After the final suspension of intercourse, in the twelfth century, between the Hawaiian and Society Islands—the possible result of the disappearance of a guiding line of small islands and atolls dotting the ocean at intervals between the two groups—the barges referred to gradually went out of use with the abandonment of voyages to distant lands, and were almost unknown to the Hawaiians as early as one or two centuries ago. Their spread of sail was very considerable, but oars were also used, and the mariner shaped his course by the sun and stars, and was guided to land by the flights of birds, drifting wood, and currents of which he knew the direction.

Some of the double canoes with which the barges were supplanted were scarcely less capacious and seaworthy than the barges themselves. They were hollowed from the trunks of gigantic pines that had drifted to the islands from the northern coast of America, and when one was found years sometimes elapsed before wind and current provided a proper mate. One of the single-trunk double canoes of Kamehameha I. was one hundred and eight feet in length, and both single and double canoes of from fifty to eighty feet in length were quite common during his reign, when the native forests abounded in growths much larger than can now be found. But the native trees never furnished bodies for the larger sizes of canoes. They were the gifts of the waves, and were not unfrequently credited to the favor of the gods.

Kaupeepee was delighted with the present of the barge. It gave him one of the largest vessels in all the eight Hawaiian seas, and rendered him especially formidable in sea-encounters. He painted the sails red and the hull to the water-line, and from the masthead flung a saucy pennon to the breeze, surmounted by a kahili, which might have been mistaken for Von Tromp's broom had it been seen a few centuries later in northern seas. He provided a large crew of oarsmen, and made a more secure landing for it in one of the openings near the fortress.

With this substantial addition to his fleet Kaupeepee enlarged the scope of his depredations, and his red sails were known and feared on the neighboring coasts of Oahu and Maui. Haupu was filled with the spoil of his expeditions, and the return of a successful raiding party was usually celebrated with a season of feasting, singing, dancing, and other boisterous merriment. Nor were the gods forgotten. Frequent festivals were given to Kane, Ku, and Lono; and Moaalii, the shark-god of Molokai—the god of the fisherman and mariner—was always the earliest to be remembered. A huge image of this deity overlooked the ocean from the north wall of the heiau of Haupu, and lets of fresh flowers adorned its shoulders whenever a dangerous expedition departed or returned. On one occasion this god had guided Kaupeepee to Haupu during a dark and rainy night, and on another had capsized a number of Oahuan war-canoes that had adroit-ly separated him from his fleet in Pailolo channel.

At that period the islands were generally ruled by virtually independent district chiefs. They recognized a supreme head, or alii-nui, but were absolute lords of their several territories, and wars between them were frequent; but they were wars of plunder rather than of conquest, and sometimes continued in a desultory way until both parties were impoverished, when their chiefs and priests met and arranged terms of peace. But Kaupeepee was inspired by a motive higher than that of mere plunder. He hated the southern chiefs and their successors, and his assaults were confined exclusively to the territories over which they ruled. His sole aim was to inflict injury upon them, and the spoils of his expeditions were distributed among his followers. Brave, generous and sagacious, he was almost worshipped by his people, and treason, with them, was a thing unthought of.

It was indeed a wild and reckless life that Kaupeepee and his daring associates led; but it lacked neither excitement abroad nor amusement at home. On the upper terrace a kahua channel had been cut, along which they rolled the maika and threw the blunted dart. They played konane puhenehene, and punipeki, and at surf-riding possessed experts of both sexes who might have travelled far without finding their equals. The people of the island were friendly with the dashing buccaneers, and the fairest damsels became their wives, some of them living with their husbands at Haupu, and others with their relatives in the valleys.

II.

We will now return to Hina—or Hooho, as she was sometimes called—the beautiful wife of Hakalanileo, nephew of Paumakua, of Hawaii. Hakalanileo had acquired his possessions in Hilo partly through the influence of his own family, and partly through his marriage with the sister of a consequential district chief. Later in life he had seen and become enamored of Hina, the daughter of Uli, and prevailed upon her to become his wife The marriage was not acceptable to Uli. The position and family connections of Hakalanileo were sufficiently inviting, but Uli, who dealt in sorcery and magic, saw disaster in the proposed union and advised her daughter against it. After much persuasion, however, her consent was obtained; but she gave it with this injunction:

"Since you will have it so, take her, Hakalanileo; but guard her well, for I can see that some day the winds will snatch her from you, and you will behold her not again for many years."

