Hotu-Mauea

Hotu-Mauea was drawing water from a well for his wife when her brothers arrived with a war-party. They surrounded the sandy pit and meant to kill him. Several men climbed down and struck at him, but Hotu-Mauea warded off their blows. The men standing above called to the attackers not to damage his head, because they wanted to keep his skull intact. When Hotu-Mauea heard this, anger gave him strength. He sprang from the bottom of the well to its rim and escaped. The war-party captured his wife and child. Her brothers asked whether the child was a boy or a girl. She placed her son so that he appeared to be a daughter, and the men stopped their attack on the woman and child.

Hotu-Mauea ran swiftly, but some of the party pursued him. Near the Horo-tiu River, he climbed a tawa tree. The pursuers came to its base, but he called down that they would not catch him. He then leapt from the tree across the river in one bound. His pursuers were left on the opposite bank, unable to reach him without a canoe or by swimming. White locates the leap near Kirikiri-roa, where the man’s footprints were said to have sunk into the rock. He closes the account with a saying applied to a tall man: that he is like Hotu-Mauea. The story ends with Hotu-Mauea beyond the reach of the war-party.