a
nightly dew fell thereafter about the sons of the dead man, providing
drink to them and encouraging a growth of fruit and taro sufficient
for their needs.

In a day or two the people were desperate. Their crops were withering,
the forests shedding their leaves. Some men killed their neighbors
and drank their blood; others drank from the ocean and their increased
thirst drove them mad; a few took poison; several offered themselves as
sacrifices and were forthwith killed on the altars; but in vain. Prayer
and offering were unheeded. The wickedness of the people in submitting
to a king like Hua had brought its punishment. Frightened, repentant,
maybe, Hua himself fled to Hawaii, and his retainers scattered
themselves in Molokai, Oahu, and Kauai. They could not escape the
curse. Like the Wandering Jew, they carried disaster with them. Blight,
drouth, thirst, and famine appeared wherever they set foot, and though
the wicked king kept himself alive for three and a half years, he
succumbed to hunger and thirst at last, and in Kohala his withered
frame ceased to be animate. To this day "the rattle of Hua's bones
in the sun" afford a simile in common speech. And the wrath of the
gods was heavy, so that the people died by thousands.

Hua being dead, the survivors looked anxiously for a return of rain and
of life to the islands, and many turned to Naula, of Oahu, imploring
him to intercede with the gods in their behalf. This priest was of
great age, and was reverenced and feared. He could command the spirits
of the living, as well as the spirits of the dead, and talk with them,
far from the place where their bodies lay in trance. He had descended
into hell, had risen to paradise, and had brought back from the region
of the blessed a calabash of the water of life. The animals knew
and obeyed him so well that when he journeyed to Kauai and his canoe
capsized, a whale swallowed him and vomited him forth on the beach at
the very spot where he had intended to land, while at another time two
sharks towed his vessel against a head wind with such speed that the
sea fowl could hardly keep him in sight. Clearing his eye by a fast
and prayer, he climbed to the topmost height of the Waianae Mountains
and closely scanned the horizon. The earth was as brick, and the sky as
brass, and the sea as silver, save in one quarter: a tiny blur on the
universal glare could be seen, he fancied, over Maui. He would wait,
in order to be sure. Yes, in th