"What might be the purpose of your pilgrimage?" she asked.
"I come in answer to the call of my friend, Lohiau."
"But Lohiau is dead," chorused the women.
"Yes, dead! And what was the cause of his death?"
"Pele." Her voice sank to a whisper, and the name she uttered was to be made out, or guessed at, rather by a study of the protruding lips and the sympathetic arching of the brow than by any sound emitted. Her eyes also made a half-turn in the direction of Pele's cave.
"He came to Hawaii in the expectation that Pele would be his life." Paoa spoke with thoughtful deliberation. "How came it about that she should cause his death?" ... After a moment's pause, he continued: "He tasted death once at Haena and, now, again, here, on this barren ... a second death, and through the wrath of Pele!"
Pele roused herself at this and spoke up: "What is that you say? that Lohiau died at Haena?"
"Yes, he tasted of death there," Paoa answered firmly.
"How, then, did he become alive again?" asked Pele sharply.
"Hiiaka, she treated him, and by her gracious skill and power brought his soul and body together again. That done, they sailed away for Hawaii."
The eyes of Pele were literally, as well as metaphorically, opened. She turned herself about and, in a lowered voice, with a show of astonishment, for the first time, addressed Hiiaka: "Is this true, that you worked over Lohiau and restored him to life?"
"It is true, and it is also true that, not until you had put to death Hopoe, did I bestow any dalliance or caress of love upon Lohiau."
Hiiaka's expression as she faced Pele was such as might have sat upon the countenance of a judge passing sentence on a confessed criminal at the bar.
Pele sat impenetrable, sphinxlike, deep in her own labyrinthine philosophy of the obligations due to a social autocrat and a goddess.
Paoa broke the silence: "Shall not Lohiau, then, live again?"
"Go back to Haena," said Pele, "and when you hear that Lohiau lives again, then will be the time for you to come and take him home."
A spell of confusion, of enchantment, seemed now to fall upon the man whilom so boastful. "But where is Pele?" he asked, looking from face to face.
"That is Pele," said the goddess, pointing to her sister Wave (Hiiaka-i-ka-ale-i).