nd with a
bound he leaped into the frothed and fretted pool below. Downward
with a dolphin's ease he moved, and with his free arm beating back
the brine, moved along the ocean bed into the sea cave's jagged jaws;
and then stemming with stiffened sinew the wind-driven tide, he swam
onward till he struck a sunless beach and then stood inside the cave,
whose mouth is beneath the sea.

Here was a broad, dry space with a lofty, salt-icicled roof. The
green, translucent sea, as it rolled back and forth at their feet,
gave to their brown faces a ghastly white glare. The scavenger crabs
scrambled away over the dank and dripping stones, and the loathsome
biting eel, slowly reached out its well-toothed, wide-gaping jaw to
tear the tender feet that roused it from its horrid lair, where the
dread sea god dwelt.

The poor hapless girl sank down upon this gloomy shore and cried,
clinging to the kanaka's knee: "O father, beat out my brains with
this jagged stone, and do not let the eel twine around my neck, and
trail with a loathsome, slimy, creeping crawl over my body before I
die. Oh! the crabs will pick and tear me before my breath is gone."

"Listen," said Opunui. "Thou shalt go back with me to the warm sunny
air. Thou shalt tread again the sweet-smelling flowery vale of Palawai,
and twine thy neck with wreaths of scented jessamine, if thou wilt
go with me to the house of the chief of Olowalu and there let thy
bloody lord behold thee wanton with thy love in another chief's arms."

"Never," shouted the lover of Kaaialii, "never will I meet any clasp
of love but that of my own chief. If I cannot lay my head again upon
his breast, I will lay it in death upon these cold stones. If his
arm shall never again draw me to his heart, then let the eel twine my
neck and let him tear away my cheeks rather than that another beside
my dear lord shall press my face."

"Then let the eel be thy mate," cried Opunui, as he roughly unclasped
the tender arms twined around his knees; "until the chief of Olowalu
comes to seize thee, and carry thee to his house in the hills of
Maui. Seek not to leave the cave. Thou knowest that with thy weak
arms, thou wilt tear thyself against the jagged rocks in trying to
swim through the swift flowing channel. Stay till I send for thee,
and live." Then dashing out into the foaming gulf with mighty buffeting
arms he soon reached the upper air.

And Kaaialii stood upon the bluff, looking up to the hillside path
b