y stood,
beating with heavy fists their broad, glossy chests of bronze, and
grinning face to face, they glowered their savage wish to kill. Then,
with right foot advanced, and right arm uplifted, they pause to shout
their gage of battle, and tell to each how they would maim and tear,
and kill, and give each other's flesh for food to some beastly maw.

And now, each drawing near to each, with arms uplifted, and outspread
palms with sinewy play, like nervy claws trying to clutch or grip,
they seek a chance for a deadly clinch. And swift the scarred
child-strangler has sprung with his right to the young spear-man's
throat, who as quickly hooks the lunging arm within the crook of his,
and with quick, sledge-like blow breaks the shoulder arm-bone.

With fury the baffled bone-breaker grips with the uncrippled hand;
but now two stout young arms, tense with rage, soon twist and break
the one unaided limb. Then with limp arms the beaten brute turns to
flee; but swift hate is upon him, and clutches him by the throat; and
pressing him down, the hero of Kaala holds his knee to the hapless
wretch's back, and with knee bored into the backward bended spine,
he strains and jerks till the jointed bones snap and break, and the
dread throttler of girls and babes lies prone on the mat, a broken
and bloody corpse.

"Good!" cried the King. "Our son has the strength of Kanekoa. Now let
our daughter soothe the limbs of her lover. Let her stroke his skin,
press his joints, and knead his back with the loving grip and touch
of the lomilomi. We will have a great bake, with the hula and song;
and when the feast is over, then shall they be one."

A line of women squat down. They crone their wild refrain, praising
the one who wins in strife and love. They seize in their right hand
the hula gourd, clattering with pebbles inside. They whirl it aloft,
they shake, they swing, they strike their palms, they thump the mat;
and now with supple joints they twirl their loins, and with heave
and twist, and with swing and song, the savage dance goes on.

Kaala stood up with the maiden throng, the tender, guarded gifts of
kings. They twined their wreaths, they swayed, and posed their shining
arms; and flapping with their hands their leafy skirts, revealed their
rounded limbs. This fires the gaze of men, and the hero of the day with
flaming eyes, springs and clasps his love, crying as he bears her away:
"Thou shalt dance in my hut in Kohala for me alone, fore