her cave. He had sought Hina in many ways and had been repulsed
again and again until at last hatred took the place of all more kindly
feelings and he determined to destroy the divine chiefess.

Hina was frequently left with but little protection, and yet from her
home in the cave feared nothing that Kuna could do. Precipices guarded
the cave on either side, and any approach of an enemy through the
falling water could be easily thwarted. So her chants rang out through
the river valley even while floods swirled around her, and Kuna's
missiles were falling over the rocky bed of the stream toward her. Kuna
became very angry and, uttering great curses and calling upon all his
magic forces to aid him, caught a great stone and at night hurled it
into the gorge of the river below Hina's home, filling the river bed
from bank to bank. "Ah, Hina! Now is the danger, for the river rises.
The water cannot flow away. Awake! Awake!"

Hina is not aware of this evil which is so near. The water rises and
rises, higher and higher. "Auwe! Auwe! Alas, alas, Hina must perish!"
The water entered the opening of the cave and began to creep along the
floor. Hina cannot fly, except into the very arms of her great enemy,
who is waiting to destroy her. Then Hina called for Maui. Again and
again her voice went out from the cave. It pierced through the storms
and the clouds which attended Kuna's attack upon her. It swept along the
side of the great mountain. It crossed the channel between the islands
of Hawaii and Maui. Its anguish smote the side of the great mountain
Haleakala, where Maui had been throwing his lassoes around the sun and
compelling him to go more slowly. When Maui heard Hina's cry for help
echoing from cliff to cliff and through the ravines, he leaped at once
to rush to her assistance.

Some say that Hina, the goddess, had a cloud servant, the "ao-opua," the
"warning cloud," which rose swiftly above the falls when Hina cried for
aid and then, assuming a peculiar shape, stood high above the hills that
Maui might see it. Down the mountain he leaped to his magic canoe.
Pushing it into the sea with two mighty strokes of his paddle he crossed
the sea to the mouth of the Wailuku river. Here even to the present day
lies a long double rock, surrounded by the waters of the bay, which
the natives call Ka waa o Maui, "The canoe of Maui." It represents to
Hawaiian thought the magic canoe with which Maui always sailed over the
ocean more swift