ess from this method, so he piled fuel against
the entrance and set it afire, hoping to suffocate the defenders
to unconsciousness, when he would force his way to the interior and
rescue Pele. Here again he failed, for a strong draft blowing from
the cave carried the smoke into his own face. Then he ordered a hole
to be cut in the cavern roof, for this appeared to be not more than
fifteen or twenty feet thick, and being friable was easily worked by
the stone drills and axes of his men. The workers plied their tools
industriously, while Kamapua shouted threats and defiance through
the chinks in the wall before the cavern door.

His taunts were vain. While the sinking of the shaft was in progress,
a strange new power was coming upon Pele. The gods of the earth and
air had seen this assault and had resolved to take her part. The sky
became overcast with brown, unwholesome-looking clouds, the ground
grew hot and parched, vegetation drooped and withered, birds flew
seaward with cries of distress, and a waiting stillness fell upon
the world. Kamapua had cut away ten feet of rock, when the voice of
Pele was heard in long, shrill laughter, dying in far recesses of the
mountain, as if she were flying through passages of immense length. The
hills began to shake; vast roarings were beard; a choking fume of
sulphur filled the air, dust rolled upward, making a darkness like
the night; then, with a crash like the bursting of a world, the top
of Kilauea was blown toward the heavens in an upward shower of rock;
a fierce glow colored the ash-clouds that volleyed from the crater,
and down the valley came pouring a flood of lava, a river of white
fire, crested with the flame of burning forests, as with foam.

Kamapua and his bandits fled, but again he heard the laughter, this
time from the crater, which Pele had reached from within, and was now
mounting, free, vaulting through the clouds, revelling in the heat and
blaze and din, and hurling rocks and thunderbolts at the intruder. At
the ocean's edge the lava was still close at his heels. Its heat
blistered his skin. He had no time to reach his boats. With his spear
he struck a mighty blow on the ground and cracked the mountain to its
base, so that the ocean flowed in, and a fearful fight of fire and sea
began. Steam shot for miles into the air, with vast geysers leaping
through it, and the hiss and screech and bellow were appalling. The
crater filled with water, so that Pele and her brot