Hawaii is a cockpit; the trained cocks fight on the ground. 
  The chief fights—­the dark-red cock awakes at night for battle;
  The youth fights valiantly—­Loeau, son of Keoua. 
  He whets his spurs, he pecks as if eating;
  He scratches in the arena—­this Hilo—­the sand of Waiolama.

* * * * *

He is a well-fed cock.  The chief is complete,
Warmed in the smokehouse till the dried feathers rattle,
With changing colors, like many-colored paddles, like piles of
polished Kahili. 
The feathers rise and fall at the striking of the spurs.

Here the allusions to the red color and to eating suggest a chief.  The feather brushes waved over a chief and the bright-red paddles of his war fleet are compared to the motion of a fighting cock’s bright feathers, the analogy resting upon the fact that the color and the motion of rising and falling are common to all three.

This last passage indicates the precise charm of Polynesian metaphor.  It lies in the singer’s close observation of the exact and characteristic truth which suggests the likeness, an exactness necessary to carry the allusion with his audience, and which he sharpens incessantly from the concrete facts before him.  Kuapakaa sings: 

  The rain in the winter comes slanting,
  Taking the breath away, pressing down the hair,
  Parting the hair in the middle.

The chants are full of such precise descriptions, and they furnish the rich vocabulary of epithet employed in recalling a place, person, or object.  Transferred to matters of feeling or emotion, they result in poetical comparisons of much charm.  Sings Kuapakaa (Wise’s translation): 

  The pointed clouds have become fixed in the heavens,
  The pointed clouds grow quiet like one in pain before childbirth,
  Ere it comes raining heavily, without ceasing. 
  The umbilicus of the rain is in the heavens,
  The streams will yet be swollen by the rain.

[Illustration:  A HAWAIIAN PADDLER (HENSHAW)]

Hina’s song of longing for her lost lover in Laieikawai should be compared with the lament of Laukiamanuikahiki when, abandoned by her lover, she sees the clouds drifting in the direction he has taken: 

  The sun is up, it is up;
  My love is ever up before me. 
  It is causing me great sorrow, it is pricking me in the side,
  For love is a burden when one is in love,
  And falling tears are its due.

How vividly the mind enters into this analogy is proved, by its swift identification with the likeness presented.  Originally this identification was no doubt due to ideas of magic.  In romance, life in the open—­in the forests or on the sea—­has taken possession of the imagination.  In the myths heroes climb the heavens, dwelling half in the air; again they are amphibian like their great lizard ancestors.  In the Laieikawai, as in so many stories, note