Pélé?"

Only four years before this, Kapiolani had--according to the custom of
the Hawaiian chieftainesses, married many husbands, and she had given
way to drinking habits. Then she had become a Christian, giving up her
drinking and sending away all her husbands save one. She had thrown
away her idols and now taught the people in their huts the story of
Christ.

"Pélé is nought," she declared, "I will go to Kilawea,[29] the
mountain of the fires where the smoke and stones go up, and Pélé shall
not touch me. My God, Jehovah, made the mountain and the fires within
it too, as He made us all."

So it was noised through the island that Kapiolani, the queenly, would
defy Pélé the goddess. The priests threatened her with awful torments
of fire from the goddess; her people pleaded with her not to dare the
fires of Kilawea. But Kapiolani pressed on, and eighty of her people
made up their minds to go with her. She climbed the mountain paths,
through lovely valleys hung with trees, up and up to where the hard
rocky lava-river cut the feet of those who walked upon it.

Day by day they asked her to go back, and always she answered, "If I
am destroyed you may believe in Pélé; if I live you must all believe
in the true God, Jehovah."

As she drew nearer to the crater she saw the great cloud of smoke that
came up from the volcano and felt the heat of its awful fires. But she
did not draw back.