"Be it even as you say," replied Hakalanileo, "I will take the hazard. We do not well to reject a treasure because, perchance, it may be stolen. Hina shall be my wife."

And thus it was that Hina became the wife of the nephew of Paumakua—Hina, the most beautiful maiden in all Hawaii; Hina, whose eyes were like stars, and whose hair fell in waves below the fringes of her pau; Hina, whose name has come down to us through the centuries garlanded with song. And for years she lived happily with Hakalanileo, who loved her above all others—lived with him until she became the mother of two sons, Kana and Niheu; and then the winds snatched her away from her husband, just as Uli had predicted six years before. But the winds that bore her hence filled the sails of the great barge of Kaupeepee.

The chief of Haupu had heard of her great beauty, and resolved to see with his own eyes what the bards had exalted in song. Travelling overland from Puna in disguise, he reached her home in Hilo, and saw that the poets had done her no more than justice. She was beautiful indeed, and the wife of one to whose blood he had vowed undying enmity. Returning to Puna, where his barge lay in waiting for him, he hovered around the coast of Hilo for some days, watching for an opportunity to seize the woman whose charms had enraptured him.

At last it came. After sunset, when the moon was shining, Hina repaired to the beach with her women to bathe. A signal was given—it is thought, by the first wife of Hakalanileo—and not long after a light but heavily-manned canoe dashed through the surf and shot in among the bathers. The women screamed and started for the shore. Suddenly a man leaped from the canoe into the water. There was a brief struggle, a stifled scream, a sharp word of command, and a moment later Kaupeepee was again in the canoe with the nude and frantic Hina in his arms.

The boatmen knew their business—knew the necessity of quick work—and without a word the canoe was turned and driven through the surf like an arrow. The barge, with a man at every oar and the sails ready to hoist, was lying a short distance out at sea. A speck of light guided the boatmen, and the barge was soon reached. All were hastily transferred to it. The sails were spread, the men bent to their oars, the canoe was taken in tow; and, while the alarm-drum was sounding and fires were appearing on shore, Hina, wrapped in folds of soft kapa, sat sobbing in one of the apartments of the barge, and was being swiftly borne by wind and oar toward the fortress of Haupu.

The return to Haupu occupied a little more than two days. During that time Hina had mourned continually and partaken of no food. Kaupeepee had treated her with respect and kindness; but she was bewildered with the shock of her abduction, and begged to be either killed or returned to her children.

The party landed a little before daylight. The sea was rough, but the moon shone brightly, and the passage into the mouth of one of the gulches was made without accident. In the arms of Kaupeepee Hina was borne up the rock-hewn path to the fortress, and placed in apartments on the lower terrace provided with every comfort and luxury known to the nobility of the islands at that period. They had been especially prepared for her reception, and women were in attendance to wait upon her and see that she wanted for nothing, except her liberty. The large private room of the three communicating apartments—the one designed for her personal occupation—was a model of barbaric taste and comfort, and to its adornment many of the exposed districts of Oahu and Maui had unwillingly contributed. Its walls were tapestried with finely-woven and brilliantly-colored mattings, dropping from festoons of shells and underlapping a carpet of hardier material covering the level ground-floor. The beams of the ceiling were also studded with shells and gaudily stained. On one side of the room was a slightly-raised platform, thickly strewn with dry sea-grass and covered with many folds of kapa. This was the kapa-moe, or sleeping-couch. Opposite was a kapa-covered lounge extending along the entire side of the room. In the middle of the apartment were spread several thicknesses of mats, which served alike for eating and lounging purposes. Light was admitted through two small openings immediately under the eaves, and from the door when its heavy curtains were looped aside. On a row of shelves in a corner of the room were carved calabashes and other curious drinking-vessels, as well as numerous ornaments of shells, ivory and feathers; and in huge calabashes under them were stores of female attire of every description then in use. In fact, nothing seemed to be wanting, and, in spite of her grief, Hina could scarcely repress a feeling of delight as she was shown into the apartment and the kukui torches displayed its luxurious appointments.

Declining food, Hina dismissed her attendants, and, throwing herself on the kapa-moe, was soon folded in the soft mantle of sleep and carried back in dreams to the home from which she had been ravished. The room was dark, and she slept for many hours. Awaking, she could not for a moment recollect where she was; but gradually the events of the preceding three days came to her, and she appreciated that she was a prisoner in the hands of Kaupeepee, of whose name and exploits she was not ignorant, and that repining would secure her neither liberation nor kind treatment. Therefore, with a sagacity to be expected of the daughter of Uli, and not without a certain feeling of pride as she reflected that her beauty had inspired Kaupeepee to abduct her, she admitted her attendants, attired herself becomingly, partook heartily of a breakfast of fish, pot, potatoes and fruits, and then sent word to Kaupeepee that she would be pleased to see him.

Kaupeepee expected a storm of tears and reproaches as he entered the room, but was agreeably disappointed. Hina rose, bowed, and waited for him to speak.

"What can I do for you?" inquired Kaupeepee in a kindly tone, while a just perceptible smile of triumph swept across his handsome face.

"Liberate me," replied Hina promptly.

"You are free to go anywhere within the walls of Haupu," returned Kaupeepee, moving his arms around as if they embraced the whole world.

"Return me to my children," said Hina; and at thought of them her eyes flashed with earnestness.

"Impossible!" was the firm reply.

"Then kill me!" exclaimed Hina.

"Did you ever see me before I had the pleasure of embracing you in the water on the coast of Hilo?" inquired the chief, evasively.

"No," replied Hina, curtly.

"Well, I saw you before that time," continued Kaupeepee—" saw you in your house; saw you among the palms; saw you by the waters. I made a journey overland from Puna to see you—to see the wife of my enemy, the most beautiful woman in Hawaii."

Hina was but a woman, and of a race and time when the promptings of the heart were not fettered by rigid rules of propriety. Kaupeepee was the handsome and distinguished son of a king, and his words of praise were not unpleasant to her. She therefore bent her eyes to the floor and remained silent while he added:

"Hina would think little of the man who would risk his life to possess himself of such a woman, and then kill or cast her off as not worth the keeping. You are like no other woman; I am like no other man. Such companionship has the approval of the gods, and you will leave Haupu only when its walls shall have been battered down and Kaupeepee lies dead among the ruins!"

To this terrible declaration Hina could offer no reply. The fierceness of this prince of the old line of Nanaula, this enemy of her people, this scourge of the southern chiefs, alike charmed and frightened her, and with her hands to her face she sank upon the lounge of kapa beside which she had been standing.

The chief regarded her for a moment, perhaps with a feeling of pity; then, placing his hand upon her shoulder, he softly said:

"You will not be unhappy in Haupu."

"Will the bird sing that is covered with a calabash?" replied Hina, raising her eyes. "I am your prisoner."

"Not more my prisoner than I am yours," rejoined the chief, gallantly. "Therefore, as fellow-prisoners, let us make the best of walls that shut out no sunshine, and of gates that are a bar only against intrusion."

"How brave, and yet how gentle!" mused Hina, as Kaupeepee, feeling that he had said enough, turned and left the room. "How strangely pleasant are his words and voice! No one ever spoke so to me before. I could have listened longer."

After that Hina harkened for the footsteps of Kaupeepee, and lived to forget that she was a prisoner in the fortress of Haupu. His love gently wooed her thoughts from the past and made sweet the bondage which he shared with her.

III.

The sudden disappearance of Hina created a profound excitement among the people of that part of the coast of Hilo from which she had been abducted. The women who had been permitted to escape ran screaming to the house of Hakalanileo with their tale of woe, and soon for miles around the country was in arms. When questioned, all they could tell was that a canoe filled with armed men suddenly dashed through the surf, and their mistress was seized and borne out to sea. This was all they knew.

Canoes were suddenly equipped and sent in pursuit, but they returned before morning with the report that nothing had been seen of the abductors. Messengers were despatched to the coast settlements of Hamakua, Hilo and Puna, but they brought no intelligence of the missing woman. Uli was consulted, but her divinations failed, for the reason, as she informed the unhappy husband, that the powers that had warned her against the marriage of her daughter and foreshadowed the result could not be prevailed upon to impart any information that would interfere with the fulfilment of the prophecy. Uli, therefore, sat down in gloom to await the developments of time, and Hakalanileo started on a systematic search through the group for his lost wife.

After visiting every district and almost every village on Hawaii, he proceeded with a small party of attendants to Maui, and thence to Molokai, Oahu, Kauai and Niihau, and back to Lanai and Kahoolawe; but no trace of Hina could be discovered. He was well received by the various chiefs, and assistance was freely offered and sometimes accepted; but all search was in vain, and he returned disheartened to Hawaii after an absence of more than two years.

