LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

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