This exploit with the arrow and the remarkable grace and personal
beauty of the young man quite won the heart of the princess, and she
was soon possessed by a strong passion for him, and determined to
make him her husband.

With her wily arts she detained him for several days at her home,
and when at last he was about to start for the mountain, she shut
him up in the house and thus detained him by force. But the words
of his mother, warning him not to remain too long, came to his mind,
and he determined to break away from his prison. So he climbed up to
the roof, and removing a portion of the thatch, made his escape.

When his flight was discovered by Kawelu, the infatuated girl was
distracted with grief. Refusing to be comforted, she tasted no food,
and ere many days had passed was quite dead. Messengers were despatched
who brought back the unhappy Hiku, author of all this sorrow. Bitterly
he wept over the corpse of his beloved, but it was now too late; the
spirit had departed to the nether world, ruled over by Milu. And now,
stung by the reproaches of her kindred and friends for his desertion,
and urged on by his real love for the fair one, he resolved to attempt
the perilous descent into the nether world and, if possible, to bring
her spirit back.

With the assistance of her friends, he collected from the mountain
slope a great quantity of the _kowali_, or convolvulus vine. He also
prepared a hollow cocoanut shell, splitting it into two closely fitting
parts. Then anointing himself with a mixture of rancid cocoanut and
kukui oil, which gave him a very strong corpse-like odor, he started
with his companions in the well-loaded canoes for a point in the sea
where the sky comes down to meet the water.