But his first search was not his last. During the fifteen years that followed he made frequent voyages to the different islands on the same errand, and always with the same result. He offered sacrifices in the temples, made pledges to the gods, and consulted every kaula of note of whom he had knowledge; but his offerings and promises failed to secure the assistance of the unseen powers, and the kilos and astrologers could gather nothing of importance to him from their observations.

Meantime Kana and Niheu, the sons of Hina, grew to manhood and prepared to continue the search for their mother, which Hakalanileo had at last abandoned as hopeless. Again and again had their grandmother told them the story of the abduction of Hina, and as often had they vowed to devote their lives to a solution of the mystery of her fate. It was vouchsafed to Uli to see that her daughter lived, but beyond that her charms and incantations were fruitless. But when the beards of her grandsons began to grow she felt that the time was approaching when Hina's hiding-place would be discovered, and she inspired them to become proficient in the use of arms and the arts of war. And to their assistance she brought the instruction of supernatural powers.

Niheu became endowed not only with great personal strength and courage, but with unerring instincts of strategy and all the accomplishments of a successful military leader. To Kana were given powers of a different nature. He could contract his body to the compass of an insect, and expand or extend it almost indefinitely; but he was permitted to do neither except in cases of imminent personal peril, as the faculty was rarely imparted to mortals, and in this instance was accorded by Kanaloa without the knowledge of the powers to which that deity was subject.

Finally, after a season of long and patient inquiry, it was developed to Uli that her daughter was secreted in the fortress of Haupu and could be recovered only by force, as she had long been the wife of Kaupeepee and would not be surrendered peacefully. Hakalanileo regarded the development with distrust; for while at Kalaupapa, on the island of Molokai, less than three years before, word was brought to him from Kaupeepee, offering to open the fortress of Haupu to his inspection. Hence, when his sons set about raising a large force to attack that stronghold, he gave them every assistance in his power, but declined to accompany the expedition.

Before noting with greater detail the warlike preparations of Hina's sons, let us refer briefly to the changes which the years leading them to manhood had brought to others connected with the events of this legend. Hina had been a not unhappy captive at Haupu for nearly seventeen years, during which Kaupeepee had continued his desultory assaults upon the usurping chiefs of the neighboring islands. His name had become known throughout the entire group, and several combined attacks upon Haupu had been repulsed—the last by land, led by a distinguished Maui chief, with a slaughter so great that the adjoining gulches were choked with the slain. The venerable Kamauaua had passed away, leaving the government of Molokai to his son, Keoloewa, who had married Nuakea, daughter of the powerful chief, Keaunui, of Oahu, and sister of Lakona, of the strain of Maweke. Moi, another of Nuakea's brothers, had joined Kaupeepee at Haupu, and became not only his steadfast friend and adviser, but his kaula, or prophet, as well.

Paumakua had died at a very old age, and was buried at Iao, leaving his titles, meles and possessions to his son, Haho; but the change did not seem to affect the holdings of Hakalanileo in Hilo, although it brought to his sons some support in their subsequent war with Kaupeepee. Haho was a haughty but warlike chief, and refused to recognize the titles of many of the native nobles; and, to permanently degrade them, he founded the Ahaalii, or college of chiefs, which embraced the blue-blooded of the entire group, and remained in vogue as late as the beginning of the present century. To be recognized by this college of heraldry, it was necessary for every chief to name his descent from an ancestor of unquestioned nobility; and when his rank was thus formally established, no circumstance of war or peace could deprive him of it. There were gradations of rank and tabu within the Aha-alii, and all received the respect to which their rank entitled them, without regard to their worldly condition. No chief could claim a higher grade than the source from which he sprang; nor could he achieve it, although through marriage with a chiefess of higher rank he might advance his children to the grade of the mother. The Aha-alii had a language which was not understood by the common people, and which was changed whenever it became known to the makaainana, and it w.,s their right on all occasions to wear the insignia of their rank, the feather wreath (lei-hulu), the feather cape (aha ula), and the ivory clasp (palaoa); and their canoes might be painted red and bear a pennon. The royal color was yellow.

Although Kaupeepee was of the undoubted blood of Nanaula, and would not have been denied admission to the Ahaalii, he treated with contempt the institution of nobility founded by Haho, declaring that the blood of the founder himself was ennobled only through the thefts of his low-born grandfather. This was doubtless correct; but Kaupeepee's hatred of the southern invaders would not allow him to be just, even to their ancestors.

Such was the condition of affairs when the sons of Hina began to prepare for their expedition against Haupu. They sent emissaries to Oahu and Maui, and were promised substantial co-operation by the leading chiefs of those islands, the most of whom had suffered from the raids of the scourge of Molokai. They collected a mighty fleet of canoes and a force of six thousand warriors. As many more were promised from Oahu and Maui, which, were Keoloewa's permission obtained, would be landed at Molokai to operate in conjunction with the army from Hawaii.

As an attack on Haupu from the sea side was not considered practicable, even with the overwhelming force that was being organized against it, messengers were despatched to Molokai to prevail upon Keoloewa to permit a portion of the united armies to land on the south side of the island and assault the fortress from the mountain. His sympathies were with his brother, and he hesitated; but when he learned of the formidable force organizing for the reduction of Haupu, he appreciated that he was unable to successfully oppose the movement, and, with the assurance that his subjects would be neither disturbed nor de-spoiled of their property during the conflict, and that the invading armies would be withdrawn from the island at the end of the campaign against Haupu, he consented to the landing. Had he known the real motive of the assault he would have advised his brother to surrender his fair prisoner and save both from possible ruin; but, conceiving that Kaupeepee's depredations had become unendurable, and that the chiefs of the great islands had at length united to crush him, for his own safety he felt compelled to leave him to his fate.

This resolution accorded with the advice of Kaupeepee. Many days before his faithful kaula had told him of the approaching invasion, of the combination of chiefs against him, and the doubtful result of the struggle; and before the messengers reached his brother he had gone to and advised him to offer no opposition to the landing of his enemies on the island. "Opposition would be useless," argued Kaupeepee," for my enemies are coming in great force. I have slain them and blasted their lands, and single-handed will meet the consequences. Do not embroil yourself with me, but save to our blood the possessions of our fathers."

"Perhaps you are right," said Keoloewa; "but why not abandon Haupu and save yourself, if you are not able to hold it?"

"Never!" exclaimed Kaupeepee. "For more than twenty years its walls have stood between me and my enemies, and I will not desert them now. I have a thousand brave men who will triumph or die with me. Should Haupu be taken, go and count the corpses around its walls, and you will not blush to see how a son of Kamauaua died!"

"So let the will of the gods be done!" replied the brother. "But we may not meet again."

"True," returned Kaupeepee, with a strange smile—"true, my good brother, for my sepulchre at Haupu needs ornamenting before the mourners come."

"In my name take anything required for your defence," said Keoloewa, still holding the hand of his brother, as if reluctant to part with him; "my heart, if not my arm, will be with you!"

"We shall be well prepared," were the words of Kaupeepee at parting; and before he reached the top of the pali on his return to Haupu, the messengers from Hawaii landed at Kalau-papa.

With this concession from Keoloewa the arrangements for the campaign were speedily made. The main body of the united forces was to concentrate at Kaunakakai, on the north side of the island, and move under the supreme leadership of Niheu, while a large detachment, embracing the best seamen of the several quotas, was to blockade the sea-entrances to Haupu, destroy the canoes of the fortress to prevent escape or succor, and co-operate generally with the land forces. This dangerous service was entrusted to the command of Kana.

At the appointed time the Hawaiian army set sail for Molokai in a fleet of over twelve hundred canoes, many of them double, and carrying a large supply of provisions. The assistance of the gods had been invoked with many sacrifices, and the omens had been favorable. In one of the large double canoes was Uli. Her form was bent with age, and her hair, white as foam, covered her shoulders like a mantle. In youth she was noted for her stateliness and beauty; but age and care had destroyed all traces of her early comeliness, and her wrinkled face, and black eyes glistening through the rifts of her long, white hair, gave her the appearance of one who dealt with things to be feared. She was surrounded with charms and images, and before her, on a stone-bordered hearth of earth, burned a continual fire, into which she at intervals threw gums and oily mixtures, emitting clouds of incense. Her canoe followed that of the sons of Hina, with their priest and war-god, and red pennon at the masthead; and as the fleet swept out into the ocean, with thousands of oars in the waves and thousands of spears in the air, Uli rose to her feet and began a wild war-chant, which was taken up by the following hosts and borne far over the waters.

The day following a number of expeditions left various openings on the coasts of Oahu and Maui—none of them approaching the Hawaiian army in strength, but together adding an aggregate of nine hundred canoes of all sizes and about four thousan of warriors to the invading force. All of them reached the landing at Kaunakakai on the day appointed for their arrival, and Niheu found himself in command of ten thousand warriors and over two thousand canoes. No such number of spears was ever before seen massed on Molokai; but the people had been assured that they would not be injured either in person or property so long as they remained peaceful, and the terms of the agreement with Keoloewa were faithfully observed. Among the invaders the people found many friends and relatives, for intercourse between the islands at that time was free and frequent; and although their sympathies were with Kaupeepee, they soon came to regard the projected capture of Haupu as a great game of konane, played by agreement between two champions, during which the spectators were to remain silent and make no suggestions.

The tents of the chiefs, around which were encamped their respective followers, extended along the shore for more than two miles, while the beach for a greater distance was fringed with canoes, many of the larger painted red and bearing gaudy pennons of stout kapa. As plundering had been forbidden, provisions of dried fish, potatoes, cocoanuts, taro, and live pigs and fowls had been brought in considerable quantities in extra canoes; but as the duration of the campaign could only be surmised, rolls of kapa and matting, shell wreaths, ivory, feather capes, calabashes, mechanical tools, ornaments, and extra arms were also brought, to be fairly exchanged from time to time for such supplies as might be wanted.

IV.

Everything being in readiness for an advance upon the stronghold of Kaupeepee, a war-council of the assembled chiefs was called. Among them were several who were well informed concerning the approaches to Haupu, and the main features of the campaign were arranged without discussion. Signals and other means of communication between the two divisions having been agreed upon, the next morning a detachment of two thousand men, occupying five hundred canoes, under the command of Kana, moved around the island to blockade the entrances to Haupu, and immediately after the main army, leaving a strong reserve to guard the canoes and look after supplies, broke camp and took up its line of march across the island to the mountains back of the fortress. The trails were rough, but at sunrise the next morning the land division, stretched along the summit of the hills two miles back of Haupu, looked down and saw the fleet of Kana drawn like a broad, black line around the ocean entrances to the doomed stronghold.

Meantime Kaupeepee had not been idle. Every movement of the enemy had been watched; and when word came to him that the shores of Kaunakakai were so crowded with warriors that the number could not be told, he grimly answered: "Then will our spears be less likely to miss!"

The walls of the fortress had been strengthened and replenished with missiles; large quantities of provisions had been secured, and sheds of ample space were finally erected for the collection of rain-water, should communication be interrupted with the streams in the gulches below. Before the enemy had reached positions completely cutting off retreat from the fortress, Kaupeepee had called his warriors together and thus addressed them:

"Warriors and friends!—for all, indeed, are warriors and friends in Haupu!—for years you have shared in the dangers of Kaupeepee and have never disobeyed him. Listen now to his words, and heed them well. A mighty army is about to surround Haupu by land and sea. It already blackens the shores of Kaunakakai, and will soon be thundering at our gates. The fight will be long and desperate, and may end in defeat and death to the most or all of us. I cannot order, cannot even ask you to face such peril for my sake. The gates are open. Let all leave with my good-will whose lives are precious to them. Let your acts answer at once, for the enemy is approaching and no time can be lost!"

For a moment not a warrior of the thousand present moved. All stood staring at their chief and wondering that he should doubt. Then a confused hum of voices, rising louder and louder, swelled into a united shout of "Close the gates!" and Kaupeepee was answered. And a braver answer was never given than that which came from the stout hearts and unblanched lips of the thousand fearless defenders of Haupu. The gates were closed, with not a single warrior missing, and the fortress was soon environed with its enemies.

Halting his army on the summit of the mountains overlooking Haupu, Niheu despatched a messenger to the fortress with a signal of peace, to ascertain with certainty whether Hina was a prisoner there, and, if so, to demand the surrender of the captive. The messenger returned in safety, bearing this message from Kaupeepee: "Hina is within the walls of Haupu. Come with arms in your hands and take her!"

Communication was established with the fleet in front of Haupu, and Kana was advised to enter the gulches in force the next morning, destroy the canoes of the fortress, and maintain a footing there, if possible, while a strong division of the land forces would move down and draw attention to the rear defences by taking a position within attacking distance.

In pursuance of this plan, early next morning Niheu despatched a formidable force down the mountain in the. rear of Haupu, with orders to menace but not to assault the defences. Arriving near the walls, a little skirmishing ensued, when the detachment took a position beyond the reach of the slingers, and began the construction of a stone wall across the ridge.

Meantime Kana's fleet of canoes, which had been hovering nearer and nearer the walls of Haupu since daylight, with a wild battle-cry from the warriors crowding them suddenly dashed through the surf, and partially succeeded in effecting a landing in one of the gulches flanking the fortress. So rapid had been the movement, and so thoroughly had the attention of the besieged been engrossed with the diversion from the mountains, that a division of the assaulting party managed to reach the canoes of the fortress, and another to secure a lodgment among the rocks on the opposite side of the gulch, before meeting with serious opposition. The score or two of warriors left to guard the canoes of the fortress were quickly overpowered and slaughtered, and then the work of destruction began. With loose rocks and heavy stone hammers the canoes were being hastily broken in pieces, including the great war-barge of Kaupeepee, when from the walls above the destroyers was precipitated a bewildering and murderous avalanche of rocks of all sizes and heavy sections of tree-trunks. As the missiles rolled and bounded down the steep declivity, sweeping it at almost the same moment for two hundred yards or more in length, the ground trembled as with an earthquake, and the gorge was filled with a dense cloud of dust.

The thunder of the avalanche ceased, and in the awful silence that succeeded Kaupeepee, at the head of two hundred warriors, dashed down the narrow path leading from the middle terrace to finish the dreadful work with spear, knife and battle-axe. The sight was appalling, even to the chief of Haupu. The gulch was choked with the bodies of the dying and the dead. Panic-stricken, those posted on the opposite hillside had abandoned their only place of safety, and perished in large numbers in attempting to reach their canoes. The few left alive and able to retreat were wildly struggling to escape seaward from the gulch in such canoes of their wrecked fleet as would still float, or by plunging desperately into the surf.

With exultant shouts Kaupeepee and his warriors sprang over their dead and dying enemies and swept down upon the unarmed and escaping remnant of the invaders. Although a considerable reserve of canoes came to their rescue from without, protected from assault from above by the presence of Kaupeepee and his party, the most of the fugitives would have been cut off but for the extraordinary efforts of Kana, who led the attacking party, but miraculously escaped unhurt. In the surf, in the deep entrance to the gulch, everywhere he moved around with his head and shoulders above the water. He assisted the canoes through the breakers, rescued exhausted and drowning swimmers, and from the bottom of the ocean reached down and gathered huge rocks, which he hurled at intervals at Kaupeepee's warriors to keep them in check. These wonderful exploits awed the attacking party, and greater still was their astonishment when they saw the strange being finally walk through the deep waters, erect and with his head and breast exposed, and step into a canoe quite half a mile from the shore. Turning to his warriors, with these words Kaupeepee answered their looks of inquiry: "He is Kana. I have heard of him. I am glad he escaped."

Kana returned with his shattered fleet and still worsely shattered army to Kaunakakai. As the most of his canoes had been destroyed, Kaupeepee was unable to follow the retreating enemy to sea, but, hearing the shouts of conflict above, at once mounted with his warriors to the fortress, to assist in repelling an attack on the rear wall which had been hastily begun to save, if possible, the sea party from destruction. With Kaupeepee at the front the assault was quickly repulsed, the enemy retiring in confusion behind the lines of defence from which the advance had been made.

The wounded in the gulch were despatched, six of the least injured being reserved for sacrifice, and the night following the fortress of Haupu was ablaze with savage joy. As the first-fruits of the victories of the day, the six wounded prisoners were slain with clubs and laid upon the altar of the heiau as offerings to the gods, and chants of defiance were sent through the night air to the discomfited enemy beyond the walls.

These disasters did not dishearten Niheu. The canoes of the fortress had been destroyed, and that was something of a compensation for the loss of nearly two thousand of his best warriors and a considerable part of his fleet. Plans for further assaults from the sea were abandoned, and a regular siege, with a final entrance by the rear wall, was suggested and in the end agreed to by the chiefs in council.

Lines of pickets were accordingly stationed along the summits of the mountains flanking the fortress, in order to prevent the entrance into it of reinforcements or supplies, and the main body of the attacking force was moved down and placed in positions within slinging distance of the rear wall. This was not done without loss, for the wall was manned with expert slingers; but in less than a week the besiegers had advanced their main line of wooden defences within a hundred paces of the rear bulwark of the fortress and were daily gaining ground.

