From some of these little
islands streams of blazing lava rolled down into the lake of fire. The
air was filled with the roar of the furnaces of flame.
Even the fearless Kapiolani stood in awe as she looked. But she did
not flinch, though here and there, as she walked, the crust of the
lava cracked under her feet and the ground was hot with hidden fire.
She came to the very edge of the crater. To come so far without
offering hogs and fish to the fiery goddess was in itself enough to
bring a fiery river of molten lava upon her. Kapiolani offered nothing
save defiance. Audacity, they thought, could go no further.
Here, a priestess of Pele came, and raising her hands in threat
denounced death on the head of Kapiolani if she came further.
Kapiolani pulled from her robe a book. In it--for it was her
New Testament--she read to the priestess of the one true, loving
Father-God.
Then Kapiolani did a thing at which the very limbs of those who
watched trembled and shivered. She went to the edge of the crater and
stepped over onto a jutting rock and let herself down and down toward
the sulphurous burning lake. The ground cracked under her feet and
sulphurous steam hissed through crevices in the rock, as though the
demons of Pele fumed in their frenzy.
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