Page:Pele and Hiiaka; a myth from Hawaii (IA pelehiiakamythfr00emeriala).pdf/48

 dragons and monsters that infest the road. O Mo'o-lau ke ala, e: The way is beset by dragons four hundred."

"Ah, that is the trouble?" said Pele. Then she called upon the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, Wind, Rain, Thunder, Lightning—all the heavenly powers—to aid and safeguard Hiiaka and she authorized her to exercise the powers of these heavenly beings. The gods, thereupon, ratified this act of Pele; and at last the way was made clear for Hiiaka’s departure.

The refusal of her sisters to undertake the mission to fetch Lohiau had angered Hiiaka. Her intrepid fealty to Pele, their oldest sister and their alii, laughed to scorn the perils of the journey. She could not and, for a time, would not bring herself to understand their prudential attitude. Pele was their alii, and it was rank disloyalty in them to shirk any danger or to decline any command Pele might think fit to impose. In judging the conduct of her sisters, it did not at first enter the head of Hiiaka that motives of sound worldly prudence justified them in declining for themselves an errand full of danger, or in putting obstacles in the way of her going on the same errand: she saw in it only a failure to rise to the level of her own loyalty.

The situation, then, was heavily charged with estrangement, and when the woman in Hiiaka could not refrain from one more farewell, the color and tone of voice and song had in them the snap of electricity: