r the other, they dash along the
rugged path of Kealia, and rush downward to the sea. They bound o'er
the fearful path of clinkers. Their torn feet heed not the pointed
stones. The elder seeks the shelter of the taboo; and now, both
roused by the outcries of a crowd that swarm on the bluffs around,
they put forth their remaining strength and strive who shall gain
first the entrance to the sacred wall of refuge.

For this the hunted sire strains his fast failing nerve; and the
youth with a shout quickens his still tense limbs. He is within a
spear's length; he stretches out his arms. Ha, old man! he has thy
throat within his grip. But no, the greased neck slips the grasp;
the wretch leaps for his dear life, he gains the sacred wall, he
bounds inside, and the furious foe is stopped by the staves of priests.

The baffled chief lies prone in the dust, and curses the gods and
the sacred taboo. After a time he is led away to his hut by friends;
and then the soothing hands of Ua rub and knead the soreness out
of his limbs. And when she has set the calabash of poi before him
along with the relishing dry squid, and he has filled himself and
is strong again, he will not heed any entreaty of chief or friends;
not even the caressing lures of Ua, who loves him; but he says,
"I will go and seek Kaala; and if I find her not, I die."

Again the love-lorn chief seeks the inland. He shouts the name of
his lost love in the groves of Kumoku, and throughout the forest of
Mahana. Then he roams through the cloud-canopied valley of Palawai;
he searches among the wooded canyons of Kalulu, and he wakes the
echoes with the name of Kaala in the gorge of the great ravine
of Maunalei. He follows this high walled barranca over its richly
flowered and shaded floor; and also along by the winding stream,
until he reaches its source, an abrupt wall of stone, one hundred feet
high, and forming the head of the ravine. From the face of this steep,
towering rock, there exudes a sweet, clear rain, a thousand trickling
rills of rock-filtered water leaping from points of fern and moss,
and filling up an ice cold pool below, at which our weary chief gladly
slaked his thirst. The hero now clambers the steep walls of the gorge,
impassable to the steps of men in these days; but he climbs with toes
thrust in crannies, or resting on short juts and points of rock; and
he pulls himself upward by grasping at out-cropping bushes and strong
tufts of fern. And thus with