Page:Pele and Hiiaka; a myth from Hawaii (IA pelehiiakamythfr00emeriala).pdf/71

 and heaven at once became turmoiled in one confused whirl of warring elements.

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. Against these elemental forces the dryad-forms of Pana-ewa’s host could not stand for a moment. Their tree-shapes were riven and torn limb from limb, engulfed in a swirling tide that swept them down to the ocean and far out to sea.

Two staunch fighters remained, Kiha, who had chosen to retain the honest dragon-form; and Pua'a-loa, a creature, like Kama-pua'a, in the demi-shape of a boar, whom Pana-ewa, at the scent of disaster, had thrust into the confinement of a secret cave. This manner of retreat saved the twain from the immediate disaster by flood but not from the vengeance of Pele's army. Detected in their lairs, they were slain and their petrified bodies are pointed out to this day in verification of this story.

The fate of Pana-ewa himself was most tragical. He no sooner had taken the form of a kukui tree than he found himself overlaid and entangled with meshes of parasitic growth; he could neither fight nor fly. The spot on which he stood sank and became a swamp, a lake, a sink; the foundations on which its bottom rested were broken up and fell away. Pana-ewa, swallowed up in the gulf, was swept out to sea and perished in the waves. Kane-lu-honua had broken up the underlying strata and made of the place a bottomless sink.

(A reef is pointed out in the ocean opposite Papa'i which is the remains of the body of the mo’o Pana-ewa.)

The part taken by Hiiaka in this last act of her deliverance was hardly more than that of a spectator. She had but to look on and witness the accomplishment of her own salvation. Having been roused from the refreshment of sleep by the long-drawn recitative of Paú-o-pala'e's prayer-mele (see pp. 37–40), she did her best to cheer her two companions with assurances of coming deliverance and, gathering her little brood about her, after the