This movable line of assault and defence was a device as ingenious as it was effective. Timbers twenty feet in length, or corresponding with the height of the wall, were firmly corded together side by side until they stretched across the narrow summit leading to the fortress. To the top of each fourth or fifth timber was lashed a movable brace thirty feet in length, and then the wooden wall was raised into the air nearly erect, and securely held in that position by its line of supporting braces. It was a formidable-looking structure. Against it the missiles of the besieged fell harmless, and behind it the besiegers worked in safety.

Section by section and foot by foot this moving line of timber was advanced, until the warriors on the wall could almost touch it with their spears. Several desperate sorties, to destroy or prostrate it, had been made, but nothing beyond the cutting of a few of the lower fastenings had been achieved; and the defenders of Haupu, with tightened grasp of their weapons, grimly awaited the final assault, which they felt would not long be delayed. Day after day, night after night, they watched; but the wooden wall did not move, and they could only guess at what was going on behind it.

Finally a night of inky darkness came—a night "as dark as the farthest confines of Po"—bringing with it a storm of wind and rain. In the midst of the storm the wooden wall began to move, but so noiselessly that the advance was not perceived by the fortress sentinels. Midnight came and went; the storm continued, and nearer and nearer to the wall of stone was crowded the wall of timber. Just as coming day began to streak the east the bases of the two walls came together, the backward inclination of both leaving them a few feet apart at their tops. Hundreds of men then laid hold of the braces, and in a moment the wooden wall was shoved over and stayed against the other.

The alarm was given within, and warriors from all parts of the enclosure sprang toward the menaced wall. But the movement of their enemies was not less prompt. Up the braces they swarmed in such numbers that the few who had succeeded in reaching the top of the wall from within were hurled from it, and after them poured a cataract of spears against which the opposing force was powerless. The huge stone was rolled back, the gate was opened, and soon the upper terrace was cleared and five thousand warriors, led by Niheu in person, were sweeping down to complete their work of slaughter.

But their victory was not to be cheaply purchased. They had slain two or three hundred on the wall and around the gate, but thrice as many more, under the desperate leadership of Kaupeepee, were stretched like a wall across the middle terrace, with a resolution to contest every pace of the ground with their lives. They might have escaped, perhaps, down the paths leading from that terrace to the gulches; but they preferred to die, as they had for years lived, in defence of Haupu.

Down the terrace swept the victorious horde in the gray dawn of the morning. Niheu vainly tried to hold his warriors in check, for he knew the main body of the fortress force was still before him, and would have advanced with prudence; but the voices of the leaders were drowned in the battle-shouts of the surging throng, which in a few minutes struck Kaupeepee's wall of spears and battle-axes, and rolled back like a storm-wave broken against the front of Haupu. But the check was only momentary, for immediately behind the shattered column was a forest of advancing spears, and with a wild tumult of shouts and clashing weapons the entire force was precipitated upon Kaupeepee's thin but resolute lines of defence.

The slaughter was frightful; but the unequal conflict could have but one result. Kaupeepee and the fifty or less of his followers left standing were crowded, fighting step by step, into the lower terrace, and thence to the heiau, and finally to the temple as a last place of defence. There the struggle was brief. The roof of the temple was fired, and as Kaupeepee and the last of his devoted band sprang from the blazing building to die at the throats of their enemies they were struck down with their javelins in the air. A spear penetrated the breast of Kaupeepee. As a last act he poised his the to hurl at a helmeted chief who had just struggled to the front. The chief was Niheu. By his dress or face, which bore a resemblance to the features of Hina, Kaupeepee must have recognized him. He looked, but his arm did not move. "Not for your sake, but for hers!" exclaimed the dying warrior, dropping his weapon to the earth and falling lifeless beside it.

Not one of the defenders of Haupu escaped, but more than one-half of Niheu's army perished in the various assaults upon the fortress. Hina was found uninjured, and, while there was great joy to her in the embrace of her sons and aged mother, she wept over the death of Kaupeepee, who with his love had made light her long imprisonment.

The body of Kaupeepee was given to Keoloewa for interment, as were also the remains of Moi, who was among the last to fall. The walls of Haupu were levelled, never to be raised again, and Hina returned to her husband in Hilo, after a separation of nearly eighteen years, thus bringing to a close one of the most romantic legends of early Hawaiian chivalry.