Except Kiloliana, who knew back-trails up the precipitous walls, no
man could win to the gorge save by advancing across a knife-edged
ridge. This passage was a hundred yards in length. At best, it was
a scant twelve inches wide. On either side yawned the abyss. A
slip, and to right or left the man would fall to his death. But
once across he would find himself in an earthly paradise. A sea of
vegetation laved the landscape, pouring its green billows from wall
to wall, dripping from the cliff-lips in great vine-masses, and
flinging a spray of ferns and air-plants in to the multitudinous
crevices. During the many months of Koolau's rule, he and his
followers had fought with this vegetable sea. The choking jungle,
with its riot of blossoms, had been driven back from the bananas,
oranges, and mangoes that grew wild. In little clearings grew the
wild arrowroot; on stone terraces, filled with soil scrapings, were
the taro patches and the melons; and in every open space where the
sunshine penetrated were papaia trees burdened with their golden
fruit.

Koolau had been driven to this refuge from the lower valley by the
beach. And if he were driven from it in turn, he knew of gorges
among the jumbled peaks of the inner fastnesses where he could lead
his subjects and live. And now he lay with his rifle beside him,
peering down through a tangled screen of foliage at the soldiers on
the beach. He noted that they had large guns with them, from which
the sunshine flashed as from mirrors. The knife-edged passage lay
directly before him. Crawling upward along the trail that led to it
he could see tiny specks of men. He knew they were not the
soldiers, but the police. When they failed, then the soldiers would
enter the game.