In the first skirmish the idolaters triumphed over the royal army sent against them, and full of confidence they resolved to march upon Kailua.  The King sent an envoy to try and conciliate them, and came very near being an envoy short by the operation; the savages not only refused to listen to him, but wanted to kill him.  So the King sent his men forth under Major General Kalaimoku and the two host met a Kuamoo.  The battle was long and fierce—­men and women fighting side by side, as was the custom—­and when the day was done the rebels were flying in every direction in hopeless panic, and idolatry and the tabu were dead in the land!

The royalists marched gayly home to Kailua glorifying the new dispensation.  “There is no power in the gods,” said they; “they are a vanity and a lie.  The army with idols was weak; the army without idols was strong and victorious!”

The nation was without a religion.

The missionary ship arrived in safety shortly afterward, timed by providential exactness to meet the emergency, and the Gospel was planted as in a virgin soil.

CHAPTER LXXIII.

At noon, we hired a Kanaka to take us down to the ancient ruins at Honaunan in his canoe—­price two dollars—­reasonable enough, for a sea voyage of eight miles, counting both ways.

The native canoe is an irresponsible looking contrivance.  I cannot think of anything to liken it to but a boy’s sled runner hollowed out, and that does not quite convey the correct idea.  It is about fifteen feet long, high and pointed at both ends, is a foot and a half or two feet deep, and so narrow that if you wedged a fat man into it you might not get him out again.  It sits on top of the water like a duck, but it has an outrigger and does not upset easily, if you keep still.  This outrigger is formed of two long bent sticks like plow handles, which project from one side, and to their outer ends is bound a curved beam composed of an extremely light wood, which skims along the surface of the water and thus saves you from an upset on that side, while the outrigger’s weight is not so easily lifted as to make an upset on the other side a thing to be greatly feared.  Still, until one gets used to sitting perched upon this knifeblade, he is apt to reason within himself that it would be more comfortable if there were just an outrigger or so on the other side also.  I had the bow seat, and Billings sat amidships and faced the Kanaka, who occupied the stern of the craft and did the paddling.  With the first stroke the trim shell of a thing shot out from the shore like an arrow.  There was not much to see.  While we were on the shallow water of the reef, it was pastime to look down into the limpid depths at the large bunches of branching coral—­the unique shrubbery of the sea.  We lost that, though, when we got out into the dead blue water of the deep.  But we had the picture of the surf, then, dashing angrily against the crag-bound shore and sending a foaming spray high into the air.