When Hiiaka recognized the desperate strait of her friend and lover she urged him to betake himself again to prayer.
"Prayer may serve in time of health; it's of no avail in the day of death," was his answer.
It was not now a band of women with firebrands, but a phalanx of fire that closed in upon Lohiau. The whole land seemed to him to be a-flame. The pictures that flit through his disturbed mind are hinted at in the song he utters. The pangs of dissolution seem to have stirred his deeper nature and to have given him a thoughtfulness and power of expression that were lacking in the heyday of his lifetime. Hiiaka called on him for prayer and this was his response:
Pau Puna, ua koele ka papa; Ua noe ke kuahiwi, ka mauna o ka Lua; Ua awa mai ka luna o Uwé-kahuna-- Ka ohu kolo mai i uka, Ka ohu kolo mai i kai. Ke aá la Puna i ka uka o Na'ena'e; [453] O ka lama kau oni'oni'o, [454] O na wahine i ke anaina, I ka piha a ka naoa o mua nei. Oia ho'i ke kukulu [455] a mua; Oia ho'i ke kukulu awa; O kai awa i ka haki pali, O kai a Pele i popo'i i Kahiki-- Popo'i i ke alo o Kilauea; O kai a Ka-hulu-manu: [456] Opiopi [457] kai a ka Makali'i; Ku'uku'u kai a ka pohaku, Ke ahi a ka noho [458] uka, Kukuni i ke kua [459] o ka makani. Wela ka ulu [460] o ka La i Puna, e; Kiná Puna i ka ai'na e ke Akua, e. He akua [461] ke hoa, e; Ke kuhi la iaia he kanáka-- He akua ke hoa, e!
Puna is ravaged, its levels fire-baked; Fog blots out the forest-heights of the Pit; Uwé-kahuna's plain is bitter cold-- A mist that creeps up from the sea, A mist that creeps down from the mount; Puna's dim distant hills are burning-- A glancing of torches--rainbow colors-- The whole assembly of women. In pity and love they stand before us; They form the first line of battle And they make up the second line. The raging waves engulf the steep coast-- The sea Pele turmoiled at Kahiki, That surged at the base of Kilauea-- The bird-killing flood Ka-hulu-manu. Makali'i's waves were like folds in a mat; A smiting of rock against rock Is the awful surge of the Pele folk. The wind-blast enflames their dry tinder. The face of the Sun is hot in Puna. I companioned, it seems, with a god; I had thought her to be very woman. Lo and behold, she's a devil!