This cave was a very nice place for a honeymoon, but hardly for a permanent residence.  So the young chief contrived a way of getting her out of the cavernous prison.  He told his inferior chiefs that he wanted them to take their families and go with him to Fiji.  A large canoe was soon got ready, and as they embarked he was asked if he would not take a Tongan wife with him.  He replied, No! but that he should probably find one by the way.  They thought this a joke, but when they came to the spot where the cave was, he asked them to wait while he went into the sea to fetch his wife.  As he dived, they began to suspect he was insane, and as he did not soon reappear they feared he had been devoured by a shark.

While they were deliberating what to do, all at once, to their great surprise, he rose to the surface and brought into the canoe a beautiful young woman who, they all supposed, had been drowned with her family.  The chief now told the story of the cave, and they proceeded to Fiji, where they lived some years, until the cruel governor of Tonga died, whereupon they returned to that island.

A HAWAIIAN CAVE-STORY

In an interesting book called The Legends and Myths of Hawaii, by King Kalakaua, there is a tale called “Kaala, the Flower of Lanai; A Story of the Spouting Cave of Palikaholo,” which also involves the use of a submarine cave, but has a tragic ending.  It takes the King fifteen pages to tell it, but the following condensed version retains all the details of the original that relate directly to love: 

Beneath a bold rocky bluff on the coast of Lanai there is a cave whose only entrance is through the vortex of a whirlpool.  Its floor gradually rises from the water, and is the home of crabs, polypi, sting-rays, and other noisome creatures of the deep, who find here temporary safety from their larger foes.  It was a dangerous experiment to dive into this cave.  One of the few who had done it was Oponui, a minor chief of Lanai Island.  He had a daughter named Kaala, a girl of fifteen, who was so beautiful that her admirers were counted by the hundreds.

It so happened that the great monarch Kamehameha I. paid a visit to Lanai about this time (near the close of the eighteenth century).  He was received with enthusiasm, and among those who brought offerings of flowers was the fair Kaala.  As she scattered the flowers she was seen by Kaaialii, one of the King’s favorite lieutenants.  “He was of chiefly blood and bearing” with sinewy limbs and a handsome face, and when he stopped to look into the eyes of Kaala and tell her that she was beautiful, she thought the words, although they had been frequently spoken to her by others, had never sounded so sweetly to her before.  He asked her for a simple flower and she twined a lei for his neck.  He asked her for a smile, and she looked up into his face and gave him her heart.

     After they had seen each other a few times the lieutenant
     went to his chief and said: