The daughter of the dawn
Date: 2024-04-02T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy fiction; Maori (New Zealand people) -- Fiction

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Title: The daughter of the dawn

A realistic story of Maori magic

Author: William Reginald Hodder

Illustrator: Harold Piffard

Release date: April 1, 2024 [eBook #73312]

Language: English

Original publication: Boston: L. C. Page & Company, 1903

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN ***

The Daughter of
the Dawn

A Realistic Story of Maori Magic

By
William Reginald Hodder

Illustrated by Harold Piffard

Boston
L. C. Page & Company
MDCCCCIII

“HIS LONG FIGURE WAS SUSPENDED ABOVE THE DARK ABYSS.”

[COPYRIGHT.]

Copyright, 1903
By L. C. Page & Company
(INCORPORATED)

All rights reserved

Published July, 1903

[DEDICATION.]

THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
TO AN AGED PAIR
WHO DWELL AT TARANAKI’S BASE,
THEIR HAIR AS WHITE
THEIR LIVES AS PURE
AS THE SNOW ON TARANAKI’S SUMMIT.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION

WANAKI’S FOREWORD

I. A SPLENDID MADMAN

II. THE AGED CHIEF

III. A SECRET OF ANCIENT NIGHT

IV. THE HAUNTED REGION

V. ON THE GREAT TAPU

VI. NGARAKI—CHIEF AND TOHUNGA

VII. THE INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE OF HIA

VIII. THE VILE TOHUNGAS OF THE PIT

IX. NGARAKI THE FIERCE

X. KAHIKATEA AND HIS STRANGE BELIEF

XI. THE SEARCH FOR ‘THE LITTLE MAIDEN’

XII. THE MAN-WHO-HAD-FORGOTTEN

XIII. CRYSTAL GREY

XIV. THE CHIEF OF THE VILE TOHUNGAS

XV. THE DARKNESS PUTS FORTH A TENTACLE

XVI. WHICH REVEALS THE WAY OF THE SORCERER

XVII. LOVE AT SECOND SIGHT

XVIII. TE MAKAWAWA IS STARTLED

XIX. THE DREAD MAKUTU

XX. CRYSTAL LOVES KAHIKATEA, WHO LOVES HINAURI

XXI. CRYSTAL AND HINAURI MEET

XXII. THE TALISMAN

XXIII. THE DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN

XXIV. ZUN THE TERRIBLE

XXV. THE SERVANT OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF HUO

XXVI. NGARAKI’S HOUR OF TRIUMPH

XXVII. THE GIANTS CLOSE THEIR TEMPLE

XXVIII. FAREWELL

CONCLUSION

ENDNOTES

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

His long figure was suspended above the dark abyss

“This, O Pakehas, was the legend given me by my father”

The light sank lower and showed more. Then to my astonished eyes was unveiled, inch by inch from the darkness, the massive granite brows of a gigantic head

She seated herself sideways on the hammock, while I resumed my wicker chair, and told again the story which I had narrated to her father

The flash came, and the sight it revealed I shall never forget. There stood Crystal in the path before me, draped in her night garments

Another twist and he rolled right across it, his hair and beard frizzling in the flame

At that instant the expected sun ray burst in, and the dazzling beauty of the Daughter of the Dawn was revealed

The second Maori that entered with axe upraised had his head cut clean off by the first sweeping back stroke

I raised the tube, took careful aim, and puffed the dart

He rocked it backwards and forwards until at last he raised it on its side, and there, with a firm hand, he held it poised upon the very brink

Kahikatea stood like a bronze statue, with one arm stretched out. In the hand of that arm was the throat of the wizard, whose body hung from it, limp and lifeless

With hands crossed upon her bosom, and her shrouding hair drawn over her like the curtains of the night, Hinauri lay upon the pyre

INTRODUCTION.

The way in which the record of Wanaki, which it has been my compulsory task to edit, was placed in my hands forms not the least remarkable episode between these covers. On a certain night two months ago I was sitting in my library in Harley Street, writing. It was late, and I could hear the tinkling of many little bells in the street as the cabs brought home the gay theatre-goers. As I wrote on, the tinkling of these little bells grew to a merry chorus, yet it did not disturb me: I was used to it. But the night advanced, and the bells seemed to grow tired as the cabs rolled by less frequently. Then gradually I began to feel that a disturbing element was creeping in between me and my work. Indefinable at first, this feeling grew, until at last I recognised it as a vague expectancy, and, as each cab passed, I caught myself listening to hear if it would stop at the street door. This struck me as being a very absurd state of mind, for no one was due, and a patient would hardly call at that time of night. Yet the strange feeling of expecting someone grew upon me at such a rate that I put down my pen and listened in spite of myself as the cabs with the tinkling bells went by. At last, after a longer interval than usual, my ears fastened upon the bells of a vehicle that seemed to be approaching from beyond the horizon. They drew near rapidly, and the absurd feeling of expecting someone grew still more intense. Laughing at the stupidity of it, I rose from my chair and walked to and fro, wondering what had happened to my nerves, usually so strong. Suddenly I stood still. The rapid motion of the horse’s hoofs was slacking down. Would the cab pull up at the street door? Of course not—it would pass. It had almost done so when there was the sound of the scraping hoofs of a horse suddenly reined in, a violent agitation of the little bells, and then the cab drew up at the street door. I heard a ring at the bell, and then sat down in my chair to wonder what this late visitor wanted, and, above all, to ask myself again and again how I could account for my extraordinary feeling of expecting someone who was unexpected, and yet had arrived. While I was thus engaged my man Gapper came in with a face that announced the end of the world, and spoke in a voice which betrayed, in the same trembling breath, an overwhelming desire to impart news and a suffocating fear of being heard.

“There’s a strange man in the ’all, sir,” he said, “as wants to see you. I gave ’im to understand, sir, as you wouldn’t hever see no one after eleving, but ’e looks at me ’ard and says quiet like, ‘You will do as I tell you,’ ’e says.”

“What is he like?” I asked.

“Well, ’e looks to me as hif ’e ’ad just come ’ome from a fancy-dress ball. ’E’s got feathers in ’is ’air and drorin’s on ’is face, and a sort of long fur cloak and—but there it is, sir, I can’t describe ’im; ’e’s a-standin’ there hin the ’all just as if the ’ole place belonged to ’im. Shall I ask him to go away?”

Gapper’s knees were knocking together. I saw that he was morally incapable of asking this strange visitor to go. I myself felt slightly unstrung, and it may have been my fear of showing this that prompted me to say abruptly:

“Show him in, Gapper; I expect it’s some friend playing a joke upon me. At all events I will see him.”

Evidently relieved by these words, my man retired, and presently, with a humility born of a fresh access of fear, ushered in my visitor. He then retreated nimbly and closed the door behind him.

As the stranger stood in the centre of the room I rose from my seat in unfeigned astonishment. Well might Gapper have thought that he had just returned from a fancy-dress ball, except for the simple, and to me obvious, fact that he was not an impersonation at all, but the genuine thing. In fact, my visitor, who had been, so to speak, heralded by my inexplicable sensations, was a tall and stately Maori chief, dressed in a long robe or war-cloak of dog’s hair, which fell almost to his sandalled feet. He had both spear and meré, and in his hair were the white-tipped feathers of the huia. He was young, almost handsome, and his face was tatooed in a way that denoted an exalted rank, while in his fierce black eyes, in his noble bearing, in his profound composure as he waited for me to speak, one might have read his right to lead men, or else to drive them before him. He seemed to have come right out of the far King Country into my library at one stride, so uncivilised was his appearance. My surprise was immediately giving way to a feeling, half of admiration, half of fear, for, after my unwonted sensations preceding his arrival, I was assailed with the thought that there was a mysterious power about the man—a thought materially strengthened by his perfect ease and conscious dignity.

“May I ask your name?” I said with a brave attempt to appear complaisant.

“I am Aké Aké,” he replied, speaking in good English; “Aké Aké Rangitane, the son of Ngaraki, who was the son of Te Makawawa, who was the son of——, but O man of another race, who is to do my bidding, I will not relate to you my ancestry. It would take many moons to do that; many thousand generation boards would not contain it, for lo! it stretches back to a far-off age of which your wise men know nothing. O Pakeha, the blood of the Great River of Heaven, which flowed down from the skies before the darkness of ancient night fell upon the earth, runs in my veins.”

I looked at him narrowly. There was no denying that his aspect was that of a man whose blood knew well its own unbroken channel through the ages. Something in his eyes, something more in his stately aspect, and a very great deal in the fierce, sudden nature hidden beneath his utter serenity, constrained me to take him solemnly.

“You come to me in a strange way, Aké Aké,” I said; “like a man from another world. Tell me why you have come, and what it is you want of me.”

Instantly he awoke from his apathy, and his eyes quickened with the fire that had been slumbering.

“Hearken, then, O man of another land, and I will tell you why I have come. The Great Tohungas of the Earth spoke to me in my sleep and said, ‘Aké Aké, thou art the last of our ancient blood; the temple of the ages is closed for ever and needs no longer a guardian priest to keep its ancient secrets; therefore thou must withdraw into the sky, leaving no son behind thee. But thy last act is under our guidance. Seek out the record of one Wanaki, the “Pakeha Maori,” and take it beyond the great Ocean of Kiwa to the land of the mighty King who rules the whole world. There give it to the man whose face thou hast seen in dreams, and to whom we will guide thee. Bid him make a book of this record, so that, though thy race is fading away, all knowledge of its secrets may not die with thee.’ I followed the word of the Great Tohungas, and when I reached this great city I was taught your name and the name of your abode. Then, to-night I discarded my pakeha garments, dressed myself as becomes a Maori chief, and came to find you. Without doubt I have been guided aright, for your face is the face that I saw in my dreams.”

He paused, scanning my features still more intently. I was amazed beyond measure at his strange words. The affair was getting more and more inexplicable.

“But why,” I gasped; “why have I been selected to make a book of Wanaki’s narrative?”

“Because you have sought to discover traces of some lost secrets in our lore,” he replied. “I will speak your own words to you—they are words which you put into a book. ‘We know not the ancient glory of the Maori nor yet the wisdom which lies hidden behind his karakia.[1] Some have said that the strange words of his incantations mean nothing, but there is reason for believing that they are the surviving fragments of a priestly language which was spoken many thousands of years ago by a pre-Maori race dwelling on a great southern continent, of which the present land of the Maori is but a small remaining part.’ Those are your own words, O Pakeha, and it is because you have had such long thoughts of the Maori and the race that came before the Maori that I have been bidden to seek you out.”

“Yes,” I said, “those are my words; I remember them. But what do you know of the race that was before the Maori’s coming from Hawaiki?”

He was silent, seeming unwilling to speak of that race. At length he said, “Far back in the ages my ancestors were of that race, but when the Maori came they joined hands with them. Here is the gulf that you cannot bridge in the history of our land; and, O Pakeha, it is unbridged save by the platted rope of our priesthood, woven without break, and stretching across the ages of Day and Night and Day. Here before you is what seems the end of this rope; hidden in a great light of long ago is the rock to which the other end is bound. But I have not come to you to reveal the ancient wisdom which has come down to me from the beginning of the world.” He laid his spear in the hollow of his left arm and drew from within his robe a small bundle, wrapped in a piece of neatly woven flaxcloth.

“This is the record of Wanaki,” he said, placing it upon the table before me. “Make a book of it, and let not the moon die twice before you have completed the task. That is my word, and behind it lies the word of the Great Tohungas of the Earth.”

“But, my dear, good man,” said I, with rising temper, “Great Tohungas of the Earth or no Great Tohungas of the Earth, I have other things to do. I have other books to make; look here”—I turned to the piles of manuscript on my table and placed my hand upon the largest—“this book must be made before the moon has died once.”

“I care not,” he replied imperturbably. Then there was a flash of quick anger in his eyes as he added: “You will obey my word, for the cursing power of Ngaraki, my father, dwells in my eyes, and before him no man could say ‘I will not!’ and live.”

At this barbarous attempt to browbeat a civilised human being with the mention of a savage hereditary cursing power I was so amused that I forgot both my anger and my fear and laughed loudly. But even while my laugh was at its height my glance encountered that of my visitor, and I became unaccountably silent. There was a fierce power in his eyes which backed up his words, and my ill-timed amusement gave place to a cold fear. What was this? His gaze held me as if in a grip of iron, and though I struggled inwardly to free myself from its strange hold, I was unable to do so. I tried to rise from my seat, but could not. I made a frantic effort to cry out, but my voice refused to act. With those terrible black eyes burning into mine I shivered and fell back in my chair. Then I saw, or thought I saw, behind the form of Aké Aké a line of grim and stately chiefs, standing in an unbroken chain, which, ascending gradually into the far horizon, finally disappeared in the distant mists of antiquity. As I looked sleep pressed my eyelids down with a masterful hand, and I sank into oblivion.

When I awoke half an hour later and found myself alone, my first thought was that I had dreamed fantastically, and I had almost confirmed myself in this conclusion when my glance fell upon the package lying upon the table. I snatched it up and got at the contents. I soon saw that it was indeed what my visitor had said—the record of one Wanaki. With this record in my hand I could hardly dismiss the matter as a dream. I rang the bell, and Gapper came in smiling, just as he is wont to smile when some caller has been generous. I questioned him as to whether he had let the visitor out.

“O yes, sir,” he replied; “some time ago.”

“Well, Gapper,” I asked carelessly, “what did you think of him, eh?”

Gapper grinned. It was the grin dedicated to gold, not mere silver.

“In the first place ’e was a gentleman, sir,” he said; “and in the second place ’e kep’ up ’is disguise remarkable well. ’E looked like a lord, sir. Might I make so bold as to ask who ’e reely was?”

“He is Aké Aké,” I said severely; “Aké Aké Rangitane, a great Maori chief. And look here, Gapper, if you had as many pounds in the bank as that chief has eaten men in his time you would be a rich man.”

My man gaped at me in astonishment; then, when he was fully assured that I was not joking, he went away and double-bolted all the doors and windows.

But the record of Wanaki’s adventures—what of it? If the reader will permit me to stand talking a little longer in another man’s doorway, as an old writer of prefaces puts it, I have yet something to say in reference to the ‘Pakeha Maori’s’ manuscript. At first I tossed it aside as worthless, willing to take my chance of the wrath of the Great Tohungas of the Earth, for it was written in such an indecipherable hand that I could not bring myself to bear upon it. I then set to other work that had to be completed by a certain date; but, though all was plain sailing with this other work, I could make no headway. My subject was void of difficulties, but I seemed to be beating against a heavy wind. Several days passed in this fashion, and it struck me that if the cursing power of Aké Aké and all his ancestors was not at work upon me, I was afflicted with some obscure nervous ailment.

At length, late one night, after many days of unrest, I took up the manuscript again and managed to get through the first page, from which I gathered that Wanaki’s adventures were of a remarkable character. Then I felt drawn to follow his narrative, and would certainly have done so but for the fact that his handwriting was a thing that made me long for a cursing power of my own; I could not arrive at its hidden meaning. When almost in despair, however, a bright idea came to me. I would send the record to a man skilled in the art of deciphering the indecipherable—I refer to my typist. I sent it to him, and before one moon had died I received it back with the mortifying assurance that as my handwriting had proved considerably clearer than usual, he would be pleased to make a proportionate abatement of the usual terms.

Now the second moon is nearly dead, and I have prepared the work for the press. I am resolved it shall leave my hands this very night, for, after a careful study of this remarkable history of Wanaki’s adventures, I am fain to admit that, even when I smile most incredulously at his experiences of the ancient magic of the Maori, and the terrible cursing power of the hereditary priesthood, I shiver most coldly at the thought that if the third moon sees my task unfinished, I shall again be listening for a cab to stop at the street door, for a bell to ring, and then—and then it will come to facing the inscrutable eyes of Aké Aké. Reader, I will be frank with you. The set scientific smile of scorn with which I, as a sane and sober medical man, am wont to ornament my face at the mention of the cursing formulæ of savage magic, and at other things contained in the record of Wanaki, is now a matter of long habit, and will continue until death comes with a powerful screw-wrench to remove it; but behind that bold front of second nature there lies a disquieting memory of a moment when, laughing, I encountered the gaze of Aké Aké, and was bound by some mysterious spell to do his bidding.

The Maori chief has not visited me again, but I have just received a letter from him with another, from a third person, enclosed. Both of these I have inserted at the close of Wanaki’s narrative, which I now lay before the reader in the following pages.

The Editor.

WANAKI’S FOREWORD.

As I sit down to write this history of strange adventures the words of my aged friend, the chief and tohunga Te Makawawa, come up in my mind:

“O Son, the word of our ancient law is death to any who reveals the secrets that are hidden in the Brow of Ruatapu. The secret of Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn; the Mystery of the Vile Tohungas of the Pit, the traditions of far time preserved in the heart of the Great Rock—all, everything, is a death-blow returning on the head of him who reveals it. Yet, O Son of the Great Ocean of Kiwa, I, who was once the guardian priest of the Temple of Hia and the hereditary curser of the Vile Ones of the Abyss of Huo, now show these things to you, for I am weary of climbing the snows of Ruahine and long for rest and Tane’s Living Waters. The Great Tohungas of the Earth have taught me in my sleep with words like the voice of the wind in the forest trees: ‘O Tohunga of the Great Rock, the mystery of Hinauri is not for the Maori unless thou tell it first to the Sons of the Sea, but know, if thou tell it, thou must die.’ Therefore, Son, I show it to you, for, what though I fear the eye of the fierce Ngaraki, I fear not death. Friend! perchance, when I have descended by the sacred Pohutukawa root, you, too, will tire of life and tell this thing to your brethren, ‘but know, if thou tell it, thou must die.’ ”

Well may I pause here, for after what I have seen in the Brow of Ruatapu, in the Temple of Hia, and in the Abyss of Huo, disbelief in the ancient laws of the priesthood of the Great Rock is not for me. But for me is the truth of the aged tohunga’s words, and for me also is the rest that he longed for and the living waters of Tane; for so clearly do I read the truth of a civilised world in the truth of Maori lore, that I believe when I am bathed in those Waters of Life and pass through the darkness into the Light, I shall look into her eyes again—the dark eyes of Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, the Bright One who came out of ancient night to give a sign, and withdrew again into the skies, leaving my world all desolate. The mystery of her coming was that sign, and I will reveal it, partly because the sorrow of her going is such that the penalty of death is welcome to me, and partly because a voice—I know not if it is the voice of the Great Tohungas of the Earth—teaches me, too, in dreams, that my brethren, the Sons of the Sea, of whom the dark-skinned children of Ira might with justice ask much, should hear and consider this Sign of Power. Not to be buried at last in oblivion has it been nursed and guarded by an unbroken priesthood of hereditary succession extending back, through Maori and pre-Maori races, through the dark night of Time, even to the glorious sunset of a former Day. Not for naught has it come down from a remote age, whence, O Reader, you have heard only the voices of seers telling, in whispered tones, of

“Mighty pre-Adamites who walked the earth

Of which ours is the wreck.”

The Daughter of the Dawn.

CHAPTER I.
A SPLENDID MADMAN.

As this narrative of adventure may possibly fall into the hands of some who will refuse to accept it as anything but a work of the imagination, I, Dick Warnock, the narrator (known to the Maoris as Wanaki), will begin by a slight description of myself, which will speedily disabuse sceptical minds of any doubts. I am, then, a very matter-of-fact individual, so ordinary in intellect that my enemies would without hesitation acquit me of the charge of inventing this strange history, even if they could prove that I was morally capable of such deception. So easily will it be guessed that I fall short of being a creative romancer, that, when the reader looks in vain in these pages for some exalted eloquence of diction, some graphic description of scenery, or some rhapsody on a flower, he will hesitate to cast the blame upon me, the prosaic, especially as here, at the very beginning, I distinctly state that if there is any kind of eloquence in my story, it is the eloquence of strange happenings—a thing which I have endeavoured to keep my pen from spoiling.

It was because I had been born and bred in Maoriland, because I understood the language and much of the ancient lore of the Maoris, that I was commissioned by a firm of solicitors in London to search for one, Miriam Grey. The person in question had sailed from the Old Country eighteen years before, and had joined her husband, William Grey, at Wakatu, in the northern part of the South or Middle Island of New Zealand, known among the Maoris as Te Wai Pounamou, or the Place of the Greenstone. One letter only had reached her relatives at home, and that, dated three days after her arrival, told how she and her husband were about to journey southward, overland, to Hokitika, where he owned a small farm. But that letter was the last, and all attempts on the part of her relatives to discover what had become of her and her husband were fruitless. That they had left Wakatu for Hokitika was easily proved; that they had never arrived at the latter place was also duly ascertained; but what had happened to them between these two points was a matter that had come to be set down among the inexplicables, where it remained, until it was discovered that Miriam Grey was the direct heiress to a large estate in Bedfordshire. Then it became necessary to find, at least, evidence of her death.

For this task I was selected for reasons already stated, and I began by making inquiries at Wakatu, a quaint little English settlement nestling in the hollows of the hills by the seashore. There, after many inquiries, I found a peculiar piece of evidence which excited me to a belief that Miriam Grey was still living. What that piece of evidence was I will not say at this moment, for, though it really constitutes the beginning of my story, its significance was not fully apparent to me until I chanced upon a certain splendid madman in the bush, and compared my fact with a far more extraordinary, though dreamlike, reminiscence of his own. Therefore I will simply state that in consequence of my discovery I left Wakatu and sailed across the bay to Riwaka, having as my destination a wild place called Marahau, the Valley of the Mighty Wind, where, on a high cliff by the seashore, so I was informed, stood the pa[2] of a certain Te Makawawa. Concerning this aged chief report spoke with awe, for he was more than a mere tohunga, a priest—he was an ariki, an arch-tohunga; and some said that he was more than ariki—he was matakite, a seer.

This Valley of the Mighty Wind was some distance round the coast from Riwaka, and it was possible to reach it by boat, but on the day that I had planned to set out a gale was rising, and neither Pakeha nor Maori would put out. Consequently, being both restless and rash, I made the journey on foot across the hills, following some directions given me by an old settler, who had once been to Marahau.

Late in the afternoon, after a weary tramp over densely-wooded mountains, into a region that grew more wild and gloomy as I advanced, I came to a tremendous flax swamp running up between the hills from the seashore. As it was impossible to get through this I turned inland into the virgin bush to avoid it. This detour must have taken me many miles away from the coast, how far I could not tell, for the sound of the gale in the great trees overhead altogether drowned the roar of the sea. As I knew that Te Makawawa’s pa was at the opening of the lonely valley of Marahau, and that I was already too far inland to reach it before dark, I determined to push on as far as possible, and then camp as comfortably as might be under the circumstances.

Towards sunset, after having rounded the great flax swamp, I reached the summit of a line of high hills where the bush was somewhat sparse and stunted. Here, to take my bearings, I selected a tall, thin pine, and climbed to the head of it. By the sight that met my eyes I was a trifle disconcerted. Many miles away was the sea, white with the gale that now swayed me violently to and fro in the feathery top of the pine, while all around, in unending monotony, were the bush-clad hills, stretching away into the south towards the great snow ranges, and rolling on for ever into the west, where, beneath the ragged gold of a stormy sunset, lay the mysterious region of Karamea. But nowhere in the distance could I see the high palisades of Te Makawawa’s pa.

It is strange what a sense of isolation comes to the traveller among these interminable hills and valleys. I was impressed by the wild gloom and solitude of the place, and descended the tree to find a suitable camping-ground by the side of one of the many streams that made their way down between the ridges. It was not the first time I had been compelled to spend the night alone in the bush, and I by no means disliked the solitary feeling of being the only man in a big wilderness. But it so happened that on this occasion I was not the only man there, as I was soon to discover.

I descended the range of hills in an oblique line towards the sea, knowing that among the lower slopes I should easily find a convenient camping-ground. After nearly half an hour spent in arguing with the aggravating creeper known as the prickly lawyer, struggling through interlaced roots up to my chin, and battling with occasional networks of supplejacks, whose one idea seems to be to string a man up by the neck until his natural life be extinct, I at last came into a somewhat broad and open gully, where a stream made its way through groves of white pines and tree ferns. The character of the bush here was totally different from that of the surrounding hills. Instead of thick underscrub I encountered broad spaces here and there, not unlike those of an English wood. Overhead at intervals towered the giant rimu and kahikatea, the monarchs of the bush, and they roared in the gale as such trees alone can roar; while under foot the kidney fern decked the ground and clumped upon the moss-grown tree trunks in profusion. It was while I was making my way through these ferns that I came, suddenly and to my great astonishment, upon a well-worn path.

Perhaps this might be the way to some digger’s hut, occupied or otherwise; perhaps the approach to the abode of some mad “hatter”; at all events it was more than a wild goat track, and I resolved to follow it. Before I had gone twenty paces I detected a slightly muddy patch, and conceived the idea that if these were any recent footprints they might help me to form some conclusion as to whether this path had been used by Maoris or Pakehas. Accordingly, I bent down and examined the ground. There were footprints, not of Maoris’ bare feet, but of someone with boots—long, well-shaped boots they were, such as would be found on the feet of a very tall man. One cannot always judge Hercules by his foot, but when there are two feet, or rather footprints, situated nearly two yards apart in stride, it is safe to say that they belong to a man considerably over six feet in height.

As I hurried along, the track became slightly wider, and here and there a marshy part was strengthened with a corduroy of tree-fern trunks. Up, on to a slight ridge, through a long grove of white pines on the top, with the wind shrieking and whistling among their clean boles, I pursued the path, then down into a valley, and through another dark grove of tree-ferns, where, losing it altogether on the soft bed of dry fern dust, I wandered on, thinking to pick it up on the other side.

I had not gone far in the grove when, between the bare trunks of the tree ferns, I caught sight of a light twinkling some little distance beyond. I made towards it, and on coming out into an open space, saw that it came from a square window in some small abode standing on a rising ground at the further end of the space. I could just discern the vague outlines of a log hut with a giant roof-tree towering above it, while beyond was a wooded hill, whose ridge, fringed with roaring pines, broke the fury of the gale. This was obviously some digger’s hut, and here I should certainly get shelter.

Cautiously I made my way over the small clearing towards this secluded abode in the wilderness, so as to peep in at the window and get a glimpse of the inmate before asking for a night’s rest. I took this precaution because solitary “hatters” are often so obviously mad that the wisest course is to let them alone. But, when I reached the window and looked in, I got a sudden surprise. By the light of the candle standing on a rough table near the window, I encountered the face of one who was surely as much out of place there as a rough digger would be in the House of Lords. As I looked I saw that the owner of the face was poring over a large, quaint-looking volume and making notes with pen and ink in the broad margin. Now, to ponder some point, he leaned back in his chair and gazed straight before him, so that, by the light of the candle and the glow of the fire, which touched the edge of his short, crisp brown beard on the cheek that was turned from me, I saw his face clearly. It was truly a striking one, with a mouth well moulded within the shadow of a short, thick moustache, a nose aquiline and strong, eyes lustrous, half passionate and full of dreams, and a forehead massive and high, from which the hair rolled back good-naturedly like a mane. This should be some Waring of Browning’s portraiture, who had disappeared from his circle to bury himself in solitude, probably leaving a gap behind him which no other could fill. If indeed he was mad—and it seemed that he must be to waste his powers in such a hidden corner of the earth—it was a gentle, poetical madness, if one might judge by the almost tender expression of his face, and, withal, of a methodical kind, for, having unravelled his knotty point, he returned to his broad margin and made certain emendations.

After my brief glimpse of the remarkable man within, I had no hesitation in asking him for a night’s shelter. Accordingly I knocked gently at the door, and a deep voice answered, “Come in!”

I obeyed, and entered the hut.

“Ah!” said my host, rising from his seat and looking down at me—his dark eyes smiled genially as they met mine—“you’ve lost your way, I presume.”

“Yes; I started out to find Te Makawawa’s pa, but missed it, saw your light, and ventured to look you up.”

“Quite right. You’re welcome.” He extended his hand and gripped mine without cracking all the bones as most men who stand six and a half feet high love to do.

I now had a better view of this recluse, and recognised him again from his footsteps. He was a man of magnificent build, and his bush shirt, bush trousers, bush leggings, and, still more, bush boots, hid neither the fact that he was of good breeding, nor that his limbs were in perfect proportion, even to the point at which a man might wear a dress suit successfully. His strong, but sensitive face, with its deep, passionate eyes, which lighted up when he smiled, appealed to me as no man’s face has ever done before or since. In the space of time which it took him to get a chair for me, I had recognised a man who in every way could carry about three editions of myself under his arm, and yet in his courteous smile as he addressed me, I saw the gentlest man alive.

“Come, sit down then, and get out your pipe and tell me how the outside world’s getting on.” I had refused his offer of supper, as I had already supped on cold duck and biscuits in the bush.

In a few moments, when he had turned a log on the fire, we sat one on each side of the hearth as if we had been old friends.

“The outside world,” I said, lighting my pipe with a glowing ember, “has lost a woman, and I am looking for her.”

“A woman?” he laughed. “Rather a strange place in which to search for a woman, isn’t it?”

I returned his laugh. “Yes,” I admitted; “but the whole story, or such of it as I have gleaned, is strange enough for anything.”

“Oh! a romantic story, is it?” His eyes fell from mine to the bowl of my pipe, from which rings of smoke curled and wreathed irresistibly. “Wait a minute,” he added after a pause. He rose from his chair and reached up among the rafters overhead, searching for something. At last he found it, and, returning to his seat, showed me what had once been a well-coloured meerschaum which, by the dust and cobwebs on the case, had evidently lain undisturbed among the rafters for years.

“If you will oblige me with a little tobacco,” he said, “I will keep you company, though I haven’t smoked for many a long day.”

Presently, when the necessary conditions of storytelling were established, he turned to me and said: “Now for your romantic story, if I may be permitted to hear it.”

“The story is a long one,” I replied; “but I am merely in possession of detached points of it. These I am only too anxious to lay before anyone I meet, on the chance of their being able to strengthen some point or add another from their own experience in this neighbourhood. My own part in the affair is uninteresting. I am merely Dick Warnock, or, as the Maoris call me, Wanaki, employed by a firm of solicitors at home to find a more important person named Miriam Grey, or to glean evidence of her death.”

“Now that you have given me your name,” put in my host, “I must give you mine. The Maoris, with whom I get on very well, call me Kahikatea—that is more my real name than any other.”

I saw by his manner that he did not wish to give his English name, and, realising that it was no business of mine, I forbore from asking it. Kahikatea was certainly a good name, for, from a life spent mostly among the Maoris, I was able to see in their quaint way that this man was as a great “white pine” among the forest trees. Hence his name was good, and I called him by it.

“Good, O Kahikatea!” I said easily; “I will continue the story, such as it is. To put things briefly, a large estate in Bedfordshire has been left to a certain Miriam Grey, who has been missing for many years. On instituting inquiries, however, it was found that she had sailed from England and landed at Wakatu, across the bay, some eighteen years ago, to rejoin her husband, who came up from Hokitika to meet her. They set off together on the return journey towards Hokitika, but never arrived at their destination. It is supposed that they were captured by the Maoris.”

“In which case it is exceedingly unlikely that either of them is alive at this day,” replied my host.

“Wait a moment,” I replied quickly. “I have an extraordinary piece of evidence which tends to prove that Miriam Grey was alive and a prisoner among the Maoris as late as three years ago. When I was making inquiries in Wakatu I was almost giving it up as hopeless, and was on the point of starting for Hokitika, when the old curator of the little museum came up to me one day with the gleam of the clever discoverer in his eye, and drew me aside.

“ ‘Did you not say that the woman you were looking for was named Miriam?’ he asked.

“ ‘Yes,’ I replied; ‘Miriam Grey.’

“ ‘Come with me then. I’ve got something which may be a clue.’

“He led me on through the streets until we came to the little museum, and there in a lumber room of uncatalogued curiosities, he showed me this bit of carved akeak, which he said had been discovered on the sea beach two years before.”

I drew a small piece of carved wood from my pocket and handed it to Kahikatea, who took it in his hands and inspected it carefully.

“This is not Maori carving,” he said at once, “it is too delicately done for that. But it is the work of someone who understands Maori art—look at this double-spiral work round the border. But what are the letters? They are almost worn away.”

“Yes; by the scratches on the thing it looks as if it had found its way down some rocky mountain stream. Ah! you’ve got it upside down, I think. That way—there now—it’s plain enough. This word is clearly ‘prisoner’; and these are ‘Te Maka,’ which, with the space left after it, must once have been ‘Te Makawawa.’ ”

“Yes, and this is ‘mountain,’ ” he ran on, spelling in advance of me; “and this is meant for ‘Table Land.’ ”

“Quite right; and here is the date fairly clear, showing that this was done three years ago.”

“But by whom?” he asked quickly; “that is the point.”

For answer I pointed to some marks in the corner below the date. “What do you make of that?” I asked.

He scrutinised them carefully for some minutes, then, turning to me said: “I can certainly make nothing else than ‘Miriam’ out of it.”

“Nor I,” I replied; “and, if you notice, there is an obliteration after it which, from the length of it, might once have been ‘Grey.’ ”

“That is true, but the conclusion that ‘Miriam Grey’ is held a ‘prisoner’ of ‘Te Makawawa’ in a ‘mountain’ near the ‘Table Land’ is weak in many parts.”

“True, but I can strengthen it,” I hastened to reply. “Do you see anything in that carving which points to superior talent in the person who did it?”

“Indeed I do,” he replied with certainty; “this is the work of no ordinary carver. I should be inclined to say it was the work of a genius. There are signs of delicate execution about it which no one could mistake.”

“That is precisely it. Miriam Grey, so said the solicitors, showed extraordinary signs of genius as a sculptress.”

At the last word my host stared at me with a dreamy look in his eyes. Had I touched upon the peculiar point of his madness?

“A sculptress!” he said slowly, and gazed for a full half-minute into the fire, while I watched him. Then, as I did not break the silence, he resumed: “Yes, there is a Te Makawawa, I know him well; there is a Table Land not far from here and a mountain near it; and, from what you have shown me, a woman who is a sculptress is held a prisoner there.”

He rose from his chair and paced up and down the small hut with his brows let down in deep and perplexed thought. “Strange—very strange. But she must be a sculptress of very great genius if——” He paused abruptly in his pacing the floor.

“Look here!” he said, casting off his abstraction, “if you will accept my poor hospitality I can put you up for the night, and then, in the morning, I will go with you to old Te Makawawa’s pa.”

I saw from his manner that he knew, or thought he knew, something about the matter, and asked simply, “Have you an idea?”

He looked down at me, then passed his hand over his brow in perplexity; finally, smoothing back his wayward mane, he faced the question and said frankly:

“My idea is a dream that I had a year or more ago—a very absurd dream, but, nevertheless, one so vivid and clear in all its details that it had, and still has, a strange effect upon me. That dream sometimes appeals to me as if it were the raison d’être of my existence in this solitude. And yet again, sometimes I think that my dream was an actual experience, but I have no proof that it was. Wanaki! all men who live alone in the bush as I do are more or less mad. But that word of yours, ‘sculptress,’ has given me an idea that after all I may not be as mad as I thought. If, to-morrow, old Te Makawawa can throw any light upon what has long perplexed me, then I will discuss my dream with you, as it may possibly have some bearing on the whereabouts of the woman you seek; to-morrow, not now, for, uncorroborated, it would appear to you so wild and strange, so obviously the vagary of an unhinged mind, that you might hesitate to accept my hospitality.”

As he fixed his fine eyes upon me and smiled, I realised that the fact of his being puzzled by the strangeness of his dream argued for his sanity; and if, indeed, his mind was really unhinged, it was upon some sublime point, some noble idea, having an uncommon object, full of the deep poetry that burned in those eyes.

As I returned his gaze and his smile I felt drawn towards him with feelings of a sudden friendship, and it was in accord with these feelings that in my mind I wrote him down a splendid madman.

CHAPTER II.
THE AGED CHIEF.

It was dawn when I opened my eyes and saw Kahikatea stooping to get through the doorway, so as to stretch his limbs outside, where there was no danger of knocking down articles stuck up among the rafters. Soon afterwards I joined him in front of the hut.

“Ha!” he said, greeting me with a smile full of early morning freshness, “I always turn out before the sun gets up, so as to see the lovely colours on the hills—look!”

He pointed to the roof-tree, the very tip of which was glistening like velvet in the first crimson flush of sunlight. The wooded hill beyond was bathed in splendour, and the birds were gliding down umbrageous slopes, chasing the early dragon-flies and filling the place with song. The storm of the preceding night had left no trace, and Nature had emerged all fresh and smiling. Kahikatea walked about enjoying it, while slowly the sunlight crept lower and lower down his roof-tree until it flooded on to the top of his log hut, and finally touched his own head before it reached mine.

“It’s glorious living all alone in the bush,” he said; “I get more solid satisfaction out of it than out of London, or Paris, or New York, or Sydney, or—hello! there’s my korimako—my little bell-bird—he always turns up as soon as the sun gets on to his fuchsia tree.”

I followed his outstretched finger and saw his fellow poet of the sunrise brushing the dewdrops from among the flowers and scattering them around as he trilled out a rain of melody quite as liquid as the many-tinted shower that fell upon the moss beneath.

“His song is sadder than it used to be,” said Kahikatea; “the bees get most of his honey now, and he is doomed to extinction.”

I had almost made up my mind before that this man was a poet, and one who could be trusted to catch Nature’s higher meanings from her birds and flowers and trees, from her dawns and sunsets, and her mid-day hush, when the bell-bird, assuming the rôle of a solemn, mysterious clock, strikes one in the lofty, silent spaces of the bush. Now, as I watched his face under the influence of the morning and the korimako’s music, I conceived a picture of his nature which has remained with me to this day—the picture of a clear-souled poet, who could dream and yet act, who was mad and yet sane.

The sun was not far above the horizon when we made a start for Te Makawawa’s pa. Through the silent grove of palm ferns, along the well-worn path that I had discovered the night before, and finally by ways that were new to me, I followed my tall friend down out of the bush to the sea, where the silver-crested waves were rolling in upon a grey gravel shore.

After traversing this for some distance we struck inland to avoid a steep rocky promontory, with bluffs, against which the spray was dashing high. Then, after several hours’ tramp through flax swamps, along precipitous ridges, over flooded streams, and through open dells, where all the rarest ferns in the world seemed to be growing together, we reached a broad river, and, following it down to the sea, saw ahead of us, on the summit of a high and bold cliff, the palisading of Te Makawawa’s pa.

“It’s a difficult place to get into,” said Kahikatea. “There are precipices on three sides of it, and the entrance here at the bottom of the hill is not particularly obvious. It must have been a fine stronghold in the early days.”

We raised a peculiar whoop in vogue among the Maoris, in order to signify that visitors were approaching; then, receiving the answering cry of welcome: “Haeremai! Haeremai!” we began the ascent of the hill. At the entrance of the first palisaded enclosure we were met by numerous dogs, which barked out of all proportion to their meagre size. At the second palisading, which enclosed the pa proper, we saw an aged chief come through a private opening. It was Te Makawawa himself, and as he drew near I recognised the tohunga Maori of the order called ariki, which designates the chief, the priest, and the seer.

“Welcome, O Kahikatea,” he said, addressing my friend in the Maori tongue. “Welcome, O Pakeha stranger,” he added, turning to me; “the pa of Te Makawawa is the home of the stranger who comes with my friend the Forest Tree.”[3]

“Prop and mainstay of the children of Ira,” said Kahikatea—and I was surprised at his fluency in the native tongue—“well I know that thou art the ariki who reads things that are hidden from other eyes. We have come with a strange word to speak before you, O tohunga—a word that you alone can make plain.”

Te Makawawa waved his hand with a stately grace, and, inviting us to follow, led the way into the pa. Conducting us through fenced lines dividing the houses of the tribal families, he at length reached his own elaborately carved dwelling, almost on the brink of a great precipice which overlooked the sea. He ordered his servants to place clean mats on the ground in the portico, and he—a rangatira[4] of the old school, stood with well-simulated humility until such time as we should invite him to be seated. We gave the customary invitation, and Te Makawawa seated himself opposite to us.

Then, when the food baskets had been placed before us and we had eaten, we sat in silence, the chief, according to custom, waiting impassively to hear the object of our visit, and we, also according to custom, deeply considering the words we should use. As Kahikatea had undertaken the duty of spokesman I was free to observe more closely the face of the aged chief. He was beardless, his hair was quite white, and his bold, high forehead, coupled with his piercing black eyes, gave evidence of great power and ability. His whole face was tatooed in a way to denote the highest rank: he had evidently been a great man among his people—an ariki, in whose veins ran the blood of the Great River of Heaven. He was nearly ninety years old, so I subsequently discovered, but his age was not written in his eye nor yet in his proud and erect bearing.

My eyes wandered to the sea below, sparkling in the pathway of the sun, and holding the little wooded islets in a setting of silver breakers. Now and again the long rising swell of the Great Ocean of Kiwa came in with a weird sigh, moaning about the cliffs on the coast below. Sea birds, uttering plaintive calls, circled overhead and again swooped down over the face of the cliff. It was a strange spot wherein was about to be unfolded a stranger tale.

“O wise tohunga,” said Kahikatea at length, “I have dreamed a dream, and have come to ask you what it means.”

“The wind has whispered some hidden word in the branches of the Kahikatea,” said the old chief; “lay that hidden word before me, that I may hold it in my hand.”

“My word is a dream which I will tell—a dream on a night when the moon was full. It seemed to me that I climbed a great mountain wall by a high plain yonder towards the setting sun——”

He paused, for he had seen, as I had, a passing movement on the old chief’s rugged face.

“Do you know of such a mountain wall, O Te Makawawa?” pursued Kahikatea.

A long silence ensued, and we both watched the aged chief’s face, while his eyes rested on the ground. He seemed debating in his mind whether he should answer; but at length, with a craftiness through which I thought I saw the truth, he raised his eyes and said:—

“I have myself in dreams wandered astray in a forest at the foot of a mountain wall, by which I know that my death is waiting for me there. Your words, O Kahikatea, carried me back to my own dream—did you ask me a question?”

This was artful. He had evidently made up his mind that he knew nothing of such a mountain wall, at all events not until he had heard more.

But my friend did not repeat his question. I think he saw with me that the old chief had been startled, but had extricated himself gracefully, and that, now he was on his guard, we should have no further clue.

“I was saying,” Kahikatea went on, “when I saw that the spirit of your ancestor was speaking to you, that I climbed up a mountain wall, I know not how, for it seemed to me that no man could have passed that way before. In my dream, as I stood on a great platform at the summit of the wall against the sky, a thin crust of rock beneath my feet gave way and I fell into a narrow cavern. Not being able to get out again I groped my way along and found that it communicated with a passage cut in the rock, narrow, but high, as if it had been made by, and for, giants. I followed this passage, winding in and out in the darkness of the rock, and at length came out again on the summit of the wall.

“Then my feet were guided to a funnel-shaped chasm, down which—by means of a long, stout pole, which I slanted from ledge to ledge again and again across the narrow chasm—I made a perilous descent. At last I felt a solid floor beneath my feet, and, moving cautiously, made my way across a dark cavern towards a faint light showing round a buttress of rock. When I gained this point, O thou prop of the tribes, I saw a sight which startled me—even in my dream.”

He paused, and I wondered what he was coming to. Te Makawawa’s piercing eyes were fixed upon my friend in a penetrating scrutiny as if he would read his inmost soul. But his own rugged, tatooed face betrayed no thought, no feeling.

After a silence Kahikatea continued:

“It was a form of beauty that I have never since been able to banish from my mind. There, standing in an open space on the floor of a cavern of white marble, with the moonlight flooding in upon her from an opening in the rock, was a figure, white and dazzling. For a long time I stood gazing at the most beautiful face and form it has fallen to my lot to look upon. It was a woman in the first years of womanhood; her arms were raised towards something she could see in the western sky through the opening; a thin robe covered her form, and a breath of wind had swayed it gently against her limbs. But, O chief, mark this: her hair, which fell in rippling folds over her outstretched arms, was white and glistening, and, though the expression on her face was that of one who sees a vision of joy, her eyes were colourless. Her form was full of yearning—of pursuing prayer towards the glory of her vision, but she moved not. I drew nearer and stood before her. Then I saw that this woman was an image in marble, lifelike, beauteous, wonderful; but stone—cold stone!”

Again he paused, and I watched the face of the aged chief. It was calm and unmoved, but his eyes blazed like polished obsidian reflecting the sun. He spoke never a word, and Kahikatea continued:

“While I gazed in wonder at this radiant image—in my dream, O chief—I heard a step behind me, and, before I could turn, a stunning blow on the head felled me. Then I no longer knew light from darkness. My dream ended there for a time, but when again I emerged from darkness I was lying on my back on the bank of a stream at the foot of the mountain wall a thousand feet below, my clothes wet through, and my body stiff and sore with bruises. That is my dream, O chief. My words to you are ended.”

Te Makawawa sat silent and thoughtful, considering his reply. While he was doing so it occurred to me to add my story to Kahikatea’s statement, for I now understood why my friend had been startled at my mention of the word “sculptress.”

“I also have a word to lay before you, chief,” said I.

“Proceed, O Friend of Kahikatea,” he replied.

Then I narrated to him the history of the woman—how it had become a matter of great moment that news of her should be obtained. How I, through my knowledge of the Maori tongue, had been sent to look for her, and how, finally, it seemed to me that what the wind had whispered to the branches of the Kahikatea was connected in some strange way with the woman, for was she not wise in the matter of cutting figures out of stone? In conclusion, I handed him the fragment of wood. He inspected it carefully, and then asked the meaning of the words.

“They mean,” said I, watching his face intently, “that a woman named Miriam Grey was taken prisoner eighteen years ago by a certain Te Makawawa, that she is near a mountain and a tableland—the meaning here is washed away—and that she was still alive three years ago. O chief, my words, too, are ended.”

Silence again ensued, which remained unbroken for a long space, during which time an artist might have caught the aged chief’s expression exactly, for it remained unaltered. I knew that if he did not speak soon he would not speak at all, and we should go back the way we came, not very much wiser than when we started. I employed the time wondering how much he knew. Was he considering the terms of his reply, or was he quietly making up his mind as to whether he should reply at all? At length he raised his eyes and encountered those of my friend.

“O Kahikatea,” he said solemnly, “like Tawhaki of old thou knowest the ‘way of the spider,’ and, like him, thou hast seen Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn. I can speak of what I know to one with whom the Great Tohungas of the Earth have spoken. But with thee, O Friend of my friend the Forest Tree,” he added, turning to me, “I will not speak except on a condition which I will lay upon the ground before you.”

“Lay thy condition upon the ground, O wild white crane among tohungas—lay thy condition upon the ground before us, that we may look at it and take it up or not as it seems good to us.”

“It is well,” he replied. “Lo! the beginning of my word to you is this: I am growing old; my foot is already searching for firm places among the snows that encircle the summit of Ruahine; I see those who are not present, I hear those who do not speak; any day I may look into the eyes of the green lizard that will summon me to Reinga.[5] But before I descend by the sacred Pohutukawa root that leads to the Abode of Spirits I would undo a wrong that I did—an evil deed, cruel and unfair beneath the eye of Rehua.

“That is the beginning of my speech to you, and this is how it runs on. Hearken, Pakehas! You, O Friend of Kahikatea, the Forest Tree, seek a woman concerning whom, if you agree to my condition, the spirits that linger by night may speak to me: Te Makawawa, whose heart is in his face before you, seeks a white-faced child whom he cannot find, for he knows not the speech of the Pakeha.

“Hear the end, O Friend of my friend, the Forest Tree—the end is for you. When the child is found I myself will teach you concerning the woman. The tongue of the Maori is known to you as well as the tongue of the Pakeha; therefore, you can search among the races of the South for the white-faced child. If this bargain seems good then I will speak to you and to the Forest Tree. And when the child is found I will commune with the spirits of my ancestors about the woman.”

“And if I find the child, O chief,” I said, “will you swear upon the sacred tiki[6] that you will find the woman?”

Te Makawawa turned a withering glance upon me.

“The Friend of the Forest Tree speaks the Maori tongue, but surely he does not know the Maori heart——” he began, but Kahikatea broke in upon his words.

“It is enough,” he said. “The word of Te Makawawa is good; it will not snap like the kohutukutu’s branch. Let my brother Wanaki say whether he will accept the condition.”

I am obstinate by nature, and somewhat cynical, but from Kahikatea’s manner I guessed that old Te Makawawa, notwithstanding his remark to the effect that the spirits of his ancestors would enlighten his ignorance, already knew more about Miriam Grey than we should ever find out unless we accepted his own terms. Having turned this over in my mind I said:

“I forgot that the word of the ariki was sworn upon his own heart, which is sacred. I call back my words, O chief, and I agree to your condition. Now speak and answer the words of Kahikatea about his dream, and my own words about the woman.”

“It is well,” he said with dignity, drawing his mat closer around him. “My heart flows out to both of you; to you, O Dreamer of dreams, and to you, O Seeker in the dark, I will speak words straight from my breast, but in hearing them know that they may not be repeated to other ears while I live. That is understood between us.”

CHAPTER III.
A SECRET OF ANCIENT NIGHT.

For some minutes the aged chief sat silent, looking out far away over the sea, where the white-winged taniwhas[7] of the Pakeha pass through Raukawa, to gain the great ocean of Kiwa. His thoughts were as far away as the blue Isle of Rangitoto, marked vaguely in the horizon. What thing was he pursuing over the dim trail of the past? Of a truth he seemed to see those who were not present, to hear those who did not speak. Would he begin his story at the time when those fierce old history-makers of yore—the Waitahi and the Ngaitahu—dwelt in the valley of the “Pensive Water,” and held their land against the fierce invaders coming down from the land of Tara? No, he turned towards us, and the words from his breast were of things long, long before the Waitahi fought their frays upon the sounding shore.

He spoke in a hushed voice; for our ears alone were the secret things he was about to unfold.

“O men of the great land beyond the mountains and the sea, why should I tell to you those things which none but our priesthood of ancient night have known? It is because I have heard the voices of the Great Tohungas of the Earth speaking to me in sleep, and I have had no rest. Therefore I will obey the words that have come to me in the whistling winds of heaven, and reveal a secret of the ancient tohungas of my race. Yet in doing this I know full well that, by the occult law of the ages, I shall incur my death.

“Know then, O children of another world, that the blood of the Great River of Heaven has run through the veins of an unbroken hereditary priesthood from the further shore of Time to this day that we see beneath the shining sun. Men who do not know speak of Te Kahui Tipua; a band of man-eating demons, they say, who dwelt here in Aopawa. Sons! these are no demons, but the powerful priesthood of which I speak to you, extending back into the far night of the world. The Rangitane and the Ngaitahu have nursed our priests in their wahine’s laps; the Ngatimamoe also, and before them the Waitahi, skilled in spells—all these came and passed away like the leaves of the kohutukutu,[8] but the father blood of the ancient Kahui Tipua is of the Great River of Heaven flowing down the ages from times when this land of the Maori was without a shore from the rising to the setting sun.

“What the west wind has whispered in the branches of the Kahikatea, what his friend has spoken with his tongue about the woman, and my own word to you about a lost child, are the head, the back, and the tail of one story. Hearken to me then, O men from over the sea, while I show to you a hidden thing which has never been shown to a pakeha before, nor revealed to any but our own priesthood. Then, when Te Makawawa has trodden the Highway of Tane, and you see his eye set as a star in the sky, you will tell this sacred thing to your brethren of the other side, for it is a word of power to the Maori and Pakeha alike. But know that whoever reveals this hidden thing to the outside world must die.

“Not three days’ journey towards the setting sun is a high plain rolling like a yellow sea beneath a great mountain wall. On that sacred plain waves now the golden toi-toi, and it is desolate; but there was a time when a great city stood there in which dwelt a mighty race of long ago. And within that mountain wall is the vast temple of Ruatapu, cut out of the ancient rock by the giant tohungas of old. This, O children of the sun that rose to-day, was long before the wharekura[9] of our lesser tohungas, many ages before the Maori set sail from Hawaiki to find these shores. In that temple of the ages are strange things preserved from the wreck of the ancient world—things which one day you shall see, but I now shorten my words to tell of a sacred stone under the protection of the Good Tohungas of the Brow of Ruatapu, and yet again of another, an accursed stone, the plaything of the Vile Tohungas of the Pit.

“In that far time, when this land of the Maori was but a small part of a vast land now eaten by the sea, the people who dwelt in the city of the high plain were powerful giants, and they were ruled by a priesthood of tohungas, among whom two kinds of magic were practised: the Good and the Vile. The Good Tohungas derived their spells, like Tawhaki, from the heavens above, where the Great Spider sits weaving his web around him, and they dwelt in the forehead of the mountain wall. The Vile Tohungas obtained their spells, like Tangaroa, from the depths of the sea, and from the gloom of Porawa; they inhabited the foundations of the mountain. But although both dwelt in the same temple, there was a deadly hatred between them, and, when they met in battle, fierce lightnings were seen to issue from the rocks.

“I am not now the hereditary priest of that temple, but many moons ago, before the snows fell on my hair, I was called by the Great Tohungas, whose eyes look down from the northern sky, to enter the mountain and take the place of my father, who was growing old. My father, worn with doing the will of the tohungas in the temple, came out to die, and I took his place, even as I, after many years, have come out to die, while my son, Ngaraki the Fierce, has taken my place. When I entered the mountain by a path any brave man might find and follow, and further, when I ascended to the upper part of the mountain, by a way that no man could find unless he were guided as I was, I found there the sacred white stone, before which it was the work of the priest to sing the magic karakia, which have been handed down from the time of the ancient city. For the tradition given to me by my father, O Pakehas, told that in this stone stood the form of a woman, beauteous as the dawn; and the prophecy attached to her was that one day the stone which enclosed her would be broken, and she would stand free.

“Sons of Kiwa, hear the sacred story of the woman of the ancient city, and listen well, that my words do not pass by like the empty wind, for, in revealing this for the good of my race and yours, I give myself over to the Woman of Death and Darkness—such is the law by which I, a sometime priest of the mountain temple, will abide. In the times of which the rocks of that temple alone keep a record, the bright goddess Hia, or, as we call her, Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, came down from the skies to restore the divine magic which the Vile Tohungas had almost driven from the world. She became queen of the city on the plain, and tried to rule the people by the love-magic she brought with her. But she failed: the people were being led down to death by the vile brethren of Huo, or, as we know her, Hine-nui-te-Po, the Daughter of the Darkness. They would not look upon the dazzling beauty of Hia’s face, nor would they hear her words. E tama! none can sin against the Great Spider and live. Lo! Mariki, the Woman of Pestilence, slid down a silky thread of the vast web and breathed death on the city. Tu-of-the-Whirlwind came also and smote the great land.

“But the Tohungas of the Brow of Ruatapu had been taught in dreams when the great fire of Io throbbed through them and lighted their heads. They foresaw the destruction of the city, and took the Queen Hinauri to a white cave in the forehead of the mountain, where she showed them the last strange wonder of her magic. Standing on the floor of the cave, with her giant priests around her, she gazed through the opening towards the western sky above the hills. A ray of golden light pierced the air and shone into the place. It fell upon her face and form. It lingered in her eyes and on her dark flowing hair. The priests fell back dazzled by her glory. Then she raised her arms towards the western sky and spoke strange words: ‘Lo! in the distance it is shown to me—the land of my people as it will be in the far future. I see them living in happiness, ruled by my love-magic. Ages will pass away before that time will be, but behold, I will leave my body here waiting and watching for that future when my people shall come back; and, at the dawn of that bright age, I too will return as a sign to the world. And you, my priests, will watch my sacred body till that day. Then, when I return, Huo, the false image of myself, which will be fashioned in this temple below, shall be hurled down upon the heads of the Vile Tohungas, her worshippers.’

“She ceased, and the golden ray seemed to be fading from her, while she stood as if listening to some mellow music from the sunlit slopes of the far-off future land of peace and love. A light leapt into her eyes, and a smile broke over her face. Lo! even while she stood there leaning forward, with her arms outstretched as if to some lovely vision of the dawn, the sun ray faded quite away, and left her spellbound, immovable—a radiant statue of expectancy.

“Then, as the Tohungas chanted their mystic song they saw that her spirit had fled, leaving her body standing like stone. Like stone, I said, O Kahikatea; but her spirit had not taken away the smile from her lips nor the joy from her eyes. The lovelight would still dwell there, and her arms would still remain outstretched in longing until the ages should have rolled by—in constant yearning until some distant day should bring her people back to repeat their history with a happier close. O Pakehas, it was a thing to see: Hinauri the Radiant One, who rivals the dawn in her beauty, stood there waiting, waiting, waiting till the far future of the world should come with Ihi Ihi, the sun ray, to call her back to life.

“O Sons of the Shining Sea, hear how my tale runs on. Summer and winter came and went for hundreds of years, while in the cave high up in the silence of the mountains stood for ever the Daughter of the Dawn, holding out her arms to the unborn future of the South. Far below upon the plain lay the City of the Southern Cross, deserted, silent, and crumbling to ruin. A pestilence had fallen upon the land, slaying the people as one man, and now through the silent streets wandered the dragons of the desert. By night the moonlight glinted upon the palaces and domes, showing here gigantic columns, and there a patch of open square, while sometimes from the shadowy streets arose a ghostly murmur, as of a phantom race that is dead and gone, whose spirits linger by night around the desolation of their former homes. But the Bright One’s gaze was fixed, not upon the city below, but on the limits of future time.

“How can I show you the wonder of Hinauri’s waiting for the dawn? O Pakehas, on calm moonlight nights the children of the misty moonbeam looked in at the opening of the cave and wondered to see her standing there, a figure of beauty, all shining with moisture, in the clear, pale ray. The drops that drip so slowly in limestone caves had begun to deposit their treasures upon her form. Her robes shone with a thousand crystalline gems. Her hair rippled down like wavy stalactites laden with sparkling clusters of precious stones. They had gathered like the dust of diamonds upon her arms, and neck, and brow, while from the roof of the cave the ever-dripping, crystal-laden water had tried to place a crown upon her stately head.

“O men of a later day, how can I picture to you the wonder of Hinauri in that high solitude? The spirits of the wind would pause in their wanderings round the mountain sides to look in at the silent inhabitant of the cave. Then they would sigh along upon their way down the ridges to whisper among the shadows of the deserted city. And on dark nights, when the anger of Tawhirimatea smote the feet of Tane-holding-up-the-Sky, that storm-god loved to linger at the opening of the cave and watch her mysterious beauty, as Taki’s lightning lit the place; and, while he watched, his fierce heart would melt, and his wild breath soften into sighs of love.

“On and on sped the years. Ages rolled over this land, and the City of the Southern Cross crumbled to dust. Other ages came and went, and the sea lapped about the crags beneath the opening of the cave and rolled its huge billows over the buried city. And lo! as the moons, gliding by on the floor of the crystal heaven, chased each other for ever across the sky, the sea sank back, and there, where once had surged the hurrying throng of a mighty people, stood the gigantic moa in the dense fern, and on the rocks crept the three-eyed lizards of old time. But in the mountain cave the ancient spell had endured. Hear the tale of the Great Tohungas, who watched one by one in the temple. Slowly, through the ages, the limestone covered the form of the goddess, but not to hide her from the eyes of the matakite. The expectant look upon her face had deepened, and her whole body seemed ready to spring to life at a word. To the eyes of the seer her face shone glorious from within a crystal stone, but some who saw less clearly passed down the word that her features were chased as if with the dust of stars, through which the pink in her cheeks and lips showed like rata through a glistening mist. But to me, when my father took me to the cave, there was naught but a large block of pure white marble, roughly hewn, such as the mighty fingers of the ages fashion from the limestone. Yet I could see, though my sight was dim, that within the dull, hard stone stood the wondrous form of Hinauri, waiting to be released from her age-long prison. My father said that the time was near when Hinauri should return, and the Great Tohungas had told him in dreams that it was by the ‘magic of a woman’ that her spirit should come back into her body. He then instructed me in the ways and duties of the temple, showing me many things which I cannot speak of now.

“But I said my words to you were also of the accursed stone. When the spirit of the Bright One had fled, the Good Tohungas withdrew into the sky, leaving one of their number to protect the sacred stone. Even the name of this mighty one has come down to us as surely as his blood runs in my veins. ‘Zun[10] the Terrible’ he was called, and it was he who concealed once and for ever the secret of the sacred stone. The Vile Tohungas of the Pit were searching for Hinauri to destroy her, but Zun tricked them. He cast himself down into the foundations of the temple and dwelt among them to learn their vile magic. Then, when he had mastered their secrets, he fashioned a false image of Hinauri as a great spar, and bound it down to the rock with a round stone. The Vile Tohungas, believing that this spar, stranded on the shores of Time, contained the sacredness of Hinauri, cursed it for ever, so that woman should never rise to the skies, but remain bound down to do their will. Zun the Terrible then drew a phantom spirit from the spar and delivered it over to them, saying it was Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn. The Vile Ones took it and bound it to the moon-face, where for all time they have paid it a sneering worship of disdain. Thus did Zun the Terrible give them the false for the true, and tricked them with their own magic. Then he turned his back upon these Vile Ones and set himself to climb up out of the darkness into which he had fallen. But, O my sons! the Vile Ones still live upon the earth. The giant sorcerers of old stand for ever on the floor of the mighty abyss in the temple, waiting the day when they shall return. Their red fire was removed by one of their slaves, whom Zun drove from the temple into the north, and we say it is burning even now, though we know not where.

“So the sacred stone in the white cave has been preserved to this day, and to this day the magic of the sun ray may be seen. It is true it now strikes into the cave at certain times of the year through a crevice in some outstanding crags, but, O children of a later sun, it is a ray of the same light that shone there ages since, and bore Hinauri’s spirit away. E tama! there is a prophecy that one day, when this ray of Ihi Ihi is upon the sacred stone, her ancient spirit will return upon it, and she will live. Already is the stone that bound her broken away; already she stands free, as she stood long, long ago, with her arms outstretched to the future, and the dawn of a new age upon her radiant face. This, O Kahikatea, is the truth which lies behind your dream. This, O Pakehas, was the legend given me by my father, who had received it from his father in like fashion as it had been told by father to son from the beginning of the world.

“Now, Friend of the Forest Tree, I will answer your words to me about the woman Miriami Kerei.

“Many moons of fasting and singing of karakias passed over my head before the Great Tohungas

“ ‘THIS, O PAKEHAS, WAS THE LEGEND GIVEN ME BY MY FATHER.’ ”

began to speak to me in dreams. One night the spirit of my father stood before me and told me that the woman upon whom the tohungas had set their true mark was travelling southwards with her husband, inland, towards Hokitika. She was the woman by whose magic the age-long fetters of Hinauri should be broken; therefore he bade me find her and take her to the white cave, where she must dwell as sacred as Hinauri’s self until the object of her coming was accomplished. Therefore, I summoned the warriors of my tribe and sent them to guard all the mountain ways to the south of the ‘Pensive Water,’ and to take the man and the woman without injury and bring them to me at the boundary of the Great Tapu, which enclosed the plain and the sacred mountain.

“At the end of half a moon they returned with the pakeha and his wife. She was a comely wahine, with eyes like those of a Maori chieftainess, but they held more of the ‘magic of a woman.’ O Pakehas, have you looked into a dark lake among the mountains and seen the star Tawera shining there all alone? Like that was the light of Miriami’s eyes; like that was the spirit far within them. I do not remember the pakeha’s name, but I remember learning by the signs he made to me, that he had journeyed from Hokitika to Wakatu to meet his wife, who had come in a great canoe from the land beyond the sea, and that now they were on their way back to Hokitika. I was sorry, and my heart went out to the pakeha, but the word of the tohungas was to be obeyed. I could not let him go his way, lest he should bring a great army against the mountain for revenge, so I ordered the tongueless men of the temple to bear both man and woman to the mountain, for there I meant to deal with the man according to the customs of our ancient magic. By a secret entrance at the back of the mountain, which no man might find—the ‘way of the lizard’—then by the secret ‘way of the fish with wings,’ which no man can travel without guidance, I had them taken to the white cave, where I showed them the stone and explained as much of the ancient story as I could by signs. The woman understood me, for a clear light came in her eyes as she gazed at the stone. At that moment the sun ray, coming through a rift in the crags outside, fell through the opening like a shaft of gold, and shone upon the white fetters of the Bright One. Then I saw that the Tohungas’ real mark was on the woman, for her eyes became fixed. She held out her arms to the stone with a cry, and the pakeha caught her as she fell. I knew now that she was matakite,[11] and had seen Hinauri within the stone.

“When she came out of darkness she spoke to the pakeha with many words, and I judged her meaning to be this: that she would stay in the cave and release Hinauri from the stone, and he would stay with her; but when they made me understand this I replied by signs that the man must go, but the woman must stay. He grew angry, and showed me with his hands that he would go and call the pakehas together and bring them with guns against the mountain, and take the woman away by force.

“At this I ordered the tongueless men to bind the pakeha again. Then I signed to the woman that he should be taken down and set free, and that if she would watch from the opening of the cave she should see him go. This quieted her, and I conducted the pakeha down through the secret ways; but before setting him free I tatooed upon his breast one of the magic signs of the temple—the sign of silence and forgetting, and rubbed into it an ointment which has power to make a man forget the events of his life while the tohunga lives who cast the spell over him. There is another ointment, O Kahikatea, which will cause a man to forget only the events of a single moon, or at least to recall them dimly as dreams. But it was necessary that the pakeha should forget everything, and he went forth from the mountain as one in a trance, from which at sunset he would awake in his right mind, but as a man who can speak the words that he always spoke, and do the things which he always did, yet can remember neither his own name nor the face of his friend. This, O men of to-day, is a word of the ancient magic for which our lower tohungas seek in vain.

“Then I did many things for the comfort of the woman Miriami—that is the name by which she bade me call her, O Wanaki. I placed mats within a recess of the white cave and brought her food and water and firewood, and in it all I made her understand that she was tapu[12], and she grew to trust me. At her bidding I procured through my tribe some sharp instruments for her with which to break the bonds of the Radiant One, and also some books, that she might learn to speak the Maori tongue. When this was done she showed me the ‘magic of the woman’ by which Hinauri should return. She would break and cut the stone away from the divine form within, so that it should stand free.

“When I knew this I fell at her feet and worshipped her. For many moons she laboured, and though I heard the chipping of the tools upon the stone—the breaking of Hinauri’s fetters—I set not my foot within the cave. Eight moons passed away, and the ninth was growing old, when one day she waited for me outside the entrance to her abode, on the white steps that lead down into the lower parts of the temple.

“ ‘O Te Makawawa,’ she said, ‘the work is finished. Hinauri, the Bright One, stands free, but she does not yet live. Nevertheless, Chief and Tohunga, there will be another life in this cave before many days.’

“ ‘Blessed be the child that is born under the smile of Hineteiwaiwa,’ I said. ‘I will go to my tribe and bring back a woman to be with you.’

“I brought the woman, and Miriami’s child was born before another moon had set out to find the Sacred Isle in the West. Then was I summoned to the cave to see the magic the woman had wrought upon the stone. Hinauri stood free. She stood as thou didst see her in thy dream, O Kahikatea—a thing to wonder at and worship. E Koro! the magic of the woman was not of earth. It was the Chisel of Tonga—and more than that, though I know not what more.

“Then for two summers and winters I toiled in the temple, cursing the Vile Tohungas in the abyss at the full moon, as my father and all my father’s fathers had done before me, and singing the ancient karakias in the white cave at sunset. But the spirit of Hinauri returned not. Yet from that time forward certain men with the fire of the Vile Tohungas in their eyes found entrance to the temple. My thought is that they had heard a threatening voice teaching them strange things. Perchance the ages had told them how they had been tricked, and they came to learn the secret of our greater magic, and to destroy the Bright One. But, O Sons of Kiwa, I took their heads, baked them, and hung them in the abyss.

“But hear me, O Friend of the Forest Tree. These are my words to you, and this is the thing which keeps me from rest. When the little girl—Keritahi Kerei was her name—was able to run about and speak her own tongue and mine, I used to lead her and Miriami down to a place where the river hemmed them in against the mountain wall. Here the sun shone upon the moss, and flowers grew, and here the little one would play. One day I was cutting wood on the bank lower down, when I heard a scream, and, looking up, I saw Miriami standing on the bank waving her arms. I hastened to the place, and she pointed to the water, where I saw, rising to the surface, the little body of the child. O my brethren of the pale skin, I saw her white face, and in her hand she held some mountain lilies, in reaching for which she had fallen over the bank. The current swept her under, and though I plunged in at once, it was some time before I could find her among the twisting folds of the water. When at last I laid the little body at Miriami’s feet, its spirit had fled beyond Wai Ora Tane.[13]

“Have you seen the grief of a mother weeping for her child, O Pakehas? I hope I may never see it again. I sat down and covered my head, and my own tears flowed like rain. But not for long. Miriami dashed her tears away and tried to bring the little one’s spirit back from Reinga. I knew that a spirit sometimes halts and lingers on the hither bank of Wai Ora Tane; therefore I worked with her on the little body, trying to charm the spirit back, and, as we worked, I sang an incantation, while her tears fell on the child’s pale face.

“But Keritahi’s spirit had passed beyond the waters, from whose further bank none may return by the way they went. The sun was sinking when we ceased our efforts, and then Miriami sank down in despair. By the ancient rites of the temple no dead body must remain within its inner tapu. I told Miriami that I would bury it at once somewhere in the outer tapu across the stream. She pleaded with me to let her come, but I would not; I had sworn to my father’s spirit that she should not go beyond the inner tapu. ‘Then,’ she said, ‘bury the body of my child beneath the shade of the great rimu in the valley, where the tui sits and sings in the twilight, that when I listen from the mouth of the cave I may mingle my grief with his singing.’

“I promised this. When she had taken a last farewell of her little one, she sank on the ground numbed with grief, and I crossed the river with Keritahi’s body in my arms. As I was hurrying towards the rimu in the valley, I said in my heart, ‘It is the will of the tohungas—the child stood in the way of Hinauri. The attention was divided. Now the child is dead, Hinauri will delay no longer. It is best: the tohungas have spoken——’

“The tongue in my heart stopped, and I stood still, looking down at the child. Was it a tremor passing through the little body, or was it my dream? Who could come back after so long a stay in Reinga?

“I hurried on again into the shades of the valley, and came to a sudden stop a second time, for the body was trembling visibly in my arms. There was no longer any doubt. The little lips parted. The child drew a breath and sighed. Then the eyes opened and closed again. She was returning from the arms of the Great Woman of Darkness.

“My first thought was to turn back and restore the child to her mother, but when I had taken some steps I hesitated. Another thought held me, and I stood still. Miriami would conquer her grief; the worst of it was over. The tohungas had spoken, and I saw their meaning. The child was to live, but not, O Pakehas, not with its mother, not within the tapu of Hinauri. Yes, it was plain. My heart bled for Miriami, but there was something more important: Hinauri was first.

“Keritahi opened her eyes and looked up at me. Her little lips moved, and I heard the only part of my name that she could say: ‘Wawa.’ Then the eyes closed again, and my breast melted. How could I play this trick upon the woman whose magic had done so much? Miriami’s soft eyes came up before my mind, and my body shook like the kahikaha’s leaf. But I must do it. It was for Hinauri. ‘Besides,’ I said, ‘the child must have the spirit of a great witch—none but a witch could come back out of the Land of Silence. Yes, the Great Ones have spoken—she is a witch, and that is why my karakias have been powerless.’

“Need I tell you, O my sons, how I coaxed the child to sleep on a stone that I had warmed with fire—then how I dug a grave beneath the rimu and buried a large stone there—and afterwards how I went back to Miriami with a lie in my throat and took her again into the mountain, where in the white cave she remained alone with her grief? But I will tell you, O Friend of the Forest Tree, what I did with the child, for that word is for you, to guide you in the search.

“I went back to her lying on the warm stone. I bent over her and listening for her breathing. It was regular and deep.

“ ‘She is a witch,’ I said, ‘she will live.’

“When she awoke I took her to my tribe, though on the way I sat down many times to cover my head, for, with her arms round my neck, she asked me questions that I could not answer. I gave her to a young chief of my tribe, and said to him, ‘Take a band of warriors and journey on towards the south, and when you come to a pakeha’s house leave the child there in safety without any word, so that the one into whose care the child falls knows neither whence it comes nor who brings it.’

“They went forth, and the child was under my word of protection.

“O Friend of the Forest Tree, within two moons they returned, and the young chief spoke a strange thing in my ear. ‘We have ended the work you set us to do, O Te Makawawa, and lo! a moon ago we came to a hut on the bank of a river southwards, and within sat a pakeha asleep by a fire. With my own hand I unfastened the door and set the child inside. Then I closed the door with a loud noise, and looked in at the window. The man awoke, and when I looked upon his face I saw that it was the face of him we captured with the woman many moons ago. That is truth, O chief.’

“Then I, having heard this, returned to the temple and sought rest, saying to myself: ‘It is not such a bad deed you have done, Te Makawawa—you have stolen a child from its mother and have restored it to its father.’ But no rest came to me, neither did the tohungas speak to me again in dreams. In the many years that followed I grew weary of life, for Hinauri came not, and I felt the displeasure of the tohungas heavy upon me. I still kept the woman a sacred prisoner, and she lived in peace, for was she not matakite,[14] and a lover of solitude?

“At length my son Ngaraki, the Fierce One, arrived at the age when he should take up the duties of the ancient temple, and I came forth to die. But lo! I cannot go hence until I have undone the wrong that I did, until I have restored the child to her mother. Make haste, O Friend, and find the little maiden in the south. The sun lingers over the hills, but cannot set—my eyes grow dim, and I see your faces in a mist—my head is bowed to the ground, but my spirit cannot pass hence till this is done. O Sons of the Shining Sea, my words to you are ended.”

The aged chief covered his head with his flaxen robe and bowed himself to the earth. A solemn silence fell upon us, so astonished were we at this, his strange story.

CHAPTER IV.
THE HAUNTED REGION.

If there were not so much to tell before I lay down my pen, I might describe the feast which Te Makawawa and his chiefs prepared for us that evening, or give the substance of the wild, poetical songs that were sung in our honour, and of the speeches that were delivered—all bristling with allusions to ancient tradition. But the matter, though interesting, does not concern this history directly. Suffice it to say, then, that I had, from the first, developed a slightly sceptical attitude towards the old chief’s story. This was accentuated by the fact that, after the feast of which I have spoken, one of the songs sung by a young chief contained a chance allusion to Hinauri, giving in a few words the skeleton of a popular legend which differed almost entirely from Te Makawawa’s tradition of the same person. Even if this discrepancy could be explained by saying that a popular legend is often fabricated around the central name of some more ancient tradition, it still remained to deal with the extraordinary parts of Te Makawawa’s story, which were not easy of belief without some kind of verification. Therefore I had many a grave doubt.

On the following day, when we took our departure, the aged chief sent with us a Maori named Tiki, who had been with the party which had taken the child, fifteen years before, and left her at the hut of the Man-who-had-forgotten. This Maori was to be my servant, to aid me in finding Keritahi Kerei, or, as we should pronounce it, Crystal Grey. He was to obey me in all things, and not to leave me under any conditions until the child—now, of course, if living, a girl seventeen or eighteen years of age—was found and brought to Te Makawawa.

When we three, Kahikatea, Tiki, and myself, were leaving the pa, the old chief gave us a solemn and sad farewell. Sitting at the doorway of his house, he said: “Depart, O Kahikatea, Dreamer of dreams! Take not again the ‘way of the spider’ lest you become even as he who has forgotten his name and the face of his friend. Depart, O seeker of the child whose mother awaits you, and forget not my words. Go, my friends, to whom I have shown the secret of the ages. Go! while I remain here watching the kohutukutu’s yellow leaf that will not fall, watching the western sun that cannot set.”

So we left the pa of Te Makawawa, our hearts full of the strange tale we had heard. When we reached the bank of the river we sat down on a log and looked at one another.

“Do you believe the old chief’s tale?” I asked Kahikatea.

“It accounted for my dream,” he replied; “but, do you know, I have never been able to decide whether I dreamed that about the stone woman in the cave, or whether it was an actual experience I went through. All I can be certain of is, that on the floor of my hut, two years ago, I awoke from what I took to be a kind of syncope due to failure of the heart’s action. I went out and shook myself together, and recalled a hazy memory of those things I related to the old chief. Of course, I dismissed the matter as a dream, though that pure white woman’s face I could not, cannot, and do not wish to, dismiss, for I admit to you candidly that I would risk my life to see it again: it has a fine meaning. I say I explained it as a dream, but what perplexed me some time later was, that in my record of the month from full moon to full moon I discovered a gap of three days. Then another thing which puzzled me was that I had a great many bruises that I could not account for, one in particular: a painful sore on my back—by Jove!”

He started up in an excited manner and threw off his coat. Then in another moment his shirt followed, and he stood stripped to the waist.

“Look!” he cried, turning his back to me; “just between the shoulder blades—is there any kind of mark?”

It was my turn to express surprise now, for there, in the spot he had indicated, was a peculiar tatooed sign—a square in a circle, with a small cross in the centre.

I described it to him, and when I had finished he turned round and faced me.

“The sign of forgetting,” he said.

“The ‘sign of forgetting,’ ” I repeated, and my scepticism suffered a shock.

“I thought,” he mused slowly, as he proceeded to dress himself again, “I thought I could not have spent three whole days in that syncope. If I went to that mountain temple and was branded with this mark, which made my adventure seem like a dream, why should not they have branded Grey in such a way—say by rubbing in a different drug—as to make him forget his own name and the face of his friend?”

“And yet—and yet—” I said with some hesitation, “the whole of Te Makawawa’s tale is so remarkable that I cannot say I feel justified in setting out to look for that child without some more certain proof. It is quite possible the old chief has invented the story of the child so as to get us out of the way. The search may lead me to the other side of the world, whereas the Table Land and the mountain are not three days’ journey from here. I believe most firmly that Miriam Grey is there if she is living, but I’m inclined to think that, if there was a child, it died, or was drowned, and that old Te Makawawa invented the rest of the story to throw us off the track. What do you think? Is not our best plan to go and spy out the mountain first?”

“It may be so,” he replied meditatively. “Personally my interest is neither in the child nor in the woman, but in the existence of that ancient temple of a forgotten race, with its white goddess who rivals the dawn, gazing out into the sky with a prayer on her face, and her arms held up to the daybreak of the golden age. It is a grand symbol and, as I said before, I would risk my life to verify it; for even the face of that marble woman appeals to me as no woman’s face has ever done before. I see it in my mind, not as stone, but as that of a living woman whose eyes are full of a holy light. I will go with you to the mountain wall, and, notwithstanding the old chief’s warning, I will search for the ‘way of the spider.’ ”

“Agreed,” I said, “and I will look for the ‘way of the fish,’ whatever that may be, and take my chance of the fierce Ngaraki.”

With our minds made up we decided that it would be better not to inform Tiki of our purpose until, in our route southwards, we came to a point where we could branch off towards the Table Land. We took this precaution lest he should find an opportunity of hurrying back in the night or sending a chance messenger to Te Makawawa telling him of our purpose, in which case I felt convinced we should be followed by a band of his warriors. Having questioned Tiki, I found that the way by which I was to seek the child lay through Karamea, to the west of the Great Tapu Land. It would be an easy matter then to change our minds on the journey, and direct our course towards the forbidden region which we knew must be the place we wanted.

Of our progress on foot towards Karamea little need be said, except that it was fraught with all the difficulties of the virgin bush. Kahikatea had a fowling-piece, and I had my rifle, so that we had no difficulty in procuring wild duck, with here a pig and there a pukako or a kakariki. We gathered our larder up as we went along, for we found the bush-clad hills and gullies most plentifully stocked.

On the evening of the third day we saw a high range of snow-capped mountains far away on our left, and questioned Tiki about them.

“That is the Great Tapu Land,” he said, lowering his voice.

After a conversation over the camp fire in our own tongue, we decided that the time had come to change our course. Accordingly, in the morning we informed the Maori that the curiosity of the white man was great: we wished to see this forbidden country. He looked scared at this; but, when we told him he must accompany us, his legs trembled under him, and I verily believe that if they had been any use to him at the moment, he would have fled for his life.

“Taniwha lives there,” he said, “it is tapu. The Maori must not go there; it is the place of evil spirits.”

“Why is it tapu?” I asked.

He shook his head. “When the ariki make a place tapu it is because it is dangerous to go there.”

I was determined to see how much he knew, so I continued to question him.

“How long has it been tapu?” I asked.

“From the times of Wiwa and Wawa, when men had wings,” he replied. “Do not venture on it, O Pakehas. The ariki who have been there to appease the evil spirits have come back and told us of the terrible monsters that inhabit the land, and of the evil spirits that are on the watch for anyone who sets foot there.”

“What kind of spirits are they?”

“Listen, O Rangatira! Some men of Ngatimamoe once lost their way and crossed the high level land beneath those peaks, when they came to a great wall of rock, out of which a stream ran forth into a deep pool. Here they stood and watched the bubbles coming up, when they saw something rising out of the depths. It came to the surface and spouted the water from its mouth. Then they fled, for they knew that only taniwha rise out of the depths in that way. It was the evil spirit of the mountain, and they who had seen it were doomed.”

“What happened to them?” I asked.

“They all died before another moon had passed,” he replied triumphantly.

“And are you afraid because of a silly story like that?” I said, well knowing the superstitious dread the Maori has of the demon taniwha, even if it only comes in the shape of a small green lizard. But he was not to be shaken in his belief.

“Ah,” he replied gravely. “I have heard that the Pakeha is afraid of nothing, because he believes in nothing. But the Maori knows these things are true: the whole place is bewitched with devils, Pakeha; do not go near it.”

Kahikatea, who had been sitting on a log cutting tobacco with his bush knife, now restored the weapon to its sheath on his hip, and remarked, as he charged his pipe: “The fact of this tremendous tapu being laid on the whole place shows very clearly that there is a secret to be kept by those mountains—a secret known only to the tohungas who imposed the tapu. And these wild tales I imagine to be a piece of priestcraft to add additional protection to the secret.”

Then, rising and standing over the Maori, he went on in his forcible way: “Look here, Tiki! We’re going, and you’ll have to come with us. Te Makawawa, the ariki, has been many a time to this Great Tapu to appease the taniwha; remember that. And his words to you were, ‘Do not leave the Pakeha Wanaki until the child is found.’ Now, if you run away in the night while we sleep, I shall tell Te Makawawa, and he will turn the whole brood of taniwha loose on you, and they will tear you to pieces, so that the name of Tiki will be forgotten in the land.”

This idea was too much for the Maori, and he gave in.

“O Kahikatea,” he said, “I will go with you, but remember my word: he who goes into the Great Tapu returns not—all that returns is a cry from the dark.”

So the matter ended, and, after a substantial breakfast, we started, heading towards the east, where the peaks of the great mountain chain showed against the sky. But it was like dragging a load of stones, getting Tiki along against that heavy tapu. Whenever he could get me alone he improved the opportunity by telling me some of his terrible tales of taniwha, in the hope of getting me to prevail upon Kahikatea to turn back from the haunted mountain. But, interesting as his tales were, he only succeeded in making his own hair stand on end, for though I may be a lover of Maori lore, I cannot lay claim to an overwhelming fear of the taniwha.

But we found there was some foundation for Tiki’s spouting monster. It happened in this way. In the afternoon we travelled along the bank of a mountain stream, that ran down from the Great Tapu beyond. It was a small body of water in a deep rocky bed. We followed it up for several hours, and by sunset reached what we took to be its source—a deep pool, some twenty yards across, at the foot of a tremendous rocky cliff, on the face of which grew rare ferns, with here and there the crimson or white rata vine. The quiet overflow of this pool swept down beneath high banks, whose flowers and ferns were now flushed and glistening in the sun, which sent a few struggling rays between the black trunks of some mountain birches. It was a pleasant spot, with a broad green bank on the one hand, where the afternoon sun had found an entrance, while, on the other, where the sunlight never reached, a perfect grotto of rare ferns grew from the crevices of the rocks that composed the high overhanging bank.

Here upon the broad green sward we built our camp fire and prepared to stay the night, and it was here that the strange thing happened which went a long way to confirm Tiki in his ideas of the haunted mountain and perplexed us not a little. Twilight was deepening over the gloomy hills, and the silence in which bush travellers hear mysterious noises grew deeper and deeper as the late-singing birds stopped their songs one by one to make way for the little owls. We sat upon the bank of the pool, smoking after our meal and looking idly at the water, when the Maori’s quick ear caught some unusual sound. He sprang up and stood stock still, with a scared look upon his face.

“Is it a taniwha coming, Tiki?” I asked, for I could hear nothing.

Presently, however, a distant moaning sound seemed to come out of the ground.

“The earth is shivering,” said Kahikatea, rising from his sitting posture.

“It is nothing, Tiki,” I cried; “it’s only Ru, your restless earthquake-god, turning in his rocky bed. He is rearranging his mat and his pillow; he’ll soon settle down again.”

But the sound grew nearer and louder, and the bank on which we stood trembled visibly. Then there was a hollow roar underground, and Tiki, without waiting to see what came of it, shrieked “Taniwha!” and turned to fly.

But Kahikatea was too quick for him. His long arm swept out and caught the Maori by the shoulder. Then, as he wheeled him round and nailed him to the spot, a great torrent of water burst forth out of the pool, and rose to a height of ten or fifteen feet in the air, swelling the stream level with its banks as it swept away. The noise of this rushing fountain, as it rose and fell into the pool, drowned all speech, and for some minutes we stood looking at it, too surprised to speak. I heard a howl of fear from Tiki, as my friend, gripping him by both arms from behind, made him face it.

“It’s an intermittent spring,” roared Kahikatea presently, above the tumult.

We watched the column of water springing now several feet higher, and then sinking lower as its force increased and abated alternately, and shouted many conjectures between the howls of Tiki. The seething pool dashed spray in our faces, and we drew back.

In ten minutes or a quarter of an hour a sudden change came over the springing column of water. It sank gradually back into the pool. The tumult ceased, and the water fell to its former level. The small stream then flowed quietly through the bed of its channel, and all was still again.

Tiki was the first to break the silence.

“The evil spirits have let the flood loose,” he cried. “Did I not say the place was tapu? O Wanaki, let us go back.”

A profuse perspiration was on the Maori’s forehead, and his knees shook. I felt sorry for him, and proceeded to explain an elaborate theory of intermittent springs, helped here and there by a word from Kahikatea. At length we took the keen edge off his fear, for he admitted that our mana[15] was great, but he would not accept our explanation. Taniwhas were more in his line, and his attitude seemed to be based on this principle: Why invent an elaborate hypothesis like ours when a simple one like his would account for all the facts?

Some little time later, when our astonishment had worn off a little, and Kahikatea had begun to gather ferns on the other side of the pool, Tiki took advantage of the opportunity to urge me even more strongly to turn back and not venture further into the haunted place. But I assured him that we had no intention of taking his advice, and he accepted the inevitable, saying again that our mana was great, and that when we got out of the tapu we would no doubt reward his bravery by giving him a pair of trousers and a new pipe—indeed, in consideration of value received, he seemed almost willing to renounce his religion altogether. By his reassuring remarks I certainly gathered the impression that if he were only clad in a complete suit of European clothes no taniwha could touch him. He was no high-class Maori to talk like that, for, if Te Makawawa had caught him in trousers, he would have ordered them off, and thrashed him within an inch of his life for forsaking the ancient glory of his race.

Nothing remarkable happened during the remainder of that night, unless it was that Kahikatea moaned in his sleep several times, and I caught the impassioned words, “Hinauri! Hinauri!” A strong feeling of friendship had sprung up within my heart for this strange man, with his passionate love of birds and trees, of snow-capped mountains and deep, wide solitudes; of great symbols and lofty ideals. His very stone goddess, set with fantastic meaning in the high solitudes of the everlasting mountains, appealed to me as the strongest part of the bond that already existed between us. I lay wondering who he was, and what his past life had been; and, as I wondered, I fell asleep.

CHAPTER V.
ON THE GREAT TAPU.

On the following day, when, after much up-hill work through thick bush, we gained what seemed the summit of a line of hills, we sent Tiki up a tree to search in the distance for the bold mountain wall which Kahikatea said he could dimly remember. When the Maori reached the top he called down that he could see a long, high rock running between two peaks like a great wall. It was far away in the horizon, but he said we could reach it by sunset. Tiki remained up the tree for more than a quarter of an hour, but what he was doing we did not learn until, continuing our march, we discovered that he seemed to know every tree and gully and fern patch on the way. Soon we realised that he was a most useful Maori—he had been mapping out the way from the top of that tree, and was now giving us an instance of the perfection to which the savage bump of locality can be brought. Without the aid of Tiki’s mental chart, I think we should never have been able to thread that mazy labyrinth of dense fern, supplejacks, and tangled undergrowth; and I am positively certain that if it had not been for my fluency of tongue in the matter of Maori abuse, Tiki would never have set his face so resolutely against the dread beings which he fully expected to encounter at every turn.

At length, late in the afternoon, having reached an elevation of some 3,000 feet above the sea level, we came to a gigantic rift in the mountains, through which, in a deep, rocky gully, issued the river which watered the plains far below. Fed by many little mountain tributaries, it issued from the gorge as a considerable body of water, but as we traced it back into the mountains it became a mere stream, frothing between great moss-grown boulders, on which gleamed here and there a mountain daisy, or a white lily bobbing its head in the swishing tide. Crossing and re-crossing this stream to avoid the precipitous rocks that occasionally barred our way, we toiled onwards and upwards until the vegetation began to grow thin and stunted, and, about sunset, we passed beneath two red birches that stood like the gateposts of a meadow land, with their heads woven together in the sunlight by luxurious clusters and festoons of the native scarlet mistletoe bloom.

Standing beneath these gateposts we looked out over what we knew was the Table Land of Te Makawawa’s legend. It was a strange, silent place—a yellow, rolling plain, some three or four miles across, sloping off into rounded hills on the west, and bounded on the east by the peaks we had seen from the distance. The moss-covered plain was almost bare, save for a few clumps of toi-toi, with plumes that waved all golden in the slanting sunlight, while everywhere in the yellow moss grew strange wild flowers, and long ribands of lichen, swept by the wind, trailed from a few stunted and isolated trees. It was like a piece of summer Siberia set down amid verdant surroundings. But what caught my eye more particularly was a stupendous wall of rock that ran up against the eastern sky at a distance of two miles on our left. It seemed to connect the bases of the two peaks which towered above it, their summits tipped with snow. This wall—on which there was now a dark, uneven shadow creeping up as the sun went down beneath the rounded hills opposite—must have been nearly a thousand feet high, and, near its topmost crags, veins of obsidian, or mica, caught and threw back the rays of the sun like the coloured windows of a vast cathedral front.

“Beyond a doubt this is the place old Te Makawawa spoke about,” said Kahikatea, gazing at the mighty rock; “and now I am certain that I have seen it before. That outstanding oblique spur at the base of the wall, those jagged rocks at the top, and the snowy peaks—I can recall them well, though the how and the when of it seem gone completely.”

He passed his hand across his forehead, and his face wore a puzzled expression, as he tried to recall the details of his strange, dreamlike experience.

“It certainly does suggest a giant’s temple with two grand spires,” I said. “I wonder if Miriam Grey is there.”

“And I wonder if Hinauri is there,” returned Kahikatea.

“And Ngaraki!”

“Ah, Ngaraki, the fierce guardian priest, with his foes, the Vile Tohungas of the Pit, and his wild incantations, taken up where Te Makawawa dropped them.”

The sun’s last ray was now pink upon the snowy summits of the peaks. As we watched, it faded away and twilight fell upon the Table Land with a solemn hush, broken only by the murmuring of the river, and the deep, hammer-on-anvil notes of the tui’s last song. It was time to look for a camping-place and to gather firewood, for the air was crisp almost to the point of frostiness, and our blankets were few.

By the time the Southern Cross was visible above the mountain wall we were comfortably established on a mossy bank of the stream, behind a clump of outstanding trees, and Tiki was busy cooking our supper in his own peculiar way. After the evening meal was finished the Maori rolled himself together near the fire and was soon sound asleep. We sat awhile smoking, and then followed his example, for we were both very tired. But scarcely had we settled ourselves on our beds of dry fern when the moon, almost full, rose above the great rock and lingered a moment on the edge of the southern peak before passing behind it.

“That’s very fine,” said Kahikatea appreciatively.

“Yes,” I replied, “but I don’t like the idea of sleeping in the moonlight. Supposing we move our beds down behind that larger clump of trees. Tiki appears to have monopolised the only shadowy spot here.”

He assented, and we took up our beds and walked to the spot indicated, where we re-made them and settled down to our night’s rest. A small waterfall poured into a pool in the river near by, and, lulled by the monotonous sound, we lapsed into silence, and then into sleep.

I do not know whether it was the enchanted solitude of the place that aroused my imagination, or whether I was overtired, but my sleep was full of dreams based on the strange story of Te Makawawa. I saw the giant sorcerers of old coming and going out of the great temple with the two snow-capped spires; I heard their mystic chant echoing down through the ages; then, the fair queen who came down from the skies hovered like a misty moon-goddess above the mountains, and I had to move away from there. But my dreams went on. I saw the great city of old standing on the site of the yellow plain, its palaces glistening like alabaster in the moonlight, while faintly to my ears came the ghostly hum of a phantom race, hurrying through the ways of that city, bent on the business or pleasure of long ago.

Suddenly this ghostly murmur ceased abruptly, and I awoke with a peculiar sense of an unnatural silence, and found that day was just breaking. What had happened? I could no longer hear the waterfall. I suddenly fancied that I had been struck deaf, and, to make sure of the fact, I called out:

“Kahikatea! are you awake?”

Relieved at the sound of my own voice, I was still puzzled at his reply:

“Yes, just woke up. What’s become of that waterfall? River seems to have dried up.”

In another moment we were on our feet and making towards the spot where the waterfall had been. It was not there, and the channel was a mere string of pools. The flowing water had been shut off at its source, wherever that was.

“It must have been the sudden stopping of that waterfall that woke us,” I suggested.

“Yes, it must have been,” returned Kahikatea. Then, after gazing abstractedly at the bed of the channel for a time, he continued: “I’ve an idea that the drying up of this intermittent stream accounts for the other one’s spurting up in that extraordinary way. They must be connected at their source in such a fashion that the shutting off of the water in this one causes an overflow in the other.”

“I should like to see how it is managed,” I said. Then, having an idea in my turn, I went on excitedly: “I propose we follow this stream up and see if we can get to the source—now’s our chance while it is empty.”

“Ah! while it is empty. But if it has anything to do with the other stream it probably will not be empty for longer than that was flooded last night. Besides, it may lead us miles away into the mountains for no good. I’m more inclined to make the attempt to get round to the back of those peaks and so on to the top of that precipice. I’m sure I’ve been there before, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t do it again.”

“If you are going to look for ‘the way of the spider,’ then,” I said, “I’ll have a try at ‘the way of the fish,’ and it seems to me that this stream may be in some way connected with it.”

“Possibly. ‘The way of the fish’ must as certainly be by water as ‘the way of the spider’ must be by climbing.”

For some time we discussed the possibilities of these two hints old Te Makawawa had let fall in the course of his story, and finally we arranged to make a start as soon as possible, with the understanding that Kahikatea was to take his way round the western end of the Table Land until he reached the south-eastern side of the peak, and there attempt the ascent, while I was to follow up the bed of the stream and reconnoitre the base of the mountain wall. We told Tiki that the fierce chief Ngaraki dwelt among the mountains, and that he must remain hidden in a sheltered spot in the bush till our return, to which he replied that he had once seen the great tohunga Ngaraki, and would be very pleased to keep well out of his way, for Ngaraki would certainly kill him if he found him on the tapu.

Then, after a hasty meal, we set out. As I shook hands with Kahikatea our eyes met, and he said: “When we meet again we shall probably know more about this mysterious business. Don’t set out to look for me within three days, but if I reach camp before you I shall conclude you have fallen into Ngaraki’s clutches—if there is such a person,” he called back over his shoulder as he strode away.

“If there is such a person,” I repeated to myself, as I set out along the bank of the silent watercourse. I was very soon to discover, however, that Ngaraki the Maori was no phantom of Te Makawawa’s brain.

CHAPTER VI.
NGARAKI—CHIEF AND TOHUNGA.

In the dim shadows cast by the towering rocks upon the Table Land I followed the course of the dried-up stream, which, after a distance of nearly a mile, took a turn and led round towards the mountain wall on my left. In half an hour I came within the deep shadow of this mighty pile, and, looking up, saw its tremendous outstanding crags, nearly a thousand feet above, surmounted on each hand by the snow-capped peaks clearly defined against the rosy flush of the eastern sky. High up on the wall, where it united with the base of the northern or left hand peak, a spur left the parent rock and ran down obliquely from a height of several hundred feet to within fifty feet of the ground, then, curving upwards again, terminated in a gigantic crag, which to my mind suggested a strange resemblance to a huge lion sitting upon the plain with his head erect, and mounting guard over the approaches to the mountain.

Following the bed of the stream right up to the base of the great wall, I saw that this spur hemmed in from the bare plain a small valley, about a hundred yards across at its mouth, but gradually narrowing back until it ended in a precipitous ravine in the acute angle formed by the descending ridge and the main rock. Great pines grew upon the spur’s inner face, and the varied foliage of the virgin bush which it enclosed softened its rugged contour. In the broadest parts of the valley grew smaller trees, isolated and with green grass beneath them, while further back the creeping vines wove the tree-tops together and crowned the tangled undergrowth with white flowers and yellow berries. One or two tall palm ferns nodded their heads over the lower growth, and some little distance up the valley towered a gigantic rimu, holding its massive foliage against the deep gloom of the ravine beyond. On seeing this great tree I immediately recalled that part of the aged Maori’s story in which he spoke of burying a stone instead of the child beneath its shade, and determined to visit the place and see for myself.

But meanwhile the course of the stream was demanding all my attention. I was beginning to wonder whither it was leading me as I followed it for another hundred yards towards the valley, its one bank the mossy turf of the plain sheltered by a little scattered bush, the other the bare rock itself. Here a little proof of human occupation confronted me: I almost stumbled over a small stack of firewood, neatly piled beneath a clump of silver birches and giant manuka. A little further on I came upon a kumara[16] patch and some peach trees laden with ripening fruit.

While I was inspecting these, a far away hollow roar fell upon my ears, followed by a hissing and a rushing near at hand; then presently I heard the sound of waters coming down the bed of the stream towards me, and knew that the mysterious freak of nature was at work again. I rushed to the edge of the bank and watched the foaming water, flooding the channel as it poured by, leaping and dancing as if glad to be free again.

Anxious to find out whence this water came I followed the bank, concealing myself as much as possible among the bushes, until, just at the opening of the valley, I found that it curved round at right angles, enclosing a patch of mossy ground against the rock, and came to an abrupt halt, as far as I was concerned, at the foot of the mountain wall. Here the water welled forth silently right out of the side of the rock, forming a deep pool some seven or eight yards across. The smooth open bank on which I stood carried its yellow moss and daisies up to the feet of the precipice, and then sloped away into the dark shades of the valley to the left.

I could see no opening through which the water issued. Evidently the current ran far below the surface, but how was the water dammed back to such an extent? I soon ascertained the cause: after flowing straight out for about twenty yards the water was obstructed by a narrow constriction in the rocks, through and over which it frothed and seethed before swirling round again towards the great wall.

I strained my eyes down into the dark green pool, trying to catch sight of the hidden opening, but the stream of bubbles which rose to the surface obscured the depths. I regretted that I had not been five minutes sooner, but my only plan now was to wait until the stream stopped flowing again, and then I should see what I should see—perchance the ‘way of the fish.’

Not knowing the habits of this extraordinary stream, I had no idea how often it dried up. It might be weeks before the strange phenomenon happened again, and yet on the other hand it might occur a second time that very day. I was willing to take the chance of this, and, as it was evident from the wood heaps and the kumara patch that the place was inhabited by someone, I resolved to conceal myself among the thick bushes across the pool on the strip of land which the river enclosed against the wall of rock.

Accordingly, I jumped across at a narrow part at the end of the deep pool and crept beneath a large spreading arm of a dwarf tree-fern. The tip of this leafy arm drooped till it touched the water, so that, as I lay at full length beneath it on the edge of the pool, I was fairly concealed from view, although through my green screen I could see the opposite bank and the edge of the bush at the opening of the valley. Here I made up my mind to wait and watch all day, for if there was anyone about I was certain either to see or hear them.

I conjectured many things as I lay, looking now at the bubbles that came up from the depths of the pool, and now at the blue sky, brightening with the morning sun. But of all the wild imaginations that flitted through my mind concerning that mysterious place, none was so strange as the series of events and adventures which actually befell. For several hours I lay beneath my fern shield hearing nothing more unusual than the singing of many birds in the valley, the frothing of the water among the rocks at the end of the pool, and its gentle lapping against the granite wall, a yard on my right. There could be no one in the valley, for if the fierce Ngaraki had been there he would have been up and abroad long since; there was no sound, no sign of any human being. What if, after all, Ngaraki dwelt within the mountain? By what strange and hidden gateway did he pass in and out of his temple?

While speculating on this matter the southern sun appeared over the top of the mountain wall, and I knew it must be near noon. The bright rays flooded down into the pure green depths of the pool, and the bubbles rose like great shining pearls. About ten feet down I thought I could distinguish something that looked like an aperture in the rock through which the stream was pouring. It did not appear to be a very strong current, for there was no indication of its force anywhere on the surface of the pool.

As I peered down trying to see it more clearly, some dark object sped through the opening. At first I thought it was part of a tree; then, by its movement in the water, it suggested a gigantic fish. Another second and I held my breath, while my heart beat hard against my ribs, for the object was now more clearly defined. A cold shiver ran through me; and now, as I write of that feeling, I must record my firm belief that there are moments when the wildest superstitions touch us with an icy finger, if they can but touch us unawares. Tiki’s taniwha flashed into my mind in that half-second, while I saw the dark monster with waving limbs rising from the bottom, and then flashed out of it again as I saw a head and neck, a pair of massive shoulders and two great brown arms approaching the surface. Now the sunlight glistened on the wavy black hair and dark brown skin of a Maori not two yards away from me.

With my heart thumping against my ribs I lay perfectly still, while the man who had come out of the mountain by ‘the way of the fish’ shook his head angrily, tossing the water from his long black hair; then he struck out for the opposite bank. He caught hold of some roots that were growing there, and with a sudden spring, set his foot in a hanging loop above the surface. In another moment he was standing on the moss, the water dripping from his hair and from his flaxen waist garment.

It needed no searching scrutiny to tell me that this was the fierce Ngaraki, of whom Te Makawawa had spoken. The stately dignity of his tall form, and the easy grace of his movements as he turned himself about upon the bank, marked him out as a chief among his people. His neck was like a pillar of bronze. His hairless face was tatooed in a way to denote his high rank. In his arched nose there was an untamable pride, which his piercing, coal-black eyes made fierce and fiery. His brow bespoke him a learned man of his race—a tohunga versed in occult lore and ancient traditions, while the long wavy hair that rolled back from his forehead and fell dripping on his glistening shoulders, revealed the perfect shapeliness of his head. From my concealment I marked him down a magnificent savage—a terrible fellow; and yet—and yet, for all the wrath that slumbered in his eyes, I fancied I detected something gentle in the lines of his sensitive mouth; something which imparted to his whole rugged, tatooed face a pervading expression of melancholy sadness.

He looked up at the sun; then a forcible, nasal-guttural, which seemed to be spoken by his whole body at once, fell from him:

“Ngha!”

The ferocity of that single word was like the sudden snarl of an angry tiger. It seemed almost enough to knock a man down. With a quick pace he turned and strode towards the valley, where he disappeared in the gloom of the trees.

When he was gone I had time to consider the situation. This opening, then, was ‘the way of the fish’—“the way a brave man might take to enter the ancient temple”—but not so fast: a good swimmer might come out that way with the current, but could he go in against it? The coming out was evidently not an easy task, for while he had been standing on the bank, the Maori’s broad chest had heaved considerably with the exertion of it. What, then, must the going in against the current be like? Of course, it was possible that Ngaraki, knowing the habits of the stream, would wait for the water to cease flowing, and then simply walk in dry shod through the hole in the mountain side. In this case I determined to follow him, for I knew there must be a cavern of some sort within. What I should do when I got there I did not know. The thought of the Vile Tohungas of the Pit came to me and filled the supposed cavern inside with vague, shadowy horrors. But I shook them off and held to my resolve.

Presently I saw the chief emerge from the shade of the trees in the valley, carrying a heavy axe over his shoulder and some other rude agricultural implements in his hand. I guessed that he was going to till his kumara patch and cut firewood. In a few minutes I heard the sound of his axe from the bank of the stream further down, and knew that I was probably a prisoner until sunset, for I well understood that if Ngaraki became aware of my presence, my chances of exploring the mountain were gone.

Therefore, through the long hours of that summer afternoon, I lay beneath the fern thinking, imagining, wondering what the vast pile above me contained. For long intervals Ngaraki’s axe was silent, and I watched for his return, but, as he did not come, I knew his work was not finished. At length, when the sun was within half an hour’s journey of the hills, I caught sight of him returning into the valley, evidently to put his tools away. Arranging a few stray ferns as an extra precaution against his catching sight of me, I watched eagerly to see whether he would return to the bank.

In a few minutes his tall form emerged from among the trees. He approached the pool and stood for awhile looking down into the water meditatively. Then he raised his eyes and swept them slowly around the pool. Now they rested on the fern beneath which I was concealed, and I half closed my own eyes lest they should attract his notice through the screen.

“Ngha!”

For a moment I fancied he had seen me, but the next I knew that he had not, for he began striding up and down the bank without looking again in my direction. He was beginning a chant, for some purpose which as yet I could not ascertain. As he strode down the bank for half a dozen paces he hung his head in thought; then, turning, he quickened his steps and muttered a few low words which I could not catch. Again and again he repeated this movement, and each time his retreating form became more suggestive of repose and his on-rushing aspect more wild and fierce. He was working himself up for something. What it was I soon guessed, for the words of his chant began to be intelligible to me in places:

“Thrust aside the running waters,

With one arm beat them aside:

Pierce the heart of the dark.

Like a spear thrown in battle

Cleave the rushing torrent.”

By this, given out with many a fierce gesture, I saw that he was getting ready in the real Maori style for some deed of daring. Now the chant was coming to a climax:

“The door of the dark:

The side door of Te Ika:

The concealed door of Maungatapu.

Enter the door of the dark—

Ngha!”

The last word was given on turning suddenly. Then, rushing forward with a quick run, the Maori shot from the bank like an arrow, and plunged beneath the pool in the direction of the opening. I watched the bubbles stream upwards from him as he darted through the sunlit depths. I strained my eyes and saw him hover in the current. A short struggle ensued, and for nearly ten seconds something moved far down between the light and the dark. Then I knew that the fierce tohunga of the mountain had passed within.

For a moment I indulged the thought of following. Swimming was one of my strong points. I had not many of those said points, but that was one, and as for diving, the women of the Sandwich Islands once wagered their bracelets and anklets in my favour in a surf-riding competition; and they did not lose, for my antagonist miscalculated the waves, and, quitting his board too late to dive beneath the oncoming breaker, was dashed on the rocks and killed. Yet, notwithstanding a certain skill in the water, I dared not follow Ngaraki; first, because I had never inspected the passage, and secondly, thirdly, and fourthly, because I had no idea of what I might encounter inside. “The door of the dark” was all I could see, and, for all I knew, there might be other doors to pass through before I could find the surface, in which case I should probably lose my way and be drowned.

On the whole, I resolved to do nothing overcourageous, and made up my mind to go a considerable distance down stream and camp on a secluded part of the bank, whence I could return easily at daybreak, or at whatever hour of the night the stream might stop again.

Scarcely had I selected my camp at the point where, some distance away, the stream left the cover of the mountain wall, when I heard a strange sound far above me. It was a faint, hollow murmur, like that of a ghostly voice chanting within the mountain. Very weird it sounded, and, as I listened, I recalled the words of Te Makawawa, when he had said that high in the forehead of the great rock the guardian priest chanted the chant of the dying sun before the white form of Hinauri. The Eye of Tane was half closed beyond the hills, and as his light crept up the mountain wall the far-off chant died away into the silence. Later, in the solemn hush of the twilight, a tui sat on the great rimu up in the valley and rang his vesper bell in deep, liquid notes, which echoed again from the stupendous sides of the ravine.

After making a good meal off some cold duck I had brought with me, and some of Ngaraki’s peaches I had borrowed from the tree, I lighted a small fire and composed myself to a pipe, more meditative than usual. I felt there was little fear of Ngaraki seeing my fire, as he had retired within the mountain for the night. Secure enough with my back to the great wall, I smoked on until about nine or ten, when the moonlight began to creep nearer and nearer over the plain towards me, glinting on the waving toi-toi plumes, and casting a silver sheen upon the moss.

It was a strange spot above the homely levels of the world, this land of legend and of mystery. Te Makawawa’s story had certainly received verification in one important point, viz.: there was a ‘way of the fish’ into the interior of the mountain, for I had seen a man pass thither. Was there also a ‘way of the spider’ into that high white cave, where Hinauri stood holding out her arms to the future of the world? My thoughts turned to Kahikatea, and I wondered if he had found that way among the mountains. The chanting I had heard far above me perhaps proceeded from this high cave, and, if Ngaraki could go there by the ‘way of the fish,’ I did not see why I should not follow him. But the aged chief had said that no man passing by the ‘way of the fish’ could find the ascent to the marble cave without a guide. So imbued was I becoming with the spirit of the place, that I was beginning to believe in Te Makawawa most firmly, and almost forgot that as yet I had no proof of the existence of an ancient temple, to say nothing of Miriam Grey, her daughter, and the statue of Hinauri. Wondering what light the morrow would throw upon these mysteries I fell asleep with the sound of the stream in my ears, well knowing that if it stopped I should awaken on the instant.

CHAPTER VII.
THE INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE OF HIA.

The moon, looking a trifle faded, was just above the western hills when I started up out of my sleep as if I had heard a sudden noise, but all was still as the grave. For several seconds I wondered what had awakened me; then I recollected my whereabouts, and, missing the sound of the stream, knew that its sudden stoppage had served the purpose of an alarum clock.

My first thought was to make sure that it had only just stopped, and I soon settled this, for when I hurried to inspect the channel I found that the water was still trickling slightly from one pool to another before ceasing entirely.

Now was my chance. I obliterated all the signs of my camp as far as was possible, and, stowing my rifle and ammunition in a safe place, hurried along the bank towards the deep pool. Scarcely had I reached the last group of bushes, however, when I had cause to start back and hide myself. There was someone climbing out of the empty pool. Peering through the branches I saw Ngaraki raise himself to the bank. He had a large Maori kit in his hand, and with this he walked along the bank towards me. The light was dim, and I crouched among the bushes while he passed by within several feet of where I stood. He was evidently going to fill the kit with kumaras and fruit, and take it within the mountain again. Why was this lordly chief, whose back was tapu, playing the part of a slave, if not for the same reasons that had actuated Te Makawawa before him—to serve the woman with the stars in her eyes?

I saw my best chance was to enter at once. Accordingly, as soon as Ngaraki was out of immediate earshot, I slipped from my concealment, and, climbing cautiously down the bank, dropped on to the shingly bed of the stream. Before me in the wall of the rock, its lower lip level with the bottom of the channel, was the now vacant aperture, between six and seven feet in diameter, and beyond this was the inky blackness of the cavern within.

I entered the gloomy place, and felt slight gusts of wind upon my face. Advancing a pace or two on the hard, smooth, rocky floor within, I looked about me. At first I could see nothing, but presently my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, and I found that the cavern—for such it was—was not as dark as I had thought; I could discern great spaces, with vast shadows beyond them. Immediately before me, some ten paces away, was visible the dim outline of a colossal rock, smooth and rounded. From this a tremendous spar sloped upwards towards the further wall of the cavern. But these things were towering above me, and I could get but the vaguest idea of their outline.

I now felt at a loss to know which way to proceed; and, fearing that at any moment Ngaraki might return, or that a torrent of water might spring up out of the darkness and wash me out of the mountain like a bruised rat out of a hole, I made up my mind to risk lighting a match to see if I could find the source of the stream. I advanced further into the cavern, testing every footstep, then, striking a match, I held it up and took a hurried glance round. The floor, worn smooth by the action of water, sloped up to a huge basin-shaped rock about five yards in advance of where I stood, and from the lower part of this rock I caught sight of water trickling as if from a crevice. Quickly I ran towards this and examined it. In the lower part of the side of the great vessel was an aperture five or six feet in diameter, which appeared to be stopped up by a rock fitting the inner edge so neatly that there was hardly a crevice except that through which trickled the small escape which had attracted my notice. I could hear the sound of waves lapping against the rocks above me, and concluded that there was a large body of water in some reservoir there.

I immediately set to work to find a way up the sheer wall which, with the great basin, enclosed the space where I stood, making a kind of rugged courtyard some ten or twelve yards square. The wall which ran round this space joined with the wall of the cavern on each side of the aperture by which I had entered, and also with the basin on each side of the orifice which was stopped by the stone, leaving just enough of its curved contour to suggest the idea that it was a basin. It was quite twenty feet high, and at the top there appeared to run a platform. It was this that I set myself to reach.

A hasty search of the water-worn wall all round, by the light of a match, revealed, on the left hand as I faced the entrance, a series of holes in the rock, evidently designed as a ladder. Up these I made my way and scrambled on to the platform above. Here a strange and wonderful scene lay spread out before me in a dim, misty light—a scene whose details appeared indeed to be the handiwork of some giant race. The vast cavern itself was apparently the work of some disruptive agency, but it was simpler to believe that the objects which it contained had been fashioned with human purpose and design, than that they were the slow work of natural forces during the lapse of ages. Before me, and occupying the whole of the cavern to my right, stretched a large lake, with its waters seething as if in a boiling cauldron. Flung up in a tumult from below, with huge bubbles bursting on the surface, it rolled outwards to the almost circular margin, and lapped against the platform on which I was standing. Beyond the foam and turmoil of this lake was dimly visible the further bank, and above that rose the craggy sides of the cavern, arching up far overhead into the darkness. At a glance I saw how the place was lighted. Towards the left, at the end of a gradually narrowing prolongation of the cavern, running off obliquely from some outstanding crags straight across the lake, I could see an opening, with huge perpendicular bars like the irons of a grating. Through this colossal window, which opened on the other side of the mountain wall, the rosy dawn was sending its first messengers into the gloomy place, shedding a soft, diffused glow, in which everything found a spectral outline.

The topography of this vast cavern was so remarkable and awe-inspiring that I must describe it here in detail, though briefly. The huge rock which I had seen from below I now made out to be a bowl-shaped receptacle some thirty feet in diameter, filled with water from the lake by means of a narrow channel, so that the flat surface which led round the top of the basin was continuous with the rim of the lake. It seemed possible, by means of this continuous and level pathway, to walk round the top of the basin and strike right across to the other side of the cavern, upon a narrow partition that separated the lake on the right from a profound abyss on the left—an abyss which I saw occupied the whole of the remaining part of the place, including the gulf with the giants’ window at its far end. It would have been possible to get across the cavern in this way, had it not been for a gap in the partition, through which the overflow of the lake rolled into the depths below. Upon the further lip of the basin which faced the abyss rested a gigantic spar of granite, the long tapering point of which sloped upwards for some fifty yards towards the further roof of the cavern, while its more compact and weighty end lay beneath the water in the huge vessel. It was evidently the head of this long spar which now blocked the hole in the bottom and prevented the water from escaping.

As I was gazing in wonder at these extraordinary stones, I was aroused by the sound of a footstep crunching on the shingle at the entrance below. It was Ngaraki coming back. My first impulse was to plunge into the water and hold on to the rim of the lake, and so conceal myself; but, thinking there might be some recess near at hand I glanced along the wall of the cavern to my right, and, seeing a spot nearly half-way round where the rock seemed to be a shade darker than the general gloom, I made towards it along the narrow margin of the lake. When I reached it I found that it was a little recess stocked with what appeared, by the feel of them, to be pieces of the resinous rimu-heart which the Maoris use for torches. I could not stay there, as no doubt Ngaraki would want a torch, and would come to the recess to get one. Getting a trifle flurried, I continued my way round to the other side of the lake. There was less light here, owing to the buttress of crags round which the light from the grating came but faintly, and consequently I ran less risk of being seen; but if I was to learn anything of the secrets of the place and of Miriam Grey, as well as avoid an unnecessary conflict with Ngaraki, I must hide, and that quickly, for now I saw the dim form of the tohunga moving on the other side. He was carrying something, probably the kit full of provisions, along the margin of the lake towards the recess where I knew the torches were stored.

All this while I was groping among the rocks for some place of concealment. At length I found a rock about three parts of the way round, which stood out a little way from the cavern side, offering a very narrow passage between itself and the main rock. Slipping behind this, I felt comparatively safe, and stood there awaiting events.

A glance round my barrier showed the shadowy form of the tohunga busy with something half-way round the lake. It appeared to me as if he was hanging the basket to a peg on the wall of the cavern, for when he stood away it remained there. Then he disappeared in the dark recess, and I conjectured he was going to light a torch. But no—he reappeared almost immediately with his kaitaka, which he wrapped about him after the fashion of a Roman toga, and sat down on the margin of the lake. Apparently he was waiting for something.

The morning light now streamed brighter round the bend of the wall, and I could see more clearly the great spar sloping upwards to the roof above. A little beyond my place of concealment was a broad space of rock, where the partition that held the water up out of the abyss met the rim of the lake on my side of the cavern. Keeping close in the dark shadow of the crags I ventured to approach this ledge. A feeling of awe crept over me as I peered into what seemed to be a vast bottomless pit—black, profound, and impenetrable. The overflow of the lake rushing through the gap in the partition made a faint swishing, hurtling sound as it poured down into the darkness, but no roar as of falling water came up from below. This fact appalled me: was there, then, no bottom to that awful abyss? Above the dark, forty feet or more from where I crouched, hung the gigantic spar, tapering upwards until its point almost touched the top of the overhanging crags against the roof. It presented the appearance of a mighty lever, the fulcrum of which was the lip of the basin on the other side of the abyss.

A faint glow now struck across past the craggy buttress which at present concealed the gulf from my view. It hung above the pit and fell upon the wall of the cavern high on the other side of the lake. It was the first red ray of the rising sun coming in through the giants’ window at the end of the gulf. It was this for which Ngaraki had been waiting, for, with one eye always on him sitting there, I saw him get up and replace his garment in the recess. Now he was coming round the lake towards me, and I hurried back to my hiding-place. He passed on the other side of the rock, which I carefully kept well between us, and proceeded to climb the crags of the buttress.

While I stood wondering what he was going to do the red glow deepened, glinting on the long arm of the spar, and falling on the waters of the lake with a vivid emerald. The deep, high reaches of the cavern wall showed up in russet light and dark shadow, but most strange and terrible of all was the lowest shaft, which cut sheer through the inky blackness of the abyss, and fell upon its steep, smooth wall some thirty feet below the basin, showing the down-pouring overflow of the lake like a flying greenstone arch. The light increased, and small clouds of mist rising out of the abyss threw fleeting rainbows upon the sides of the basin, upon the under surface of the long spar, and into the vaulted arches of the vast granite walls.

It was with a hasty glance round that I noted these strange effects, for all the while I was intent upon Ngaraki’s doings. He had climbed up the rocks, and was now standing erect upon a narrow ledge high up, almost on a level with the point in space where the spar’s jagged and flinty-looking sides tapered off to a fine point. Looking more closely, I saw that to the extreme end of the spar was lashed a wooden sprit, which reached a point on a level with Ngaraki’s shoulders, and about six feet from him. I stood and gripped the rock with nervous hands, as it slowly dawned upon me what the Maori was going to do. Surely he was mad—none but a maniac would take such a leap as that!

The sunlight streamed past a corner of the cavern wall beyond, and tipped the end of the spar with light. The wooden sprit attached now showed clear and well defined. This was evidently what he was waiting for. Gathering himself together he took the daring leap without the slightest hesitation, and in another moment his long figure was suspended above the dark abyss.

It was with difficulty that I suppressed a cry at witnessing this, but what followed took my breath away altogether. The long arm began gradually to swing downwards through space, descending towards the abyss. Slowly and ponderously the great spar moved until its point, with the depending figure of the Maori, passed out of the line of sunlight into the gloom cast by the overhanging crags. Leaning forward, I strained my eyes towards the dark, moving mass. Surely he was not going to descend into the abyss! No—he evidently knew what he was doing. His feet touched a broad ledge of rock a few yards on this side the buttress, and his body straightened as if for an effort. The sprit descended upon his shoulder. It bent beneath the weight of the spar, which quivered at the shock; but the downward course of the lever was arrested; and, as he stood aside leaving it suspended there balanced by its own weight, my eye ran along its whole length, and the cause of this strange equilibrium was at once apparent. A huge round stone of many tons in weight rested in a hollow of the spar just above the basin’s rim. The working of the thing was simple, and could be seen at a glance. The part of the lever in the basin contained a large hollow, into which the round stone rolled when the arm was raised, thus forcing the lower part of the head of the spar against the aperture at the bottom of the basin, and stopping the flow of the water. When, on the other hand, the arm was lowered, as had just been effected by the Maori, the stone rolled up from the hollow and settled in a groove immediately above the fulcrum, thus maintaining the whole spar in a state of equipoise. So neatly balanced it was that when Ngaraki let go and stood away, it remained stationary, quivering throughout its whole length, as the rolling stone oscillated for a few moments in its socket. In the very centre of the arm that stretched across the abyss was a narrow constriction. So thin was the rock at this point that it offered an explanation of the artifice of the supple sprit at the end, and also of the Maori’s action in steadying the spar before standing aside, for it was evident that if it were brought to a standstill by a sudden impact against the rocky ledge, there was danger of a breakage at the constricted point—in which case the whole thing, rolling stone and all, would go hurtling down into the abyss below. As my eye fell on the gap in the partition, I noticed that there was a change in the overflowing torrent. It was reduced to half its bulk. This was the work of the stupendous lever; its head, rising out of the aperture in the basin, had liberated the water, which was now escaping through the hole in the mountain side, and, thus relieved of half its flood, the torrent which poured down into the abyss was diminished accordingly.

Strange thoughts flashed through my mind in the few seconds that had passed since the descent of the spar. Was this the work of some race of giants, long since dead and gone? Who had hewn that round stone out of the solid granite? What giant hand had shaped that colossal bowl and balanced the long spar so neatly on its lip? For answer I considered two things: first, the saying of Te Makawawa that the giant sorcerers of old had fashioned a false image of Hinauri as a long spar in the lower parts of the temple, and had bound it down with a great round stone, and, second, that science would call these things freaks of nature, formed by the age-long action of water.

Between these two things I was unable to choose, for they flashed through my mind just as Ngaraki was coming along the edge of the abyss towards me. There was now considerable danger that I should be seen, for it was fairly light, even in the shadow of the crags. However, the spot behind the rock was dark enough, and I crouched there thinking he would pass, but what was my dismay to hear the sound of his footsteps coming round my barrier. He stood still. Surely he had seen me. I was preparing for a struggle, to be concluded either beneath the water of the lake or in the depths of the abyss, when I heard the Maori climbing up the rock above me.

There was dead silence for nearly a minute. The water in the lake hissed and boiled, and the torrent of the abyss whiffled down into the darkness; but, beyond that, there was no sound, for the roaring of the escape through the mountain side had ceased, by which I knew that the waters had risen above the aperture, and the current was flowing silently beneath.

Suddenly I heard a forcible exclamation from the rock above me, and, a moment later, the sound of a plunge. Darting from my hiding-place I saw, by the commotion on the surface, where the Maori had gone down into the bubbling depths. With one hand on my sheltering rock to help me back into the shadows when he rose to the surface, I stood on the rim of the lake and watched the unfolding waters. Something strange was taking place beneath there, for the lake was now twisting and whirling as if a gigantic fish was turning round at the bottom.

I was prepared for almost anything now, after witnessing the extraordinary evolutions of the spar, but still I must confess I was staggered at what took place. If anyone could have photographed me then they would no doubt have secured a fine sample of a terror-stricken face, with gaping mouth and staring eyes. The boiling of the water ceased, and there, near the margin of the lake on the side opposite to the gap in the partition, a wave heaved up beneath the movement of something rising to the surface. A dark object reared its head out of the depths. At the same moment there was a hollow, booming sound overhead. Then, with a rush and a roar, from the side of the cavern some forty feet above, issued a frothing cascade, which fell into the centre of the lake with a sound like thunder, dashing the spray over my face and churning the water into tumultuous foam. The lower part of the cascade and the whole of the lake now gleamed like silver in the light of the rising sun. But the Maori had not risen to the surface. Had he perished down there, or was this simply another lever contrivance beneath the water?

Half a minute elapsed, during which I stood in utter astonishment watching the torrent, whose roar and tumult seemed to drown all thought and feeling. While engaged in collecting my scattered ideas my eye caught a movement of some object ascending the wall of the cavern on the right of the cascade. I looked more closely: it was evidently the kit of provisions which I had seen Ngaraki attach to something there. That something I now knew to be a cord, but who could be drawing it up from above? Utterly at a loss, I could only conjecture that it was Ngaraki, who had passed by some more secret ‘way of the fish’ beneath the lake, and had now reached a part of the cavern high above. Fearing that, if this was the case, he might see me, I withdrew further into the shadows. Well I knew that this ‘way of the winged fish’ was a passage which it would be worse than useless to attempt, for I now saw the truth of Te Makawawa’s words to the effect that none could pass that way without being taught. I realised that my chances of reaching Miriam Grey without Te Makawawa’s guidance were hopeless, and that I must turn my attention to the search for her daughter. Nevertheless, before leaving that strange place I was resolved to explore its accessible parts and see what hidden things of forgotten time it might contain.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE VILE TOHUNGAS OF THE PIT.

I must have sat there in the shadows nearly half an hour trying to understand by what possible means the Maori tohunga had passed from beneath that lake to the higher part of the cave. I was tolerably sure that the water which now thundered down into the lake was the deflected current of that which had formerly welled up from below, no more no less in bulk, for the overflow into the abyss was neither increased nor diminished by the change. Moreover, having witnessed Ngaraki’s manœuvre with the long lever above the abyss, I felt convinced that he had performed the same feat with a similar lever under the lake, and I was strengthened in this conviction by the fact that the dark thing which had reared its head above the water, where it still remained at the back of the cascade, was obviously the end of some rock which might serve that purpose.

The sunlight all this time had been slowly descending as the sun had risen. Now its upper margin had disappeared over the margin of the lake, and all above was getting dark again. No longer fearful of being seen in the dim light, I crept round towards the cascade to inspect the part of the rock which had appeared above the water. It was smooth and rounded, and covered with black slime, appearing to be a portion of a spar with hewn characteristics like the others. I was seized with a wish to bring weight to bear upon this strange contrivance, and see if it was balanced in any way. Accordingly I passed through the battery of spray behind the cascade and secured the longest piece of rimu I could find in the recess. Returning with this, I leaned forward over the margin and gave a strong, steady push to the rock, but failed to move it. It seemed as firm as the main rock on which I stood. Evidently the raising of this lever opened a way for the water to come down from above, and removed the pressure from some aperture below the lake, thus leaving it free for the initiated to pass through.

When I attempted to review my position, I came to the conclusion that until the water was shut off again by the great horizontal spar, I was a prisoner in the cavern, unless I liked to take that plunge through the opening in the side of the mountain. I went round the margin of the lake and looked at it. The water was everywhere within six inches of the continuous pathway of rock. It meant a dive of nearly twenty feet before striking the current, and then there was no end of skill required to avoid being bruised against the rocks in passing through. I resolved not to try it—not just yet at all events. I had yet to explore the cavern round the buttress and along the narrowing gulf that led to the huge grating, so I determined to spend the remaining time of my detention in discovering if possible what the lower parts of the temple contained.

With great care I retraced my steps behind the cascade and round the lake until I regained the darker shadows of the buttress. I made my way on to the broad ledge, above which hung the wooden sprit of the spar, and here, as I stood and gazed down into the abyss, I noticed something which made my flesh creep. It was a simple thing perhaps, but it touched me more nearly than anything I had as yet encountered in that gloomy place. There, on the wall of the abyss, some hundreds of feet below the basin, below the great spar hanging in space, I could see all that was now left of the sunlight—a bright red patch glistening upon the granite. Making my way a little further along to the angle of the buttress, I could trace this shaft of light from the abysmal depths up to the stupendous grating at the far end of the gulf. It was the most glorious, and at the same time the most awe-inspiring thing I have ever seen, this ray from the outer world cutting through the darkness like a golden bar, and falling, all red, upon the sheer wall far away below. It pointed to a depth at which my brain reeled, but the dark which lay above it and the dark which stretched below suggested a depth beyond the depth which was positively awful to contemplate. I sat down upon the rocky lip of that vast mouth of Porawa and gazed stupidly at this clear channel of golden light running through the solid dark. The patch upon the wall far down crept lower and lower, but found no floor. Was the place indeed bottomless then?

As I asked myself this question the light faded away and all was gloom again, save for a dull daylight that crept in for a little distance through the giants’ window. A cloud had come before the sun. Now again the ray came in like the thrust of a golden spear, then it was withdrawn, and, though I waited for some time, it did not reappear.

With a great weight of awe and darkness upon me, I rose from the rock resolved to reach that grating at the end of the gulf and there restore myself with the ungarnished daylight. It was not, however, without some recollection of what old Te Makawawa had said about the Vile Tohungas of the Pit that I felt my way along the narrow ledge, which seemed to have been hewn with design as an approach to the grating. I felt I was going the right way to be cooked and eaten by these same Vile Tohungas, wherever they might be in the darkness, but, although naturally of a nervous disposition, I was always careless whether I ran into unknown dangers with the right foot first or the left, so I continued my way, holding on to the jagged points of the wall with my right hand, while choosing every footstep with the utmost care, for I was hardly the fool to risk a fall into the abyss, and look for its ground floor head first without a light.

It took me nearly half an hour to travel that two hundred yards, but once within fifty paces of the huge grating I could see more distinctly. Soon I reached a spot beneath those tremendous bars, and, looking up at them against the clouded sky without, saw clearly that they must have been fashioned by the hand of man at some remote period of the world’s history, concerning which our bravest anthropologists are reticent, or speak only in whispers. Haeckel could show no photographs of his speechless men of Lemuria, and many would have laughed him down. Yet, if Haeckel had been with me on that never-to-be-forgotten day when I explored that colossal place, he would have wept for joy over those mighty stone bars, obviously hewn by the hand of man out of the everlasting granite. There were four of them, each fully thirty feet high. In places the action of air and moisture had worn them very thin, and, as I seated myself on a broad ledge that reminded me of a window sill, I heard the rising wind making strange, weird chords as it swept these vibrating bars like the strings of a gigantic harp.

The music of the wind playing through the bars of the giants’ window reminded me of that ghostly hum of a phantom race which I had heard in my dream. It rose and died away like a voice from the distant past, calling up that peculiar feeling of “long, long ago,” until in my own civilised way I became a veritable Tiki, and admitted that the ancient temple was haunted by the wailing spirits of the giant sorcerers of old. The men who had bound that great spar down with that huge round stone—what else could have done it?—the men who had made the secret way by which Ngaraki had disappeared beneath the lake, who had carved the pathway out of the side of the abyss and fashioned this stupendous window—the men of old who had done all this still haunted that profound darkness down there, in which, perhaps, there were mysteries of a stranger kind. Perhaps! certainly, at least, there was a pathway leading down into the darkness on the opposite side to the one by which I had come. I could see that plainly.

At length I roused myself from my reverie, and passing through the stone bars, stood on a jagged platform without. Below was a great fissure, and, facing me about forty yards beyond, was the rock which formed the further boundary of this fissure. Its crest was just above the horizon of the outer world. The depth of the fissure I could not see, but it stretched some distance away to the left, where its expansion was hidden by a bend in its course. On the left of the rock on which I stood was nothing but a small crag, and beyond that the mountain wall, but on the right was a rugged pathway, shelving fearfully, but still a pathway, leading round the head of the fissure to the other side.

I determined to see what came of this, and taking off my boots to get a better foothold on the shelving rock, I followed it. I never fully realised what a coward I was until I got to the other side and found the cold perspiration rolling off my face. It was a blind pathway—at least it seemed so, for it came to a sudden halt, as if the pre-historic workmen had given it up. I went down on my chest and looked over, but saw nothing but the gloomy bottom of the gulf far below. I even took my little pocket mirror and held it so that I could see beneath the rock below, but could make out nothing except a ledge and a hole in the rock about twenty feet down. If it ever had been a secret way it had long since been abandoned. No man could ascend from below, yet it was possible one might reach that hole by means of a rope. I retraced my steps and re-suffered my cold perspiration till I reached the stone bars again.

A glance at my watch showed me it was now nearly twelve o’clock. I had nothing to eat, so dinner was out of the question. The next best thing was a smoke. There was no use in going back into the cavern, for I had explored everything there except the lake, and candidly I did not feel equal to exploring under water in the pitchy darkness, with a cataract overhead and an outlet into an abyss below. Accordingly, I sought out a little recess where the inner pathway joined the giants’ window sill, and there put on my boots, after which I lighted my pipe and smoked the smoke of the hungry.

The faint roar of the cataract within the cavern fell upon my ears with a reassuring sound, for I knew that in all probability its cessation would mark the time when Ngaraki would come down from his unknown haunts above, perhaps to put up the spar again and leave the exit clear. The hours passed slowly, but there was no change. Six o’clock came, but still the cataract roared on with a dull, muffled sound.

Whether it was the monotonous murmur of the falling water, or the wailing music of the wind in the great stone bars, I do not know, but I fell into a sleep, from which I was awakened some time later by the full moon, which had just risen above the further boundary of the fissure, and was shining full upon me. Its pale, silver light flooded into the far interior of the cavern, and fell upon the crags of the buttress, the sides of the basin, part of the spar, and the lake beyond in the distance.

As I looked at these things and collected my faculties, I suddenly realised that the roar of the cataract had stopped. The wind had fallen; it no longer moaned in the stone bars. All was as silent as the grave of things long dead.

My first thought was to see if the passage out of the mountain was clear. Accordingly I made my way along towards the buttress—part of the pathway was in the moonlight—but when I reached it I found that the great spar was still hanging horizontal above the abyss, while the moon rays flooding on to the surface of the lake showed the water boiling up from below as when I had first seen it.

For a long half hour I crouched in the shadows there, thinking that the fierce tohunga would again appear on the scene, but all was quiet: nothing moving except the overflow into the abyss, and the moonlight slowly creeping down after it.

At the end of this half hour a happy idea occurred to me. Perhaps the moonlight would serve me to explore the abyss by the descending pathway I had noticed on the other wall of the gulf. I retraced my steps and stood again by the giants’ window. The moon was in a cloudless sky, and one of the slanting beams fell upon a part of the path some ten yards down. Beyond that the way continued in darkness, but from a brief calculation I concluded that in less than an hour the moonlight would illumine the very depths of the abyss; and if I started at once on my hands and knees I might be able to keep up with it.

It was hard work going down that rough road on all fours, but it was the easiest way in the long run, for a single false step in the darkness would have been fatal. There were no loose stones, but for the first fifty yards the way was very uneven; and, though not steep enough to reach the point where I had seen the patch of sunlight in the morning, sufficiently downhill to make my progress slow and laborious.

From time to time I glanced at the moonlight, which streamed past me on the left, and fell on the perpendicular wall some hundred feet below the basin. I saw more clearly now that as the night wore on and the moon rose higher, its light would flood down into the profound depths of the pit. Already it revealed the outstanding arm of some crag projecting from the other side of the gulf.

When I had proceeded nearly a hundred yards along the descending way, I found that by the help of a granite crag which stood out from the wall, the path turned back upon itself. In this new direction it was less uneven, and, after traversing its length for some fifty yards, I discovered that it turned back upon itself again, leading down in the original direction. It was strange work, crawling along an unknown way in total darkness, and it was in vain that I endeavoured to make light of it.

But the moonlight reassured me somewhat. It was now far below, resting on the perpendicular granite, the bed rock of the world. But still it crept down and down: where was the bottom of this fearful place? Higher and higher rose the moon into the sky; lower and lower her rays sank into the pit. The light was now striking down at an angle of forty-five degrees to the horizontal, and as I scanned its whole length it seemed to me like a solid silver bar strong enough to bear one’s weight from the giants’ window away into the depths below.

The path was now smooth and even, and I gained on the moonlight. When within sixty or seventy yards of its resting-place I was surprised to find a blank precipice in front of me. At least, as I groped before me with my hands, I felt that the rock took a sudden descent. Thinking that this might be anything from a small precipice of three feet to a yawning gulf of a thousand yards, I took a small stone and dropped it over the edge. It fell on solid rock three or four feet below. Scrambling down I found a level step, and, two paces further on, another break leading down again to another step. It was not until I had passed down over several of these that I came to the conclusion that it was a regular staircase on a vast scale. Each step as I stood on that below it reached nearly to my shoulder, and its breadth was quite five feet. Surely I was getting down into the region of the Vile Tohungas, but I was not yet on a level with the moonlight. Another ten or twelve steps brought me to a spot where, thirty yards in front of me, I saw the lower margin of the moonbeams strike upon the grey granite wall, which as yet gave no hint of where it might find a basement in the yawning gulf below. I sat down to wait, knowing that between forty and fifty yards lower down the staircase must meet the wall and turn back again upon itself in order to continue the descent.

Now that I had nothing to do but to await developments, I felt the silence and the darkness resting like crushing weights upon my senses. Not far away on the left I could hear the faint swish of the torrent from the lake as it fell through the darkness, but no sound came up from below to tell that it had found a bottom in that profundity beneath. With my physical eyes I could see little, but the scene as I viewed it in my mind’s eye was one of stupendous grandeur. Behind, far above, was the moonlight flooding through the giants’ window, and striking down through the dark until it fell upon the granite, glistening with a pale grey before me. High overhead I knew the long spar hung suspended, and below, shrouded in impenetrable gloom, was a world of unknown things hidden in the blackness of darkness for ever.

Into this gloom I peered and waited. The edge of the light cut the dark as sharp as a knife, leaving a surface like jet. By whatever agency—human, natural, or diabolic—this pit had been hewn out of the solid rock in the remote past, it seemed that on clear nights the moon must still hew it out again from the solid dark. Here then was the Pit: where were the Vile Tohungas?

I was aroused from my dreams of the “giants in those days”—the Vile Tohungas who, according to Te Makawawa, inhabited this lower part of the temple—by the moonlight impinging upon something standing up out of the darkness towards my left. I fixed my eyes upon the object, thinking it was the

“THE LIGHT SANK LOWER AND SHOWED MORE. THEN TO MY ASTONISHED EYES WAS UNVEILED, INCH BY INCH FROM THE DARKNESS, THE MASSIVE GRANITE BROWS OF A GIGANTIC HEAD.”

pinnacle of some outstanding crag. The light sank lower and showed more. Then to my astonished eyes was unveiled, inch by inch from the darkness, the massive granite brows of a gigantic head. Suddenly the light flashed back from two bright red eyeballs, which shone like petrified blood. The nose and mouth and chin then came into view, and at length the whole head and neck stood out clear above the gloom.

The face of this image, which, if in due proportion, was evidently thirty feet high, was strong and terrible. The eyes looked up at the moon from beneath a receding brow, the nose was long and flat, and the lower lip of the firm, evil mouth was curled as if in disdain. It was a sinister face that thus greeted the Queen of the Night—sinister, proud, and contemptuous in its power. This was perhaps the lord of a fallen race—one of those

“Mighty pre-Adamites who walked the earth

Of which ours is the wreck.”

Perchance—who knew?—he might represent the mighty and terrible Nephilim spoken of in the book of Enoch. Such thoughts as these crowded through my brain as I watched.

But this giant image was not alone. Slowly, and one by one, other heads appeared above the darkness, until I counted eleven. Huge shoulders and chests now gleamed in the light of the moon. Eleven pairs of red eyes flashed back her rays all bloodshot. The terrible images seemed to be worshipping the great luminary, but it was the worship of scorn, for each one looked up and curled his lips with a calm half smile of masterly disdain. They were set in a semicircle, and I saw that originally there might have been twelve, for there was a gap in the line where one was missing. Thinking that this one might be much smaller than the rest, I waited for the light to fall upon his head, but the gap remained a gap, and I concluded that one of these Vile Tohungas of the Pit had fallen from his place.

By this time the moonlight fell full thirty feet below the head of the tallest statue, and showed that the images were merely busts, carved only to the waist, where in each case the hands were clasped over the abdomen. It showed also that the pedestals were each in one piece with the statue. At last the light reached the floor of the abyss, and the Vile Tohungas stood out in bold relief, casting great shadows upon the granite wall behind. I saw their bases, and wondered to find that they were of a piece with the bed rock. They had been fashioned bodily out of the very plutonic ground-floor of the earth. Vying with the moon herself in age, these figures had stood up from the floor of the abyss to greet her with that scornful sneer upon their faces for untold ages. My imagination travelled back through vast stretches of time until I was weary and spent.

Suddenly a voice from the darkness to the left below startled me. A voice in that dread place! It sent the blood back on my heart as with crooked fingers I gripped the rock. In another instant, however, I recognised the chanting of Ngaraki, and remembered the mention Te Makawawa had made of cursing the Vile Ones of the Pit at the full of the moon. By the alternations of his chanting with the strange silence of the place, I knew that he was passing up and down there in the darkness before the colossal figures. By the increasing vehemence of his wild song I knew also that he was working himself up into a fury of wrath. It was a chant more terrible and savage than that which I had heard on the bank of the pool outside the mountain, more wild and fierce than the hollow murmurs which had reached me from far above while smoking at my camp fire. He may have been a savage then, but he was something more, or something less, now. His words, ringing high with growing rage, almost infernal in their intensity, struck a note of horror in my listening soul:

“Ha! stand out; Lurkers in the Dark!

Come out of your hiding places;

Come out and stand up in the light of the moon.

Bold Taranaki cleaves the sky:

I call his ancient fire to eat your bones;

And Tongariro spits his rage aloft—Ngha!

’Twill fall and boil your heads in pitch.

The earth was young, the moon scowled from the sky

With laden breasts of poisoned milk,

And ye scowled up at her, vile sneering ones,

And drank destruction to the world.

The earth is old—your words are living still:

I will make you eat your words—Ngha!

I will make you eat the heads of the words you spoke to men!

To what shall I place my cursing power?

To your heads? They’re fit for the feast of a chief.

To what shall I place my cursing power?

To your eyes? I will snatch and eat them raw.

To what shall I place my cursing power?

To your bones? Ngha! Hooks for the shark god!

To what shall I place my cursing power?

To your cursing power? Yes, to your cursing power!

Cursed in the light, writhe till the sun goes down, Ngha!

Cursed in the dark, writhe till the sun comes up, Ngha!”

At this point I caught sight of the fierce tohunga as he advanced each time into the line of light to within a few paces of the granite figures. His garment swayed about him as he rushed forward, his long hair was dishevelled, and in his hand was a greenstone meré, which glinted in the moonrays as he whirled it high above his head in the rising fury of his cursing. Constantly advancing into the light like an infuriated savage, and retreating again into the shadows with his chin upon his breast, like a man in profound thought, he chanted louder and more fiercely as his onward rushes became more terrible in gesture and his retreating movements more profound in their repose. Thus with hurricane and calm, hurricane and calm, he approached the climax when the hurricane should end in frenzy and the calm in trance:

“Where is the pot shall hold your heads?

Where is the fire shall boil the pot?

I’ll spend my life in making it—Ngha!

Beyond Kaikoura’s rugged crest,

Beyond Raukawa’s rolling tide,

Are pots of pitch that seeth and hiss—

Mountain pots that roar and rage—

Lakes of fire whose billows roll and dance and leap into the air.

I hear them calling for your heads.

But fiercer fires have louder tongues:

A fire of raging hate is here,

Fed by deadly cursing—Ngha!

Here! Vile Lurkers! Here!”

He beat upon his breast to show them where the fire was hissing, and seething, and roaring for their heads—

“ ’Ere Taranaki glowed with love

For fair Pihanga’s pure embrace,

’Ere thundering Tongariro burned

With angry thought to call her his,[17]

This fire was made with ancient hands.

Tawhaki fanned it with his breath

(His footsteps thunder in the sky

I curse you with his mighty breath—Ngha!

Now Taranaki’s fires are low:

He stands apart.

His flame is fled, his voice is still,

But mine will roar with countless tongues

That shake the earth with Ruaimako.

Nor storm, nor sea, nor Rangi’s tears

Can quench this raging fire of hate

Which leaps with curses at your throats—Ngha!

The time will come! the time will come!

Hinauri sleeps aloft and waits—

Lo! She starts, she moves, she wakes.

Now she takes the stranded spar

And hurls it down into the pit.

The crash is heard through all the earth—

See! I snatch your heads in triumph,

And place them in the mighty pot.

Whaka ariki[18]—your heads are mine

To boil in everlasting pitch.

Upokokohua—Ngha!”

Giving out the last few words in a voice of thunder that woke strange rumbling echoes far above, the Maori rushed forward more like a demon than a human being. I saw his strong face twisted with rage. I saw the meré gleam in the moonlight. Then with a final curse—a savage yell which seemed to shake the granite statues of the dead—he hurled the weapon at the head of the tallest image. Like a flash of green light it darted through the moon rays. It struck upon the forehead of the Vile Tohunga, and sparks came forth. With a crashing sound it struck and then glanced off and fell upon the rock at my feet.

I picked up the meré and looked again at the image. The mark of the weapon showed clear and distinct above the left eyebrow. But the sudden silence was unearthly. What of Ngaraki? I looked below, where I had seen him halt in his last mad rush. He was lying prostrate on his face upon the granite floor, motionless.

For some minutes I watched him, then, as he did not move, I climbed down the remaining steps, and, keeping out of the moonlight as much as possible, reached a point near to the prostrate figure. His hands were stretched out before him, with fingers bent as if clawing at the rock, and his head rested on one side, so that the moonlight showed the glassy stare of one of his wide open eyes. I saw that he was either dead or in a trance, and, as the tohunga Maori of the old régime was not unlike Balaam, I concluded that Ngaraki had induced a trance in the regular way, and would now remain like one dead perhaps for hours.

I lingered in the shadows watching him for some time; then my eyes wandered mechanically round the semicircle of figures that towered above. Surely I had made a mistake! Where was the gap left by the Twelfth Tohunga?

Falling back a few paces I counted them again. Surely I had been deceived. There were twelve of them, and the one that now stood where the gap had been, raised his gigantic head above all the rest. His face was not like those of the other images. There were traces of nobility upon the brow, and the lips were more sad than disdainful. But what struck me most was the fact that it seemed less substantial than the others. Could it be a phantom of the imagination—a thing conjured up before a mind unbalanced by the awful gloom of the place, by hunger, and thirst, and fatigue? As I glanced again at the features of the face, now more distinct than before, I passed my hand over my forehead and felt it was wet. And well it might be, for the unsubstantial image that stood before me had features and an expression closely resembling, though in a gigantic way, those of Ngaraki himself! With an impulse that I could not restrain, I hurried across the open space, and, approaching the Twelfth Tohunga, put out my hand to touch it. My fingers closed on empty air, and lo! there was the gap again unoccupied as before.

At that moment the prostrate figure of the Maori moved upon the ground, and I darted again into the darkness. Looking back I saw him get up and shake himself, then move away into the shadows, whence he presently reappeared with a piece of smouldering punk and a crooked stick of wood. With these he sat down, and blowing the punk into a blaze, ignited the wood, which, by its combustible qualities, I knew to be a piece of the heart of the rimu. At length he held the torch high above his head and came towards me, but, as he passed by on one side of the figure near which I was standing, I crept round with the shadow on the other. Unconscious of my presence, he kept on his way until the light of his torch shone upon the body of water which fell through space with mysterious sighs, whipping the air and throwing off fine, floating spray as it went on its inexplicable course past the very foundations of the mountain, for I now saw that it disappeared in a circular opening in the ground floor—an abyss below the abyss.

A few paces before the brink of this road to Porawa the tohunga paused, and, holding his torch high, shed its light upon the face of another figure carved out of the granite, and standing apart with its back turned upon its fellows. Again the eerie feeling assailed me, for that rugged face gazing upwards through the dark was the face of the Twelfth Tohunga, having the same strange resemblance to the Maori himself. It was a noble countenance, and the contour of the lips expressed, not disdain like the others, but humility and sadness—perhaps repentance. Unlike the others, too, his hands were joined over his heart. Perchance this was one of the Great Ones who, as Te Makawawa had told us, had fallen from his high magic to consort with the vile to trick them, and, having completed his design, had turned his back upon their evil faces and set his image there apart to gaze up through the age-long night towards that distant point far above where the radiant Hinauri stood and waited. But how could I know anything? I could only conjecture, for Ngaraki said no word, and I could not read the strange characters engraven on the granite breast of this Twelfth Tohunga.

From the chief’s attitude it was evident that this image perplexed him sorely. Was it that he detected some resemblance of its face to his own, or was he communing in spirit with the ancient being who had set his image there with such ideal meaning? I could not tell, for he was silent, and when at last he turned, torch in hand, and, holding his arms up towards some vision he seemed to see above the darkness, chanted some words that were full of tenderness and yearning, it was in the ancient priestly language which few even of the ariki can understand. It was an unknown tongue to me, but I recognised it from its likeness to some of the more ancient karakias or mystic hymns I had often heard repeated as charms by the lesser tohungas. But the meaning of Ngaraki’s gestures, and the soft inflections of his voice showed plainly that he was addressing Hinauri as from the breast of the Twelfth Tohunga standing in the darkness of the abyss. His cursing mood had fallen from him like a garment, and in my heart I felt drawn towards this strange savage; yet I knew that any profane person found trespassing within the precincts of his sacred temple would find small mercy at his hands, and therefore I took good care to keep out of his way. I knew that if my presence was discovered I should be taken for one of those visitors mentioned by Te Makawawa as “certain men who had the fire of the Vile Tohungas in their eyes.” I should be accused of planning the destruction of Hinauri, and then my head would be taken and hung up in the abyss.

Ngaraki now turned in his ancient chant with a sudden quickening of his words, and, as most men do when a thing appeals to them in a new and surprising light, spoke in the tongue which came more fluent to him:

“See! the city is silent”—he appeared to be interpreting the ancient characters on the breast of the Twelfth Tohunga—“the great queen sleeps above the darkness, my fellow seers have withdrawn into the sky, and I, Zun, with these vile Brethren of Huo, am all that is left of the people of the South. Mine is the task”—yes, Ngaraki seemed to speak these words, which had been graven on the breast of the image, as if they stated exactly his own case—“mine is the task to watch over the tapu of the Bright One, and to this end I have cast myself down to consort with the vile, to know them, to know their names, to understand that of which they are the embodiment. And I record that I know what I do, and none shall say that I fell through weakness. It is done. The city is silent. The great queen sleeps above the darkness, but she sleeps in safety, for I have confounded the Vile Ones with their own magic. Lo, I have delivered a gross image into their hands to bind down and oppress, and now in scorn I turn my back upon them and gaze up towards the future of the world. They will return, and I shall return, and in the far future Hia will arise and hurl their gross image of Woman upon their heads. Then shall I conquer and triumph over the Vile Ones and cast their lord into the pit that yawns before me. And through the everlasting night I wait for Hia, praying that life shall be long and death short; praying that the Rival of the Dawn will obtain for man a life that ever rises again from the darkness.”

He paused and seemed lost in thought; he had evidently read the words in a new light. Then, as if seeking more of this new light from a familiar thing, he passed to the back of the image and held his torch up again till the rays fell upon the strange characters therealso engraven. As one who reconsiders what has long puzzled him he read:

“We, the Brotherhood of Huo, laugh in scorn at the windy words of Zun. He sees a phantom up there in the darkness. Hia is swallowed up in Huo, whose body we have bound down to the rock for ever. Her spirit we have bound also to the moon-face, that we may see to work our will. By her bondage we shall live, but the life of Hia’s people shall be short and their death long. They shall die and become like soil, and those they leave behind them shall weep and wail and lament. Therefore we laugh in scorn at the windy words of Zun. We shall live and rule the world while our images endure.”

Ngaraki remained silent a space. Then the last I saw of him for many weeks was characteristic of the man. He slowly approached the brink of the abyss below the abyss, and stood for a moment gazing down. In a second his sudden blood boiled over with a return of his former fierceness and, pointing downwards with outstretched arm, while he turned his head towards the chief of the Vile Ones, he yelled:

“Ngha! Destroyers of the Woman! My enemies of the ancient night! That is the way by which your heads go down to the pot.”

A moment the torch was held aloft; then, with a fierce gesture, he flung it into the depths below, and all was dark again, save for the patch of moonlight, which had now retreated far along the level floor.

I said this was the last I saw of Ngaraki, and that is quite true, for though I came into close contact with him that very night, and felt more of his strength than I have any desire to feel again, it was all transacted in the darkness of that terrible place.

CHAPTER IX.
NGARAKI THE FIERCE.

When Ngaraki had thrown his torch down into the bottomless pit, there seemed nothing left but the darkness and the silence. Presently I heard what I judged to be his footsteps hurrying towards me, and, in my haste to get out of the way, lest by chance he should touch me, I trod on a loose stone and fell. I was on my feet again in an instant, and was edging away from the spot, when the chief’s voice, three paces away, cried, “Ngha! who comes?”

Feeling secure in the impenetrable darkness, I made no reply, but proceeded to creep silently away towards the foot of the staircase, listening intently all the while for the tohunga’s movements. But he was evidently standing stock still. Presently he repeated his challenge more fiercely, and, receiving no answer, hurried away towards the end of the gulf.

I felt somewhat relieved at this, as I felt sure I could find the foot of the staircase, and so get up the pathway; and, if the worst came to the worst, try the plunge through the aperture in the mountain wall. But I found it was no easy matter to find my bearings. I could see the patch of moonlight some distance up the ground floor of the abyss, and, facing it, knew that the giant statues were behind me. I proceeded to feel my way from statue to statue in what I fancied was the right direction, but I had not gone far in this way when faint sounds of footsteps around me arrested my attention. I stood still, and all was silent. A minute passed, and, when I moved on, the fall of these phantom footsteps on every side again brought me to a sudden halt. Was this some dreadful nightmare, or was I surrounded and hemmed in by the minions of Ngaraki? The nervous tension of this would soon have driven me into raving lunacy. I felt I could not stand it much longer, and tried to steal away quietly on tiptoe, but the footsteps followed me and I stopped again.

To put an end to this nightmare I thought the best thing I could do was to kill someone and make a rush. I took my revolver from my pocket, but merely went through the motion of shooting men down on every hand just to relieve my nervous tension. After reflection I did not dare waste a shot in the darkness, for I might want the whole six later on, and I had left my ammunition outside the mountain; so I tried to take things quietly. While in the midst of this, something, not three paces away, collided with something else. “Kuk, kuk!” said a throat, and another throat answered with a guttural, purring noise, followed by a long-drawn sigh. After that there was a silence, in which I was sorely tempted to shoot in the direction of those sounds. Presently, however, under a further development of the situation, I thought it was my wisest course to spend at least one of my six bullets. Standing under cover of the darkness, but haunted by these ghostly footsteps, I saw, twenty yards on my right, a dim glow. As soon as this caught my eye I knew what was going to happen. Somebody was blowing a piece of smouldering dry punk into a blaze; a torch, or several torches, would be lighted, and I would be hunted out like a rat. I was determined that this should not be if I could possibly help it. I much preferred the dark and the ghostly footsteps. Now the punk was glowing red, and, just above it, the wizened face of someone blowing it appeared distinctly. I could not bring myself to the idea of potting at this man out of the dark; it seemed a little unfair; so, moving about again, I listened for the footsteps and fired into the thick of them.

The effect was magical. The report rang up through the abyss and reverberated with a thousand echoes in the high galleries above. But this was not the only effect. Immediately following the shot there arose a guttural, inarticulate howl, and a strange clucking noise began all around. It suddenly dawned on me that these sounds came from men who had lost their tongues: these were no doubt the speechless men Te Makawawa had spoken of. But I did not stop to find out any more about them. Taking advantage of the general confusion, I felt my way to the last stone figure in the semicircle, and, with a guess at the position of the foot of the staircase, struck out to find it.

I could now hear no footsteps about me, and thought that if I could only get up out of the abyss I should feel happier. After proceeding some twelve or fifteen paces, I touched a rock and felt my way along it until I came to a corner. A sigh of relief escaped me at the discovery that it was the lowest step of the giants’ staircase. I was just about to mount it when a peculiar guttural “Kuk, kuk!” came like a challenge out of the darkness five feet away on the left. My first impulse was to spring towards the sound and get at the throat from which it proceeded. But suddenly I remembered having heard this sound answered by a kind of guttural purring. It was evidently the tongueless challenge equivalent to “Who goes there?” Why should I not give the answer? On the spur of the moment I did so, making the most guttural purr I could find in my throat, and following it up with a long-drawn sigh. It was met with silence. My challenger evidently took me for a friend who, actuated by a cleverness equal to his own, had conceived the idea of guarding the only way out of the abyss.

It was with a conceited feeling that I was infinitely cleverer than all of them that I mounted the step and listened before groping my way upwards. There was still confusion in the abyss. To judge by the excited noises I heard, someone had evidently been touched by my revolver shot. There was no sign of the glowing punk, and I gathered from this that in the presence of firearms they felt safer in the darkness. That they stood in fear of another shot was also evident from the fact that gradually the strange sounds ceased, and all was quiet.

Presently I heard footsteps hurrying towards me. They were those of other clever mutes who wished to prevent my escaping that way. I was the first to give the peculiar challenge, which was answered by a purring and a ghostly chorus of sighs from several throats. Then, feeling that I had hoodwinked them, I ventured to creep away as silently as possible, raising myself from step to step. Several times I stopped to listen, but all was quiet behind me and I went on and on, up towards the giants’ window.

It must have been nearly an hour before I gained the approaches to the huge grating. When I reached it I stood for a moment looking up at the moon, then, turning, I followed the bright ray through the darkness until it fell upon the floor of the abyss, a patch of light considerably less in area than an hour ago. It had travelled nearly the whole length of the gulf.

While I was looking at it before passing on I heard a chorus of guttural sounds far down. I started and moved away, as it dawned upon me that my tell-tale shadow had been seen on that patch of light below. My cleverness now oozed out at the back of my head and ran down into my heels. In a very short space of time I knew I should have those phantom footsteps about me again.

My first idea was to stand in the dark and shoot them down as they came past the window in the moonlight, but on second thoughts I saw that I could only dispose of five in this way at the very most, and there were certainly more than a dozen of them, besides Ngaraki himself. Everything considered, I thought it the best plan to make for the lake and try the opening.

Another ten minutes, then, found me nearing the buttress. My eyes were continually on the moonlit window, for my pursuers must pass there, and I was anxious to count them as they passed. But it was not until I reached the rocks of the buttress that I saw the first rush quickly across the light. Another followed and another, until I counted ten. It was an uncomfortable number, especially as they knew every inch of the place and I did not. So well, indeed, did they know their way that I had scarcely reached the ledge beneath the spar when I heard them coming round the corner of the buttress. I had my hand on the wooden sprit above my head when they were almost upon me. That they would search every nook and corner I knew well, and if I could not reach the other side of the lake first I should have to fire my remaining shots, and, plunging in, run the risk of being swept down by the overflow into the abyss. Why should I not cross by the spar? They would never think of that.

No sooner had I conceived this plan, which was as good as any other, than I bore my weight on the sprit, and found that, although there was a trembling motion, the balance of the spar was maintained. In another second I had raised myself by the “one-legged-doctor” trick everybody learns at school, and was lying along it.

Scarcely had I accomplished this when I heard the sound of footsteps below, and someone touched the end of the sprit, for I felt it tremble beneath me. At this I grasped the points of the granite to which it was lashed, and drawing myself along, sat up astride of the thing. I was now well over the brink of the abyss, and began to feel clever again as the pattering of footsteps went by behind me. By their movements to and fro I could hear that they were searching for me, and I did not dare move further lest I should attract attention. To make up for the absence of their tongues their ears were preternaturally acute, and the slightest movement might have betrayed me. Even when the sound of footsteps ceased I remained motionless for a long time, fearing that there was someone listening near by in the darkness. If the cascade had still been pouring down from above I should have stood a better chance under cover of the sound. Everybody knows the peculiar effect that listening in the darkness has upon one. The muscles become rigid, the throat grows dry, an irresistible desire to swallow produces in the act a peculiar noise, and a strange kind of hypnotism suggests to the limbs that they cannot move. To this add a cold perspiration, born of the idea that there is a vast yawning pit beneath one, and a score of ears listening for the slightest sound near by, and you have my sensations within a little.

How long I sat there astride of that sprit I do not know, but at length my feelings became unbearable. I determined to move, but it cost me all it costs one in a nightmare to make a start. With a harsh, inward laugh, that sounded almost hysterical in my mental ears, I at last succeeded in throwing off this strange self-hypnotism, and, stretching my hands forward, grasped a point of rock on the spar itself. Once having pulled myself on to the granite I felt more confidence, and, though the long lever quivered beneath me, I sat astride and worked my way along. I tried to shut out the terrible abyss beneath me, but the knowledge that it was there in the darkness was perhaps worse than if it had been visible to physical eyes. It was like dangling between life and death. But, as the Maori mystic saying runs,

“Cling to Life in the light—cling to Life in the darkness!” And I clung.

After what seemed several hours, although most probably it was something like fifteen minutes as clocks go, I reached the constricted part of the spar, and felt that it was not much thicker than a man’s body. As I rested on it for awhile I felt the drip of water from the roof of the cavern, falling now on my bush hat and now on my shoulders. I wondered how many thousand years it had taken that dripping water to wear the granite down to its present shape, and how many more would elapse before the spar gave way at this point, and the two fragments, with the great round stone, go hurtling down through space on to the heads of the Vile Tohungas far below. I feared that I would get there first.

A glance along the gulf towards the giants’ window showed me that it must be now midnight, if not more, for the moon was no longer shining in between the bars, and I could see her light reflected from the face of the wall beyond the fissure without. I found fresh courage in the thought that if I could reach the further lip of the basin and take the plunge, the rays of the moon shining down into the pool on the western side of the mountain would serve to guide me towards the opening.

But my fresh courage soon gave out, for no sooner had I climbed from the narrow part on to a broader surface of the spar, than the horror of my situation reacted upon me. Faint with what I had gone through since my last meal in the early morning, I felt the darkness beginning to move around me. Concentric rings of light were converging to a point in my brain. I had just sufficient sense to spread myself face downwards on the rock before I swooned away.

* * * * *

When I awoke to consciousness the faint light of daybreak was struggling in through the giants’ window. The vast cavern was full of greater and lesser darknesses, and, as I peered into these, I recalled the events of the past night. A sickening horror swept through me as I realised that I had been lying on a narrow bridge above the abyss for hours, and it was followed by a feeling of thankfulness that I had not turned in my deep sleep and rolled down into the depths. I felt as if angels had stood one on each side of me, and sat up, full of the conviction that I should see the outer world again.

It was strange that I had not been discovered. Evidently my pursuers had not thought of my hiding place. But in order to get out safely it would be necessary to make all haste, for no doubt they were still keeping watch, and the grey, misty light of the far-off day was growing every minute. Very soon I should make an easy target for stones, and if Ngaraki could hit the Vile Tohunga’s eyebrow at twenty yards with his jade meré, what could he not do with me? To his way of looking at things there was no telling what secrets I might carry away with me if I escaped, therefore the sooner I was wiped off the face of the rock the better for that ancient temple and all it contained.

As yet it was impossible to see more than a vague suggestion of one’s hand before one’s face, but in ten minutes’ time there would be enough light to shoot by. Crawling along the spar towards the basin, I made all possible haste. I had not gone far before I heard footsteps several paces in front of me. I stopped, and all was silent. I could hear my heart beating, and the ghostly whiffle of the descending torrent immediately beneath, but no other sound.

It was no time for delay. A plan suggested itself to my mind in a flash, and I acted on it without a second thought. Drawing a match from my pocket with my left hand and raising my revolver with my right, I struck the match on the granite and threw it fizzing into the darkness before me. The light lasted only a second, but in that brief space I saw two figures crouching on the spar ahead, fired point blank at the foremost, and saw him roll over into the abyss. The next instant something whizzed through the air two inches from my forehead, turning my hat half round upon my head. I knew that Ngaraki had also taken advantage of the momentary light to hurl his meré. The involuntary start backwards at this sudden surprise saved my head again, for, immediately after the missile, came the crashing sound of a heavy club on the rock a foot before me. This was the work of the other figure I had seen. Dropping my revolver, I leaned forward and seized the head of the club with both hands. A struggle ensued, and each tried to use the club as a means of pushing the other off the spar. The struggle did not last long. Giving the club a quick twist from my end, I at the same time pushed it violently against my antagonist, who made a sound in his throat and fell backwards, still holding his end of the club. But in doing this I swung and fell sideways. The next moment we were dangling one on each side of the spar, with nothing to hold by but the club lying like a cross-bar over the narrow rock. All this took place in the space of a few seconds, and it was while I was swaying in the air that I heard from far below the rattle of Ngaraki’s meré on the floor of the abyss.

Thank Heaven, the mute held on. If he had let go I should have gone down with him. Never was a man so anxious that his foe should keep his head.

In moments of danger different people act in widely different ways, but, in moments of extreme peril, when even fear itself seems paralysed, most men, I think, would do the right thing automatically. From what happened I am convinced that the man on the other side of the rock was doing exactly as I was doing, looking for some point of rock by which to cling. At all events I felt, by my end of the club, which I was now holding in one hand, that he was not hanging quietly. Never were two living beings weighed on a more extraordinary balance to determine which should be found wanting. One more second determined it. Failing to find a purchase with one hand, I had grasped the club with both again and drawn myself up with my chin over the end of it. Then, to find a good hold on the edge of the spar, I transferred my right hand while sustaining my weight with my chin and left arm. Quickly I slid my other hand along the club till it found the rock. It was done. The club went up as soon as I released it; there was a guttural exclamation on the other side, and the sound of clawing fingers on the granite as the man went down into the pit, leaving me hanging over the side of the spar.

I drew a long breath and proceeded to raise myself. With chin and one hand supporting my weight again, I reached forward and swept the surface of the spar with the other. The first thing I felt was my revolver, but it was little use to me just then. There was a rough point near it which would help me, but no sooner had I grasped it than I had to withdraw my hand, for I could just distinguish a shadowy form coming towards me from the basin end. I could hear him feeling his way along, and knew that he was looking for me. I would let him pass and then climb and shoot everything I met on the rest of my journey towards the basin. With this end in view, I found the revolver again, and placing it with difficulty in my coat pocket, got my hand back on the rock and remained hanging till the one who was looking for me had passed by.

To find the rough point of rock again was easy, but to draw myself up with nothing to place my knees or feet against was more difficult. At length I managed to get one foot up on the spar, and then gradually dragged my weight on to the upper surface. The light had grown considerably stronger in the last few minutes. I could now see the grey surface of the rock before me. By the time I had crawled twenty feet along the widening surface I could discern the vague outline of the great round stone above the outer lip of the basin, and could hear the gritting sound it made as it rolled and rocked slightly in its socket with the motion of the spar, set up principally by the man who was looking for me at the other end. I needed only a little more light in order to stand upright and make a rush.

A full minute I waited, straining my eyes before me to see if there was anyone barring the way. The spar was now quivering violently, and I knew the one who had passed me was near the further end. Another minute passed and the motion grew fainter; he was on his way back. Presently I heard him crawling along on his hands and knees not ten yards behind me.

Trusting now to the light, I rose and proceeded carefully towards the round stone. When I reached it I found no one there, but on the lip of the basin there were several shadows moving. The foremost, evidently thinking I was the man who had gone along the spar and was now returning behind me, gave the guttural challenge. There was no time to waste in purring, so I gave the countersign with my revolver. He staggered back and disappeared.

Then all was confused. Vague shadows flitted round the rim of the basin. I pushed one off into the abyss, another I shot as he came at me, and he fell into the water. A well-aimed stone carried my hat from my head back into the abyss, cutting the skin of my scalp to the bone as it passed. I heard feet pattering behind me and ran on round the lip of the basin. Now I was facing the place where I knew the opening in the mountain side lay concealed beneath twenty feet of water. I had two shots left; the one I fired at something I saw moving on my left, the other I reserved for the one who was running quickly round the lip of the basin behind me. Turning, I fired at a distance of five yards. He did not fall, but uttered a fierce “Ngha!” and came on.

With a quick plunge I leapt from the rock and struck out downwards into the dark with all my strength. Presently I felt the current rushing through my fingers. Another vigorous stroke would have sent me into it, but as I drew up my legs something touched my foot. I kicked back and encountered what felt like solid flesh. I was now head and shoulders in the current, and could see a round light before me, but an arm slid along my leg, a hand closed round my ankle, and I was dragged forcibly out of it again.

I turned in the water to face my antagonist, whom I now knew to be Ngaraki himself, and, guiding my hands along his chest and shoulders, caught him by a bronze pillar for all the impression I could make on the throat. But I might as well have tried to throttle it. The next thing I knew was that his hand had closed over my own throat with a grip like iron. He shook me in the water as if I were a mere rat, and we rose to the surface.

He still retained his terrible grip as he groped along the bank for the steps in the wall. By the time he had found them my senses were beginning to go. I could get no breath until he released my throat, and it was now nearly half a minute since I drew my last. I was getting confused, but I remember one thing which made a distinct impression upon me. My hands, in attempting to get at his own throat again encountered a small stream of something warm trickling from his chest, and, strange as it may seem, almost my last feeling was one of remorse that my final bullet had wounded this strange man, for whom, notwithstanding all his attempts to kill me, I had conceived a kind of savage admiration. In my dying condition, lying helpless in his grip, I seemed to lose my own selfish personality; and, in that brief moment, looking at things from his standpoint, I admitted I was in the wrong, and found time to wish at least that I had not fired that last bullet.

We were now on the margin of the lake swaying about. Suddenly a low moan escaped his lips. His fingers relaxed. He fell back against the cavern wall. Before he fell, however, he gave me a violent push which sent me reeling into the lake.

In the second that elapsed before I reached the water I may have taken in some air. I do not remember doing so, for I was almost gone; but I think I must have got some oxygen into my lungs, for, to a certain extent, consciousness revived as I felt myself going down in the tumultuous depths. Aided considerably by the water welling up from the bottom I arrested my descent and darted upwards again, but on reaching the surface and gasping for air, I found myself in a current. Oh! horror of horrors! I felt I must be going down into the abyss. My mother’s sweet, sad face rose in the darkness before me, and I called on God as all men do in their last extremity. For some time—I could not say how long—I struggled against that current with the strength of despair, but, wildly as I strained every nerve and sinew, I felt I was being gradually sucked in. I reached out to catch some point of rock, but there was nothing. Then with a feeling of blackest horror I realised all was over. But the horror gave way, and, as I swept down, I felt myself smiling up at my mother’s face like a child dropping off to sleep. There was a stunning crash as my head struck against some rock in the descent, and then I fell down, down for ever and ever into the black abyss of unconsciousness.

CHAPTER X.
KAHIKATEA AND HIS STRANGE BELIEF.

When a man wakes suddenly in the night, he may imagine that the head of his bed is where the foot should be. When he wakes from a deep swoon he is willing to admit that he may be anywhere. But imagine the feelings of a man, whose last recollection was that of being swept over the brink of an abyss, waking up and finding himself lying on his back on a mossy bank, with a well-known face bending over him.

Such was my case, and I thought the whole thing was so impossible that I gave it up, and, closing my eyes, continued my downward career through the blackness of darkness, wondering when the final crash would come.

Again my eyes opened and encountered the face of a friend between me and the blue sky. A pair of dark brown eyes, anxious and kind, looked down into mine, and I tried in vain to remember the name of that friend with the mane of flowing hair and the brown-bearded face. I knew him so well, but could not place him. After an effort I gave it up and closed my eyes with a sigh. Really it did not matter very much, for, just after being shattered on the granite floor at the far bottom of the abyss, it did not seem to signify what was the name that belonged to that face. I lapsed again into darkness, and I can dimly recollect having some such grim, absurd thought as this: that the fall on the rocks below had scattered my ideas and injured my brain in some way.

A third time I opened my eyes: the same position, the same face as before. I began to think there was something in it, and was prompted to put a question.

“Where am I?”

“Where are you?” replied the deep voice of Kahikatea—I knew him now—“Why, I hauled you out of the pool nearly half an hour ago. You came up from the bottom like a piece of limp seaweed. I thought you were dead at first.”

“So did I,” I returned wearily. “I thought I had gone down into the abyss, but it must have been the current through the basin that I was struggling against in the dark.”

Kahikatea looked down at me with a puzzled expression on his face, as if he thought I was wandering.

“Don’t talk now, old man,” he said presently. “You’ve a frightful bruise on the back of your head and a deep cut on the top; you’d better keep quiet.”

Thus admonished, I lay with my eyes half shut watching him, as he prepared a bandage to bind up my wounds—the one on the top and the one on the back, from both of which I could feel the blood still flowing.

“Now,” he said, when at last I was bandaged with something like a tenfold turban round what appeared to me a tenfold skull, “shall we camp here?”

“Rather not,” I returned; “they might see us from above and drop rocks on us.”

“Very well, but you mustn’t talk.”

With this he placed his hands under me, and, lifting me up easily in his powerful arms, strode away down the bank of the stream. I was too weak to protest, and said nothing. At length, coming to a sequestered spot enclosed in thick bushy foliage, he put me down gently and set about preparing a soft bed of dry fern. This done, and myself placed comfortably upon it, with some turfs of dry moss for a pillow, he lighted a fire and made this strange sick-room in the wilderness comfortable. I dozed off into a troubled sleep, and when I awoke my nurse sat by me, and administered a pannikin of hot broth, the effect of which was invigorating.

The fear that I had killed the fierce but noble tohunga—the guardian priest of that ancient temple from which I had just escaped by a miracle—was weighing heavily upon my mind. In a few brief sentences I told Kahikatea what had occurred within the mountain, and we considered the question as to whether, if Miriam Grey were somewhere in that strange place,—and from what I had seen I firmly believed she was,—she would starve without Ngaraki. We came to the conclusion that this was improbable, for if anything happened to Ngaraki, the mutes would no doubt know what to do, for, in an hereditary priesthood such as this claimed to be, it was not likely that the order of succession would be dislocated by a sudden death. Considering these things we concluded that Miriam Grey, if there, was as safe as ever she had been. But we knew that the way to her prison far overhead, impossible without a guide at ordinary times, was even more so now; a strict watch would no doubt be kept; and ‘the way of the fish’ was a difficulty, to say nothing of the ‘way of the winged fish.’ Accordingly, after well considering the matter, I determined to follow the aged chief’s advice, and take up the search of the child, feeling convinced that if she was living I could find her.

For two days and two nights I lay on my bed of dry fern, and was attended by Kahikatea. By all the laws of medical science, except perhaps one or two not yet thoroughly laid down, I ought to have had concussion of the brain, or some such thing, but, strange to say, on the morning of the third day I awoke perfectly clear in the head, and with every sign of fever gone.

I determined, however, to accept Kahikatea’s advice and rest for the remainder of that day and night. We passed the time in telling each other our adventures and in drawing what conclusions we could from them. My friend’s search for the ‘way of the spider’ had not been as successful as my exploration of the ‘way of the fish.’ He had found the place where on the first occasion the rock had let him through into a kind of tunnel, and had followed this for a considerable distance, only to be stopped by a blank wall of rock which had all the appearance of a rude portcullis let down from the roof.

“From what you have told me of the strange contrivance in the interior of the mountain below,” he concluded, in relating this part of his adventures, “I can quite understand that this rock blocking up the tunnel might have been so contrived by the ancients that it could be let down and made to close the entrance to the cave from above. I don’t know how thick it is, but I am going to find means to cut through it. By the time you have found the child I shall probably have got through to Miriam Grey—by-the-bye, did you look for the grave which old Te Makawawa spoke about?”

I had quite forgotten it. “No,” I replied; “I was too busily employed inside the mountain looking for my own. But now’s our time—let us make use of it. There’s only one rimu of any size in the ravine; it is unmistakable.”

“ ‘Beneath the great rimu where the tui sings’—those were the old chief’s words,” said Kahikatea, as we made our way along the bank of the river and past the deep pool into the valley, which was shut in against the mountain wall by the descending spur. There was no stream running out of the ravine, and the place was carpeted with moss and kidney ferns, upon which the afternoon sun here and there got in a smile through some crevice in the foliage overhead. At length we came to a fairly open moss-grown space around a mighty vine-laced trunk, which supported the dark green velvety foliage of a magnificent monarch of the bush.

“Splendid tree,” said Kahikatea, taking off his hat and gazing up at the fantails and tuis chasing the gnats about its sunlit sides.

“Yes,” said I, the prosaic, “but where is the grave?”

For the next five minutes we were searching in the open space around the tree. At length I found an inequality beneath the moss, and with our sheath knives we removed the superficial growth of fifteen years.

“There has evidently been something buried here,” said Kahikatea, as we looked at the grave-like ridge, about two feet in length; “if we find bones, or all that is left of them, old Te Makawawa’s a fraud, and you and I together will bore and blast a passage through by the ‘way of the spider;’ but, if on the other hand we find a stone, the old chief is to be trusted, in which case you must set out to look for Crystal Grey, and I will bore and blast alone.”

“Unless you will come with me,” I said.

He did not speak for a little while, and I saw he was hesitating. Then the dreamy look came into his eyes—the look which I knew meant his strange, mad desire to look into the face of Hinauri, who, lifeless, but full of meaning, stood praying up there in the forehead of the mountain.

“No,” he made answer presently. “Crystal Grey is your quest. You must go alone.”

We were digging into the soft ground with our sheath knives and scraping out the dirt with our hands. When we were nearly two feet down my sheath knife grazed upon something hard, and another minute disclosed the surface of a stone embedded there.

“We’d better get it right out to make sure,” said Kahikatea, and so we worked away until we had cleared its whole surface. Then, with the aid of a log for a lever, we hoisted it and placed it upon the moss.

“Without a doubt the old chief is to be trusted,” said Kahikatea.

“Without a doubt,” I rejoined. “There were points that I had made up my mind to disbelieve. This was one of them. But now I have verified so much of his story that I am inclined to accept the whole of it as true. I shall act on the assumption that Crystal Grey is still living, and I shall search for her.”

We replaced the stone in its grave and covered it up to look as much as possible the same as before, then found our way back along the bank of the stream to the camp beneath the mountain wall, where we spent the remainder of the day and part of the night in discussing our different undertakings.

Again I put the question to Kahikatea—a question which in after years I have often pondered as being one which was asked more wisely than I knew—“Will you not come with me and search for Crystal Grey?” and again he answered me with the madness of the poet who, in setting his mind on visionary things, forgets that flesh and blood is the working basis of all.

“Warnock,” he said, “I have hitched my waggon to a star and I’m not going to unhitch it now. I have made up my mind to look into the face of Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, and you would have me turn aside to help you search for Crystal Grey, the daughter of a mortal woman. No, my friend, the daughters of mortal women are not for madmen like me. Warnock!”—he smiled good humouredly at me—“the mother who freed Hinauri from her age-long prison must be the mother of a beautiful daughter. I prophesy that, when you have found the maiden, you will marry her and live happily ever afterwards.”

“And you?” I asked, smiling back, “you will wed an abstraction and beget great poems. Now look here, Kahikatea, face the thing squarely. Suppose, according to the tradition, which was probably hoary long before Pygmalion and Galatea were thought of—suppose that Hinauri should become a living, breathing woman, what would you do?”

He did not answer for some little time, but remained looking straight before him. At length he gave a sigh and said, “Granting for the moment that such a thing were possible, Hinauri would be more to me than she is now. I should love her with my whole self.”

“That is to say, from your present standpoint of the impersonal, she would be less to you.”

“No, no; the greater includes the less as a part of its greatness.”

“That is to say,” I persisted, pressing him hard, but not against his will, for two in a solitude speak as brothers; “if she came to life you would still retain your ideal love for her, but would also give her the love that a man gives to a woman.”

“Yes, I cannot imagine that it should be otherwise.”

“Well now; I begin to think that you are not in love with an abstraction after all, but that your feelings stand on a basis essentially human—founded on the life-likeness of the image—on that, and on the further romantic tradition that she will return.”

Again he was silent. Then he said slowly, half to himself and half to me, “The yearning desire upon the face was human, it was living; the tenderness, the compassion, and that something more—a kind of sorrow-joy which I could not fathom, filled me with the strange thought that the stone could feel. I thought—I believe I said it aloud—‘if brightness would only leap into those eyes, if the raven gloss would only come upon those tresses, if the laced bosom would only move with the wonderful emotion of the face, what a glorious woman would be there.’ As I saw her she seemed to be waiting for a breath or a touch. One sandalled foot, showing beneath the robe, had been advanced with the outstretched arms and the other seemed to be in the act of following, while as yet a little breath of wind had pressed her robe gently against her. Ah! Warnock, you are right; it was not the cold stone I saw, but the living woman.”

“And it is that living woman you are in love with,” I concluded.

“Yes, and I am not so mad after all.”

“You would not be if only that woman had a real existence.”

“A real existence?” he said in surprise; “a strong idea will realise itself somehow. My dear Warnock,”—his voice fell almost to a whisper, and he spoke with a strange eagerness—“you think me mad as it is, but at what I am going to say you will think me too far gone for argument. The idea which, according to tradition, has lived in the minds of an hereditary priesthood from remote ages, has taken possession of mine also. I mean the strong belief that Hinauri, as she is in that stone, will return.”

I looked at him aghast. “Can you give a reason for your belief?”

“None whatever!”

“Then you admit it is contrary to all reason, and yet you believe it.”

“I do not admit it is contrary to all reason; it may be in accord with some reason of which you and I are ignorant.”

“It seems to me, that there can be no reasonable foundation for the idea that a stone will suddenly turn into flesh and blood.”

“Yet the idea that was made stone might also be made flesh.”

Kahikatea said these words in deep abstraction. I took small note of them at the time, though afterwards, when everything was made clear to me, when my own mind had yielded to nothing less than ocular demonstration, they were burnt deep into my brain as some of the truest and sanest words ever uttered. So deep was my friend’s abstraction that he was unconscious of having thought and spoken. This was evident, for, starting as if recalled from a deep reverie, he proceeded to reply to my last remark.

“No,” he said; “it is absurd to believe that a stone can turn into flesh and blood; yet I believe that Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, will return. That is my madness, Warnock, and yet it seems so sane that even now I regard her as a living woman—the only one in the world for me.”

He rose as he spoke, and knocked his pipe out against the mountain wall. Turning towards me with a smile, he added: “If your determination to find Crystal Grey is half as great as mine to reach the cave where the pure white woman stands, you will find her, and then—well, I have prophesied what I have prophesied: the woman who harboured the vision of Hinauri could not have borne an unlovely child.”

Early on the following morning we left the shadow of the mountain wall and passed out from the Table Land beneath the red birches crowned with mistletoe. By Tiki’s guidance we retraced our steps, and by nightfall again reached the pool beneath the high cliff where we had witnessed the phenomenon which had so terrified the Maori.

Here we prepared to camp, but when I went to draw water from the pool to boil the billy, I discovered something which not only threw an additional light on the inner workings of that temple in the rock which we had left behind us, but also had the effect of preventing our camping at that spot. As I was stooping to draw up the water, something floating on the surface near by attracted my attention. Taking a dry branch from the bank I fished the object towards me and held it up.

It was a hat!

I looked at it more closely in the uncertain light and recognised the article. It was my own hat that had gone down into the abyss in that terrible fight with Ngaraki and his speechless men in the interior of the mountain. With my body full of shudders at the thought of what else had fallen into the abyss on the same occasion, and my head full of the only possible explanation of this remarkable find, I sought Kahikatea, and we agreed to move on and camp on the bank of some tributary stream lower down; which we did.

CHAPTER XI.
THE SEARCH FOR ‘THE LITTLE MAIDEN.’

On the following morning I parted with Kahikatea, who was going back to his hut among the mountains, and thence to the nearest civilised part to procure such things as he required for his exploration. Tiki and I continued our way south towards the cottage on the bank of the stream where his band had left the child in Grey’s care fifteen years before; not that we expected to find Crystal Grey still there, but for all that it was the right point at which to begin our search. I may say here that I no longer had any doubts as to whether the child left there by the Maoris was Miriam Grey’s daughter, and, as we journeyed along towards the gap between two lines of snow mountains, I talked with Tiki about her.

“What clothes had she on when you took her south?” I asked.

“A kaitaka of kiwi feathers,” he replied, with a readiness that assured me he could recall it perfectly. “She also had huia feathers in her hair, sandals on her feet, and a small heitiki[19] hung round her neck.”

I pictured the little mite as a kind of “pakeha Maori” chieftainess travelling south in the arms of a band of cannibals, but as safe as, perhaps even safer than, a well-guarded child in a Christian family, for was she not under the word of protection of the ariki Te Makawawa? Under such conditions she might have journeyed through the Uriwera, entering it in childhood and emerging at womanhood, without so much as a hair of her head being harmed.

“What was she like to look at?” I asked again.

Tiki made an expressive gesture of admiration with his hands.

“He Pakeha! She was like a rising star. The young wild swan was not more beautiful. When it was my turn to carry the little maiden I had strange feelings, and when she looked at me with her dark eyes a waiariki[20] sprang up in my heart—ah! she had the eyes of a witch, pakeha, but her words were like the sweet hymns of our ancestress Paré. My heart flies out of my breast, like a bird into the south, to search for the little white maiden beyond the snowy peaks there in the distance.”

“But she is not a little maiden now,” I said. “If she is alive she is grown up—almost a woman. And quite possibly she may have left this land to cross the Ocean of Kiwa.”

“Ah! wherever she is she will be like the graceful nikau palm among the trees of the valley, and her laugh will be like running water. I remember her laugh, pakeha! and her lips! they were as red as the titoki berry in its sheath, but they will be blue with the tatoo now, if she is almost a woman!”

“I should hope not,” I said, laughing. “They will still be as red as the cherry, or as the titoki berry in its sheath, if you like that better.”

“But her black hair will fall upon her shoulders, and she will wear a kaitaka like our maidens,” he persisted.

I did not wish to damp his ardour in the search for ‘the little maiden,’ so I said, “Perhaps—we shall see!”

Day after day, as we journeyed on, we talked of the object of our quest, and I saw from the Maori’s words that he worshipped the memory of this little maiden as that of a divine thing. What had he seen in her eyes to produce this lasting impression upon him? I conjured before my mind the fresh, fair young face of a girl of seventeen or eighteen, with laughing lips and coal-black eyes, harbouring, perhaps, a look of the sorceress in them—a look made more emphatic by enshrouding masses of raven hair. This face glanced down at me between the fleecy clouds of the far south, but I recall the vision now only to dismiss it, for it possessed not the dawnlike flush of radiant beauty that heaven had cast on Crystal Grey.

On the evening of the fourth day we came to the river along the right bank of which Tiki remembered taking the child. He led the way and I followed, marvelling at his memory of cliffs and dark pools, and outstanding trees which he had not seen for fifteen years.

Twilight fell over the bush and the roaring river. I suggested camping and continuing the journey next morning. But Tiki said we were now not far from the hut, so we held on for another half mile. Tiki was right, as he always was in matters of locality, for there, between some trees a little withdrawn from the bank, we saw a small cottage; but no smoke came from the chimney, nor was there a light in the window.

“Is it the place?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied, looking about him; “it is the place. There is the totara beneath which we waited while our chief carried the little maiden up to the hut.”

As we advanced towards the cottage we soon saw that it was deserted. The little bridge that spanned a stream was lying with one end in the water, the gate opening on the garden path was leaning sideways from one hinge; and, as we passed on up to the door, the overgrown path, the wilderness of tangles in the garden, and, finally, the broken windows of the hut itself showed that it had long since been deserted.

Opening the door on its creaking hinges, we went inside. The place was quite bare, except for a bed of fern in one corner, where some traveller had camped. There was no evidence of its having been regularly occupied for, I thought, at least ten years. However, I resolved to sleep there that night, and in the morning push on to the nearest sheep run, accommodation house, or digging township, as the case might be, and make inquiries. Accordingly we swept the floor, brought in more fern, boiled our billy on the hearth, and slept in more comfortable quarters than those to which we were accustomed.

A strange thing happened in the night—a thing which was the first in an extended series of inexplicable occurrences, in the progress of which I almost began to imagine I was being haunted. I awoke suddenly, and saw the bright moonlight flooding in through one of the empty casements, and there, looking in, was what I accepted as a mean trick of my imagination. It was a face—the most vile and wizard-looking face I have ever seen. The features were those of a negro, wizened, withered, evil-looking to a degree. I started up into a sitting posture, and rubbed my eyes, but when I stared at the open square of moonlight again the face was gone. I sprang to my feet, went over to the casement and looked out, but saw nothing. Yet what I heard chilled my blood. From very far away in the bush came a wild, hideous laugh, like that of a triumphant devil. Bah! was the place haunted, or was I ridden by some nightmare which had grown out of my fearful experiences in the mountain cavern? I could make nothing of it, so I went back to bed, and when I awoke in the morning I laughed it away as a grotesque nightmare.

When day came I had a good look round the place to see if I could find anything that would give me some sort of clue to the whereabouts of Grey, but nothing that I saw afforded me anything to the purpose. There was an overgrown and almost obliterated bullock-dray road, however, which I knew must lead to some run or settlement, and this I proposed to follow, as it led away to the south-west, and would in all probability bring us to the West Coast Goldfields, or, at all events, to the sea; so that, at least, we could find our way to Hokitika.

A last look round the interior of the hut before setting out afforded a peculiar piece of evidence to the effect that some child, six or seven years old, had left that hut in, or shortly after, the year 18—. I arrived at this conclusion in the following way. While I was making a careful survey of ceiling, floor, and walls, my eye fell upon some horizontal scratches on the bare wall near the fireplace. At first glance they appeared like markings made by a carpenter, but a closer scrutiny showed me in a flash what they really were—measurements of the growth of some child. There were eight or nine. The first, dated June, 18—, was about three feet six inches from the floor. The next stood an inch above, and so they ran up, some with dates and others without, to the height of four feet and a little over. There at a certain date the measurements stopped, from which I concluded that the child, whose growth had been registered in this way, may have left at that time. There were no markings anywhere else to give the idea that any other children had lived in the hut, so the only conclusion I could draw was that these referred to the child who had been left there with Grey some fifteen years since.

But a sudden thought arrested my mind. I was getting along a little too hastily. There might be another explanation of the sudden termination of this systematic scale of measurements at the height of four feet something. That last measurement might have had a black edge to it, in which case it occurred to me with a shade of sadness that its date might be found again burnt into some little wooden slab at the head of a grave four feet something in length, in a sheltered spot in the garden about the hut.

To exhaust this alternative I explained my discovery to Tiki, and together we went out and made a thorough search all over the tangled wilderness of a garden, but, to my great relief, found no such grave or wooden slab. It was more probable, I thought, judging from the deserted state of the place, and the growth of the quick-hedges since they had last been cut, that Grey and the child had left the hut somewhere about the year specified in the last measurement, nine years before the time of which I am writing.

“The little maiden is not dead,” said Tiki anxiously, when we had concluded our search; “no, she is not dead. We should have counted another star in the sky, if the little maiden had passed over Wai Ora Tane.”

“She is not buried here at all events,” I replied with dry logic, which I fear compared but poorly with the poetical thought of the Maori. Then we found the bullock-dray road and set out on our tramp.

Overgrown, bestrewn with débris from the thick bush, and in parts almost impassable, it led straight down into the south-west, and when we had followed it for two or three miles it opened out into another dray road which was in good repair. Here we found fresh bullock tracks, with the ruts of dray wheels, and after travelling some five miles in our right direction with the rising sun behind us, we heard a sound of ‘language’ ahead. It was the bullock-puncher talking in his most persuasive tone to his long-suffering team.

Presently, turning a slight bend in the road, we came up with him—a raw Irishman of the lankiest, boniest type imaginable, with fiery hair and a nose that had been blunted in Heke’s war in the ’forties. His trousers were not what they used to be; his boots were eighteen by four; his shirt should have been at the binder’s in several places, except where it was fashionably fastened at the collar with a tie of undressed flax clean that day from Nature’s laundry; his socks, which one looked for in vain between the bottoms of his trousers and the tops of his boots, were at the wash; and his clay pipe, stuck like a dagger in his belt of raw bullock’s hide, looked as if it wanted renewing; but—his language was divine, I mean profane, and his whip, as it curled in air and dusted last year’s hair from the leader’s flank, was eloquent with the sublimity of perfect punctuation.

I was drawing out this bullock-puncher, when the off leader stopped, and, turning his lowered head to the right, gave a violent snort that scattered the dust and dry leaves from the ground. In a trice the great whip was unfolding itself in the air, and, as it came down on the startled bullock’s flank, the well of Irish much defiled overflowed its banks; but, in the confusion, I heard distinctly from far away the same wild, mocking laugh of my nightmare. Again I asked myself if I was haunted, and if so what earthly or unearthly thing had scared the bullock at that moment. Again I could make nothing of it, and dismissed the matter from my mind.

We walked by the side of this son of Erin for a mile, and I learned in the course of conversation that there was a small digging township ten miles further on. Seeing that he could not talk to his bullocks properly with anyone else constantly interrupting the thread of his argument, and that he neither knew anything about Grey nor could tell me who had last lived in the hut on the river bank, we soon left him behind, coming along slowly to the tune of “Woo comother byke—Skipper! byke—Skipper!! ye (crack) byke! Skipper!!!” which tune had no “grand Amen” in it, but went on and on until, as we drew ahead, it died away further and further in the distance.

Towards evening we reached the digging township—a quaint, mushroom growth of tents and rough wooden buildings. Here I began my inquiries, but no one could give me any information. The floating population of the gold diggings was not an easy field in which to find traces of a man who had probably left the district ten years before. The Hindu saying, “A piece of wood and a piece of wood may meet in the ocean, and having touched, float away again—like this is the meeting of mortals,” is especially true in a gold-seeking world, where men come from everywhere, and drift about between California, Bendigo, and New Zealand. But late that night chance favoured me. I dropped into the tap-room of an accommodation house a little way out of the township, and put my inquiries to the landlord. He shook his head, then turning to the ten or twelve occupants of the room who were playing euchre at a large table, he addressed them collectively.

“Say, do any of you chaps know anything of a man named Grey, who lived in these parts about ten years ago?”

The diggers paused in their play and looked up. One honest-looking ruffian—a Scot, with sandy whiskers and quick grey eyes, paused with his arm upraised in the excited attitude a man assumes when he is about to plank down the right bower. I saw his eyes pass over me in a quick scrutiny; then, when the others had answered the landlord’s question with negatives of various kinds, he spun the winning card on to the table instead of banging it down with a noisy thud in the usual way among diggers, and, pushing his chair back, asked another man to take his place, and sauntered out of the room.

I did not think this had any bearing on the matter in hand until afterwards, when, on leaving the place and proceeding along the road that led back to the township, I was surprised to see this rough Scot step out of the shadows by the roadside and come towards me.

“I heard ye askin’ for Grey up yonder,” he said, “and I thocht maybe it’s Dreamer Grey ye want.”

“Dreamer Grey?” I repeated, laying stress upon the strange Christian name as I rolled it over in my mind. “I don’t know him by that name—in fact, all I know about him is that he disappeared from Hokitika seventeen years ago, and lived for some time in a small hut on the bank of the river about twenty-five miles down. He was a tall, soldierly man, with curly black hair, brown eyes, and a short moustache——”

“Ay, that’s Dreamer Grey,” he interrupted; “but tell me noo, what are ye wantin’ him for?”

“Are you mistaking me for a detective on his track?” I asked laughing.

“I’m no so sure,” he said gravely as his keen grey eyes met mine in the starlight. “I’m no so sure, and until I weel ken what ye’re wantin’ him for I canna tell ye.”

“All right,” I replied. “Grey’s wife has been left a large estate at home and a lot of money, and I’m searching for her—if living—or, failing that, for evidence of her death.”

“Grey’s wife? eh, man, but Grey had nae wife. It canna be the same man?”

“Oh, yes it is,” I persisted. “He had a little girl named Crystal with him, had he not?”

“Ay, he had then, a bonny wee lassie.”

“With black hair and black eyes.”

“Ay, I mind the wee lassie weel. Ah! man, but she was bonnie.” His rough voice softened as he said the words.

“That little girl was his own child,” I went on.

“Eh! What’s that? what’s that? his ain child? Weel noo; he telt me that the bairn was left at his hut one night when he was asleep by the fire. Hoo d’ye ken it was his ain bairn? Dreamer Grey wasna the man to tell his mate a dam lee, an’ I’m no the man to stand by and——”

He was getting excited, and I hastened to explain.

“Now, you listen,” I said, “and I’ll tell you how I know what I know; and, at the same time, you’ll see that what Grey told you was perfectly true. I have gleaned from the Maoris that they took Grey and his wife prisoners when they had only been married a few weeks. They kept the woman, but set Grey free, having first inoculated him with some strange poison which clouded his mind, and, as they gave me to understand, entirely dislocated his memory. In due time the little girl, his daughter, was born, and when she was two years old one of the chiefs, not wishing to kill her, but wanting to be rid of her, sent her with a party of Maoris southwards, with orders that she should be left with the first pakeha they encountered. They came across the hut where Grey was living and left her there while he was asleep. Of course, he adopted the child not knowing it was his own.”

“Ay, ay,” said the Scot slowly. “Man, that’s a strange tale ye’re tellin’ me. But I mind weel that Dreamer Grey telt me he had forgotten his past life, and he was sae mysterious aboot it that I thocht he had done something that he didna wish to mind, and that’s why I heid ma tongue when I heard ye speerin’ aboot him up yonder at the hoose.”

“Ah!” I said. “And how did he come by his strange name?”

“I’m comin’ to that. He said that when the wee lassie was left wi’ him she telt him her name was ‘Crystal Grey’ as near as a bairn could say it; and so he ca’d himsel’ Grey, an’ we ca’d him Dreamer, because every now and again he would stop in his work and look straight ahead in an oncanny way, as if he was tryin’ to reca’ somethin’ he had dreamt. Ay, he was a queer body, and what ye say aboot his mem’ry explains many and many a thing that I couldna mak’ oot.”

“Well now,” I said, anxious to come to the point, “the Maori tohunga who doctored him with the poison knows where Grey’s wife is and will reveal her hiding-place to me on one condition—that I find and bring back the child. Whether his conscience is troubling him, or whether some strange superstition is at the bottom of it, I cannot say; but I have reason to trust him, and, if I return with the child, I have no doubt I shall find her mother. So if you know where Grey and the child are and have quite given up the idea that I’m on Grey’s track for something he doesn’t want to remember, perhaps you can give me some information.”

At this the honest Scot opened his heart, and told me how he and Dreamer Grey had worked together on the goldfields; how, some ten years before, Grey had made his pile, and had bought a large tract of land at the head of one of the sounds on the south-west coast, where he settled down with one aim in life, to care for the well-being of the wee bit lassie; and, finally, how, if I were to go there and say that old Jim Crichton directed me, I should be welcomed with open arms.

“And noo ma bonnie lad,” he concluded, when he had told me this much and more, “it’s a dry tale that doesna end in a drink. Come on!”

As he put his arm through mine and drew me away towards the accommodation house, a stone rolled from the top of a bank twelve or fifteen feet high on one side of the road.

“Did that fall of its own accord?” I asked myself, and as if in answer to my question there came again that wild, unearthly laugh from far away back in the bush.

“Did you hear that?” I asked excitedly, catching my friend by the arm.

“Yes; someone laughing in the bush—sounds oncanny.”

“I heard it once before,” I replied, “but thought it was fancy—some mad hatter, I suppose.”

And we continued our way to the house.

CHAPTER XII.
THE MAN-WHO-HAD-FORGOTTEN.

Our journey to the coast, first through the dense bush and afterwards by goldseekers’ tracks, was not marked by any adventure worth mentioning. Arrived at a village on the coast line near Hokitika, we booked our passage by a whaler bound southward, and in less than a week we reached the Sounds.

Grand, solitary, majestic are the bold features of this coast line which faces the westerly breezes of the Pacific. Gentle arms of the sea caress and almost entwine great mountain rocks that stand waist deep in ninety fathoms.

Following the Scot’s directions accurately, I arranged with the captain of the whaler to put us ashore in a boat as soon as we came opposite the required Sound, which I recognised at once from Crichton’s description. The opening was almost hidden by the perpendicular rocks which stood about the entrance, but, when we passed between these in the small boat pulled by two sturdy sailors, we found a broad arm of smooth water within stretching for several miles between rugged mountains, which grew gradually rounded and verdant as they sloped away inland.

As we passed over the glassy surface of this still water among still surroundings, it seemed that we were entering a world where we should encounter no living thing but penguins and wild fowl.

The steady sound of our oars echoed from the rugged and precipitous shore; some ducks wheeled by overhead and disappeared round an elbow some hundred yards beyond, and high up above the towering rocks, the distant fleecy clouds shone in the rays of the setting sun. It was a splendid solitude, whose substance and shadow were clearly defined and divided by the millpond surface of the water.

But immediately on rounding the elbow beyond which the ducks had disappeared, we came in view of something which jarred upon our sense of solitude. There, riding at anchor in a little wooded cove before us, was a large yacht.

“Whose is that?” I asked one of the seamen who had come with us.

“I couldn’t tell you, sir,” was his response; “but there’s a bit of the Yankee about her. See them there spars”—he broke off suddenly in his speech to me and addressed the continuation of his remark excitedly to his fellow seaman—“why, blow me, Bill, if that ain’t the craft as we seen in Astrolabe Roads nigh on a month ago. What was the big chap’s name, him as was the owner?”

“Señor Cazotl,” returned the other, regarding the yacht intently. “I heard the skipper tellin’ the doctor that he was a Mexican with whips of money and a nasty look in his eye; and what’s more, if a man could be judged by his crew, he was more like Old Nick himself out for a holiday than anyone else.”

“What was the matter with his crew?” I asked.

“The matter! why, the skipper said he’d never seed a more hang-dog lookin’ lot; a man with a crew like that ought to be hanged on general principles, he ought. Some was half-castes; there was two Spaniards with murder scribbled all over ’em, and a Portuguese hunchback with a face like a wild gorilla; but the worst and curst of the whole swag was a grey-headed, skinny wisp of a nigger what gave our skipper fantods, and made him think of Thugs and Areois, and them sort of uncanny sarpints.”

“The skipper evidently didn’t care for Señor Cazotl and his crew,” I said.

“You’re right there, sir. He ups anchor an’ gets away the very next mornin’ before the Mexican had a chance of returning his visit.”

By this time we were abreast of the yacht, but we could not discern anyone on board; and, after weighing the remarks of the sailors, I did not feel greatly inclined to have anything to do with the strangers. But it fell out contrary to our inclinations, for, having avoided the yacht, we had no sooner reached the next bend than we nearly ran into its owner and two of his crew in a small boat coming down from the upper part of the sound. We were within twenty yards, when the man who was steering, evidently Cazotl himself, called upon his two rowers to cease pulling, and waved his hand to us, evidently wishing to speak. The sailors reluctantly obeyed the intimation, and, as we drew up within two oars’ lengths of each other I observed the huge, ungainly proportions of Cazotl sitting in the stern, and his evil face, whose low forehead, square protruding jaw, and leering lips were half concealed by a wealth of glossy black hair. His long, flat nose lent a peculiar interpretation to his face, and filled me with the strange fancy that if one of his first parents may have been a fiend, the other might certainly have been a giant ape. Moreover, there was a peculiar suggestion of red fire in his eyes which riveted my attention. As he drew nearer and was about to speak, I found myself wondering where I had seen that face before. The general cast and expression were familiar to me, but I could not recall where or when I had seen it.

“Good day to you,” he said. “Do you live in these parts, or are you a wandering star like myself?”

“Going to the head of the Sound for a time,” I replied shortly; “got a friend living there. Just come off a small sailing craft outside. That’s your yacht down there, isn’t it? You, I presume, are Señor Cazotl?”

“Yes, at your service. I should be very pleased if you and your friend at the head of the Sound would do me the honour of looking me up some evening.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I will mention your kind invitation to my friend, but his house is some miles up the Sound. We must push on if we hope to reach it before dark.”

The two sailors were not slow to ply their oars, and, as we began to move off, Señor Cazotl said: “I shall be very pleased to see you, if you care to come.”

But I did not reply, for my glance had fallen for the first time on the two who were handling the oars in his boat—and what I saw deprived me of speech for the moment. The one was a Spaniard with “murder scribbled all over him,” and the other was the white-haired, skinny, Thug-like wisp of a negro. I stared in amazement, for I recognised his wizened face as that which I had seen in the moonlight at the window of the hut on the bank of the river. In another moment I jerked out some reply—I cannot remember what—and we passed on towards the head of the Sound, while Cazotl’s boat continued its way towards the yacht.

The sailors, as they rowed on, talked to each other in a manner not flattering either to Cazotl or his crew, but I sat silent. Two things troubled me. Had that lithe negro tracked me through the bush, and, if so, why? And where had I set eyes on Cazotl’s face before? His yacht had been seen some weeks since in l’Astrolabe Roads, which locality was not far either from Te Makawawa’s pa or from the place where I first landed from Wakatu. A shudder ran through me as I asked myself if it was possible that the Thug-like creature I had just seen had tracked me from the moment when I landed until now. In answer to my question there came into my mind that far-away laugh which I could not understand, as in each case it had followed some false step or semi-exposure of someone near at hand. The more I thought the more I was convinced that I had been tracked by this thing with the evil face; and, as it dawned upon me that, if it was so, there must be some connection between that fact and the appearance of the yacht down there near our destination, I felt forebodings which I could not dispel. I was aroused from these dark thoughts only to be plunged into darker by Tiki, who, gazing steadily after Cazotl’s boat, remarked: “Wanaki! if that taepo[21] catches the little maiden he will roast her in the oven. Oa! I have heard the ariki say, ‘Beware of the children of the Great Woman of Death and Darkness; and by this you shall know them: they have the gleam of the red fire in their eyes.’ ”

It was dark when the two sailors landed us at the head of the Sound, and made their way back to their ship. As far as one could see by the uncertain light of the stars, the rugged characteristics of the place here sloped off into rounded hills enclosing a broad, fertile valley, which widened out considerably before being lost among the hills inland. There were banks of trees not more than a quarter of a mile up the valley, and there I concluded we should find Grey’s house.

It was not very long before we struck a path leading up from the water. This, as we followed it, took us through green fields, where sheep and horses were grazing. Then before us we saw the great banks of trees. Coming at last to some slip bars beneath high blue-gums, we gained a square enclosure some acres in extent, in the midst of which, embowered in trees, we discerned vaguely the gables of a house. In the upstairs window of the gable facing us a light was showing through the close-drawn blind. Someone was going to bed.

Our path led us round an umbrageous orchard and brought us out on to a well-kept lawn, where, passing beneath some cedars which stood apart, their boughs moving gently between us and the stars as they whispered in the night wind, we approached the picturesque old country house.

“You stay here beneath the trees,” I said to Tiki, thinking his appearance might frighten the inmates; “and I will come for you presently.”

Then, finding my way round the verandah, I sought out the front door and knocked. Presently, through the glass panel at the side of the door, I saw a light approaching along the hall, and a moment later the door was opened by a tall man with a candle in his hand.

“Are you Mr. Grey?” I asked, recognising him from Te Makawawa’s description—a soldierly man with curling hair, brown eyes, and short, black moustache.

“That is my name,” he replied, holding the candle up and scanning my face.

I said, “I am a stranger to you, but I come from Jim Crichton, whom I met in the Karamea; and I have something important to tell you.”

“From Jim Crichton!” he said, with pleased surprise. “You are welcome, then, if your news is good or bad. Come in.”

He led me into a room that looked like a library, and proceeded to light the lamp.

“Everybody’s gone to bed,” he said, as he turned the wick up, “and I was just going myself. We’re early to bed and early to rise here. Take a seat, Mr.—let me see, you did not tell me your name.” He smiled at me kindly. In the smile and the expression of his face anyone could see that he was a man with a large heart.

“Warnock—Dick Warnock.”

“Ah! sit here, Mr. Warnock, and before you tell me your news let me get you something to eat; I daresay you’re hungry.”

He went out of the room, and I glanced around at the pictures on the wall, the books in the shelves, and the delicately arranged flowers on the table. It was the room of a successful man with refined tastes, and in many places there were gentle evidences of a feminine hand.

In a few minutes he returned, bearing a tray with various things to eat and drink, and while I was partaking of these he talked about his old friend Crichton, recalling incidents of the goldfields.

When I had finished my meal, and had tuned my pipe to his cigar, I leaned back in my chair and said: “Now to my news.”

“All in good time,” he replied with a pleasant smile; “is it good or bad?”

“It is good, but I have no doubt it will startle you, even to the extent of leading you to doubt my sanity, or at least my story.”

He raised his eyebrows and looked steadily at me for a while; then, blowing forth a cloud of smoke, he remarked quietly: “All right. I’m not easily startled. Proceed.”

“In order to find the exact point at which I must begin,” I said, “I shall have to ask you a few questions. In the first place, do you remember the hut on the bank of the river where you lived?”

“Yes, perfectly well.”

“Good. Do you remember your first coming to that hut through the Karamea bush?”

“Yes, I remember that.”

“Well now, one question more; can you remember the place you set out from on that occasion?”

Grey took his cigar from his lips and fixed his eyes on the lamp, while a dreamy, puzzled expression came on his face. At last, drawing his hand over his brow, he turned to me and said: “Perhaps it will be your turn now to doubt either my sanity or my story; but, nevertheless, what I am about to tell you is the sober truth. Four or five days before reaching that hut something happened to me, I don’t know what, but at all events I have never been able to recall anything that transpired previously. The last I can remember, and it is a very dim memory, is that I found my way down from a high place among the mountains. All beyond that is a blank in my mind—a blank containing nothing but the consciousness of something forgotten.”

“I doubt neither your sanity nor your story,” I hastened to reply. “Besides, I have ample evidence of the truth of what you say; and not only that, but I can set before you various important details of your past life which, as I said, will startle you.”

He scanned my face again more eagerly than before. “Are you an old friend whose face and name I have forgotten?” he asked wistfully.

“No, not that,” I replied. “I have my information from the Maoris. Do you know that you have a wife and daughter, Mr. Grey?”

He started. Then leaning forward over the table and looking earnestly in my face, he asked, hoarsely:

“Still living?”

“I have every reason to believe that your wife Miriam is still alive——” I paused, wondering if in his oblivion he had married again, and if, perhaps—it was a painful thought—the woman of his choice was at present the head of his household. His face, wrought with nervous emotion, told me nothing of this kind; and if I had not paused he would have interrupted me in his excitement.

“Thank Heaven!” he said, striking the table with his fist, and rising from his seat to pace the carpeted floor; “thank Heaven I have never married again. And my daughter—speak, sir—my daughter?”

“Was left at your hut fifteen years ago while you were asleep by the fire.”

He stopped in his pacing to and fro on the other side of the table and faced me with a countenance from which all traces of excitement had fled. Slowly a fine light began to burn in his brown eyes. Like a man walking in his sleep, he felt his way round the table, and, seating himself again in his chair, said in a deep, hushed voice, which had a strange ring of sweetness in it: “Crystal Grey my own child—the mother whom she has led me to love above all other women—my—own—wife. I, I, Warnock!”—he started from his chair again—“can you prove this? Quick! or I shall go mad; man, it is more than I ever dared to dream.”

Then, as clearly as I could, I laid before him the facts which the reader already knows, telling the story of Te Makawawa, but, in accordance with our understanding with the old chief, omitting all mention of the legend of Hinauri and the statue in the marble cave. As I proceeded I strengthened point by point with evidence derived from my own adventures in the mountain, with the carved piece of wood, which I handed him across the table, and with that part of Kahikatea’s adventure which involved no mention of the sacred stone.

“It is strange,” he said, when I had finished; “but for the last seventeen years, which is the only part of my life that I know, there has passed scarcely a day without some flitting reminiscence of giant rocks, with an additional dream-glimpse of something which has always eluded me. In the midst of my work, or perhaps when I am in conversation with someone, I will suddenly see in my mind’s eye a woman’s face—ah! very often that woman’s tender face—then a patch of grey rock, a smooth white stone, or a gigantic crag against the blue sky; but, beyond that, nothing, except a vague consciousness of some long chain of events which will not disclose themselves.”

When I continued my tale, and concluded with the statement of Te Makawawa’s express condition that when I returned with the child he would inquire of his ancestors concerning the whereabouts of Miriam Grey, but not before, Dreamer Grey’s eyes sparkled with purpose and resolve.

“We will go, Warnock,” he said, “we will go, the three of us together, and find my wife, if she is still alive.”

“The three of us?” I said. “You, I, and——?”

“Why, Crystal of course; she went to bed before you came. But, by Heaven! I must go and wake her and tell her this news.”

Before he had finished speaking he was out of the room and half way up the stairs. Suddenly remembering Tiki waiting beneath the cedars, I went softly out of the house with half a loaf of bread in one hand and a large piece of cold pork in the other, with which, having found him, I advised him to regale himself. But, hungry as he was, he did not begin until he had asked the question which probably he had asked himself a hundred times since I had left him: “Is the little maiden in there?”

“Yes,” I replied, “she’s in there; you’ll see her to-morrow, perhaps. Stay here and I’ll come out again soon with Pakeha Kerei, and he’ll find you some place where you can pass the night.”

“He Wanaki,” was all he said, but it meant a great deal. It meant that eating and sleeping were matters of no moment now that he knew ‘the little maiden’ was alive.

Leaving him, I returned to the house and waited for Grey. When he came back some time later his face was full of a gentle happiness. The discovery that Crystal Grey was not an adopted child, but his own daughter, had touched the very depths of his soul.

“Warnock,” he said, grasping my hand, “how can I ever repay you for this?”

“I am already a paid servant,” I faltered, “drawing my salary from certain trustees of a large estate at home.”

“Ah! yes,” he replied, “money might repay you for your trouble, but how can I discharge the debt of gratitude I owe to you, who have brought me this great happiness?”

“I give it up,” I said laughing; “and I advise you to do the same. In the meantime, I have a Maori waiting outside, and I took the liberty of taking him some food while you were away. He’s a bit of a savage, and perhaps it would be best for him to sleep in the barn—he would be more comfortable.”

“Yes, yes; where is he?” he asked. Then, as I led the way, he added with a merry laugh: “I suppose he’d never forgive us if we put him between sheets in a feather bed—he’d think his days were numbered, eh?”

I laughed in reply. I was becoming infected with my host’s happiness.

“Do you talk Maori?” I asked, as we found Tiki finishing his meal beneath the cedars; “this fellow can’t speak a word of English.”

“No, I can’t,” he replied, “but Crystal can. She’ll put him through his facings in the morning. Where shall we bed him down, in the barn or in the hay loft?”

“I think a bundle of straw in the corner of the verandah would be a luxury to him.”

“Right! you wait here. I’ll soon fix him up.” And he disappeared, to return presently with a lantern and a large bundle of straw which he deposited in the most sheltered part of the verandah, where, following my instructions, Tiki made his bed and turned in. We then went inside the house; and when, after a long, earnest talk, my host had shown me into the best bedroom, he said “Good-night,” and retired to rest.

Until long after everything was quiet I leaned upon the window-sill gazing at the stars, and basking in the atmosphere of happiness which had fallen upon that house. The cloth of gold roses that clustered round the window gave a faint odour, which stole softly out upon the quiet air, for the night wind had died away in the blue-gums, and the garden below was very still. The sound of a breaking twig, the sighing of the guilty aspen as its leaves turned restlessly in their sleep, the chirping of a cricket on the lawn, the munching of the horses in the stable, the hooting of an owl in the plantation, and the baying of a shepherd’s dog on the hills—these were the sounds that emphasised the stillness of the night. But suddenly, from far away, came the faint refrain of a wild, heathenish chant, rising and falling on the still night air in weird, barbaric changes. As I listened it chilled my blood, breaking through the sweet, happy silence of the place like a note of horror. I knew it came from the direction of Cazotl’s yacht. With a shudder I closed the window to shut it out.

CHAPTER XIII.
CRYSTAL GREY.

So long accustomed to rise at the first signs of day, I was unable to break myself of the habit suddenly. Consequently, according to long custom, I awoke next morning just as the faint grey of dawn was appearing above the eastern hills. To wake and to get up were the same thing to a man of my abandoned restlessness. In less than twenty minutes, therefore, I was dressed. Picking a dew-covered rose-bud from the clusters about the window, I went downstairs fastening it in my buttonhole, passed out at the front door, and on to the verandah.

Taking the opposite direction from that in which Tiki had retired for the night, I found my way round the verandah to the back corner of the house, where, beneath heavy festoons of flowering vines, some wooden steps led down into a well-planned wilderness of a garden. There I roamed beneath the trees in the dim light and strange hush of early dawn. The faint twittering of a thousand birds came from the tall native trees that walled the place in from the outer world. It was a wonderful garden, and had evidently been laid out by some early settler with English ideas, long before Dreamer Grey came to the place. There were well-worn paths between umbrageous native matapo, titoki, and ngaio; and leaf-strewn sward beneath isolated fruit trees, which were quite forty years old.

Wandering about in this old-world garden, with now a glimpse of the rosy sky between the wall of native trees, and now the taste of a plum or cherry that hung low on the dewy branch, I came at length upon a curious grove of hazels planted in short rows, at right angles to a hawthorn hedge in such a way as to form a suite of five or six rustic rooms, roofed above by the arching boughs of the nut trees, walled in behind by the hedge, and screened from the rest of the garden in front by the drooping foliage of some branches trained for the purpose.

I saw all this in a first glance through the leafy screen of one of them, for the now crimson sky beyond, showing through a gap in the tall native trees and flooding in over the hedge, suffused the interior with a dreamy light. When I had pushed my way in I found that this garden retreat showed signs of occupation. There was a hammock slung across it from the stoutest stems of the hazels. A small table stood against one wall of stems, a rough seat against the other. An easel and palette reclined against the hedge, which was almost covered with the profuse pink bloom of geraniums; and, on the floor, carpeted with last year’s leaves and nuts, stood a cushioned wicker chair.

The dry nuts cracked beneath my heavy boots as I walked towards the hammock and picked up a book that lay there on a cushion. It was a well-worn volume of Shelley’s poems, and on the flyleaf was written, “Crystal Grey, her book.” I put it down and glanced round the quaint place again, murmuring to myself, “Crystal Grey, her studio.”

It seemed a place of dreams, and it suited my mood, so I placed the wicker chair against the hedge, and sat down to watch the delicate hues which were beginning to glorify the screen of leaves that shut me off from the garden. As the sun showed signs of his rising behind me these leaves, catching the flush, stood out against the shadows beyond. They changed from dark green to light, then glistened into a pale yellow. Finally, as the sun’s first ray struck through the pink geraniums on the hedge, they were glorified with delicate rosy hues, and all the place was suffused with the fresh dewy pink of early dawn. How beautiful it was, that glorious sunlight glistening on the silk pattern of the cushion in the hammock, touching the stems of the hazels with light and shadow, and striking the leaf-strewn ground with a deep russet as it fell even to the foot of the leafy screen, all fresh and dewy through the sparkling air.

I awoke from my dream at some sound that reached my ears. It was a footfall on the grass outside. It drew near. I heard the rustle of a skirt. In another moment the sunlit leaves about the entrance were drawn aside, and a girl entered. The boughs swung to behind her, and she stood in the sun ray, still holding one branch with her hand, while she regarded me for a moment with hesitation. I said a girl, but my first impression of Crystal Grey was that she was something between a proud goddess and a sweet angel: the former aspect slumbering in her coal-black eyes and wavy black hair, the latter wide awake upon her lovely face and perfect form, clad, as all angels are, in white. The mysterious eyes of deep night, and the hair of deeper night contrasted strangely with the innocent wistfulness of the rest of the face. If the eyes were those of some severe sage, made young again by a draught of his wondrous elixir, the sweet girlish lips looked as if they had kissed the early morning dew from a ripe peach and carried away the freshness of it. I rose from my wicker chair and stood facing her, with the hammock between us. I was too dazzled by this sudden apparition of girlish beauty, beyond my power to describe, to stammer out a single word; and, while I was trying to begin an apology for my rough appearance in her garden sanctum, she spoke first.

“Are you the stranger that brought the good news?” she asked, as she let go the branch and advanced a step towards me.

“I am,” I replied; “but that hardly excuses my trespassing here perhaps.”

“SHE SEATED HERSELF SIDEWAYS ON THE HAMMOCK, WHILE I RESUMED MY WICKER CHAIR, AND TOLD AGAIN THE STORY WHICH I HAD NARRATED TO HER FATHER.”

She extended her fair, white hand, and, as I took it in my rough brown one, looking into her eyes the while, a combination of feelings took possession of me. I can only liken it to the laying of the foundation-stone of a love which would mount upwards for ever and ever, like a crystal staircase leading to the far-off heaven of her soul.

Her sweet lips moved, then trembled, but no words came. Only her eyes spoke unfathomable things, as they burned with feelings, tender and mysterious; only a sigh escaped her as she turned her head away.

“What is it affects you so in the news I bring?” I asked.

“My mother,” she replied; “is she still living? Do you think we can find her? Oh! tell me the story of your adventures again; perhaps there was something my father left out.”

She seated herself sideways on the hammock, while I resumed my wicker chair, and told again the story which I had narrated to her father the night before.

When I had finished, she said, “May Heaven reward you for all you went through.”

“I am rewarded already,” I replied.

“You mean that Heaven has rewarded you in advance by giving you a disposition that gets its happiness from making other people happy.”

I was ashamed of my poor attempt at a compliment and said, “Yes, that is what I meant”—though it was nothing of the kind—“only I am not clever at expressing myself.”

“Do you think that last shot of yours killed Ngaraki?” she asked, with a gentle concern in her voice, for I had told her more about the chief than I had to Grey the previous evening.

“I hope not,” I replied; “he was a noble fellow, and had a fine hatred of the Vile Tohungas, because, as he said, they were the Destroyers of Women.”

A slight change of expression passed over her face, and with a quick intuition she said:

“There is something you have kept back. Almost my only memory besides that of my mother’s face is what I think must have been an image carved out of marble, all white and beautiful. Did you see any such thing?”

“No, I did not see what you speak of, but I saw Ngaraki hold up his arms and gaze—like the Twelfth Tohunga I have told you about—up through the darkness to something which he knew was far above, and I judged from the chief’s manner that the object he was addressing was sublime and beautiful.”

There was a silence, during which Crystal was evidently engaged in trying to recall more of this earliest memory, while I was considering whether, if I spoke of Kahikatea’s experience, I should be breaking my promise to Te Makawawa. At length, proceeding on the argument that his discovery was independent of the old chief’s revelations, I concluded that I was on safe ground.

I said, “Now that you have mentioned the matter, I might tell you that I have a friend who says he has seen that beautiful image in a high cave in the mountain. How he got there I hardly know, and how he got out again he does not know himself, but he says he saw the marble statue of a lovely woman, young—almost a girl. She was standing near the mouth of the cave with her arms outstretched, as if to some vision in the western sky, and on her face was stamped a divine and radiant beauty, while her form, still and cold, yet full of motion, seemed ready to spring to life at a touch. The prayers of all women who lift their eyes unto the hills were upon her lips. The sightless eyes derived their love-light from the longing expressed by the whole figure yearning forward to some glorious future of our race when——”

I paused, for while I had been speaking Crystal’s hands had clasped themselves together in her lap, a rapt look had come to her eyes, and my thoughts wandered from the statue. However beautiful, however dazzling it might be, it could not be more so than this girl before me. Therefore, as I said, my thoughts wandered from the statue; I paused and she, with a start, turned her eyes upon me with looks of serious wonder.

“What a symbol of the ideal woman!” she said. “All white—standing far above the world—waiting, with a prayer upon her lips, for the dawn of a brighter day. She is the higher self of all women who wait and pray, and try to be white. What did your friend think?”

“He thought just what you think. Indeed, he even went so far as to fall madly in love with that ideal woman in his own strange, poetical style, and he now swears he will find his way to that cave to look upon her face again. Pygmalion and Galatea make a very pretty story between them, but don’t you think it’s rather a wild kind of poetry for a man of the nineteenth century to love a stone?”

She smiled a sweet, sad smile at one of the little leaves overhead, as it opened and shut its tiny door against the blue. “Surely it is not the stone your poetical friend has fallen in love with,” she said presently; “it is the beauty and meaning depicted on that stone—how, and by whom, is a mystery.”

The breakfast bell rang vigorously from the verandah, and covered the silence with which I greeted her last remark. It was not because I saw any reason for secrecy that I kept this part of Te Makawawa’s secret, but simply because it had been tacitly understood between him and me that it was not a matter for repetition.

Crystal rose from the hammock, and saying that her father would be waiting for us, led the way towards the house.

As she hastened before me among the trees of the garden, and, later, when she stood and waited for me on the verandah steps, looking down between the clustering vines, I thought that any man, no matter how poetical, was a fool to fall in love with the beauty depicted on a stone, when the world of living things contained such loveliness in the flesh. Truly it was as Kahikatea had said: the woman who had conceived the image of Hinauri and reproduced it upon the stone could not have borne an unlovely child. Yet to say that Crystal Grey was “not unlovely” would be a very inadequate description. More positive statements than that would have fallen from lips more matter-of-fact than mine. If eyes were made for seeing, then Crystal Grey had her own excuse for being, as someone somewhere sings, but if words were made for description, the subtle charm of this child of dreams could find no vehicle but music.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE CHIEF OF THE VILE TOHUNGAS.

Having made up his mind to accompany me with his daughter on our search expedition, Dreamer Grey began setting his sheep-run and his household matters in order, in view of an absence which might prove prolonged. It was necessary to engage a competent manager to look after things, and this meant a delay of at least a week, which, however, would afford ample time to prepare for the journey. During the first two or three days of this week I saw much of Grey, helping him with his sheep and various other things that had to be seen to. As a consequence we got to know and trust each other well.

Tiki, who worshipped ‘the little maiden’ as if she were a divine being, and, when she spoke to him in his own tongue, replied invariably with a mixture of acquired politeness and native poetry, half comical, half grand to listen to, had made himself and me thoroughly uneasy about that taepo he had seen in Cazotl’s boat. With the wisdom of a savage, who, long accustomed to intertribal wars, knows almost intuitively when he is being tracked, if not why, Tiki had it firmly fastened in his mind that the people on the yacht ought to be watched. As I had not informed Tiki of my suspicion that we had been tracked along the whole course of our journey, I regarded his independent view more seriously than if he had known and exaggerated my own weird feeling in regard to that wizened negro.

“Very well, Tiki,” I said, the day after our arrival, when he spoke about it, “if you think ‘the little maiden’ is in danger from those people you might keep your eye on them.”

He needed no second permission. From that time I saw very little of him for several days, but I knew he was keeping a strict eye on the movements of Cazotl and his crew. It was not until the evening of the fourth day after our arrival that my suspicions received verification, and his watchfulness nearly cost him his life.

In the evening of that day, when Grey was busy with some correspondence in his library, I strolled down into the garden, where I knew I should find Crystal, for I had seen her go out some time before with her sketching book. I had dreams of a heaven on earth—indeed, I should have been less than human if more than three days had passed over my heart without bringing my ‘love at first sight’ to a stage in which I felt that the garden where Crystal moved and had her being was a sacred place. Sweetness lingered in the air. The dreamy trees, as they rolled in the summer zephyrs, made music which could not be written down; the rustic retreat beneath the hazels was full of an influence which I can only describe as the presence of angels lingering in an atmosphere which has been purified for them. Sitting here alone late at night, I had been able to cast aside the littleness of my life and feel that by right of an ennobling love I might remain there awhile on sufferance. I was aware that a great change had taken place in me. A new world had sprung into being, and the splendour of its sun, moon, and stars was centred in Crystal.

It was with a feeling that all this must soon come to an avowal of love, as surely as water boils at a given temperature, that I sought her that evening in the garden; and, I reflected, it would in all probability reach a sudden end just as surely as the same water under different conditions freezes at a given degree, for in all sober reason, who or what was I to deserve the love of such a girl? But I went to find her all the same, and making my way to the retreat beneath the nut-trees, held aside the leaves about the entrance and looked in.

Crystal was sitting in the wicker chair with an open book on her knees. Her hat was laid aside, and a wisp of her raven hair, fanned loose from the good-natured mass, half screened her cheek.

“May I come in?” I asked.

“Yes, of course you may,” she laughed, looking up and brushing the wayward wisp back into its place again. “Come and read me some of Kawana Kerei’s legends in the original Maori.” She held up the book as she spoke.

“In the original Maori?” I said, seating myself on the rough bench against the hazel stems. “That reminds me. I saw a picture in an out-of-the-way corner of the drawing-room to-day with something in Maori written beneath it: ‘Degrade the pure one! Whose is the task? Mine! Mine!’ Did you paint that picture?”

“Yes,” she replied simply; “I painted it quite lately.”

Seeing by her manner that she was a little confused, I asked: “Is it founded on some Maori legend?”

“No; it is—it is——” She hesitated, with her eyes cast down; then, after a pause, looked up with a shy smile and asked: “Have you ever had a very vivid dream, of which you can remember every detail so accurately that it seems like a real experience?”

“No,” I said; “my imagination is not strong enough for that; but if you are going to say that picture was painted from a dream of your own I shall believe you.”

She leaned forward in her chair and half whispered: “Yes, it was; I saw it as plainly as I see you now, Wanaki,”—she had caught my Maori name from Tiki—“even more distinctly, if that is possible.”

“Tell me your dream,” I said. “I could not see the faces of the men in the picture, as the light was not good, but I judge from the legend that they were evil. It is strange that you should see unlovely things in your dreams. Will you tell it me?”

“It is rather a terrible subject,” she said, “and I don’t think I quite understood it even when I had painted the picture. Perhaps you will tell me what it means. I dreamed that I went away over the sea for thousands of miles. The silver-tipped waves shone beneath in the bright moonlight, and the little islands, fringed with palms and belted with coral, were studded everywhere on the ocean. At last I came to a vast country, where, in the interior, there were great hills and mountain lakes, impassable swamps and deep wildernesses. I saw ancient ruins and long lines of what looked like giant cactus——”

“Mexico,” I said, thinking aloud.

“It may have been; it was vast and it was tropical. In my dream I found myself standing among the ruined pillars of what must once have been a colossal temple. Now, it usually happens in a dream that one sees things vaguely, but in my dream it was different. I saw every detail. The scale-like feathers on the huge stone snakes that were coiled up the pillars, the glittering eyes of the vampire bats that clung about them, the huge green lizard that basked in a patch of moonlight on the stone floor—all these were clear and distinct, and on the heavy, broken stonework overhead, supported by the pillars, were shadowy masses of creeping plants, with here and there a glistening aloe or clump of white flowers catching the moonlight through the crevices.

“As I was looking at these things in my dream a murmur of voices came from within. I advanced between the treble row of pillars and saw a large inner space where there were a number of figures moving about a tall column. They were men of different nationalities, and they chanted a strange song while they looked up at the full moon which poured its rays down into the open space. These men had strong, evil faces, with eyes that flashed red in the moonlight; I can remember each one perfectly, and have drawn them as I saw them.”

She paused as if she were recalling the vivid scene, and, in the few moments’ silence, my mind flew back to the Vile Tohungas of the Pit gazing up at the full moon, nursing their stomachs and curling their granite lips disdainfully as they worshipped. Ngaraki, no doubt, would have read in this dream a word from his Great Tohungas of the Earth to the effect that the Vile Brotherhood of Huo still existed, striving to work out the age-long degradation of Woman, and, above all, to destroy his ancient goddess, when, as the Daughter of the Dawn, she should return. Just as the sacred fire of Hinauri had been nursed in the breasts of her guardians through pre-Maori races up to the present, so the baleful red fire of the Vile Tohungas, taken into the north by their servant fleeing from the wrath of Zun, may have been kept burning through pre-Toltec civilisations even unto this day. In spite of myself, this idea was growing upon my mind, when Crystal continued.

“While I watched, their chant to the moon ended; and, as the last notes fell, I fancied I could hear them rolling back into the distance like the close of a song sung by a great multitude in the open air. Then a large black mirror was brought out of the darkness and fixed in position so that the moonray was reflected high up on to a dark part of the smooth stone wall of the ruin. They began a wild orgy round the pillar. It came to a sudden silence, and all stood still, gazing at the moonlight on the wall. I looked also and saw, not on the rock, but in the distance through the rock, what looked like the central thoroughfare of some great city. By the glare of many lamps, high and low, I saw carriages crossing and re-crossing, while omnibuses for ever stopped and moved on again. I saw people moving to and fro upon the broad pavements; all about were women—many of them proud-looking and beautiful—who appeared to be waiting for someone. I did not understand what they were doing there, but when the men in the open space of the temple cried ‘It is well! It is well!’ I knew that the vision had shown them the working out of some great wrong.

“The picture vanished, and they returned to their orgy, which grew more terrible and furious, then stopped suddenly as before, while they remained gazing fixedly at the moonlight on the wall. A second time there came a scene—not the same place, though the people acted in just the same way—and this also was greeted with the cry, ‘It is well! It is well!’

“It vanished, and a third time the wild orgy was carried on. It reached a pitch of fury which horrified me, and, when it stopped suddenly, and they stood gazing at the wall, the vision came again. But this time it was the white figure of a woman standing among the trees of a garden far away. The place was bathed in peaceful sunlight. It was a sun-picture reflected by the moon from a distant spot. I could not see the features of the woman, but her arms were raised to the sky, and she seemed to be praying. Then, as if in answer to her prayer, there came, out of the blue, beings that seemed more like gods and goddesses than men and women. They came thronging down towards the world—men with noble looks and perfect forms, and women with serene, heavenly faces full of all the tender goodness that should belong to a woman. They appeared to separate to the four quarters of space, and I thought that here was a race of more perfect beings coming to people this earth in answer to the cry of the woman.

“At a sound of murmuring and confusion, I turned to the other watchers in the open space, and, as I did so, one among them, who seemed to be chief, stood out from the rest and held up a threatening hand towards the far-off vision. He laughed, and his voice was more animal than human. Then he roared out the words you saw beneath my picture: ‘Degrade the pure one! Whose is the task? Mine! Mine!’ and with these words ringing in my ears I woke. That was the dream; was it not strange?”

“Very strange,” I said; “but your father called me as I was glancing at the picture, and I had not time to examine it very clearly. I should like to have a good look at it if I may.”

“Yes, I’ll run and get it now.”

“Let me go,” I volunteered. But she was before me, and ran up to the house. While she was gone I cast my memory over the extraordinary dream she had related. Matter of fact as I was, I could not but see that if ever there was a meaning in a dream there was a meaning in this. The Destroyers of Woman exulting at the slow undermining of mankind in the mass, their threat hurled at Woman as the Mother of a nobler and more godlike race, their resolve to degrade her as such, so that this world should be peopled with dull, coarse forms, informed by vile minds, such as their own evil faces portrayed—all this, I reflected with astonishment, was indeed the tale of Ngaraki the savage, retold from the heart of an innocent girl.

My reflections were cut short by the reappearance of Crystal with the picture.

“See!” she said, holding it up to the full light; “that is the man who roared out the words. Why—what is—oh! Mr. Warnock, what is the matter?”

I had turned from the picture with a gasp, and had sat down on the wooden bench with my face buried in my hands. I looked up as she repeated her words and saw mingled bewilderment and concern on her lovely face.

“It is the face of a fiend,” I said, “not of a man.”

“But why are you so strange? And why do you clench your teeth like that? You’re as pale as death—surely, Wanaki, the face of a fiend on canvas cannot be so terrible to look at!”

“It is the face of a fiend,” I repeated fiercely, half beside myself with maddening fears, “not of a man.”

It was the face of Cazotl. And, in those evil features, I traced a resemblance which had eluded me on my first sight of the Mexican in the flesh—a resemblance to the bold granite features of the chief of the Vile Tohungas of the Pit, so fiercely cursed by Ngaraki.

Very weird to me was this strange, circumstantial suggestion that the legendary chief of the Vile Tohungas had returned to be the actual head of a brotherhood whose aims and objects were identical with those of ancient time. Yet forcible and valid seemed the conception that as the guardians of Hinauri had brought their protecting curses down from the remotest past, so her enemies, who, although driven far into the north as the aged chief had said, had preserved their continuity as a Vile Brotherhood through the ages, had handed on even into the present their hatred of the Pure One, always with the aim of destroying her or causing her to forget her Sign of Power. For awhile my shrewd, practical scepticism struggled against a strong unity of evidence derived independently from different sources. The aged chief’s belief that the Vile Ones would return, Crystal’s dream picture of the Destroyers of Women, the undeniable resemblance of their chief to Cazotl and to the granite image in the abyss—these things pointed my mind to strange conclusions; but when I reviewed the conflicting purposes of the Good and the Vile of ancient time and identified them with the conflicting purposes of Ngaraki and Cazotl, I was for a moment almost tempted to throw my common-sense to the winds and say that the ancient giants of the two priesthoods had returned again and again to the earth to continue the fierce struggle begun at the very foundations of the world. But if Cazotl were the arch enemy of Ngaraki and the would-be destroyer of Hinauri, why should he have appeared to Crystal Grey in a dream? And why, again, should he seem to be in pursuit of her? A vague apprehensive shuddering within me was the only answer to these questions.

CHAPTER XV.
THE DARKNESS PUTS FORTH A TENTACLE.

That night, long after the house was quiet, I remained leaning on the sill of my bedroom window, looking down on the peaceful garden below and turning matters over in my mind. The night wind sighed and died away in faint puffs upon the trees. A midnight hush was falling upon everything—a midnight hush and something more: great black clouds were banking up seaward, and the roses round my window were sending out heavy odours, such as flowers do before a thunderstorm. The air became sultry as the inky clouds banked higher and higher. Then the land wind fell altogether and dead silence ensued, in which I could hear the titoki-berries opening on their little hinges, and a strange sound of a going in the high tops of the native trees in the plantation, while always the leaves of the aspens tossed and turned in sad unrest.

It may have been the oppressiveness of the air that weighed me down with a vague presentiment of evil, though now I look back upon it I am inclined to think my feelings were owing to a strong antipathy to an evil thing. This antipathy must have been aroused and strengthened by the discovery recorded in the last chapter. Crystal’s dream had filled me with feelings even keener, I thought, than those which had taken possession of Ngaraki, for he, so I reasoned in my ignorance, had to do merely with inert stones, one sacred, others cursed; whereas I had to do with flesh and blood. I had little doubt that Crystal’s dream was one of those strange instances of second sight which sometimes come to people who live pure lives in quiet places, where they are in close touch with the nature they can see, and in closer touch with the nature which they cannot see. The likeness of the face in the picture to the face of Cazotl was no mere fancied resemblance. It was striking. It was real. The details of the picture, too, were true to life, and such as no amount of study from books could produce. This I coupled with the knowledge that Crystal had never been away from home except for seven successive years spent at school in Dunedin. I was driven to the conclusion that there was something in this dream, and, if something, why not everything? As I leaned over the window-sill I pondered many things deeply. Whatever might have been the reason of tracking us all the way from the Table Land the Mexican’s presence in the Sound appeared to me to be the speedy carrying out of the threat he had delivered in the dream. I could well understand that Crystal, with her high ideals and living energy, was of those women whose very existence is a nail in the coffin of the fiend in human shape whose glance first strikes the lily from your hand, and then the truth from beneath your feet. Consequently, on the one side deepened my love for this perfect woman with the eyes of night, and on the other blazed a terrible hate for her would-be destroyer.

With these feelings I entered into the spirit of the brooding thunderstorm, and, knowing that sleep was impossible, I resolved to go out of the house, and take my thunder and lightning in the garden. I had always been fond of a thunderstorm—for in a land where there are few isolated trees and many bold mountain tops, the danger from lightning is very small—but on this occasion I welcomed it with a kind of vivid pleasure, as it was in strict accordance with my mood.

Going downstairs, I found a mackintosh on the hat-stand in the hall and put it on. Then, making my way quietly out of the house, I went round the verandah to see if Tiki was asleep. I was not surprised to find his mattress of straw unoccupied. He was on the war track. Probably he had slept by day, and was not watching the yacht in the interests of ‘the little maiden.’

As I found my way on to the lawn I heard the first rumble of the thunder over the hills in the distance. The fan-like branches of the cedars were moving restlessly, as if the terrified air did not know which way to turn. I could just see their vague outlines against the blacker sky.

While I stood listening to the ominous whispers of the cedar-branches, a blinding flash lighted up the place, throwing the wall of pines above the plantation into clear relief. Then, some miles away, the thunder crashed and rattled among the hills. In the silence between the lightning and the thunder, however, I heard what I took to be a dog or a cat running softly on its four feet across the lawn from the plantation. My mood of dark hate blinded my usual wariness, and it never occurred to me that it might be something else. After the thunder came silence, and then another flash scribbled down the indigo sky into the hills, and, while it lighted my surroundings as clear as noonday, my glance happened to fall upon some gnarled, twisted, and charred remains of a patch of scrub which had lately been burnt, about twenty yards distant, and just midway between the plantation and the trees beneath which I stood. One of the grotesque fragments, a trifle thicker than the others, was twisted in such a peculiar way that its weirdness caught my attention, and when the flash had passed I sauntered carelessly towards it and waited. The peal of thunder was scarcely over when the vivid lightning streamed down again, and when I looked for the weird effect of the charred patch, it seemed to me that the grotesque-looking twist was gone. At the same instant something struck my hat behind—something which I mistook for the first large drop of the thunder-shower—and, dismissing the apparent change in the burnt-out patch of scrub with the passing explanation that it was owing to my change of position, I sauntered on towards the path that led out beneath the wall of trees into the fields of the valley. As I went I certainly thought it strange that one drop of rain should fall alone, and wondered vaguely what it was that had struck my hat during the vivid flash.

Passing through the plantation and the wall of pines, whose leaves threw out a resinous odour in the sultry air, I turned and walked back along the outside of the plantation, intending to re-enter the enclosure by a small gap which led directly on to the lawn. As I drew near this, and flash after flash lighted up the place, I saw from time to time something, which at first I took for a post, standing in an open space some thirty paces away from the plantation. When I came nearer to it, however, the lightning’s glare brought out the object in bold relief, and it looked more like a man standing bolt upright in the open field. The thunder now followed sharp on the heels of the lightning with a deafening crash right overhead, and the heavy rain came down without warning. Buttoning the mackintosh close up under my chin, I struck out into the field towards the spot where I had seen the object that had aroused my curiosity.

When I calculated that I was fairly near it, I stood still and waited for the flash, for in the darkness I could see nothing. The flash came, and there, a few steps before me, with the rain dancing from his hair and glistening shoulders, stood Tiki like a statue, gazing fixedly at that part of the plantation where the gap led through on to the lawn.

In the brief interval between the lightning and the thunder I called his name:

“Tiki!”

The words left my lips as the darkness clapped down like the door of a vault, and in the two seconds that ensued I listened and called again, but there was only the ready reply of the thunder breaking like an avalanche overhead.

The next moment I reached the Maori’s side in the darkness, touched him, shook him, called him, but he made no answer. I could hear the rain pattering on his bare shoulders; I could hear my own voice against the final echo of the thunder; then, as the rain held up a moment and a weird shuddering afterthought of the elements ricochetted across the sky, I stood still, wondering what strange state the Maori had fallen into that he stood there like a dead tree-trunk in the field.

The next flash startled me. It showed Tiki with his teeth set and his eyes fixed. He appeared like one in that strange cataleptic state in which the mind and senses are more or less alive, but all volition is gone. As my eyes rested upon him I detected on his shoulder a slight stain of blood, which slowly trickled from a wound in which a small reed dart of two or three inches in length was still sticking. All this was imprinted upon my eye while the light lasted, but it was not until darkness supervened that the picture was developed. I found the dart and pulled it out. Then, as the heavy tread of Tawhaki again shook the rafters on the House of Tane overhead, I came to the horrible conclusion that this was the work of that wizard negro—that the thing which had struck my hat by the cedars was a poisoned dart of the same kind—that the gnarled and twisted fragment was the negro himself, that——

A shudder ended my train of reasoning. The door of the house was unbarred!

That wizard devil must have been on his way to the house when he discharged that dart at me!

With terrible thoughts surging through my brain, with the phantom cry of Cazotl, “Degrade the Pure One!” ringing in my inner ears, and the passing conjecture that he was now waiting with a boat on the beach for the return of his wizard minion with Crystal, bereft of all volition like Tiki, I dashed across the space that separated me from the gap which led towards the house. No helping flash favoured me on the way, and when I reached the trees I had to grope about for the opening. At last I found it and proceeded to make my way through, but, just as I reached the centre of the plantation, the lightning forked down right on to the lawn and ran along the ground. For quite five seconds a dazzling light revealed the way on to the lawn, and in that brief space of time things happened which five seconds will not suffice to tell.

Straight before me on a narrow path between two pine trunks, was the lithe figure of the hideous negro in the act of groping his way through from the house as the lightning fell. In one hand he held a reed tube several feet long, and with the other he was feeling for the tree trunk on his right. Behind him I had a dim idea of a white-robed figure; but I did not shift my eyes from the negro, for he saw me as soon as I saw him, and the tube was moving towards his wizened lips. With a spring I was on to him, and, catching the tube with one hand just as he set it to his lips, I turned it aside, gave him a violent thrust in the mouth with it, wrenched it away, and flung it on the ground. Then I gripped him by the throat, and it was just as we rolled back together into the bushes that the bright light went out, and our brief struggle went on in the darkness.

It was brief, for I defy any man to hold a creature of that kind unless his hand, like Kahikatea’s, could meet right round his neck. He twisted and turned like an eely fiend, wrenched his throat out of my grasp, and wriggled away, leaving me snatching at air and tree trunks.

The thunder rolled off in an angry growl. As it ceased the same wild laugh that I had heard before came from somewhere far away. Mistrusting that laugh, and thinking that the negro was in hiding near by, waiting to make a dash to snatch up his deadly weapon, I quickly scrambled towards the place where I had thrown it, and soon found it among the leaves in the darkness.

Then I remembered the figure in white that I had seen following the negro, and stood peering before me, listening and waiting for the next flash. I would have called, “Who’s there?” but I knew it was best to preserve perfect silence with that wizard thing, for there was no telling what he might do with his infernal poisoned darts, even without a tube. However, I could not resist throwing out a gentle hint that I was prepared for him, and that his safest plan was to beat a retreat. Taking my revolver from my hip pocket, where I always carried one, I fired a shot up into the trees. It was answered by the hideous laugh from far away down the Sound, but it followed so quickly on the report that I knew the author of that laugh, now a confessed ventriloquist, was near at hand. He was evidently waiting for the next flash to recover his tube which I held in my hand.

The flash came, and the sight it revealed I shall never forget. There stood Crystal in the path before me, draped in her night garments soaked through and through. Her long black hair, in which flashed countless diamonds of rain, fell loose about her like a veil. Her mysterious eyes, now like polished obsidian, were fixed in a glassy stare. Her face was set and pale, like a piece of beautiful marble. She was in the same state as Tiki, conscious of much that was passing, as I learned afterwards, but obedient only to impressions that had been set upon her by the will of another, who had taken control of her own. On her shoulder, showing through a rift of her hair, was a stain of blood upon the white linen, but the dart had been withdrawn.

No sooner had the flash of light passed than that controlling will was expressed by a voice, harsh and hollow, coming from a little distance outside the plantation, and pronouncing a strange word in a

“THE FLASH CAME, AND THE SIGHT IT REVEALED I SHALL NEVER FORGET. THERE STOOD CRYSTAL IN THE PATH BEFORE ME, DRAPED IN HER NIGHT GARMENTS.”

language unknown to me. At the sound Crystal attempted to move past me in the darkness, evidently impelled by the suggestion that she must follow. But with one arm I caught her round the waist and held her back. She struggled violently with all her strength to follow the voice as it repeated the strange word from further in the field, and it dawned upon me, from what little I knew of this old and new world black magic of control by suggestion, that if I restrained her by force the result might be some strange twist of the brain or aberration of the nervous centres. So I let her move on, retaining one of her hands and walking by her side for a short distance into the field. A flash revealed a figure gliding ahead of us, and in order to make him glide a little quicker, I fired four revolver shots in succession after him. Then, acting upon an idea which had occurred to me, I tried to imitate the voice and the strange word he had used. After two or three attempts beneath my breath, I made the peculiar sound, coming to a halt at the same time.

It was effective: Crystal stopped also and turned towards me.

Repeating the word I drew her gently back towards the plantation, and she followed obediently. It was with the idea that her sense of sight might contradict her sense of hearing that I pressed her eyelids down and bound my handkerchief over her eyes, lest, when the lightning flashed, she should see me and become aware of this deception within a deception.

Thus reiterating the guiding sound which, by the bond of suggestion placed upon her by the infernal negro wizard, represented his will, I wrapped the mackintosh about her and led her through the plantation, over the lawn, and into the house. There, obedient to my instructions, given to her in the harsh voice of the negro, she remained in the care of Grey and the servants, with whom I succeeded in placing her in touch, while I, having hidden the reed tube in a safe place, hurried out to look for Tiki.

The storm had passed over, and was grumbling itself out in the distance. A bright star shone down through a break in the clouds, but it was still too dark to see clearly, and it was with difficulty I made my way to the place where Tiki had been standing.

After searching about for a long time and finding nothing, I was favoured by the moon in its last quarter rising over the hills inland and showing through the heavy cloud drift. By this pale light I corrected my position and searched again. But there was no sign of Tiki. Had he recovered and gone after the negro to kill him, or had he followed obediently under the influence of the poison and the voice?

CHAPTER XVI.
WHICH REVEALS THE WAY OF THE SORCERER.

After a restless night, gladdened somewhat by the thought that I had saved Crystal from a terrible fate, but for the most part troubled by fears of further danger, I rose early, and, passing through the gap in the plantation where I had encountered the wizard negro, walked over the field and down the valley towards the beach, thinking that perhaps I might learn something of Tiki’s fate.

Finding nothing to guide me, I climbed a high hill seaward, which overlooked the lower part of the Sound. From that vantage ground I could see nearly the whole of the slender arm of the sea which reached inland, the failing breath of the land breeze ruffling its waters. A glance at the sheltered cove where the yacht had been anchored told me that Cazotl had either shifted his position or put out to sea. I scanned the whole length of the Sound, and at last discerned the yacht passing into the shadows of the high cliffs which opened on to the Pacific. Her sails were swelling out to the breeze, and it was with a feeling of great relief that I watched her disappear between the high rocks. But my relief did not outlive reflection, for I soon saw that it was not at all probable that Cazotl would relinquish his object after one failure.

The sun had risen high in the sky by the time I had returned to the house, and while waiting for the breakfast-bell I strolled round the verandah. When I came to the corner dedicated to Tiki, I was surprised to find that faithful Maori coiled up on his bed of straw, wrapped in his mat, and fast asleep. He must have returned in my absence.

With an inconsiderate impatience to know what had befallen him I stooped down and touched him on the shoulder, knowing from experience that the slightest thing would wake him But he did not stir. I then shook him soundly, but he made no sign. With a sudden apprehension I bent over him and listened for his breathing. It was regular and deep; he was evidently sleeping off the effects of that strange poison, and, as far as I could judge, he was best left alone.

On going inside I encountered Grey coming downstairs.

“Good morning, Warnock,” he said, as he grasped my hand. “That was an extraordinary affair last night—can’t think what possessed the girl: she’s never done anything of that kind before. Good job you saw her, or there’s no telling what might have happened.”

“Yes, it was lucky I happened to be abroad,” I replied; “I went out to enjoy the thunderstorm.” Then I explained briefly how it had occurred, but omitted all mention of the negro and his infernal arts, as I thought it was better to keep that mysterious and alarming part of the matter to myself.

“Is she up yet?” I asked in conclusion.

“No; I’ve just been in to see her. She’s fast asleep and seems perfectly all right.”

“Ah! yes,” I said with assumed carelessness; “that’s the way out of those peculiar fits: to let them sleep as long as ever they will.”

With that we went to breakfast, and discussed at length the details of our proposed journey north, which was now finally fixed for the following day. Grey’s manager was to arrive on the morrow, and, the day after, we were to proceed overland to a seaport some thirty miles to the north, and there take our passage in a sailing ship which Grey had ascertained was bound for Golden Bay, the coast line of which was situated not fifty miles from the Table Land.

From time to time during the day I learned by repeated inquiries that Crystal was still sleeping peacefully, but my mental state was one of extreme tension; for, being ignorant of the after effects of the strange poison, I was tormented with a thousand apprehensions. Every half-hour I paid visits to Tiki, for in his condition I felt I had something to go by. It calmed my fears a little to find that his pulse was uniformly regular, that his breathing was normal, and that there were no signs of anything more alarming than a very deep sleep which, as far as I could judge, was perfectly natural. In this way, taking Tiki’s state to represent hers, I watched over Crystal in my imagination the whole day long, now tortured with fears for the issue, and now relieved by the healthy symptoms.

In my wanderings in and out and about the house I remembered the wizard’s reed tube, and found it again in the place where I had hidden it. It was a strange-looking reed, seven knotted, and marked with peculiar characters and signs. The darts were arranged in little receptacles round the mouthpiece. Three were left. I extracted one and inspected it. There was a blood-red tip to it, and this crimson dye I knew was the poison. The safest course would be to burn the accursed things, lest they should do damage by accident. Accordingly, I took them to the kitchen grate and burnt them. What the poison was I have no idea, but, as I threw them in one by one, each emitted a jet of some gas, which burned many colours in succession, giving a peculiar wail, like the cry of a tortured dumb animal. So horrible, and yet so plaintive and pathetic was this faint sound, that I was inclined to confess there was more than poison in those accursed messengers of evil. Then I burned the tube and returned to my restlessness.

At length, late in the afternoon, I was standing beneath the nut-trees, whither I had wandered in my anxiety, when, hearing a rustle of a dress outside, I looked up and encountered Crystal as she parted the screen of leaves and came towards me. My fears bounded off in an instant, for her face was the picture of buoyant health, and the flush of confusion on her cheeks made her look radiant.

She extended her hand to me and said, “It’s very absurd for people to walk in their sleep, but I am very grateful to you all the same.”

“What are you grateful for?” I asked, wondering how much of the affair she remembered.

“Why, father told me you found me walking in the garden and brought me in,” she replied, looking hard at me with unwavering eyes, though her cheeks were crimson.

“Oh! he told you that, did he?”

“Yes, but not until I made him. He wouldn’t tell me anything about it at first.”

“You remembered something of what happened, then, and questioned him for the rest?”

“Yes, I remembered a little and insisted on being told the whole story.”

“Will you tell me what you remember?” I urged.

She passed beneath the head of the hammock, and walking up to the hedge, plucked a piece of the pink geranium-bloom. Turning to me with a shy smile she held it out towards me.

“I will give you this pretty flower,” she said lightly, “if you will never speak about it again—it was all so absurd.”

“I’m not joking, Miss Grey,” I said half angrily; “I must know—I will know.” I had a horrible fear that could only be dispelled by the knowledge that she could account for all the acts of that infernal wizard.

The smile faded from her lips. She drew herself up and anger darted from her black eyes.

“You dare to ask me what I do not choose to tell?” she said, and never was a man so withered in spirit by a look from a woman’s eyes as I was then. What was the mystery in them? They seemed to belong not to this age, but to be looking at me from the beginning of the world. For a moment I could hardly understand that they should be set in the lovely face before me.

But the flash of anger passed, and, before I could falter a crestfallen apology, she said, “Forgive me; I was forgetting all I owe to you. My temper was too hasty.”

“I think I was too hasty in demanding to know what did not concern me,” I ventured. “Perhaps I have been too hasty all along in meddling with affairs that——”

“Ah! don’t say that,” she broke in, with a sharp pain in her voice; “you have found me a father, you will give me back my mother, and I—I have spoken angrily to you.” A tear glistened on her lashes; her bosom heaved beneath the white folds of her dress, and in her eyes was a tender light of love.

A wild thrill passed through me. In another moment I should have done a rash thing—indeed, in after years I often wished I had done that rash thing, that I had clasped that lovely one in my arms for a brief second and then been struck dead. But the lapse of half that time showed that the love-light was not for me. She raised her eyes, but not to mine, and said with sweet repetition, “My mother! My mother!”

With a slight start she recalled herself and turned to me.

“Do you know, I feel there is hardly anything I could not tell to you,” she said. “That was why I told you my dream, which I have never told to another living soul, not even to my father. And now, if, after what I said a minute ago, you would care to hear what I remember of last night I will tell you—but it is all very stupid.”

“If I think it is stupid I will say so,” I said.

Crystal seated herself upon the hammock, and, taking off her hat, placed it in her lap, where she proceeded to fasten the geranium-bloom among the other fresh flowers therein, as an excuse for keeping her eyes cast down in shyness at what she considered the stupidity of her story. I remained standing, for my suspense was keen, and I felt that I should understand it better than she did.

“Well,” she said, “I dreamed that I was sitting on a bank, when a black snake suddenly hissed and darted at my shoulder. The pain of the bite and the horror of the thing woke me, or I suppose I dreamed that it woke me, for what followed was exactly as if I had been awake, though of course it was nothing more than a vivid dream. Is it possible to dream that you are sitting up in bed, wide awake? It was very strange, but I thought that I was awake, and that I had lost all power to move. For a moment I listened to the thunder. Then I heard a voice—a peculiar, harsh, hollow voice, telling me that I must follow its directions, and be oblivious of all other things—for this, the voice, was the only thing. It may seem strange, but I did as it directed without the slightest hesitation. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to get up and walk downstairs in obedience to this ugly voice. Out of the house and across the lawn I followed it, until I came to the way that leads through the plantation. There for a moment I seemed to be at a loss. Then something—I cannot tell what, except that it was not the voice—must have stood in my way and held me, for, when I could again hear the only thing there was in the world, I was unable to follow, although I struggled to do so. At last the obstacle let me pass, and soon afterwards I caught up with the voice, which guided me back again into the house, where it told me that it had no further authority over me, and that other voices should command me for awhile. After that I heard it no more, and I have confused memories of taking a hot bath, with Jane and Mary fussing about me. Then I must have gone to bed, but I can remember nothing more till I awoke an hour ago. Was it not absurd? But some of it must have been real, for I did walk out into the garden.”

I reflected a moment before I spoke. Her memory evidently covered every inch of the ground. The pain in the shoulder, which must have been the prick of the negro’s dart discharged during the first flash of lightning after he gained her room; the falling under the influence of the poison a moment later; the hearing of the voice in the darkness, and the ready obedience to its suggestions; the struggling with an obstacle which was not the voice, but myself, and subsequently the finding of what she mistook for the voice and followed back to the house—these were the points of a story, the details of which must have taken place in the few minutes which elapsed between my missing the grotesque fragment in the burnt patch of scrub, and walking round the plantation to re-enter the grounds again through the opening where I had encountered the embodied “voice” and its would-be victim.

I glanced up from my rapid reflection, and, encountering Crystal’s smile at what she supposed was the absurdity of her story, said: “Your dreams affect me just as if you were recounting an adventure that had really taken place. Why do you make them so vivid?”

Then we both laughed the matter away.

Later in the evening I visited Tiki again, and found him sitting up with a puzzled expression on his face.

“Is the little maiden safe?” he asked on seeing me.

“Quite safe,” I replied, and narrated briefly what had happened. “Where were you all last night?” I inquired when I had finished.

“He Wanaki,” he replied, shaking his head slowly, “I have it somewhere in my mind where I was, but it slips away from my grasp like an eel from the hand. I have the head of the lizard, but the tail is cut off, and, though I can hear it rustling among the leaves, I cannot find it. This is the head of the lizard, O Wanaki. I watched the great canoe from sunset on into the night, and, when it was very dark, I heard a small canoe leave it and take its way towards the end of the water. I followed it along the shore, and when it came to the beach down there I stood near by in the darkness and heard some voices. Then someone made his way up the beach, and I followed the sound of his footsteps. He must have heard me, for he stopped and made a noise like the word of the weka[22] when it is hiding. E Tama! I was mad to take his head, for I knew he was going to steal the little maiden. I rushed towards the ‘word’ and laid about me with my stick. Again and again I did this, rushing at the ‘word’ in the dark to take the head of it and lay it at the feet of the little maiden. But every time I beat the air and nothing more, and every time I heard someone laugh far away in Reinga. Eta! my only fear was for the little maiden, so I followed the footsteps again up the valley until we came to the field out there. The footsteps stopped. Tawhaki was beginning to move overhead. The light of his eyes would soon show me where to strike. The light came. I saw the taepo near at hand and rushed at him. He raised a long stick to his mouth, and some stinging thing struck me in the shoulder. Then, O Wanaki, I rushed on and on over all the earth, and the darkness of Porawa closed on me as I went.

“That is the head of the lizard, O Wanaki, but the tail of it is cut off and wriggles away when I stretch out my hand to grasp it. What has happened to me between that and this is gone—gone like last year’s kohu leaves.”

For a space neither of us spoke, but my thoughts were busy. At length, jumping to a conclusion I said:

“Tiki! did you know that we are to leave here the day after to-morrow?”

“Yes; the little maiden told me so.”

“Did you know that we are going to land in Golden Bay?”

“Yes, and go overland to the Great Tapu.”

“Ah! all right—very well—now you’d better go and get something to eat.”

I rose and walked round the verandah, sick at heart. It was as I had feared. That infernal wizard had, without a doubt, gleaned all our plans from Tiki while in the obedient condition, and then sent him home to sleep, with the assurance that on waking he would remember nothing of what had taken place from the moment he fell under his influence up to the time he came out of it. There was but one conclusion to all this. Cazotl had sailed for Golden Bay to await our arrival.

CHAPTER XVII.
LOVE AT SECOND SIGHT.

It was the last day at the home of Crystal, and it was the last day, too, of my fool’s paradise, from which I was driven by a fact as startling as a flaming sword. Love at first sight was a thing I well understood, but love at ‘second sight’ was a matter which before that day I should have rejected as a wild impossibility—a thing to be sworn to only by a class of visionaries who will swear to anything, even on hearsay, provided it be sufficiently marvellous. The tale of my love at first sight, its beginning, its hopes, its fears, and its fate—not its ending—may be inferred from the brief attention I have called to it here and there in this history of adventure; but Crystal Grey’s love at ‘second sight’ for another, whom she had never seen in the flesh, but who stood none the less surely between her and me, must be told in detail.

It was scarcely surprising that a deep love which sprang up in full tide in the brief space that it requires for the senses to transmit an image to the brain and impress its meaning on the heart, should not flow silently for very long. Up to the day of which I write it had not entered Crystal’s mind that she was as a goddess in my eyes; it had not occurred to her that when, filled with thoughts of the great happiness which I, as a mere instrument in the hands of a loving Providence, had brought her, she let her dark eyes meet mine with the warm regard of a pure soul in them, I should be blinded by love into the fatal conclusion that she could return my love. But something occurred to Grey. That very morning, as we stood alone on the verandah after breakfast, he had said to me: “Warnock, my friend, I like you—I seem to have known you a long, long time. Listen to me. I have found my daughter; Heaven may will it that I shall find my wife; and then, when times are more settled, it may chance that, in the man who will have been instrumental in restoring these two greatest blessings, I may find a son.” He placed his hand on my arm, as he added with a smile, “My dear boy, I know what I am talking about. I may have forgotten nearly half of my life, but I can see what I can see. Speak to her, Warnock. Speak to her, my dear boy. Nothing would please me more than to call you my son.” With a final hearty clap on my shoulder he left me wondering how on earth he could have found out what I had revealed only to the stars and the setting sun. It is strange how people in love fancy that no one can know the fact until they are told.

So I spoke to Crystal, and in accordance with the matter-of-fact bed-rock of my nature, I did not waste many words in doing it. After spending most of the day in reviewing mazes of words which might possibly hold my feelings and convey them, I scattered everything to the winds, emptied my brain, and, with a full heart, strode down to the nut-trees, where I stood before her with my hat in my hand and said, “Crystal! I want to tell you something.”

She looked a little surprised at my first use of her Christian name, but, looking up, said sweetly, “What is it, Wanaki?”

“It is this,” I said. “I love you more than anything else in the world: so much that—that——”

I paused, for a look of pain flitted across her brow and the colour left her cheeks. She rose from her seat and stood facing me, with a soft, despairing sorrow in her eyes, while to her lovely face was added a sadness that made it more lovely still; for even in that moment, while I seemed plunged for ever into outer darkness, the sweet soul of tender pity and pain suffusing the face of the woman I loved was like balm to my crushed spirit.

“Wanaki, oh, Wanaki!” she said, “I am more sorry than I can say. I owe you everything, but I cannot return your love. Oh! I could take my heart out and crush it for what it tells me—that I cannot turn it to you: that I cannot love you, Wanaki.”

Her words sounded in my ears like a plaintive lament sung over my dead hopes, over the ashes of my heart. I knew not what to say; for awhile I stood dumb, trying to conceal my pain. But she, watching me with anxious eyes, searched it out, and turned away with a low moan. Her bosom heaved beneath her white dress—I knew it was with sorrow for me—but she said no more.

“Why?—tell me why!” I said at length, with a vague feeling that this terrible state of things required some explanation; “do you love someone else?”

She looked at me for a moment without answering. Then she said: “Yes, but—but he—I have never seen him.”

She averted her eyes and hung her head in a manner which showed me that she considered I had a kind of right to question her as to the cause of my misery.

“You love a man you have never seen?” I said quickly, feeling there was a ray of hope.

“You hated a man you had never seen,” she replied just as quickly; “the man in the picture whom you called a fiend—you hated him because his face revolted you. Then why should I not love a man I have never seen?”

“But I saw the face depicted, and I hated the meaning of it.”

“Well, I too have seen a face, and I love the meaning of it.” She spoke still sadly, but like a woman who means to hold her own.

“In the same way as you saw the other?” I asked with a gleam of intelligence.

“Yes; in dreams—in many dreams. For years my heart has been given to the heart of the man whose face I see in dreams.”

“But do you believe that man exists in the flesh?”

“Yes; I believe I shall meet him some day.” A light chased the sadness from her eyes—a light like that of a star when night is darkest.

“But you rejected the idea that the vile one, whose face you have pictured, had any original on earth—why deny to the one what you grant to the other?”

“I do not fear the vile one enough to believe in him, but my love for the other compels belief.”

“It is a phantom of the brain,” I urged on hearing this. “What proof have you that it is the presentment of a living man?”

“None, except a strange feeling I have in regard to it.”

I was silent for a little. I felt an uncompromising belief in her strange feelings.

“Listen, Wanaki,” she said after a pause. “You told me of a man who saw his heart’s desire depicted in a sculptured stone, and when you spoke of his love I said I quite understood it. I meant that his love was similar to mine: he loved the ideal woman—I love the ideal man.”

I bent my brows and tacitly admitted the similarity.

“Tell me what he is like,” I said presently, “so that I may try to understand.”

She placed her hand within the bosom of her dress and drew forth a cameo attached to a golden chain.

“Honestly,” I said as I drew near to examine it, “I do not see why a mere face should carry such conviction with it. And why,” I added to myself, as she unfastened the chain and placed the cameo in my hand, “why should a mere dream face, an unsubstantial vision of the brain stand between me and——”

There I paused, for my glance had fallen upon the face which I had just assured Crystal was a phantom of the brain.

Heavens! It was the face of my friend Kahikatea! The lofty, massive forehead, surrounded by his orderly-disorderly mane, his brows slightly bent with thought, his nostrils dilated in the way I knew so well, his lips set firm with purpose, and his eyes, full of his inexplicable love, gazing into space and slightly raised, as if to some distant mountain top—this was the picture of my friend, even down to his short brown beard and moustache—this was the man whom Crystal loved, yet had never seen in the flesh. His look recalled the moment, when, by the false grave beneath the great rimu, I asked him to come with me to search for Crystal, and he replied that he had hitched his waggon to a star, that he had made up his mind to search for Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, and would not turn aside to look for the daughter of a mortal woman.

As I gazed in silence at the face of my friend, a wicked lie rose up out of the ashes of my heart, and threatened to gain the mastery. Then I looked up and met Crystal’s eyes burning into mine, and felt my love leap up again and light the way through the dark. Thoughts crowded tumultuously through my brain, and clearest of all was the thought that Kahikatea, worshipping his ideal as depicted in the image of Hinauri, had renounced all other women, Crystal among them. Therefore it would be cruel to tell her that she was in exactly the same position as I was.

I said, “I have the same feeling about it as you have, I will regard it as the face of a living man. It is my love tells you this from the centre of my heart, for my love for you is the grandest thing I have ever known. But what should you do if, when you meet him in the flesh, you find that his love is given to another?”

“I do not know,” she replied slowly, “but my heart tells me I should be plunged into the dark.”

“But what if you found, as I have found with you, that he loves an abstraction—something less real than yourself——”

She looked up quickly. “You mean if he was like your friend, who loves the ideal woman in marble?”

Before I could reply, and while she regarded me attentively, I felt my eyelids flutter together as if the light were too strong. Then I said, “Yes, supposing he were like that friend of mine—would you despair?”

“I should not attempt to stand between him and his ideal,” she replied decisively.

I handed her back the cameo, saying, “Neither will I attempt to stand between you and yours, while you love it as you do.”

There was a pause, in which Crystal remained looking straight before her as if she had not heard my last words. Presently she turned to me with a perplexed expression and asked quickly:

“Why did you compare him to your friend? Why did you start when you saw his face? Why did you—Wanaki! there is something you are hiding from me.”

She stood before me, her bosom heaving with emotions that showed upon her face as pain and joy struggling together. I saw that it was useless for me to attempt to conceal what her quick intuition had already grasped.

“Yes,” I admitted. “I would have concealed it from you, because you would be happier not to know it. But my tongue carried me too far. The face you have shown me is the face of my friend Kahikatea, who has renounced the love of woman for love of a symbol of pure womanhood—an ideal beauty wrought upon a piece of cold marble which he has seen, and you have seen, in the mountain cave where you were born.”

The struggle between joy and pain upon her face came to an end, and joy sat there triumphant in her eyes.

“Oh! you have explained the meaning of his face. His love is far above the world. I see in his eyes the prayers of all great men for something more divine in woman—the demand for some higher strength and beauty of being than has hitherto been required of us. Ah! Wanaki, if one woman can do anything in this great world, I will see that the prayer of the man I love shall be answered to some extent in the hearts of women.”

On the plane of this high love she was safe, but I knew that there would be times when her more direct and personal love for Kahikatea would rebel against the fact that she herself was to him merely as one in a great multitude. She did not know, neither did I tell her, that although Kahikatea never lost sight of the symbolic meaning he had attached to Hinauri, yet he, in his turn, had a direct and personal love for Hinauri herself. Once, when we had been discussing that part of the legend which told of her return in the future he had said, “You call my fascination a piece of extravagant poetry, a love for a mere abstraction, but I tell you, Warnock, that if the marble Hinauri were suddenly transformed into a living woman, she would still be my ideal, but at the same time as real to me as any woman can be to the man who loves her.” Had I told Crystal flatly that the man whom she loved loved another, I could not have put more accurately what I knew; but not wishing to lessen the power of her resolve to work her love out in the world, I merely said: “Your nature is good and strong: you will carry out your resolve in the way that your star directs, but for myself, you must forgive me if during our journey north I am a sadder, if a better, man for this great love of mine.”

She looked at me sorrowfully, while a tear came from the black depths of those eyes of night and glistened in her lashes. It trembled and fell. She turned in silence and passed out through the screen of leaves. That tear was more to me than any words could have conveyed.

CHAPTER XVIII.
TE MAKAWAWA IS STARTLED.

It was a fortnight later, when after various stoppages on the way north, we sailed down across Golden Bay towards Wakatu. Mindful of my conclusion that Tiki had unknowingly divulged our plans to Cazotl, I kept it to myself, but argued with Grey that it would be better to land on the western side of Tasman Bay, proceed to Te Makawawa’s pa, and thence to the Table Land. Grey fell in with this proposal, and accordingly we passed down the coast, round Separation Point, and were landed at the mouth of the river above which the pa stood.

It was a clear, quiet morning when the boat took us in from the ship. Dreamer Grey, the brim of his buff bush hat drawn over his eyes to keep off the glare of the early sun, sat in the stern dreaming, not of a forgotten past, but of the possibilities of the near future. He flicked the ash quietly from his cigar; it fell with a hiss into the smooth water and drifted astern.

“There is the pa, look,” said Crystal, touching his arm with one hand, while with the other she pointed to the ridge of the cliff a mile away on the coast.

I followed the direction of her finger and saw, standing against a thin fleecy white cloud with a strip of summer blue beneath it, the palisading of Te Makawawa’s pa.

“It is a good omen,” I said merrily, turning towards them; “there is the pa; there is the fleecy cloud beyond it, and there in the further distance is the clear blue sky.”

Grey turned up the brim of his hat and let the sun shine on his happy face as he gazed up at the pa.

“And what is it you see in the clear blue sky, Miss Grey?” I asked, catching the now well-known look of longing in Crystal’s eyes beneath the shadow of her sun bonnet.

She looked across to me and smiled, while her hand slid down her father’s coat sleeve and pressed his own on the gunwale of the boat. Then her lips moved, and, though she said nothing, the movement could have been only the two words, “My mother!”

“A good omen let it be,” said Grey, and threw his cigar away.

“With all my heart!” I replied, knocking the dottle from my pipe and standing up, for the nose of the boat was running on to the sandy shore in a convenient place to land.

With what buoyant steps we followed Tiki along the way he knew beneath the fern palms and overhanging trees that skirted the beach! It was one of those clear, bright mornings which, on a shelving shore between the glistening bush and the sparkling sea, are only to be interpreted by the liquid song of the korimako, sipping dew and honey as he sings in the flowering trees, or by the merry fantail’s laugh, as with tail outspread she chases the gnat, which twists and turns in the sunlight.

“Tiki,” I said presently, “you go on ahead and tell Te Makawawa we are coming. We can find the way all right.”

On board the ship the sailors had fitted the Maori out with a civilised costume, and he looked supremely ridiculous, for neither had he been made for the clothes nor the clothes for him. As he vanished ahead of us I smiled, wondering what sort of a reception he would get from the old chief, whose ideas were of a most conservative nature.

“I should like to be present when Tiki stands before Te Makawawa in those clothes,” I said. “The old chief’s a gentleman of the old school: he will be scandalised.”

Hardly were the words out of my mouth when sounds of someone talking fell upon our ears, and presently we turned a bend of the path and came full upon Tiki face to face with the old chief. The latter had so warmed up to his subject that he did not see us, and partly shielded by the trees we stood and watched them in the open space before us. Te Makawawa’s attitude and picturesque garb, from the feathers in his white hair to the flowing fringe of his kaitaka, were in themselves a rebuke to Tiki; but his words added a sting to the rebuke, which made my poor faithful Maori look even more ridiculous than I had thought possible.

“Eta! you have not the dignity that belongs to our race. What have you done with it? Exchanged it for that pair of trousers, and they are put on wrong way now. What have you done with the mana of your ancestors? Given it away for that old coat, and it’s splitting under the arm. What have you done with the bravery and prowess of your tribe? Traded it for that shirt without any buttons, that collar fastened with a piece of flax, that hat which makes you look so beautiful. What have you done with the blood of the Rangitane which runs in your veins—of Toi our ancestor, and of Kupakupa, who made us Maori? I expect you have bartered it all for a bottle of waipiro. Eta! did our ancestors make scarecrows of themselves like this? Did they go to such foolishness to frighten the birds? Tiki, you’re a big fool. You’re like the stupid ones, trying to bring about the time when the Maori cannot hold up his head at all. You’re weak in the knees, and you put those trousers on to hide it. I think your whole backbone would scarcely make one good fishhook.”

“What a contrast,” whispered Crystal, who had understood the chief’s words perfectly. “I like the old fellow, even if he did steal my father and mother and myself. But don’t you think Tiki has had enough?” The poor Maori was trembling beneath the scorn of the aged one.

“I think so, yes,” I replied. “You stay here till I call you.” And I stepped out into the open space.

“Te Makawawa!”

He turned on the instant and came towards me. “He Pakeha!” he said, “the Friend of the Forest Tree. I saw the canoe coming in and came down to meet it. You have found the little maiden, Keritahi Kerei—good! Where is she?”

“O Chief! I have found the little maiden, and I have also brought the man who has forgotten the faces that he knew.”

I called to them, and they came from behind the trees.

Crystal stood before him looking like a mountain lily in her white dress. As soon as Te Makawawa’s bright eyes rested upon her he started, and, drawing back the step he was taking, remained in an attitude of astonishment. His eyes wandered from her face and form to me, and there was a question, a perplexity, almost a doubt written on the lines of his rugged visage.

“Friend of the Forest Tree! is this wild white swan, such as a man sees once in a lifetime, the little maiden?—or have you deceived me?”

“The Friend of the Forest Tree does not deceive,” said Crystal, before I could speak. “If you are Te Makawawa I am the little maiden of many moons ago whom you carried on your shoulder. Do you not remember the heitiki round my neck, and the little kaitaka of kiwi feathers I wore? See! my black eyes and hair! do you not remember them?”

She threw off her sun bonnet as she spoke, and stood facing him, as if half conscious of her sculpturesque loveliness.

The question, the perplexity, the almost-doubt deepened upon his face.

“Eta!” he said, turning to Grey; “is this your daughter with the eyes and hair of ancient night? Speak, O Man-who-has-forgotten; does Te Makawawa dream in the daytime?”

Grey, knowing nothing of the language, turned to me and we spoke together, while the chief gazed long at Crystal.

“O Chief,” I said at length, “the Man-who-has-forgotten says this is the little maiden left by Tiki in his hut while he slept. But why do you doubt my word, O Tohunga? Do you think the little white Children of the Mist have changed the child? Kahikatea and his friend have ever spoken the truth to you.”

“I do not doubt,” he replied quietly, showing me his palm. “These last days are full of dreams to me. My eyes are growing dim, and I see strange things against the setting sun. O people of the Great Tribe, take no heed of an old man’s dreams. Tiki!”—he turned to the be-trousered one with a return of his indignation—“hasten to the pa and bid them prepare a feast, and tell my maidens that a mountain lily will take root among them. Go, O Tiki, and tell them not to waste their time in laughing at a man who was once a warrior, with the blood of the Tane-nui-a-Rangi in his veins, but is now a thing that has been hatched from an egg like a bird.”

Tiki did not wait for the point of this piece of satire. He and his trousers vanished in all haste, and Te Makawawa, bidding us follow, strode before in silence.

“What a lordly savage,” said Grey, as we followed on; “but why did he seem so startled at the sight of my daughter?”

“He seemed to doubt my identity,” said Crystal.

“Perhaps it was his way of demanding proof,” I suggested, but I could not conceal from myself that there was something to be cleared up in his strange behaviour.

When we reached the pa on the high cliff Grey and I were allotted a house to ourselves, while Crystal was handed over by Te Makawawa to the charge of the maidens of highest rank, who were forcible in their expressions of joy when they found she could speak their own tongue. I caught sight of her standing among a little group, like a fair white queen among her dusky maidens. I saw by the gestures of the Maori girls that they were asking her to let down her hair. She hesitated a moment, then, withdrawing the pins, let it fall and shook the long, heavy masses out over her shoulders, till they rippled down almost to her knees. Loud cries of admiration came from the girls as they took up the loosened tresses in their hands and stroked and patted them tenderly, likening them to the undulating seaweed called rimu rehia, long, shining, glistening; and again to the darkness of the furthest caves, where the winds were bound by Maui. Thus they lifted it up and stroked and talked to it, while it awoke their simple hearts to poetry. Then, as Crystal gathered it all together again and fastened it up, they stood wide-eyed, with many expressions of wonder that pakeha women should do this strange thing.

As a result of a private talk with the old chief, I learnt that Ngaraki had paid him a visit some days before, and had told him strange things. The Great Tohungas of the Earth had spoken to him, saying that the return of Hinauri was near, and that he must lay the foundations of a new priesthood in the temple, and gather the tribes upon the Table Land. Messages had been sent to many tribes, and some had already settled upon the high plain under the rule of Ngaraki. Te Makawawa assured me they were gathered for peace, and not for war. Within the space of a few days his own tribe would journey on to the Great Tapu.

“And what is your plan for restoring Keritahi Kerei to her mother?” I asked.

“Listen, Pakeha!” he replied, lowering his voice. “The Great Tohungas do not speak to Ngaraki only. I too have heard their words—when all the world was dark and still. I will guide you and the maiden, and the Man-who-has-forgotten to the white cave where the woman still lives. But I would not meet the eye of Ngaraki, for he is fierce and terrible, and I could not explain this thing to him. Because of these things, friend, we must wait until Ngaraki goes into the islands of the south to gather together the men to whom he will teach the ancient wisdom. That will be on the morning after the full moon, for you must know, O son, that an ancient rite of the temple requires the presence of the priest on the night when the moon is full. We shall set out then on the third day from this, so that we shall reach the Table Land as Ngaraki leaves it.”

I agreed to this plan, and it was settled. In the meantime it occurred to me that, unknown to Crystal, I might take a journey to the hut of Kahikatea. Accordingly, early on the following day, I set out and arrived at the hut just as my friend was preparing for a journey.

“Have you found her?” were his first words as he came down the slope in front of his hut to meet me.

“Yes,” I replied; “she is at the pa, and I want you to come and see her. Then we could all journey together to the mountain—with Te Makawawa as a guide.”

“When are you going to start?” he asked.

“The day after to-morrow.”

“That’s too late,” he said; “I’m going to start now, as soon as I can. I’ve almost worked my way through the rock, but ran out of powder, and had to go across the bay for more.” The look in his eyes was far away and abstracted as he added: “It’s a strange undertaking, Warnock, and it is a strange madness that has laid hold of me; but there’s method in it, and I mean to see that perfect face and form again.”

I saw that the desire of the poet for the symbol of his dreams was still strong within him, but nevertheless, I fulfilled the object of my visit.

“If you wish to see a perfect face and form,” I said, “come back to the pa with me. I cannot imagine anyone more perfect than Crystal Grey. Come back and let us all go together. The ‘way of the fish’ is easier than the ‘way of the spider.’ My dear Kahikatea, long solitude has made dreams and visions too real to you.”

“I know it, Warnock, I know it,” he said fiercely. “I am as mad as a mystic in this one thing—and yet there’s a meaning in it—a grand meaning!”

He paused in a contemplative way, then, recalling himself, continued, “No; there is no woman of flesh and blood for me—only Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, and she is not flesh and blood—at least, not yet.”

He was tying up a great coil of rope as he spoke. Now he raised it on his shoulders, and I saw that he was ready to start.

“You’ll excuse my being in a hurry,” he said, and added with a smile, “such old friends as we are need not stand upon ceremony, need we? I seem to have known you for years, Warnock. Let me see—I come your way for a little and then branch off. Come along, I want to reach a certain camping-ground before dark.”

We parted where a fallen tree spanned a branch of the river. With one foot on this bridge he extended his hand to me.

“Good-bye, Warnock,” he said, wringing my hand and giving me a lingering farewell look. “If I succeed by the ‘way of the spider’ and you by the ‘way of the fish,’ we shall meet up there”—he pointed towards the mountains—“if not, then up there!” And with a movement of his head he indicated the clear blue sky.

I stood and watched him as he entered the bush on the other side of the stream, and then turned with a sigh to make my way back to the pa.

“My perfect man and my perfect woman may never even meet, much less mingle,” I said to myself. “Perhaps he will find the marble Hinauri, and then come down to earth again wedded for ever to this ideal and clothe its sublime meaning in a poem which will raise the level of the world.… and perhaps I—who can tell?——”

I dared not conclude my sentence, for beside my perfect man I felt too poor a thing to deserve the love of my perfect woman.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE DREAD MAKUTU.[23]

On the morning of the third day after our arrival at the pa we set out for the Table Land. Te Makawawa proposed that ‘the little maiden,’ whom he treated with a consideration and a quiet, dignified respect that almost amounted to worship and awe, should be carried in a kind of litter by slaves, but Crystal would not hear of it. She assured the chief she could travel twenty miles a day on foot, and Grey himself laughed at the idea of her being carried on a litter. Accordingly, as we had ample time to travel by easy stages, she walked on equal terms with the rest of us. Our party consisted of seven—we three pakehas, the chief, Tiki, and two slaves, who carried blankets and provisions. Grey and I insisted on bearing our own swags.

The aged chief went before us with a swinging stride, and very soon we struck a path which he knew: it was the very one he had often travelled between the pa and the Great Tapu in the early days when he had been guardian priest of the ancient temple. This path simplified our journey, and there was no such thing as battling with supple-jacks or struggling through fern breast high.

They held happy hours for me, those three days in the bush. To be near Crystal was all I could expect, and the little incidents of the journey are written in my memory—if not here. It is sufficient to say that day by day she was always in sight, and, by night, when we camped, we three formed a party round one fire, while, at the instance of the chief, the four Maoris had two to themselves at a little distance. When bedtime came we rolled ourselves each in a blanket in bush style, with our feet to the fire, and slept in triangular fashion. It was sweet to lie awake, looking up at the moonlit sky between the trees, to hear Crystal’s breathing as she and Grey fell off to sleep before me. Once I heard her murmur “Mother” in her sleep, and once again she moved with a sigh and said the name of the one she loved—“Kahikatea.”

I must not dwell upon those days and nights beneath the summer sky and the growing moon. They passed—as all fair days and nights must pass—and at length we pitched our camp upon the edge of the Table Land, hiding our fires behind a clump of high bush, lest they should be seen from the mountain wall on the other side. It was the open space of a little gully running down from the rounded hills that skirted the west of the plain.

When we had finished our evening meal, Te Makawawa took me aside round the clump of trees, and pointing to the mountain wall looming gigantic in the twilight, said: “The full moon is rising behind the brow of Ruatapu, as it has ever risen since that sunset long ago, when Hinauri said, ‘Here will I wait!’ Ngaraki will curse the Vile Tohungas of the Pit to-night, as they have ever been cursed since the day when the mighty city stood upon this rolling plain. When he has done that, I know not how soon he will leave the mountain. Therefore Tiki and I will go forward and watch for his going.”

“Good, O Chief,” I replied; “but tell me again why does he curse the Vile Tohungas of the Pit to-night?”

“The tradition says they will return in the flesh to destroy Hinauri; that is why from the beginning they have been cursed when the moon is full, for at that time their power is strongest.”

“But what will the curses do?” I asked, trying to penetrate into the depths of his belief.

“They will destroy those who would destroy Hinauri,” he answered simply, “even as the karakia sung before her in the stone will protect her when she moves to life. Our ancestors have taught us that a curse heaped upon a man’s image will find that man in the flesh. Many of these Vile Tohungas have returned, but they have never succeeded in their object. He Pakeha! Their heads are hung up in yonder mountain. Others will return, but when they do they will find the curse ready for them if they should stretch forth so much as a hand against the sacred person of Hinauri.”

“What is the result of the curse?” I asked again.

“Eta! O Pakeha! The result is makutu—not of the modern kind, which requires the belief and fear of the person bewitched, but the hidden magic of the ancients, which finds its mark like the weapon of a warrior crying ‘Utu! Utu!’[24] When it strikes it seethes like molten pitch in the vitals till sunrise or sunset. Then the cursed one dies. He leaves no star in the sky among those of the watching chiefs, but goes down, down to Porawa, with the curses of all time upon his head.”

He called to Tiki, and together they went into the night across the shadowy plain. If there was any doubt in my mind regarding this strange makutu the chief had spoken about, it was entirely dispelled before I saw him again.

Grey, Crystal, and myself remained by the camp fire, and a little distance away up the gully the two slaves cowered very close over a small heap of embers, such as the Maoris delight in. Grey, whose supply of cigars had not yet given out, sat smoking on the opposite side of the fire, smoking, dreaming much, and saying little, as was his wont. He was looking into the fire, and, as the glow lighted up his gentle face, I forecast the happy hour when his long-lost wife, the bride of two short weeks so long ago, and the mother of his only child, would tell him all the sweet things he had forgotten. Then my eyes wandered to the white figure of Crystal standing some little distance away in the darkness. She was looking at the mountain wall, where her mother was a prisoner. With the old chief’s consent, I had told her the legend of Hinauri that very day, and many other things as well, and she was no doubt building that city of long ago again upon the plain, or thinking of Kahikatea’s quest of the pure white woman who stood in the forehead of the mountain wall holding out her arms in her age-long petition to the sky.

I rose from my log near the camp fire, and walked round the clump of high trees. There I thought long thoughts of the many issues that crowded about the unknown cave in the great rock on the other side of the plain. I wondered where Kahikatea was. I thought of Cazotl and his wizard minion with a creep of horror. Then, by association of ideas, my thoughts ran down to the Vile Tohungas in the abyss. As the rising moon threw his light up into the sky above the mountain wall I stood a second time, in imagination, on those giant steps in the Pit, and watched the head of the tallest image hewn out again from the dark by the descending ray of the moon flooding down through the giants’ window. How like the vile granite face was that of the fiend of Crystal’s pictured dream! How very like the receding brow, the long flat nose, and the leering lips were those of Cazotl himself! Ngaraki was waiting there, in the darkness, ready to add his awful curses to those which extended back into the past—how far the aged moon herself, who had looked in upon it from the beginning of the human world, alone knew.

With an inward shudder at these thoughts I turned and retraced my steps to the camp fire, where I found Grey and Crystal sitting side by side, and hand in hand. I seated myself on the other side of the fire and said nothing. The moon, concealed by the trees behind me, had risen above the mountain wall, for I could see the silver light on the tip of a pine that towered above the gloom of the gully. It crept down into the rolling foliage of the lower trees, and touched a crag that stood out from the hillside. Just below this crag I could see the two slaves crouching over their fire, the glow of the embers on their faces and bare shoulders. Suddenly one of them uttered a sharp exclamation and made a movement. A moment afterwards the other clapped his hand to his chest and said something I could not catch. Then they remained looking into the fire as before.

While I was idly wondering what had startled them I heard a twig snap in the darkness on my right, just beyond the light of the fire. Almost at the same moment there was a faint hiss, and Grey started, moved his hand to his shoulder, withdrew it, and inspected a small object, which finally, with an expression of surprise, he threw into the fire, where it burned rapidly with changing colours, emitting with its escaping gas a weird little moan that I remembered too well. Another hiss followed, and Crystal gave a little cry, raised both hands to her right breast, sprang up and staggered some paces away, where she remained standing motionless like one in a trance. The firelight showed her face as I had seen it by the lightning’s glare on that other terrible night with the wizard.

In an instant I leapt to my feet, snatched my revolver from my hip pocket and fired three shots into the darkness where I had heard the twig snap. In reply came the hissing sound again, and something struck me in the chest. Then the wild laugh of the wizard negro sounded in my ears from far away among the hills.

Quick as thought I plucked at the dart in my chest and drew it out. Then, raising my hand I was about to fire again, when a deep voice from the darkness said, “You cannot fire! My voice is the only thing—you cannot fire!”

Quick thrills passed up and down my spine. The back of my head seemed as if it had been removed. In vain I strove to pull the trigger, but could not. In an instant I realised I was helpless. Then I saw the powerful figure of Cazotl advance into the light of the fire. His shining eyes, his long flat nose, his leering lips, on which rested a sneer that seemed to flow down his glossy beard, were revealed by the leaping flames. Yes, he was a fiend of ungainly but tremendous frame. As he towered there by the side of the fire the sight of him conveyed a horror to my soul. I tried to gnash my teeth, but could not.

“You can cover me with that revolver,” he said in a careless tone, which nevertheless carried conviction with it; “but you cannot fire. You can watch me, but you can neither move from where you stand nor cry out. Don’t you believe me? It is quite true—see here!”

He came towards me, and placing his great chest against the muzzle of my revolver, said: “Your finger is on the trigger, and if you were able, a touch would send a bullet through my heart; but you can’t do it, not even to save that pure and lovely girl.” He pointed to the white figure of Crystal, standing motionless at a little distance.

Heaven knows how I tried to pull that trigger and send the ball through his heart, but my powers of volition were gone—I was helpless under the powerful influence of the drug and the voice which was ‘the only thing.’

He moved away, and, as he had said, I found I could keep him covered with my revolver and watch his movements, but that was all. He turned and said something in a harsh, foreign tongue to someone in the darkness, and presently, in answer to his order, the wizard negro came within the light, and, putting an armful of sticks on the fire, hurried away for more. Cazotl bent over Grey, and, smoothing his eyelids down, said “Sleep!” Grey sank back immediately and lay still. He also was under the power of the drug.

With my finger on the trigger of my revolver I covered Cazotl as he walked round to the other side of the fire, and I prayed that just one little nervous twitch of my forefinger might do the deed. But if there was any one thing in the world of which I was absolutely certain at that moment, it was that I could not shoot.

I saw him approach Crystal, and their two figures were clearly lined against the background of shadow—the one like a slender lily, the other like a giant—powerful, majestic, but vile.

With a bow and a polished grace that marked him a man of cities, he bent his head and spoke to her words which revolted my very soul; for, sweet, musical, and poetical as they seemed, I knew them for the world-wide lie by which the basest passion gains its end. The tones of his voice were rich and deep, as he spoke slowly and distinctly.

“I am the one you love; the one you have longed for. You called me and I came. This is the garden where love meets love. The scent of roses is wafted about. Sweet music fills the air. Honeysuckle climbs over the bowers, and the soft beds of moss are full of violets. You hear the birds sing in the dreamy trees; they are saying, ‘I love you! I love you!’ and your bosom throbs with delight, for those are the words of your own pure heart.”

He paused, and by the growing light of the fire I saw her face. It was half raised to his with a wistful expression, and her bosom rose and fell as a sigh escaped her parted lips. Heaven forbid! but, by the cunning suggestion of his words, following the strange effect of the drug, she thought herself standing with Kahikatea in ideal surroundings, listening to his confession of love. The rich voice went on.

“You hear the cascade pour into the shaded pool, leaping and dancing in the sunlight: so rushes your quick blood with strong desire—a wild cascade of love’s delight. Listen! the wind murmurs through the trees: it is your own sweet voice whispering ‘yes’ a thousand times, ‘yes, yes!’ You are all a-tremble with love. Your passion thrills within you like honey and fire. It darts into your eyes like love lightning. All your desires and aspirations, your deep inward purity, your joy of laughter and speech, your power of song, and every intense longing for what is good and beautiful—all are thronging in your bosom to swell the tide of love. Now your eyes are on fire with the intensity of your being. You give yourself to me body and soul—come!”

With horror I saw the truth of his words. Crystal’s hands were clasped over her bosom. She turned to him, and all he had spoken was in her eyes. Her purest prayers were there, the essence of all her music and poetry and rippling laughter, the splendour of her world of dreams and the beauty of her love of beauty—all were there combined in a moment of supreme love and within reach of a devil in angel’s guise. A great wave of horror surged through me as I looked on at this terrible thing, and, if ever I came near to pressing the trigger and sending a bullet through that vile heart it was then. But the words, “You cannot fire!” seemed to have me in a vice, and the torment of an age in hell crowded into my consciousness while I watched.

The vile one looked down at the love he had wrought in his victim. Triumph appeared on his evil face and he gave a low, coarse laugh. He drew nearer to her. His leering lips approached hers; they bore a calm half smile of masterly disdain—a satisfied sneer for all that is good, and pure, and true, and beautiful. His hand touched her waist to draw her towards him. Then, suddenly, even as I gazed with unspeakable agony in my helplessness, a weird thing happened. With a bellow like that of a wild beast in pain, Cazotl sprang erect and threw up his great arms, as if a dart of horror had pierced his vitals. A hideous, awful cry it was that rang out over the plain, as he staggered and fell heavily to the ground, where he writhed and twisted and fought against some master hand which held him down.

Had I fired? No! I was sure of that. Then what had struck him. In a flash it came into my mind that this was the dread makutu, the fierce ancient magic which Ngaraki, the terrible guardian of the temple, was even now hurling at the granite images in the abyss. A profound awe took possession of me as I realised that the ancient curse had found its mark.

My eyes and revolver were still fixed on Cazotl, as his huge form rolled about, his bloodshot eyes starting from his head and his body doubled up as if there were seething pitch within his vitals. His hissings and groanings were terrible. Now and again hoarse cries, like those of a soul in torment, rang out—deep curses in some hellish tongue unknown on earth. And through it all I had a vague side picture of Crystal standing in the same attitude as that in which I had last seen her, and I pictured on her face the entranced longing of pure love, undesecrated by this fiend of lust.

An hour passed, and the gigantic form still rolled and writhed in agony upon the open space about the fire. Once my eyes came on a level with the two slaves sitting over their fire some paces beyond the makutued man. They were fixed like statues in the position in which I had last seen them. When next he tossed and rolled past Grey on the other side of the fire I saw that the latter was fast asleep.

“ANOTHER TWIST AND HE ROLLED RIGHT ACROSS IT, HIS HAIR AND BEARD FRIZZLING IN THE FLAME.”

As time passed, my brain began to wander. I saw places that I had seen long ago; I heard the voices of those long since dead. Clear visions held my attention for a moment, then vanished. At length one vision came and displaced all the rest. It was the wall of the abyss, on which glistened the clear light of the moon, which, flooding through the giants’ window, seemed to illumine the whole of the interior of the mountain. I saw, as if behind me, the granite statues smiling up with disdain at the great luminary; I saw Ngaraki lying face downwards upon the floor of the world; but what absorbed all my attention was the wall of the abyss before me. There—oh horror! who or what were those gigantic shadows contending in a deathly struggle? I looked up at the great window to see what cast them. There was nothing there; the bright moonlight flooded in uninterrupted, and yet, upon the wall before me, the two giant figures rocked to and fro in a grim, tremendous battle. The air grew thick and heavy, as if surcharged with some dread power. An awful silence settled down, broken only by a roaring sound as of a mighty wind through the great stone bars. The fury of the combat rose to a pitch of terror. Then from the stifling air went forth a flash of light between the shadowy combatants. A distant cry came out of the gloomy reaches of the abyss—a ghostly voice, like an echo from a bygone age, and one of the shadows reeled and staggered for a moment. Then the fight went on again, and I awoke to find myself following the form of Cazotl with eyes and hand round the edge of the fire.

The moon was now overhead, and I saw the Vile One’s face as he still writhed in agony, unable to rise. His brow was twisted with torment, and great drops rolled from it, but nothing could distort the leering, bloodstained lips from their original expression: they still sneered at all that was good and pure and beautiful. As I watched, his head nearly touched the fire. Another twist and he rolled right across it, his hair and beard frizzling in the flame. When he emerged on the other side his face appeared more than ever like the grey, granite face of the Vile Tohunga.

I cannot quite account for the hours that passed between that and the first light of dawn, but I know that the whole of that time I must have followed the writhing form of the doomed man with my eyes and revolver—the full tether of my muscular ability—for when my mind again cast off its visions I found myself still acting in obedience to his words. Cazotl’s cries were now growing faint, but his quick, hoarse breath, and his still desperate struggles, told that he was wrestling in the throes of a long and agonising death. The full moon, growing pale against the approach of dawn, was just sinking behind the hills. Crystal had sunk upon the ground, where she lay still—a vague outline of white upon the moss to the left of me. These things I saw indirectly, for my eyes were fastened upon Cazotl.

The moon passed down and daylight came, revealing to my horrified gaze a face with eyes that glared and rolled in unspeakable agony, teeth that gnashed in unremitting pain, while the limbs, their force now almost spent, still quivered in merciless torture. The rising sun tipped the hills above. I was aware the light was creeping down towards us. And now there was a brief respite, almost silence, made still more clear by the harsh, monotonous cry of a kiwi in the gloom of the gully behind. The Vile One raised himself upon his hands and knees, and his glaring eyes were fixed upon the form of Crystal sleeping on the moss five paces from him. He seemed to be able to think and act. Struggling to his feet, he stood for a moment, his fingers crooked nervously; his teeth made a grinding sound, and there was hate, revenge, and murder in his eyes. I saw his purpose. He would spring upon that fair form and strangle the life out of it. He staggered towards her, and I felt that even now my bullet would save her—but alas! my body was like dry wood, and all my nerves were non-conductors. I could not press the trigger.

Cazotl stood still as if to steady himself for a spring. But only for a moment. The pallor of death overspread his now hideous face. He raised his hand to his brow as if struck, then reeled, and with a last grating shriek of pain and rage, fell heavily backwards, where he lay extended and motionless. At that moment, even as he was falling, my finger pressed the trigger, and the bullet sped. At that moment, too, as the sunlight flooded down over glistening birch and pine, my body relaxed, and I fell unconscious to the ground.

CHAPTER XX.
CRYSTAL LOVES KAHIKATEA, WHO LOVES HINAURI.

It was early dawn when I awoke. By the light of the fire, which had evidently been freshly made up, I cast my eyes round the camp scene. Everything was as it should have been. Grey was asleep on the other side of the fire; Crystal was sitting up against a fallen tree trunk, not far from me, in the attitude of one who had dropped asleep while watching, for her cheek was resting on her arm, which was laid along the rough support. Near the other fire I could discern the forms of Te Makawawa and Tiki, while at a little distance the slaves lay huddled up. Was it possible that nothing unusual had happened—that I had merely dreamed a frightful dream? The chief and Tiki had evidently returned in the night, but why was not Crystal rolled in her blanket? I swept my eyes round the open space of the camp, and asked myself what had become of the body of Cazotl, which, in my mind’s eye, I could see so distinctly lying face upwards on the other side of the fire.

I got up and shook myself; then felt for my revolver. It was not in its usual place. I clapped my hand to my chest and found a painful spot where the dart had struck me. Then I knew it was no dream. Stepping quickly to where Crystal was sleeping, I bent down and touched her on the shoulder.

She raised her head, wide awake on the instant.

“What has happened, Miss Grey?” I asked hurriedly.

“A strange thing,” she replied, standing up and facing me; “yesterday morning——”

“Yesterday morning?” I said in surprise; “then I’ve been asleep for nearly twenty-four hours?”

“Yes, and we have been taking it in turns to watch you. It was my turn, but I must have dropped off—forgive me.”

But I was busy wondering how much of the awful occurrence of the night she knew. I said: “Yes, well; yesterday morning——”

“Ah! just at sunrise father and I were awakened by a pistol shot, and I saw you fall to the ground. We both ran to you and found your revolver still smoking in your hand. But we could not rouse you—you seemed to be fast asleep, at least father said that you were, and that there was nothing whatever the matter with you. While he was feeling you all over I looked to see what you had fired at, and oh! Wanaki, I saw a horrible thing. On the other side of the fire a huge man with his clothes all torn, his hair and beard burnt, and his hideous face upturned, lay on the ground. When father had finished examining you, he searched the body of the horrible thing, said it was dead, and that there was a bullet wound right over the heart.”

“Thank God!” I said, for, as she seemed to know nothing of his terrible throes, I would not shock her mind with them.

“Wanaki!” she said, looking earnestly at me, “why did he come, and why did you kill him?”

“Do not ask me why he came?” I answered; “and I shot him for reasons best known to myself.” I turned my head away to say that.

“Don’t be angry with me,” she pleaded. “I have told you many things. I heard Tiki say that he came to steal ‘the little maiden’—he meant me, of course. Is that why you shot him?”

“Oh! Tiki said that, did he?” I asked quickly, and waited for an answer.

“Yes, but Te Makawawa, when he first arrived and saw the huge body, looked at the face a long while, shook his head at what Tiki said, and muttered to himself something about the ancient magic of Ngaraki. Then he walked up and down, gesticulating wildly and singing a chant about Ngaraki the Terrible. He stopped in the middle of it abruptly, walked to where I was standing, scanned my face as if it puzzled him, and, shaking his head, slowly walked away. Now what do you make of it?”

“I don’t make anything of it,” I said shiftily, for I saw that if I was not careful she would drag the whole story from me. “I know the man came and threatened you and I shot him. What have they done with him?”

“Te Makawawa and Tiki and the slaves took him to a mud swamp over there and sank him in it. Then the old chief sang another long, wild chant about Ngaraki, Hinauri, and the Vile Tohungas.”

I saw she was thinking of something at the back of her words as she said this. After a pause she resumed, speaking very slowly: “Do you know that when I looked at the dead man’s face I had a feeling that he was like the man in my dream who cried ‘Degrade the pure one! Whose is the task? Mine! Mine!’ There is something strange in it all, Wanaki.”

My eyes met hers, and we stood looking at each other until at last I said: “Miss Grey; there is something very strange in it; but if I were to attempt to explain it in any way, I should only make it more mysterious. In the meantime we have much to think of. You will probably see your mother to-day.”

At this moment Grey awoke and staggered to his feet yawning.

“Ah! Warnock,” he said, coming towards me; “you’re awake at last. None the worse, eh? By Jove, that was a good shot of yours—right through his heart. What did the fellow want?”

I moved my head towards Crystal and raised my eyebrows.

“Eh? Eh?” he whispered, drawing me aside; “would have drugged her and carried her off, eh?”

I nodded.

“The deuce,” he said, wringing my hand, while he regarded me with an expression of horror on his gentle face. “Thank God you saw him in time. Warnock, my friend! I’m beginning to look upon you as a special Providence.”

The events of that night had so horrified and perplexed me that I could enter on no explanation of them. I preferred to let things explain themselves as they would—as they had, in fact—yet I knew very well that I had not killed Cazotl with my poor bullet; it was his death from another cause that had unbound the spell from my will, and released my trigger finger from obedience to the controlling voice. There was some mysterious power, more unerring than that, which had struck him like the wrath of Heaven. Remembering a part of Ngaraki’s awful cursing chant in the abyss, I moved aside with some excuse to Grey and muttered to myself:

“Cursed in the light, writhe till the sun goes down;

Cursed in the dark, writhe till the sun comes up.”

* * * * *

Impatient at the delay caused by my long sleep, Te Makawawa insisted on an early start, and after a hurried breakfast we set out for the mountain wall on the other side of the plain. The old chief informed me briefly that Ngaraki had left the mountain the morning before at sunrise, and would probably be away for another day. I tried to draw him out upon the mysterious affair of the makutu, but he stopped all further efforts of mine in that direction by the remark: “The flax that ties the tongue of the ariki is not loosened even by the sun”; by which, taken together with an expression of perplexity I had seen several times upon his face, I gathered that something troubled him.

As we passed along I noticed many rough buildings placed by twos and threes near the streams that crossed the plain and sheltered by the various clumps of stunted bush. I overtook the chief and spoke to him again.

“O Chief, whose hair is the snow of Ruahine, these are not the abodes of the ‘children of the mist’ who come hither to snare the kakariki. What then are these houses that strew the plain?”

“It is as I said,” he replied absently. “The tribes are gathering from far and near; Ngaraki has spread a rumour that Hinauri will return shortly, and they are here to do her bidding when she comes.”

“Is there not danger in this?” I asked, for I saw that so warlike a people, led by violent chiefs, would be apt to differ among themselves; or, if not, some false prophet would surely arise and work them up to frenzy with the idea that they were now to drive the pakehas into the sea.

“There is small danger,” he said. “They are gathered for peace; but, if any should stir up among them, my warriors, who are now on the way to this place, will take their heads and restore peace.”

“But some violent chief,” I persisted; “some false prophet will certainly arise, saying he has been commanded by Hinauri in a dream to rouse the people to fight, and they will do it, Te Makawawa—I know the hearts of your people.”

“O Friend of the Forest Tree,” replied the old chief, “your words are not the dry leaves of foolishness scattered by the wind; yet, if it be even as you say, who can stand against Te Makawawa? And, if they should rise as the sands of the sea and cover the whole earth, could they escape the wrath of Ngaraki the Terrible?”

His eyes flashed and I felt answered, for though I smelt war very strongly I could not imagine the aged chief and the fierce Ngaraki on the losing side.

When we reached the Lion Rock that terminated the descending spur, the secluded valley and the stupendous outer wall of the temple were still in deep shadow. Dreamer Grey looked down at the stream welling out of the mountain’s side, then up at the everlasting granite, and finally turned to me.

“You know,” he said, “you know how sometimes you have a kind of vivid impression that you have seen some given thing before—well, that is exactly the feeling I have when I look at these rocks. I wonder if I shall remember as much of my wife’s face.”

I smiled at him as he gazed up at the rocks. “You will have one memory between you,” I said, “or perhaps her face will appeal to you ‘like glimpses of forgotten dreams,’ as Tennyson says.”

He did not answer: he was forecasting his happiness with his eyes fixed upon the mountain wall as if he could see through it. As I turned away to where Crystal was standing, she moved towards me and pointed to the aged chief sitting upon the mossy bank near the rock, buried in deep thought.

“He says that he will soon take us by the ‘way of the fish,’ ” she said; “but that for the present he has long thoughts to think—that the sun will set ’ere long, and that these last moments are for him.”

“He expects to die for revealing the secrets of this mountain to us,” I said. “Do you know, he seems to me like a man who is following some commanding voice, which draws him on and on, even to what he believes to be his death.”

“Yes, he seems to have altered strangely. Even to me he is different. Often he looks at me with those piercing black eyes of his as if there was something he did not understand. At times I think that he doubts if I am the same person that he stole away from my mother in his zeal for Hinauri. Perhaps he still thinks I am a witch.”

“Ah! that reminds me,” I said. “While he is thinking his long thoughts—and I think that perhaps they are stranger than you or I can guess—while he is setting his face to the dying sun I will show you the place where you were not buried fifteen years ago.”

Leaving Grey with an unlighted cigar between his lips, still looking up at the great wall, and the aged chief, sitting motionless on the bank, we turned into the forest glade that led up into the valley and the ravine. When we gained the open space beneath the great rimu, and I showed her the spot where the tohunga had buried the stone, Crystal turned to me with a sudden thought in her face.

“Ah! Wanaki!” she said, touching me on the arm, “may all in us that is base as that coarse stone you have told me about remain buried here in the shadows.”

I was about to reply, but at that moment a dull roar, like the sound of a distant explosion, fell upon my ears.

“What was that?” she asked.

Well I knew what it was. Should I tell her? Why not? She had a right to know.

“It is Kahikatea,” I replied; “he is blasting the rocks high above the mountain wall. He hopes to clear a passage through the rocks to the cave where——”

“Where my mother is,” she broke in eagerly.

“Where Hinauri stands,” I said slowly. “Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, the Bright One who holds her arms out to the future of the world—Hinauri, whom he loves.”

Crystal moved her eyes slightly from mine. Was it a flash of jealousy or only pain that I saw in them as she steadfastly regarded a clump of daisies in the moss?

“He is mine!” she said suddenly, with a fierce blaze of passion that lighted her face as if with fire; “no one can take him from me—oh! what am I saying to you?—you, to whom I owe everything in the world: you, whom I would spare any pain—oh! forgive me, Wanaki!” The sudden fire, which in the depths of her eyes was like a threatening light flashed out of ancient darkness, concealed itself, leaving her face full of tenderness beyond my poor power of words.

I did not speak.

“Tell me,” she said again, swept on by the tide of her feelings, “tell me—if he believed this marble statue would return to life, according to the legend, would he love it in the same way as—as——”

“As I love you?” I suggested.

“Yes—as you—love—me.” She cast her eyes down, halting between the words as if she were measuring their exact meaning and influence upon her.

There was a brief pause, in which I felt like a man who, in some underground prison, can see daylight through a far small opening, and stumbles towards it. But it was no time for any but a fool to stand and think.

“Yes,” I said; “there is a personal element in his love for this legendary woman. Her face is the only face in the world for him, and he longs to look upon the fair form of the Bright One. When at last he does so, and touches the cold marble lips with his——”

I paused there with my eyes searching her face. My words had roused the natural woman in her. Between her parted lips I saw the pearly teeth set, as the colour fled from her cheeks. Clenching her hands, she turned to me with flashing eyes that had robbed her face of life, but not of a beauty that now was terrible in its anger.

“Do not tell me any more,” she said. “Oh! if my love should come to a blind end!” She drooped her head and was silent, mightily troubled in her bosom.

“What would you do?” I asked quietly.

She looked up and faced me calmly, but did not speak.

“Crystal,” I cried, seizing her hand and pressing it passionately to my lips, “may I hope that if—if——”

“Ah! Wanaki,” she said slowly and sadly, “I owe you everything in the world. I do not know what a woman will do. I never knew till now that it was possible I should feel as I have felt. Oh! tell me—is Hinauri so very beautiful?”

“They call her the Rival of the Dawn,” I said, releasing her hand as she drew it away.

“The Rival of the Dawn,” she echoed with a pathetic ring in her voice; “Kahikatea loves the Rival of the Dawn; I, who am nothing in his eyes, love Kahikatea; and you——”

“Yes, I, who am nothing in your eyes, love you.”

There was a pause, in which the west wind pressed gently against the bosom of the rimu, and the tui sang on in the high solitude of the ravine.

“That you are nothing in my eyes is not quite true, Wanaki,” she said softly; “but at present I cannot say how false it is. Let us go back and see if Te Makawawa has finished his long thoughts.”

We retraced our steps for the most part in silence, and as we went I felt that perhaps—who knew?—there would be a daybreak to my darkness. I read into her words the possibility that she might give me some of the love that Kahikatea would most certainly thrust aside without ever dreaming of its existence.

CHAPTER XXI.
CRYSTAL AND HINAURI MEET.

When we reached the open space about the stream Te Makawawa was still sitting there on the bank with his head bowed. Dreamer Grey, on catching sight of us, threw away his unlighted cigar and came to meet us.

“I am the most patient of men,” he said, “but—I suppose the old chief there knows what he’s about.”

“We can do nothing but wait,” I said, and we all sat down on the mossy sward to do so.

But we had not to wait long, for presently the chief started to his feet and began striding rapidly up and down the bank. His head was erect, his step was firm, and but for his grey hair and aged face one would have said he had not grown old. His pace quickened to a run. He stopped and performed an imaginary fight with the empty air, thrusting with his spear and shouting battle cries as he had done in his early years. Then he dashed down his spear with the air of a man whose mind is made up, threw off his outer robe, and, with a short run, plunged from the bank.

We rose from the ground and ran forward to see if the ancient one was really equal to this daring feat. Two, three, four minutes we stood looking at the dark pool, and then Grey said:

“If he hasn’t got through he certainly won’t come up alive now.”

“He must be through,” I said, “he must be through.” But I was getting anxious.

“Look! Look!” cried Crystal; “the water’s growing less; see! it’s sinking—it’s drying up.”

I gave a sigh of relief, for I saw the water was rapidly diminishing, and knew that the old chief had gained the ledge inside, passed round the lake, and pushed the great lever up to stop the flow of the water.

Gradually the surface of the pool sank below the aperture in the mountain wall and, finally, left the way perfectly clear. Grey made a movement as if to climb down and go in through the black opening, but I restrained him.

“We must wait till he returns,” I said. “We can do nothing without him.”

Accordingly we waited with our eyes fixed upon the dark round opening, level with the bed of the channel as to its lower margin, while its upper part was considerably higher than a man’s head. Presently there was a glimmer of light approaching through the darkness of the interior, and then a figure appeared in the aperture, standing erect with a blazing torch in his hand. The sight startled me, for the figure was enveloped in a large war cloak made of dog’s fur, and the whole solemn bearing of the wearer, as he held his torch aloft and stood looking at us, was that of the guardian priest of the ancient temple.

In another moment, however, I recognised Te Makawawa as he might have been eighteen years before, when he first brought Grey and his wife to this strange place. He beckoned to us, and we climbed down the bank as quickly as possible, and hurried along the shingly bed of the channel towards him.

“Speak few words, O pakeha people,” he said solemnly; “but follow in my footsteps.”

He turned and led the way. Grey went first in his wake, Crystal followed, and I came last. When we had gained the level rock above, by means of the rough, but not difficult, niches in the wall, the torchlight shed a fitful glare upon the nearer rim of the great basin, and upon part of the lake. The water, flung up tumultuously in the centre, boiled and effervesced and lapped against the rocky rim on which we stood. Far away at the end of the narrowing gulf could be seen the giants’ window, through which the sunlight streamed like silver, but grew golden as it fell obliquely into the denser darkness of the abyss. The wall of the cavern beyond the lake was lost in gloom, into which I knew the great spar was tapering off to its wooden sprit near the overhanging crags of the vaulted roof.

But we saw these things in a glance, for Te Makawawa passed on along the margin of the lake, bearing his torch, and we followed. He halted at the part of the cavern wall by the lake side, where I had seen Ngaraki’s kit of kumaras ascend by a cord.

“O Friend of the Forest Tree,” he said, drawing me a little aside, “the mysteries of this ancient temple are great and wonderful. I am going by the ‘way of the fish,’ which no man can find without a guide, nor, if he found it, could he pass that way without being taught. Now stand there close to the wall, and hold the mountain lily by the hand, lest she fall in the darkness. I go. And, when you hear the roaring of the sea overhead, and the great god Tangaroa lets loose the flood, then you will know that Te Makawawa has passed in safety, that his end is not yet.”

“And what then, O chief? Do we follow, or will you return?”

“I will let a rope down from above by the wall where you stand. Climb up the rope, O Friend. Then the Man-who-has-forgotten will tie the mountain lily to it, and together we shall draw her up, and let the rope down again for the Man-who-has-forgotten to ascend. Is my word clear?”

“Yes, O Chief,” I replied; “but if you fail, what then?”

“Then my end will have come,” he said, “and the ancient spell I cast over the Man-who-has-forgotten will return to me, his memory of all these years will be blotted out, and his new thought will link on to the old as if it were but yesterday. He will remember all—even the secret of the ‘way of the winged fish,’ for he has passed through it from above. Most clearly he will remember the ‘way of the lizard’ beyond the giants’ window, for by that path did he leave before forgetting the things he knew. Thus, if I perish, you shall escape through him.”

“It is good, O Tohunga,” I said, wondering at his strange words.

He turned and, torch in hand, passed round the lake to the rock behind which, on a former occasion, I had hidden while Ngaraki had plunged from it into the depths. I went back to the spot where Crystal and Grey were standing, close to the wall.

“Let me hold your hand,” I said to Crystal, and explained briefly to them both what strange thing would happen. I found her hand in the darkness, and as I held it in mine even the thought of Kahikatea did not intrude. Thus in silence we watched the movements of the tohunga across the lake. He removed his war-cloak and hung it somewhere in the shadows of the wall. Then he approached the edge of the lake and dipped the end of the torch in the water. The faint hiss reached us over the seething tide, and then there was darkness, in which, as I held Crystal’s warm hand, it seemed to me that we two were alone in space.

A sudden plunge in the lake aroused me; then all was still, except for the ghostly movements of the welling flood. Half a minute went by, in which my thoughts were with the chief who had undertaken I knew not what dangerous task in the depths. Would he fail?

As I asked myself the question my ears detected a change in the sound of the water. The boiling, seething motion ceased gradually, and there was a commotion in the depths of the lake—a commotion conveyed suggestively by a wave rolling round the margin, flapping over as it went, and again by the peculiar sucking sounds of whirling eddies which seemed to close together with little claps of the water here and there.

Ah! there was a sound I could interpret in the darkness. It was made by the water rolling off the sides of some object which had risen above the surface not four yards from us. It was, I knew, the head of the great stone lever in the depths. Then the profound silence which followed was broken by a hollow roar like that of some wild beast pent in a cave within the roof. Louder and louder it grew until, with a booming sound like thunder, the waters gushed from an opening above, and, their forefoam showing vaguely in the darkness, fell with a deafening tumult into the lake. The spray dashed up in our faces and I drew a long breath, for I knew that Te Makawawa had passed by the ‘way of the winged fish.’

Against the din of the cascade I heard Crystal trying to make herself heard.

I raised the hand I was clasping, and, placing her finger and thumb on the lobe of my ear, bent my head towards her.

“He is safe!” she cried, and I felt her warm breath on my cheek. Then she guided my hand to her own ear, and I cried back: “Yes; he will soon let down the rope.”

My hand still retained hers, and as I spoke in her ear a wisp of her hair strayed across my lips. I forgot everything. The roar of the cataract seemed to drown all except my passion, and that overwhelmed me. Suddenly I enclosed her in my arms and, drawing her to me, kissed her wildly on the brow and cheek and lips. For a moment she lay still in my arms, then she pushed herself gently away from me as if she were saying, “I do not know what a woman will do.… I owe you everything, but not this—at least not yet.”

At length, after waiting several minutes, I felt something swing against my shoulder. I stretched out my hand and caught it. It was the rope. When I had shouted the old chief’s directions again in the ears of my companions—that Crystal was to come second and Grey last—I tried my weight on the rope, and, finding it firm, climbed up. It seemed a long way in the darkness, and I was nearly exhausted when at length a hand slid down over the rope and touched me. Another hand found my other wrist and, as I climbed a little further, both gripped me beneath the armpits, raised me over a barrier of rock, and set me on my feet on a level foothold.

“He Pakeha!” said the deep voice of the chief; “is the mountain lily safe?”

“Quite safe,” I replied.

My first thought was to strike a match to see what space there was to move about in. I did so, and found that the old chief and myself were standing on a level platform let into the wall of the cavern. He went into the shadows and returned with a torch, which I lighted from the match, and set in an upright position in a crevice. He then unwound the rope from a rounded knob of rock on the inside of the barrier, and let down a few more yards for Grey to make a kind of swing for Crystal. A rough flax mat protected the rope from the irregularities of the rock, and the barrier itself projected far enough from the wall to enable her to keep clear of it in the ascent.

It was not until, by our united efforts, she was drawn up and stood safely beside us, that I breathed freely. The rope was let down, and Grey came up soon afterwards like an acrobat. Te Makawawa then made a sign to me to draw the rope up again, and, as I was doing so, it resisted my efforts for a moment, as if someone was holding it; however, it came loose, and I thought that perhaps a knot on the end must have caught on some projecting piece of rock. Yet the matter puzzled me a little, especially when I felt the end of the rope soon afterwards and found there was no knot there.

But it was no time for fancies. Te Makawawa took the torch from Crystal, and showed the way into a high tunnel which, as we followed him, led us right into the backbone of the rock, and gradually took the form of a spiral ascent, though I could only guess at this from the somewhat steep grade, and the continual curve to the left. We soon lost the roar of the cataract as we circled up higher and higher into the silent heart of the mountain.

After toiling up in this way for some time we came to a hollow place of many chambers. Here also was a lever-like structure similar to the great spar in the lower part of the cavern, though very much smaller and more delicately fashioned. Upon the arm of the lever I saw, by the light of the torch, some peculiar figures. I drew Te Makawawa’s attention to them and asked him what they signified.

“There is an ancient tradition,” he said doubtfully, “that this stone will be raised when Hinauri returns, and that when it is done all the ways of the temple will be closed; but its secret has been lost. See! the end hangs over an abyss—the secret is hidden in the depths.”

It was balanced on a breast-high ridge of rock, and beyond was a gulf which the light of the torch could not span.

“Remain here, O white people,” said the chief, after we had wondered at this strange contrivance; “wait here in the Place-of-Many-Chambers, and I will go and speak with Miriami, and bring her to you. But,” he added, drawing me aside, “I will say nothing of the little maiden. I cannot face the stars in her eyes.”

Leaving us the torch, he vanished through another tunnel, and left us in this Place-of-Many-Chambers to await his return with the lost Miriam Grey. Crystal stood with her hand on the tapering end of the stone lever, which stretched its arm horizontally into the centre of the chamber in which we stood.

“It would be easy to raise this,” she said. “I wonder that no one of the long line of priests, which you say has guarded the secrets of this place for ages, has had enough curiosity to try it.”

“According to Te Makawawa,” I said, “it seems to be a means of hiding the temple and its secrets for ever when the ancient queen returns, the reason being perhaps that there is immense wealth hidden somewhere here. Let us see what the other end of the lever is like.”

I held the torch over the barrier, and we peered into the gloom. Resting in the hollow of the head of the lever, some little distance out, we discerned a large round stone of many tons in weight, its outline dimly defined against the blackness beyond. Below this yawned a pit, in which the rays of the torch were lost.

“It seems to me like a system of rolling stones,” I said. “If this lever were raised and that stone launched into the gulf below, there is no telling in what way it might carry out some design originated by the founders of this strange place. No doubt there are levers below, balanced in such a way that this stone would move them and liberate other rolling stones, which would run in grooves prepared for them to execute some errand connected with the various openings into the mountain. Why not? Could anything be more gigantic and wonderful in design than the great levers in the cavern below?”

“There were giants in those days,” said Grey, joining us and glancing round as he spoke. “This must all have been hewn out with design. There are six little caves, I have counted them by matchlight, all opening into this larger one, and some of them contain the openings of other tunnels leading goodness knows where.”

Little by little Crystal and her father gravitated towards the opening through which the old chief had disappeared, and by which he was soon to return with the one for whom we had undertaken our journey. Hand in hand they stood together with their eyes fixed on that opening. I placed the torch so that its fitful glare fell upon their now pale faces, and retired into the shadows, where I stood leaning upon the arm of the lever to watch this reunion between husband and wife, between mother and daughter.

The two stood silent and motionless. I saw, by the uncertain light which revealed their faces, that their feelings were too deep for speech; I saw by the nervous clasp of their hands that their suspense was great.

But it came to an end. Grey made a sudden movement and bent his head forward. I knew his ear had caught the sound of approaching footsteps. In another moment Te Makawawa issued from the darkness, and, standing aside, folded his arms and remained with his chin on his breast. By the brief glance I caught of his features I saw that his expression was even more troubled and perplexed than before.

Presently in the opening of the tunnel appeared one whom at first glance I took to be a Maori woman of high rank. She was clothed in a rich silky kaitaka, her feet were sandalled, her bare left arm and breast glistened through the masses of dark hair which fell loose about her. As she stood there a moment between the dim light and the darkness, like a tall Maori chieftainess, a leaping flame of the torch showed her face more clearly. It was like the pale face of a madonna, sweet, tender, and good. The high brow, the magnetic-looking eyes, with delicately pencilled eyebrows, gave a look of tremendous artistic and concentrative power to the face; and this power seemed only equalled by the pervading tenderness of her expression. I saw at a glance that this “woman with the stars in her eyes” must without doubt be the remarkable creator of that remarkable work in the marble cave above.

But Dreamer Grey had taken a step towards her and stood gazing at the woman who, it was slowly dawning on him, must be his wife. She drew near to him, at first hesitatingly; then, without passion, but with a ring of great tenderness in her voice, she cried: “My husband!” and, placing her arms about his neck, laid her cheek upon his. Held in each other’s arms, they remained silent for a moment, while, in the shadow near by, Crystal stood watching them with I know not what emotions in her heart, what dawn of joy upon her face.

At last a little cry escaped her: “Mother!”

It came like a note of pathetic music, like the last beat of a long-sustained chord before it is resolved, and all is plain to the listener. Te Makawawa raised his head. A tremor shook some depth of my matter-of-fact being, which had never been touched before. Husband and wife who had found each other lifted their faces at the word, and their eyes met. Grey disengaged one arm, and, stretching it out towards Crystal, said in a voice unsteady with emotion:

“It is our daughter!”

Slowly, and as if she did not understand, the mother turned her face towards the white figure standing near by. In the half light she scanned Crystal’s features. Then she started, giving a quick interjection in the Maori tongue. The hand which had rested on Grey’s neck slid down and clutched his arm. “My daughter? hush! our daughter is dead, dear. Te Makawawa!” she gasped hoarsely, speaking again in his own tongue, “the light! the light! quick!”

Why was she so eager? She knew, or thought she knew, that her child was dead, and yet she was gazing at Crystal’s face like one struck dumb with astonishment.

The chief drew near with the torch and held it up so that its light clearly showed the faces of all. Crystal was holding her arms out to her mother with a yearning look upon her face.

“I live,” she said sweetly; “I live, dear mother—why do you not take me in your arms?”

As the light fell upon the lovely face and form, all white and sculpturesque, Miriam Grey drew a quick breath—I heard it as I stood in the shadows—a gasp of unutterable astonishment. Her free hand clutched at the air, then swept quickly across her brow, while I wondered, for how could there be anything in that face for her to recognise after so many years? Yet it seemed there was something.

“Ah! God in heaven!” she cried. “Am I mad—or is this thing true? Te Makawawa, Chief and Tohunga! are you blind?”

I walked from the shadows round to where Crystal and Grey were standing, and together we watched this strange scene. I motioned silence to them, whispering that the chief would explain.

“I am not blind, O Miriami,” he said quietly; “but what my eyes see my thoughts put aside. My two eyes and your two eyes may speak false words in this dim light. The Light of Tane is in the cave above, and here are many eyes that may see and judge.”

He waved his hand towards us as he spoke. I was perplexed by his words, for as I understood the matter it was not a question of seeing clearly, but of simple confession on the part of the old chief.

“Your words are wise, O Friend of the Great Tohungas,” she said thoughtfully, with an almost terrified look at Crystal. “Give me the torch.”

He handed it to her and she moved towards the tunnel, holding it before her, and motioning us to follow.

“What did the chief mean?” asked Crystal, when I had translated his words to Grey; “he did not explain. My mother still thinks that I died when I was three years old. I do not understand.”

“Nor I,” said Grey. “Why was my wife so startled? I can understand her refusing to accept my statement when she had such good evidence that Crystal was dead, but why did she look so amazed? Surely she could not have imagined that Crystal had risen from the dead!”

“Yet she seemed to recognise me in some way,” said Crystal again.

“That is impossible,” I exclaimed. “The colour of your eyes would be the only thing that would not have altered, and in torchlight all dark eyes would look black. No! there is something to be explained. Do you know where we are going?”

“To the white cave you told us about?”

“Yes, the marble cave where Hinauri stands—Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn.”

Crystal was silent. Presently she said: “I don’t see how she can help us.”

The tone of her voice told me that the bitterness of her heart had come uppermost again. But I did not reply, for at that moment we came to some smooth white steps cut in the rock. Te Makawawa stood aside upon these steps, and as we passed him I saw, by the light of the torch moving into a dim but growing daylight before us, that he fixed his piercing eyes upon Crystal’s face in a long, bewildering scrutiny.

The steps led round to the right, and finally we stood upon the threshold of a pure white marble cave, lofty and spacious. Beyond the facts that the level floor was covered with snow-white dust, and that there was a large opening communicating with the outer air, I took small note of the details of the place, for there, standing where the fine, clear morning light flooded in, was the marble image of Hinauri, her arms held out in longing towards some vision she could see in the western sky through the opening of the cave. Her face was concealed from the side view by some of the waves of sculptured hair that fell over her left shoulder, but the lifelike pose of the figure showed the perfect body and lovely soul of one who had seen a vision of joy long sought, and, in yearning towards it, had for the moment “forgot herself to marble.”

Miriam Grey had now thrown down her torch, and was standing beyond the image with her hands clasped together, waiting. I was the first to move into the daylight and gaze into the face of Hinauri. What I saw there dashed to the ground my hopes of a heaven on earth. For one brief moment I looked upon that lovely face, startled, bewildered, dazed—but not at its loveliness. Then I staggered back into the shadow of the rocks and leaned against them, looking on at the scene in a helpless fashion. Grey, too, after one quick glance, started back and passed his hand over his brow, as if he doubted his senses. Then Crystal, who followed him, paused before the image. With a little cry she took a step towards it and stood in mute wonder. For a time they remained facing each other, the girl of to-day and the goddess of ancient night, for whom the giants of old had fought their grim battles—the pure woman whom the vile Cazotl had sought to degrade by his magic, and Hinauri who, from the time of Zun the Terrible, had been fiercely guarded from the Vile Ones of all time by a greater magic—Crystal Grey, who loved my perfect man, and the cold white being, which, set in the high solitudes of the world, my perfect man had loved. Crystal raised her arms to the radiant Daughter of the Dawn, and a single word fell upon the silence of the place: “Myself!”

Like a note of heavenly music the word fell from Crystal’s lips; like a discord of the tuneless earth it rankled through my brain. Then for a moment—so paramount is self—life and love forsook my heart, leaving it cold, like the stone on which I leant despairingly.

For some seconds no one stirred, and during that time I, grasping at the matter-of-fact, cast about for an explanation of this strange thing. Instantly there rolled through my mind that time when, before Crystal was born, Miriam Grey worked at the stone, absorbed in the contemplation of the vision she had seen—the vision of Hinauri. Was it possible that her work had been twofold? that, while her whole being, with all the concentrative power one might read in her eyes, was absorbed in contemplation of the beautiful image of her imagination, she had “found” that image at once actually in the marble and potentially in her unborn child? Kahikatea was right, but only half right, for the mother who had conceived the beauty of Hinauri in the stone had also conceived her wondrous image in the flesh.

Then came the same dull roar that we had heard from beneath the rimu in the valley, thundering down from the roof of the mountain above us. Crystal heard it, and as she raised her face I saw the love-light leap into her eyes and a radiant smile spread over her face. I saw her lips move, and the unspoken word seemed to fall like lead upon my heart: “Kahikatea!”

I turned my face away and laid my cheek against the marble wall. There was nothing between them now.

CHAPTER XXII.
THE TALISMAN.

Miriam Grey moved out of the shadows into the daylight that flooded in through the opening of the cave and paused by Grey’s side, while they both gazed and marvelled at the wondrous thing that was now made clear.

“It is Crystal herself,” said Grey, when he had partly recovered from his astonishment.

“Crystal!” cried his wife quickly; “that was our daughter’s name, but I tell you, dear, she died; she was drowned, and Te Makawawa himself buried her. I will call him and he will tell you the same.”

She went to the top of the marble steps and called, but there was no answer. The aged chief who would face warriors, even if they covered the whole earth, had now clearly fled to avoid either facing the woman with the stars in her eyes, or confronting a matter through which he did not see his way clear.

As he had obviously left me to tell the tale of his deception, perchance of his sin against the Bright One, I gathered my thoughts together and went forward.

“Miriam Grey,” I said, “when first I undertook the search for you, Te Makawawa told me the story of the child, which, of course, you know up to the point where he took the little body away to bury it beneath the rimu. The part of the story he kept from you is this. Your child Crystal revived in his arms; he did not bury her but sent her away with a band of Maoris, whose instructions were to leave her with the first pakeha they met. The first white man they found was your husband, who, nevertheless, up to a month ago did not know she was his own daughter.”

“Not until Warnock here——” began Grey, but he stopped as he turned towards his wife, for, as was natural, my words had moved her greatly. She now stood looking at Crystal with a tender light of motherhood on her gentle face.

“My darling child!” she said slowly and hesitatingly, as if still unable to comprehend it.

“My own mother!” cried Crystal quickly—she had no hesitation in the matter—and, like a bird, she flew to, and nestled in, her mother’s arms. And they stood for a moment in a close embrace.

Crystal held back her head, and, smoothing her mother’s glossy locks away from her brow, looked at her lovingly, saying with a sweet repetition:

“Mother! Mother! Mother! My own mother!”

As Miriam Grey looked again on the lovely face so near to hers, and saw the dark eyes gazing into her own, there came once more the expression of bewilderment and awe which I had seen at their first meeting in the Place-of-Many-Chambers. Could she not account for this perfect likeness to the stone, as I had done? Surely she did not think that Hinauri’s ancient spirit had come back in the flesh?

No sooner were these questions asked in my mind than they were answered in a way that mystified me. As the look of awe deepened on the mother’s face she spoke in hushed tones:

“I saw your image in the stone before I was a mother. ‘Out of the distant past I will come to you,’ you said, as you held out your arms to me from the stone. Is it possible that the ancient prophecy is fulfilled in this way?—that you are Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, who has returned according to her promise, out of the distant past? O dear and lovely one, your eyes gaze down on me from the beginning of the world.”

Crystal seemed to be attaching her mother’s words to the feelings of which she had once spoken to me—the feelings of a “long, long ago,” hidden in some inmost tomb of memory. She was silent; but I, not willing to admit this thing by my silence, and moreover, having another explanation, spoke my thoughts.

I said: “That Crystal is your daughter is beyond doubt; but it seems to me that in the matter of the perfect likeness there is an explanation other than the one of which you speak. Of two marvels we must choose the less. My explanation is this: you yourself created an image which, in moments of deep concentration, you saw as if within the stone. Then, as day by day you visualised it more clearly, striving to give it visible shape in the marble, your desire was realised not only on the lifeless stone, but also on the face and form of your unborn child. Your idea was made stone, why not flesh?”

“Warnock is right, my dear,” said Grey, “no one believes in previous existences nowadays.”

Miriam Grey turned to me, leaving Crystal listening to her father, as he attempted to uphold and justify his view.

“Mr. Warnock!” she said gently, touching my arm; “what you say explains only the means employed. I recognise the law that we become, more especially in our offspring, what we contemplate; yet would I say that this was merely the means by which Hinauri’s spirit clothed itself in flesh.” She had lowered her voice almost to a whisper, and now she drew me further aside. A breath of the rising wind wailed about the ancient crags as it swept the side of the mountain without. It awoke strange feelings in me, as I stood in that high cave where Hinauri had waited through the ages. “There are strange things in this ancient temple,” she resumed, “things which point to the possibility of beings, who lived when the temple was founded, returning to earth again.”

I remembered the Vile Tohungas and replied: “Yes, I have seen a granite image and its living replica—do you mean that?”

“The one who stands apart I mean,” she said. “His face is that of Ngaraki, and what is more, the meaning of that granite statue that gazes ever upwards through the dark is the meaning of Ngaraki’s life.”

I was silent, wondering if this could be. I recalled the other thing in favour of her belief—the resemblance that Cazotl had borne to the chief of the Vile Tohungas, not only in face, but in purpose. I did not speak of it, but I began to detect a deep underlying connection between things that seemed formerly to be isolated. The ancient traditions, the happenings of the past month, the more immediate revelations of that very day—all seemed to be woven together in a definite pattern, real and visible to my inner eyes. I realised that, given this belief of Miriam Grey’s, the whole matter was a unity such as is made by independent witnesses who speak the truth. I could now understand, too, Te Makawawa’s bewilderment and hopeless confusion in finding what he regarded as a discrepancy in this unity, viz.: that Hinauri seemed to have moved to life, while yet the image remained immovable. These thoughts, which take so long to write, passed through my mind while the woman before me was dwelling on her last words.

“Come here!” she said again, leading me into the darkness round a buttress which divided the cave into two apartments; “you have matches. I will show you one of the strange things this place contains—a thing which will prove, if anything can, whether my child is that ancient one reclothed in flesh.”

I struck a match, and she lighted a torch that stood upright in a crevice in a ledge of rock. By the glow of the clear-burning pineheart I glanced quickly round the place. The jagged stone walls were not of marble, but of fine granite, and the furthest ray of the torch revealed no closing in of the rocks overhead. Dim reaches and shadows I could see, but no roof—indeed, by the freshness and purity of the air alone it was evident that there was an outlet above. That was surely the way by which Kahikatea had first entered the cave. As I swept my eyes round the lower walls and floor of this inner apartment I saw that in former times it must have been the abode of some of the savage priesthood who had in turn guarded the sacred stone. Thick Maori mats were laid about the level floor. Maori spears occupied the recesses of the rocks, and merés of jade rested on the ledges. Rich garments of dog’s-hair or woven flax hung from points upon the walls, and ranged around the place were the grotesquely carved wooden gods of the Maori, lolling their tongues and caressing their bodies with three-fingered hands, while their eyes of paua shell glistened in the torchlight.

While I had been engaged in looking at these things Miriam Grey had withdrawn a little stone box from a part of the wall. With this in both hands she approached, and, saying it was heavy, bade me place it on the ledge where the torch blazed. I did so, and the light of the pineheart revealed the frosty glitter of gold dust. She plunged her hands into this and withdrew a curiously wrought circlet of gold, set with a large diamond at one part and with a brilliant sapphire at another.

“This,” she said in a whisper, “so legend tells, is Hinauri’s crown. The very ancient giant priests took it from the city which stood on the plain below, and, when they brought the queen to this cave, it was placed in this receptacle, where it has remained until now.”

I took it in my hands. This actual tangible relic of a bygone civilisation helped me to understand those emotions of “long, long ago,” about which Crystal had spoken. I looked at the circlet and then at the walls of granite, and a feeling of extreme age possessed me. Had I, too, perchance lived in that far time when Hinauri, the Bright One, had attempted to rule a violent people by the law of love? Had I been among her counsellors in that long ago—a man of humble aspect, nursing an unrequited love for his dark-eyed queen?

I cast out the thought, for my unrequited love for Crystal was a thing of which I could not yet think calmly,

“This,” I said, “conveys to my mind no proof except that it once had a wearer.”

“Wait,” she replied. “Tradition says it is a talisman whose virtue is restricted to the one for whom it was made. See! there are some characters engraven inside which are supposed to relate to this tradition. In times long since it pressed the brows of the ancient queen, and the legend runs that, on her return, it will not be until it is placed upon her head that she will recall the memory of her ancient life.”

“Let us place it on Crystal’s head now,” I said quickly, making a movement towards the outer cave.

“No,” she returned, detaining me by the arm; “not now. At sunset to-night Ngaraki returns to sing his karakias before the statue. It is the time of the year when for a few days the sun-ray strikes in through a rift in the outstanding crags. We will remove and conceal the statue, and when he comes he will find Crystal posed in its place; then, while I place this circlet upon her head, he and the event shall decide if she be Hinauri or only my child.”

“If the talisman should have lost its power!” I objected.

“Then the tradition will not be of a piece with the general body of tradition which has been handed down within the ancient walls of this temple,” she said. “I have learned step by step, by proofs which I cannot show you now, that there is truth in these priestly traditions. I will tell you one thing briefly: in a circular recess in the side of the wall of the great abyss are the preserved heads of men who at various times have found their way into this mountain to destroy the sacred stone which was supposed to contain the form of the Pure One. The faces of these I have recognised by their resemblances to the faces of the Vile Tohungas of the Pit—the Destroyers of Women—and I believe firmly that the ancient brotherhood of sorcerers exists to this day, their initiates returning again and again in the flesh to work out their destiny. Even quite lately one found his way into the lower part of the mountain, but he escaped after nearly killing Ngaraki, whom I nursed for many days, thinking he would die.”

“If they had caught him what would they have done with him?” I asked.

“His head would now be hanging among the others, where it ought to be.”

I felt very thankful that I had not killed Ngaraki with that last bullet of mine, and still more thankful that my head was still on my shoulders. But I did not waste time in correcting her mistake. She concluded:

“That chamber of preserved heads, with many other things over which I have had ample time to think, has led me to believe in the traditions of this place, strange as they may appear to you of the outer world.”

I was silent, but in my silence I wished that I had kept the head of Cazotl to place among that gruesome collection.

At that moment Crystal, followed by Grey, came round the buttress.

“I want to kiss you again,” said she; “I have lived nearly sixteen years without a mother, and now I have found you I am so happy that I think I must cry.” She placed her arms round her mother’s neck, and drawing her down to a low ledge of rock near by, seated herself at her feet and buried her head on her lap and sobbed for very joy. Her mother placed one hand on Crystal’s hair, while Grey, seating himself beside her, took the other between both of his, and, leaving them thus, I walked back into the marble cave.

Again I stood before the statue of Hinauri and lingered over Crystal’s loveliness in stone. I felt a wild desire to kiss the beautiful cold lips, but I remembered that look of hers when she realised that Kahikatea loved her, and I held back. If ever a woman was pledged to a man Crystal was pledged to my friend. It was different now. I withdrew, and turned towards the opening.

This mouth of the marble cave was a little more than two yards in width, and nearly ten feet high. It admitted the lights of heaven on to the face of Hinauri. The outer surfaces of granite were worn by the age-long action of air and water, but the inner edges, of pure white marble, were accurately hewn with two parallel grooves, one on each side, similar to those down which a window might slide. Calling up the picture of the huge stone grating in the lower part of the temple, I remembered that the same grooves on a gigantic scale were there also. For a moment I wondered if these apertures were really so constructed in the first place that they could be barred with massive granite shutters. But it was useless to wonder, and I turned my attention to what was passing on the plain below, which was clearly visible to me as I advanced and stood in the opening.

On the left some outstanding crags shut out the view, but towards the right I could see, far below, the secluded valley, hemmed in against the mountain wall by the spur and the Lion Rock. On the further flank of the Lion was a small plateau of some forty yards square. On the one side of this was a precipice overlooking the plain, and, on the other, the open space was separated by a deep fissure from the thick bush that clothed the bases of the less precipitous mountains sloping off round the Table Land on the right. To this small plateau there led up a narrow path—a path which, as it ascended, became at one point so constricted by the steep precipice on its right and the yawning fissure on its left, that there was scarcely room for three men to stand abreast. The natural advantages of this position had been seen by the Maoris at a glance, and they had already set a high palisading round it, thus marking it for a stronghold. Scattered about on the yellow plain were small collections of rough dwellings—as many as might account for the presence of several hundred natives. And they seemed to be still flocking in, for, coming down off the spur of one of the rolling hills on the other side of the plain I saw a line of warriors.

In the marae[25] of the fortified pa on the Lion’s flank was a chief striding up and down haranguing a crowd of savages. By his wild gesticulations and the fury of his words, whose connected meaning I could not catch, he was evidently a violent savage with a violent idea. As I asked myself what that idea could be my eyes fell on another figure in the open space near him. I sprang up and ran to the part of the cave where I had seen Grey set down his field glasses. Returning with these I looked long and steadily at the other figure. Yes, it was the wizard negro. Another of his infernal reed tubes was in his hand, and it at once occurred to me that he had this turbulent Maori under his influence, hoping, through him, to use the whole savage force for his own purposes.

While this was going on a tall chief, white-headed, and clothed in a dog’s-hair war-cloak, strode out of the pa and across the plain to meet the warriors, who were now banding themselves together on the level. He stopped them and then led them past the pa to the strip of bush that skirted the mountains to the right. As far as I could judge, the chief was Te Makawawa and the warriors were of his own tribe. I watched the scene on the plain for more than an hour, and the conclusion I came to was that the Maoris were gradually dividing themselves into two camps—the one under Te Makawawa and the other under the turbulent chief, who was evidently ruled by the negro wizard. From a few words that I had caught of the chief’s harangue in the pa I guessed that the wizard had depicted Ngaraki’s goddess as a pakeha, and had urged that the Maoris should rise in arms against such an imposture. In addition to this I saw clearly how the subtle wizard would erect another and a dark-skinned goddess on the pedestal and enlist their sympathies with her. Very gravely I noted how my fears had been only too well founded.

At length I rose and sought out Miriam Grey in the inner cave. The three were still sitting talking together in low tones, and I hesitated before disturbing them. But I felt that the matter was urgent.

“I’m afraid there will be a battle among the Maoris before long,” I said, standing before them. “They have arranged themselves into two hostile camps, and look as if they mean fighting.”

Miriam Grey rose to her feet.

“I knew it,” she said; “I knew there would be trouble, but Ngaraki would bring the tribes together. He has told them too much, and now they have the idea that they are to win their land back and drive the English into the sea. But Te Makawawa knows better. Is he there?”

“Yes,” I said. “He controls one camp, and another warlike chief who occupies the stronghold commands the other.”

“There may still be time when Ngaraki returns at sunset,” she said. “He will know nothing of it, for he will come by the secret entrance at the back of the mountain—the ‘way of the lizard’; but he will quiet them if Te Makawawa cannot. When he comes and sees what he shall see he will be like a thousand men, and at ordinary times he is terrible enough, for I have watched his face while he has chanted his karakias in this cave.”

Under Miriam’s direction Grey and I removed the statue from its place and concealed it among the wooden gods in the darkness of the inner cave. It appeared that this removal was only rendered possible by the fact that, some years before, Ngaraki, impatient at Hinauri’s delay, had, with great toil and by means of an old sword—apparently the gift of an early explorer to some ancestor of the Rangitane—found among the weapons in the inner cave, achieved the difficult task of sawing through the base of the statue, where it was in one piece with the marble floor. This was to loosen one more of the fetters of Hinauri, for, as he said, “How could she move to life when her feet were fast bound to the rock?” Thus the place where Hinauri had stood through the ages was now left vacant, so that her living image might stand there with her arms outstretched to the western sky, with the same loveliness of old upon her face, and the same age-long prayer upon her parted lips. This, Miriam maintained, was not a trick, but a test, for none knew as well as Ngaraki the form and features of his ancient goddess! None could say with him, “This is she for whom I waited, for whom I prayed and toiled my whole life long.”

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN.

Towards sunset I stood at the opening of the cave and looked down upon the rolling plain below, with the Lion Rock enclosing the little valley against the mountain wall. About the banks of the stream the afternoon sun, obscured from me by some crags that stood out upon my left, slumbered upon beds of moss, and all was hushed. Thistle-down floated along the slow currents of the air; gnats and bright-coloured beetles winged their way above the tops of the dreamy trees, while here and there a tui flashed out from the foliage to chase them in the sunlight. And in the bosom of the quiet was felt at intervals the single bell-like note of the korimako—a drop of liquid sound falling into the deep well of silence—the ping of some little heart of air bursting in a single throb of pure delight. These sights and sounds below were to me the points of a great hush which reigned beneath the cloudless sky, as if Nature, like a fair quietist, had fallen into a trance, yet having her blue eyes wide open.

As I leaned against the side of the cave’s mouth and gazed down upon the dreamy scene, the melancholy of it all laid hold upon me—that melancholy, I mean, which is at once the matrix of joy and sadness, and which, like beauty, is far within the eyes that see it, deep within the heart that feels it. In its atmosphere our souls may almost bridge vast gulfs of time and enclose far-sundered points in space.

It was so with me. I wished that those feelings which seemed to come to me out of the long-lost past might abide with me for ever, or I with them. Knowing them as the enemies of littleness, I loved them, not because they were mine, but because they were not. In this still air of melancholy the things of ancient night breathed at my side, and the things of to-day were set far back in the dim recesses of eld. The pre-Adamite city of the plain which Time had trodden in the dust was a present reality, but the murmur of my friends’ voices from the inner cave was a ghostly echo from a bygone age.

The silence deepened on my soul, the melancholy mood forgot itself, and the mellow poetry of “long ago” vanished like the glamour of a dream. “All things happen here and now,” I said, and the sound of my own voice disturbed the stillness. Time rolled itself out into ages. Space unfolded into vast stretches. The melancholy brooding of my dream returned, but with something added: a thread of fleeting memory connected with some old-world life. I tried to assure myself that it was a mere freak of the brain, which may be able to dress a present thought in the past tense in such a way as to deceive even its own father.

But it was in vain. I shall never forget the deep impression made upon me by my instantaneous dream that all things happen here and now. When it had passed I regarded it as the true waking state, and this other the dream into which I had slipped once more. An eternal dreamer dreaming non-eternal dreams had been aroused for a moment, and then had slept again with less reverence for the clumsy, sprawling consciousness of his dream. I had laid hold of some evidences of a life buried beneath the strata of memory: a monstrous tooth of an old-world passion, a blunted flint-head of some dart of high desire, a tablet inscribed with a deed of darkness, a clouded stone in labour with a gem for a sometime crown—these were unearthed at random as if from some pre-tertiary strata of recollection; and so I dreamed on and on into the past until, turning my head at a slight sound within, I saw a white figure advance from the shadows of the inner cave into the daylight, and pause on the spot where, with her giant priests around her, Hinauri, the Queen of the City of the Southern Cross, had set her feet. I passed my hand quickly across my brow and said to my senses, “Fools! it is merely a girl of to-day draped in the style of the queen of ancient night to cheat a Maori chief.” But these words did not multiply, for I saw at a glance that Crystal’s lovely face was full of those wistful dreams of long ago which had come to me. Her form was burdened as if with a sweet, but heavy sadness, and her head drooped, so that her long, black, rippling masses of hair enveloped her arms and shoulders like a shroud of darkness, in the depths of which was the veiled light of her eyes. She was abstracted and did not observe me as I passed before her gaze and found my way into the shadows of the inner cave, where Miriam and Grey were standing watching her.

“Is this to trick Ngaraki?” I asked of the former, with a return of my former scepticism.

“Hush!” she replied, “it is no trick. She is like one walking in her sleep. Within the unhewn marble I saw the queen of old stand like that in deep abstraction before she held out her arms to me and the future. It is no trick. In ten minutes Ngaraki will be here, and he shall judge if this is the one he has toiled and prayed for all his life.”

Her hand trembled on my arm, and I was silenced. I looked into her sweet face in the vague light, and saw there again my own strange dreams of “long ago.” At that moment the thunder of Kahikatea reverberated far away overhead. He was blasting the rocks to force a passage through the tunnels. Crystal heard the sound as if it had been a chord of music in her dream, for she raised her head, crossed her hands upon her bosom and stood there, rapt, serene, expectant. The daylight, now falling full upon her upturned face, revealed a pallor and a look of endless waiting which did not pass away, but remained unaltered, as if her spirit had flitted from her body and left them there. Minutes passed and she did not move. I called her name, but she did not hear. I stepped from the inner cave and stood before her. She did not see me. Her deep black eyes of night, wide open and full of mystery, seemed sad and tired of waiting through the ages, and upon her cheek, pale as the moon-face in the light of day, her long lashes cast heavy shadows of weariness. It was the beauty of the marble Hinauri, touched with the conscious stress of her long and lonely vigil. Awed and silent, I returned to the gloom of the inner cave to watch and wait.

Sunset was drawing near. The exact moment when the sun ray would strike in was known to the woman who had spent the best part of her life in this cave. “A few minutes more,” she whispered to me; “but it will not come before Ngaraki. He must be already approaching through the tunnels.”

I heard a slight movement in the darkness among the Maori gods, and was about to ask who was there, when Miriam clutched my arm and pointed towards the head of the marble stairs which led up into the cave. There, framed in the rugged archway, stood the tall figure of Ngaraki the Terrible, clad in his flowing robe—a magnificent Maori, whose flashing eye was hard to meet, whose proud, fierce, but noble bearing marked him out as a ruler of men. His eyes were fixed upon the white figure in the centre of the cave, standing where Hinauri had for ever stood. The thick tresses of hair that fell about the graceful form of his goddess were now jet black. He passed his hand across his eyes and hit his breast a sounding blow.

No, he was not dreaming. But was it a trick? Had Miriami blackened the statue’s hair?

He took quick strides and stood before the form in white. Ngha! the eyes were no longer dull, white stone, the parted lips were faintly red, and the cheeks, though white as death, were those of a living soul.

He stepped back with a stately gesture of heroic feeling, chanting in an awed and subdued voice:

“It is not Hingarae I see,

Not Ihungarupaea,

’Tis Hinetuahoanga

Standing there!

The axe is sharpened,

The axe unloosened by the sun,

And now the tree which stifles Tane

Shall be laid low.”

He ceased with the poetry of his fierce heart unspoken in his eyes, for at that moment Miriam Grey advanced from the shadows with the circlet of gold in her hands. Motioning Ngaraki to stand aside and be silent, she drew near and placed the talisman with its sparkling gems upon the head of the living image. As she did so the pallor and abstraction, the weariness and sadness, fell from the face and form of Crystal. She no longer drooped. The warm blood mounted to her cheeks and sparkled in her eyes. Power and stateliness came into her pose. She awoke. And at that instant the expected sun ray burst in, and the dazzling beauty of the Daughter of the Dawn was revealed.

In all my dreamings I had never dreamt of beauty as divine as that. My poor words fall on their faces in helpless confusion. Miriam Grey caught her breath and stepped back, the limit of human wonder upon her gentle face. The Maori chief stood erect, his eyes shining like stars, but his countenance motionless with a control that seemed more than human. Grey moved a sudden step forward, and, as I turned my head, I saw in the shadows beyond him the vague outline of a giant figure I knew. It was Kahikatea, standing with one hand on the buttress, his head bent forward to view the form of Hinauri in the sun ray. He had come

“AT THAT INSTANT THE EXPECTED SUN RAY BURST IN, AND THE DAZZLING BEAUTY OF THE DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN WAS REVEALED.”

by the ‘way of the spider,’ and had arrived at a moment when he well might stand there speechless with amazement, shaken with the sudden realisation of desires which seemed impossible of fulfilment.

As the sunlight wrapped Crystal about with splendour, sparkling in the gems of the golden talisman, glistening on her raven tresses and close-girt raiment of white, a mysterious change came over her. She dropped her arms to her side and shivered slightly. Then the sweet longing deepened upon her form. The lovelight leapt into her glorious eyes as she gazed into the western sky. Yearning forward, she held out her arms to some vision which seemed to call her pure soul out of the depths to array itself in light upon her radiant face.

Surely this was no acting! None could imitate so faithfully the pose of longing and expectancy which had been so startling in the marble. No; as I gazed with all my soul, wonder forced the settled conviction into my mind that it was in reality Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, waking from her age-long trance. Reclothed in flesh, it was the ancient spirit of the pure one who, in a far-off period of the world’s unwritten history, had come down from the skies to rule the people by the Law of Love. A storm of deep feeling swept doubt from my mind and gave me clear-seeing eyes to view this thing. Hinauri had returned. The Daughter of the Dawn had taken up the thread of memory where she had dropped it in the ages that Time has buried in the Eternal Sea.

Still bathed in the glowing light she stood motionless, her arms outstretched to her vision. A little breath of wind sighed without, then came in at the opening of the cave and swayed the edge of her skirt till it revealed one sandalled foot. It rippled her raven tresses and caressed and pressed them gently about her form. Then her beauty became unearthly in its splendour. Her bosom heaved, her eyes sparkled with a holy light, and her parted lips uttered a cry of joy in an unknown tongue—strange, and wild, and sweet, like an echo of forgotten song. It thrilled the place with music for a moment; then the sun ray fled and bore it on its bosom away, through all the happy fields of space.

Hinauri’s arms fell to her side, and she turned to the chief, who stood silent. With a swift glance she scanned his stately form, and, when her eyes met his, a look of recognition came upon her face. In the half-bewildered way of one who is linking the memory of a dead past on to the living present, she said in even, solemn tones, speaking in the Maori tongue:

“I know thee. I know thy name. I know that of which thou art the meaning. Zun! my counsellor in an age gone by; the one who stood by me in the darkest hour of danger; but stooped from the high magic that I taught my priests—stooped, and sinned, and fell, to save me when all seemed lost. Lo! the gross image of myself—the stranded spar bound down with a stone!—whose was the splendid lie that gave that image to the Vile Ones to oppress, saying ‘This is Hia’s real self’? The lie was thine, O Zun! the substitution of the false for the true to save the sacred stone from their polluting hands. Misguided friend of long ago! thou hast suffered for love of me and still must suffer——”

She broke off suddenly, and my thoughts, which were recalling Ngaraki’s interpretation of the characters on the breast of the Twelfth Tohunga, found a sudden ending; for, at that instant, there came from the plain below a sound that shook the air. A sudden tramp of many feet as one, then silence and a short sharp yell, harsh and terrible, rending the silence like a savage spear thrust—these were the signs that told the first terrific movements of the Maori war-dance on the plain.

Ngaraki’s hand closed tightly on his meré, and he advanced one foot; but Hinauri’s eyes were sad, and her face sorrowful, as she mutely questioned him, while we all stood silently by in the shadows, feeling it was not for us to speak or act.

At length the fierce chief spoke:

“Hinauri has returned, and her people are ready to fight for her. Ngha! they will fight the whole world and drive them into the sea.”

The sound of the war-dance—evidently a sudden surprise to him—had half aroused his fierce nature, and for the moment his great joy could plan no higher tribute to his goddess than to fight for her. But in another moment he was recalled from his wild impulse, for Hinauri’s face grew sad beyond words as she answered:

“Zun—Ngaraki—my word is peace, not war; my rule by love, not violence. Ah! I have awaked too soon from my long sleep. Thou wert ever fierce and too ready to fight for me. Well did they call thee Terrible. But hear me, Zun—they may heed my words. If they would be my people they must live by the law of love and not by that of war. Go to them. Tell them that my message is peace, and stay their violence. They make war, not for me, but against me. Go with all speed, lest it be too late, and thou return to look for me in vain.”

The chief’s fierceness fell from him at these words, and there appeared upon his face a look of wondering worship, softening his aspect with the high poetry which lingers long in the heart of his race. He bowed his head in submission and moved to go. But Hinauri called him back.

“Ngaraki! Depart in peace: leave war and knife behind you!” She pointed to his weapons as she spoke, and there was a command in her voice and eyes.

The chief turned and laid his spear and meré on the white dust before her, saying: “Not only his spear and meré will the Maori lay at the feet of the Daughter of the Dawn, but his heart and life also. He was startled by the sound of war, and thought only of fighting for his queen. He will go to his people and tell them that the word of the Bright One is peace and love.”

He turned, and was about to descend the marble steps when his controlled emotions broke loose. Facing round he held forth his arms to her, while the answer to his lifelong prayers shone out upon his rugged face.

“The world is glad!” he cried; “no more shall Papanui’s daughters weep. Ihi-Ihi has come from the west. Hinauri has burst from her ancient tomb. By the magic of a woman has she burst her bonds. And now the long-sealed fountains of the Maori’s breast leap and dance and sparkle in the sun with music sweeter than the korimako’s joy. Ngha! I will hasten to my people: my heart is breaking with a mighty song.”

He hurried away, and his stately form was soon lost in the shadows below the stairway.

Then Hinauri, the daughter of Miriam Grey, turned to her mother with a strange blending of emotions upon her face. The dazzling glory of the ancient queen was now softened by the pure and tender light of a daughter’s love. She drew near to Miriam, and, placing her arms about her neck, folded her close, saying in a soft, low voice: “Mother! my mother! It is all clear to me now. I know myself; I know my name—it is written on the rocks that are buried beneath the dust of ages on the plain below, and upon the walls of this everlasting temple. Now I know the meaning of all my vague yearnings for some forgotten glory, some mellow splendour of the past, some memory of my ancient self. Now I know why the thought of ‘long, long ago’ brought tears to my eyes and yearning to my soul; and why I longed to fill the hearts of women with great thoughts and prayers, for it is by the high magic of Woman that my giants will come back. Look at me!” She stood away and held her arms aside, while there rested upon her face a perfect certainty that none could find a defect in her person. “Am I not as I came to you at the very first, perfect as the image that was reflected in the depths of your pure soul? Am I not the one who came to you and touched your highest thoughts with fire, who led your soul to the father of my choice? Yes, it was I that fanned that double flame with the breath of my desire. I gave my life to you and you preserved it by your constant prayers. Nay, more—I came to you because you were the only one in whom I could find myself. In your great love for what is pure and beautiful you held out all that belonged to me, and I came and took it, for it was mine to take as well as yours to give. And yet there are some who would say that I was not; that the full extent of this sign of power is that you fashioned me according to the model of your mind; that I was one with formless substance, and you moulded me to this form by the power of your imagination.”

She smiled and placed her arms again about her mother’s neck. Miriam Grey’s lifelong prayer for what is pure and beautiful was answered. She drew her child to her, and the beating of her heart against her daughter’s bosom spoke first. Then she said:

“You were the love that came to me out of the distant past—a ray of light from the golden skies of long ago. You are Hinauri, the Bright One, and yet—and yet you are my child.”

Her goddess stepped back, and again the dazzling regal beauty flashed out, but with a softened splendour, as she cried: “Ah! pure mother, whom I chose to be my guide! The stars in your eyes foretold my birth.” Her beauty changed to loveliness, and, as she drew nearer and continued, we in the shadows bent forward to catch her words, they were so low and tender: “Mother, sweet mother!”—she was nestling to Miriam’s bosom now—“if every woman mounted to the gates of heaven to find her child, and bore it from the skies sheltering it all the way, as you have done, there would be no more sorrow, no more death—only a coming and going of gods descending and ascending, from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven. For long ages men have been only half-born. Earthward-bound souls have striven with their mothers for whole and perfect expression in flesh, but Motherhood has fallen from its grandeur, and they have striven in vain. The Bright Ones ever come to earth, but when their witless mothers misconceive their power and beauty, what godlike likeness can they bear? Alas! that women should have forgotten that their ideals may rule the world. Alas! too, that they should caricature the gods. It is to restore Motherhood to its first sublimity and power that I have come, and the mystery of my coming is the ground-plan of a mighty race.”

Hinauri paused and placed her hand to her forehead, as if she feared her memory was flitting.

“Though I can recall the past,” she said sadly, “I have no knowledge of what my future is to be; yet I feel that this clear memory will not be mine for long. Before the world’s oblivion closes in upon me again I would search out and look upon certain things in this ancient place—symbols of constant love for the higher things of beauty, and symbols, too, of the downward progress of those Vile Ones who have made stepping stones of their dead selves to grosser and to grosser worship. And when we go down to work and pray in the world, should we not leave the pure white image here as a symbol of our higher selves, for ever holding out its arms to the glory of the future?”

I glanced at the shadowy figure of Kahikatea, half expecting that he would make some sign, but he stood motionless, straining forward, with one hand clutching a projection of the buttress. Obviously he was too thunderstruck by this fulfilment of his dreams to act, to move, to speak. I went to him, and grasping his hand, said:

“Your dream is fulfilled. Wait a little longer and you will understand.”

He answered by a silent pressure of my fingers. Then Grey and I, in answer to the wish we had heard expressed, brought forth the marble statue from the recesses of the inner cave and placed it in its former position. I remember noting that, as we stood away leaving it there, the sounds of the war-dance on the plain sounded louder and more furious; but all thoughts, all sounds were for the time set aside by what followed.

As Hinauri stood before the stone gazing for a moment upon the finest, loftiest expression of herself, I heard a deep breath taken in the shadows near me. Then a hand trembling with a bodyfull of excitement gripped my arm, and a voice whispered hoarsely, “God, Warnock—I understand!”

Then Hinauri spoke, and her words seemed to gather to themselves all the loving prayers that have risen from the lips of women since the human world began. The thrilling music of her voice struck some invisible but responsive harp-strings in the air of the silent cave, and the song of it went singing on and on, coalescing with the sweet tones that underlie the universe of women’s hearts—on and on until the Great Tohungas of the Earth quieted the music of their deeds to hear the strain, and, listening, to whisper: “Hush! we toil in vain. A woman prays and all is done. Gentle hands knock at the door of heaven, and the Sons of God come forth to walk among us”—on and on, a voice made universal, welling from the heart of every woman and falling on the ear of That-which-Listens in the throbbing heart of all. Her black eyes—dark with excess of light—were fired with all the intensity of a woman’s love, as she raised her arms and voice to the image that was to remain in the high solitudes of the mountain:

“My pure white Higher Self! I go down to the world, but thou must stand for ever gazing out into the future, thy very look a prayer for all that Heaven holds back. Pray on, pure self, and may thy prayer be ours. When we weak women of a darkened world lose heart, and almost fall into forgetfulness, then may we look up to the everlasting hills and see the age-long hope upon thy face, the vision of the Golden Age within thine eyes, and crystal purity upon thy brow. Symbol of ideal woman! In every deed may we live always in the silence of the age with thee, for thou art in the stillness, and the stillness is with beauty, and beauty is with God. Thine arms are raised in constant longing; thine eyes look forth into a further and a further sky. So may our arms be raised for ever; so may we look beyond the level of the earth and pray that we may always know that, far above the world’s loud roar, our pure white Higher Self stands ever as we might stand—clear seers of a pristine beauty, seekers of a further God and, like thee, crowned with precious gems of womanhood.”

She removed the circlet from her head, and, approaching the image, paused before it with the talisman in her hands.

“This will link thee and me together in one life, so that there shall be one spirit between us. For long ages have we been spoken of as one: let us so remain, and I, below upon the earth, will never stain thy glistening white, for all the holy blessings that have fallen on thee since the world began will fall on me and hold me up. So I remain while thou remainest, breathing this same pure air. Lo! in token that we are one life and one spirit, I place my crown upon thy brow.”

She raised it, but her eyes fell upon the characters engraven upon the inner surface, and, with hands arrested, she read aloud:

“Thou, Hia, shalt return at the dawn of a new age, but ere the sun has shone twice upon this, thy crown, thou shalt withdraw into the sky.”

She paused, while this strange prophecy wrought a sadness very human on her face. Then she placed the circlet upon the head of the image.

Something now prompted me to lead the woman I loved to the man whose face she had seen in her dreams. Acting on this sudden impulse, I emerged from the shadows and said to the one so far above me, “He is there in the inner cave. He is there—my perfect man!”

As I pointed towards the buttress she turned her dark eyes on mine; her lips trembled, and her eyes burned with a light that was not for me. Then with a troubled and sorrowful sigh—yes, that sigh was for me—she said, “Wanaki! he was always mine.”

She moved slowly in the direction of my outstretched hand. She seemed to pause and flutter a moment on the verge of the shadows, then, with the same joyous cry in an unknown tongue that she had uttered in her vision, she flew to him, and, from the darkness, I heard her murmur his name, dwelling upon it as lovingly as her head now dwelt upon his breast.

“Kahikatea! Kahikatea!”

I turned and hastened down the marble steps, leaving Grey and his wife to make what they could of it. I would go out and kill someone—that negro wizard by choice—or be killed by someone, it mattered little. But at the thought of the Destroyer of Women—the Poisoner—I pulled up short in my chaos. Yes, everything mattered. From that evil source danger might still threaten the woman I loved. What meant the prophecy engraven on the talisman, that before the sun shone twice upon it she must withdraw into the sky? The other prophecies had been fulfilled, why not this? It was not fate. It could not be fate. It was a warning. Filled with a dread presentiment as dark as the utter darkness I passed through, I went down through the tunnels and reached the place to which we had climbed from the margin of the lake. The rope was still there, drawn up as I had left it, and the cataract was no longer thundering down from above. By this I knew that the hidden contrivance beneath the water had again been set in motion, and that both Te Makawawa and Ngaraki had passed out by the ‘way of the winged fish.’ For me there was no way but to descend by the rope, and when I stood on the margin of the lake below, I feared to leave the rope hanging there. Accordingly, I swung it over a projection near the recess where the torches were kept, so that no one could find it in the darkness.

When, a minute later, I passed out at the opening in the side of the mountain, the hideous yells of the savages beyond the Lion Rock told me that fierce battle was near, if it had not already begun.

CHAPTER XXIV.
ZUN THE TERRIBLE.

To reconnoitre the position of the two camps I determined to mount the back of the Lion from the valley side. I ran across the open space and climbed half-way up the flank of the great rock, but, finding it was impossible to reach the summit, I selected the tallest pine that grew on the side of the spur and went up it in all haste. When I reached the feathery top I found myself above the level of the Lion’s back, swayed by the wind to and from the topmost ledge. Here I had a clear view of the plain, where the savages of both camps were drawn up in two long lines facing each other. The war-dance was over, and the time had arrived for single warriors of each side to rush out, and, with wild gestures illustrative of the coming slaughter, to hurl taunts at the other.

But my attention was directed more particularly to a scene that was being enacted in the open space of the enclosure on the plateau not twenty yards from me. Ngaraki, who had evidently been unable to quiet the savages on the plain, had found his way into the hostile pa, where he now stood confronting a small band of chiefs, who, by their violent manner and occasional bursts of savage laughter, looked as if they had been drinking waipiro to rouse their utmost ferocity for the coming conflict.

The violent chief whom I had seen haranguing them was there, seated upon the ground, while the others stood behind him. His aspect was one of treacherous hatred as Ngaraki, calm and careless, yet a savage of terrible presence, stood before him. Then, before a word was exchanged the tohunga of the temple burst forth into his message, delivering it in a half song, half speech, while he paced to and fro with dignified mien in the open space. He told them that Hinauri had returned, and that he was her messenger. He told them that her word was peace and love, that she had sent him to stop the approaching battle, that, if they fought, they would fight, not for her, but against her. While the yells of mutual defiance came up from the plain like the manifold voice of Tu—that god of war who ate his own brothers—Ngaraki’s tones resounded within the pa, impassioned and eloquent. But his words would find a heart of peace in the rocks themselves sooner than in the breasts of the savages before him.

He ceased, and the violent, blustering chief, whom he had addressed as Amukaria, sprang to his feet.

“He says Hinauri has come,” he yelled, brandishing his axe. “Can he show her to us? No; he says she is white as the mountain lily: then we don’t want to see her. Hinauri is no wahine pakeha; she is Maori like ourselves. I have seen her spirit: she is no pakeha. She bade me collect a thousand canoes. I have done so, and they will land at Wakatu to-night. Curse the pakeha! A pot for his head. This is my word to him.”

He turned and, rushing towards an effigy of the white man, which stood at one end of the enclosure, its head already half severed from its body, he struck a furious blow with his axe. The blow completely severed the head, which fell and rolled upon the ground. At this a shout arose from the other chiefs; then Amukaria took the effigy’s head in his hand, and holding it up cried, “A pot for the pakeha’s head!”

Ngaraki stood looking on in silence. Would his fierce blood stand this test? When the chiefs were quiet again he said calmly:

“O Amukaria, your words are wild. Your plans will come to nothing. Those who were to come in the thousand canoes are on my side. I have spoken to them and they have listened to my words. They come, but they leave war and knife behind them.”

A savage yell from Amukaria announced his baffled rage on hearing this. Maddened by drink and lust of blood, he appeared like a demon, with tongue protruded in deadly insult. He danced with rage before Ngaraki, who stood silent, regarding him with his stern black eyes. Verily the spirit of Zun the Terrible slumbered within him. A smile of contempt curled his lip, and Amukaria saw it. Unable to contain his fury any longer he rushed at Ngaraki with axe uplifted, saying, “I will cleave your head as well, and heat the oven for you.”

The wary chief did not move. He was unarmed, but he had left his outer robe within the mountain, and his limbs were free. For a moment only the axe was poised in the air, but that moment was the last of Ngaraki’s most unnatural forbearance with such a foe. His face changed. He would have said “Ngha!” but there was not time—so sudden was his spring. He caught the axe by its handle and wrenched it with a sudden twist from Amukaria’s hand; then, bounding off a pace, he whirled it far away beyond the palisades of the pa. Before his antagonist could grasp another weapon he had sprung upon him, and in a moment they were locked in a terrible struggle, in which I marked down Amukaria as already a dead man.

But as they rocked and swayed in the open space, one of the watching chiefs took a long-bladed knife and threw it carelessly upon the ground a few paces from the combatants. It would have been fair enough if it had been done openly, but the moment chosen was when Amukaria’s quick eye alone could notice the act. He had Ngaraki by the hair, but the ariki had his antagonist by the throat with one hand, and by the wrist with the other. Fully aware that no man could live many minutes with his throat in such a hand as his, he was content to keep his grip and wait. But all the while they were swaying to and fro nearer and nearer to the knife which he had not seen.

The other chiefs stood by in silence. They saw their leader’s face grow livid, but they knew that he would get the knife. His eyes were starting from his head, and his tongue was lolling, still in insult, from his mouth; but they saw, as I did, that he would reach the knife, and they did not interfere. I drew my revolver, determined to risk a shot at twenty yards if a good chance presented, but I held my hand, thinking that Ngaraki was not the kind of man to need my assistance in a single combat. I would only fire at the last possible moment; but I could warn him, and I thought to do so by shouting at the top of my voice. But my words were lost in the general uproar of savage yells on the plain, and were unheeded.

Amukaria was near the knife now. His rolling eyes had marked its position. His fingers slackened from Ngaraki’s hair, and mine sought the trigger, while I steadied myself. His body drooped as if he were falling. At that instant, judging by what followed, Ngaraki must have seen the hand which had held him reach out and grasp the haft of the knife. A yell of triumph came from the watching chiefs, but it was quickly silenced. As the knife was grasped firmly in the murderous hand, Ngaraki suddenly let go his fatal grip; then, as the lolling tongue was protruding still further in triumphant insult, his knee came up with a terrific crash against his antagonist’s chin. I heard Amukaria’s jaws clap together like a trap. It was a death-blow. His neck was broken. He fell back like a log and lay there with the lower half of his tongue bitten off by his own teeth.

“Ngha!” said Ngaraki at last, as he picked up his half of the tongue that had insulted him and tossed it to some dogs that were in the enclosure. As he did so the chiefs sprang upon him unawares, and after a prolonged struggle he was overpowered, and was soon lying bound hand and foot with flaxen thongs. Among these chiefs there was one who urged the others not to kill Ngaraki, but to bind him to the stake on which the headless effigy stood, so that when they returned with the pakehas’ heads they might hold a triumph over him before preparing him for the oven.

“Now let us hear you call on Hinauri to come and set you free,” said one of them, when the deed was done. Their tongues were protruded at him, and they taunted him in a manner that is hard for a Maori chief to bear. But Ngaraki stood in silent contempt, yet his black eyes blazed with wrath, and his flesh quivered with the indignity of his position. He tugged and strained at his bonds, and I saw that if he could but free himself it would be a bad day for his foes.

At this time the battle broke with a rattle of musketry and a rising babel of yells on the plain, and the chiefs that were still in the pa hurried down for the fray. The two lines which had been sending out single combatants for some time now fused in one mass, the muskets were cast aside after the first few shots, and the fighting was carried on hand to hand in the grim savage style. In the midst of the throng I could see the grey-haired Te Makawawa fighting fiercely. Even as I singled him out he killed his man, and, whirling his club round his head, raised the savage war-cry, “Whaka ariki!” He and his warriors were now driving the opposing force back against the stronghold. As soon as I saw this an inspiration struck me to liberate Ngaraki, or they would certainly kill him when they were driven back into the pa. In a very few minutes I was down the tree and rushing round the great rock. The fighting was close upon me as I reached the path that led up from the plain, and when I gained the narrow strip of rock in front of the pa I looked back and saw that some of them had turned and were retreating rapidly up the path by which I had come. There was no time to lose. I darted in through the opening left between the palisades and rushed across the open space towards Ngaraki, who seemed to be trying to tear the flesh off his bones in his efforts to free himself and get at the foe.

In less than ten seconds, and just as the foremost Maori entered the pa, the thongs were cut. The chief turned his fiery eyes upon me, said “He Pakeha!” and bounded off to strangle the only foe he could see—the savage who had just entered the pa. Stepping quickly aside from a fierce blow, he seized the unfortunate man by the throat with both hands, lifted him off his feet and shook him like a rat in the air, after which he broke his skull against one of the palisades. Then, picking up the weapon of his foe, a large greenstone meré, he turned to the opening of the pa to meet two who were rushing in. Both of them continued their rush into Reinga, the abode of spirits, with a clear understanding that they were to leave the door open, for more were coming that way.

Ngaraki now stood in the opening and fought grimly against the savages that Te Makawawa and his warriors were driving in. To help him I shot one here and there as occasion demanded, and at last he stood on the narrow strip of rock—an object that struck terror to the hearts of his enemies, for they only faced him as they were compelled by the fierce onslaught of Te Makawawa and his warriors behind. For the most part they were demoralised, and were pushed headlong into the fissure by the press of the throng. Some of the bolder chiefs rushed yelling on to the narrow way, but Ngaraki’s terrible club whirled and flashed like green lightning all about him, and they went down. At last one brave fellow sprang forward and closed with Ngaraki, and I had to hold the narrow way myself; but not for long, for, before I had emptied my revolver, I saw bare legs whirling in the air near by, and in another moment a Maori was hurled into the fissure. It was not Ngaraki, for that fierce ariki was again standing on the rock—a majestic figure, dealing death. In the side-glance that I caught of his flashing eyes and commanding front, I understood what it meant to a Maori to have the blood of the Great River of Heaven running in his veins. Verily the spirit of Zun the Terrible was awake within him.

In the midst of this I saw moving round to the left at the base of the Lion Rock a large band of savages who had not retreated up the path to the pa, but were evidently bent on some other object. They were led by a tall fierce fellow, and I thought I saw the negro wizard darting to and fro among them. Could they be heading for the opening of the mountain? I fired at a foe who seemed one too many on the narrow strip and looked again. The leader pointed his club towards the mountain, and with a yell pressed forward. At the same instant a rifle shot echoed from high up in the mountain wall, and the savage fell forward on his face. Thank Heaven! Kahikatea was on the alert, but if that band got into the mountain, what could two men and two women do against them? It was with a sickening sensation that I had remembered I had descended by the rope and left it there. Would anyone think to draw it up? Again, I shuddered as I reflected that in all probability the negro wizard had been into the mountain while we were in the marble cave. Could it have been he that tried to hold the rope when I pulled it up?

Filled with apprehension, I noted with one eye that Ngaraki and Te Makawawa’s warriors were nearly through their terrible work, and with the other that the band heading round the Lion Rock were in some confusion and hesitation. There was yet time to gain the mountain before the negro wizard could urge them into the precincts of what many of them regarded as the stronghold of the taniwha.

I knew that in every pa there must be a way of escape by the back, but, failing to find it, I made for the back of the Lion, and presently stood on the steep rock near the top of the pine from which I had watched the curtailing of Amukaria’s offending tongue. The tree-top was six feet from me, and a glance to right and left showed me there was no other way down. Every moment was precious if I were to have a hand in guarding the woman I loved from that most subtle tool of the Vile Ones—the Poisoner. Gathering myself together, I sprang as the tree-top swayed towards me, and, passing through the feathery pine foliage, found myself clasping the slender top of the stem with arms and legs. For the moment I thought it would break, and there would be an end, but it held good, and I made my way rapidly down the trunk, bruising and scratching myself in my haste. Once on the ground, I sped across the mouth of the valley as fast as my legs would carry me, but I had scarcely gained the bank of the channel when I was overtaken by a Maori running at full speed, with a musket in each hand and a kitful of something heavy round his neck. At first I thought he was an enemy, and I prepared to meet him as such, but when we came face to face on the bank I found to my surprise that it was Tiki.

“That Taepo is coming to take ‘the little maiden,’ ” he said fiercely. “Here, Wanaki—lead the way.” He handed me one of the muskets and motioned me to proceed. In a very short space of time we were standing inside the opening, and then Tiki disburdened himself of the kit which I found contained a goodly supply of cartridges.

While I was filling my coat pockets I heard footsteps coming down the rock from the ledge above, and soon afterwards Kahikatea strode forward into the light, with the sword of the early explorer between his teeth and Grey’s rifle in his hand.

“Are they coming?” he asked coolly.

“Yes, fifty or sixty of them,” I said. “Where is she?”

“Waiting on the ledge above. But I don’t know where Grey and his wife are. I don’t think they know anything about this.”

“THE SECOND MAORI THAT ENTERED WITH AXE UPRAISED HAD HIS HEAD CUT CLEAN OFF BY THE FIRST SWEEPING BACK STROKE.”

I looked up through the darkness, and saw the vague, white form of Hinauri standing on the ledge above.

“We can do better up there,” I said; “we can see without being seen—come!”

“All right, you go first.”

Feeling it was foolish to waste time I complied, and made my way up the rock, thinking Kahikatea was close on my heels. But he made Tiki follow me with the kit of cartridges, and before he himself set his foot in the first niche there was a chorus of yells immediately without.

In the dim light I darted on to the rim of the basin just in time to see the first savage fall to Kahikatea’s rifle. Then, as they crowded in with wild yells that echoed strangely in the great cavern, I saw my giant friend, who now stood before the opening, throw his rifle aside and set to work with the sword. The second Maori that entered with axe upraised had his head cut clean off by the first sweeping back stroke: it rolled on the ground at Kahikatea’s feet. The third was run through the body, and the fourth I picked off to give Kahikatea a chance to settle down to it. Then it grew grim as death, for they crowded in two and three at a time; but Tiki had now got to work also, and, between the three of us, we kept them at bay until there was a ghastly pile before Kahikatea. But they crowded in, urged on from behind, and Kahikatea was beginning to let out with his left hand, in addition to doing fiercely with his right. It was getting serious now, for I foresaw that if anyone got past him into the shadows he would be struck down from behind. I shouted as much to him, and he answered as his sword swished through the air: “All right! as soon as one gets past I’ll come up.”

In less than half a minute, at a moment when Tiki and I both killed the same man, two of them did get past, and Kahikatea, true to his word, drew back and ascended the rock. I had reserved my revolver for this, and until he was out of their reach, four out of six Maoris failed to follow him. Then they flocked in over the fallen bodies, and I began to fear that if once they found the way up the wall and gained a footing, we should have to beat a retreat. Even now I heard them climbing the rock, but Kahikatea was on the ledge with his sword, and the foremost fell with a thud on to the floor below. Tiki and I still directed our attention to the opening, as those already inside were mostly in the darkness. Presently I heard sounds as of men climbing on their fellows’ backs to mount the wall near me, and realised that very soon it would be a hand to hand fight in the dark on narrow and slippery places.

While destroying several of these formations by mere guess work, I was suddenly startled by a light on the other side of the lake. I turned my head and saw Hinauri walking round the margin bearing a torch in each hand. From time to time I glanced at her and wondered greatly what she was about to do. Presently I saw her leave one torch on the ledge below and hurriedly ascend the rocks of the buttress, beyond the abyss, which led up to the point high on the cavern wall where the tapering spar reached towards the overhanging crags. She had now nearly gained the narrow standing place from which I had seen Ngaraki leap out to catch the sprit of the spar. Surely she was not going to take that awful leap! In a flash I saw her purpose and cursed myself that I had not forestalled her. I stood on the rim of the basin, and with a hoarse cry called to her, but she did not heed. She had placed her remaining torch upright in a crevice of the rock, and now stood erect in the narrow niche high up on the cavern wall—a frail, white figure outlined against the darkness by the light of the torch. I held my breath, rooted to the spot. There came the quick panting of the Maoris below as they struggled to gain the level on which we stood; there came the steady swish of Kahikatea’s sword, and I felt that I should be doing my part in that grim defence; there came, too, a cry of “Ngha!” outside the opening, and I knew that Ngaraki the Terrible was splitting skulls outside. But all these things seemed like the points of an instantaneous dream, the one reality being that the woman I loved was about to take that daring leap above the abyss.

While I watched she crouched for the spring, and my heart stood still. I recalled the prophecy engraven on the golden circlet, and a choking horror entered my soul as she sprang out above the abysmal gulf. My head grew dizzy and my sight blurred. For the moment I reeled and clutched at the air, but steadied myself and looked again. The long spar, a dark heavy mass, was moving slowly downwards through space. The rock beneath my feet trembled as, with a mighty roar, the sluice gates were opened, and the water, now released by the action of the lever, gushed through the opening in the basin below. At that moment, and while the dim daylight from the opening served, I glanced round me at a sharp cry of “Wanaki!” and saw the last of my faithful Tiki. A Maori had just gained the ledge. His club was descending on my head when Tiki, who must have sprung through the air to do it, jerked him back by the neck. The club whizzed down past my face, and both of them, friend and foe, fell back into the sweeping torrent as the daylight from the opening was flooded out. Tiki the Maori had given his life for me, but his end was peace, with his hand on his enemy’s throat.

There was wild confusion in the darkness then. From the savages came gurgling cries of dismay as they were carried away by the sudden flood. But the swift happenings of that moment, when the rushing water gave us the victory, came to me through the back of my head, for my eyes were again fixed on the moving spar, whose track through space was lighted by the two torches, one above and the other below. The white form clinging to the end of the sprit swept down out of the intervening gloom into the light of the torch left burning on the margin of the abyss. Quick feet found the level rock, and Hinauri sprang aside. The great round stone rolled into its groove above the basin’s rim with more than its wonted impetus, for the end of the spar in its unchecked downward career ground violently against the rock where Hinauri stood. Sparks flew from that end as the round stone, looming near me against the light, rose on the outer lip of the groove and remained in momentary balance. But the long arm of the lever snapped at its thinnest part. The stone hesitated no longer. It rolled from its poise and overbalanced. Then those three colossal fragments—the two parts of the broken spar and the great round stone—fell down, down into the darkness, while the white figure beyond the abyss bent over the brink and listened. A dull, crashing sound of thunder came up from the depths and reverberated through the whole gloomy place, echoing from the stupendous crags overhead and rolling away into the vast reaches of the cavern. The false image of the woman, with the heavy stone which oppressed it, had at last been hurled down, and now lay among the ruins of old-world things on the granite floor of the earth.

CHAPTER XXV.
THE SERVANT OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF HUO.

Hinauri took up her torch and came round the lake towards us, but Kahikatea met her half-way, his dripping sword still in his hand. I heard the sword clink as he cast it on the rocks—he had no further use for it as they stood facing each other in the torchlight. At this moment my attention was diverted by something brushing against my sleeve. I put out my hand and clutched what seemed to be a stick pointed towards the spot where the two stood. A quick horror shot through me, for at the instant I touched it I heard a peculiar hiss that I knew only too well. It was the reed tube of the negro wizard. But I had spoilt his aim, and before he knew what had happened I had thrust him backwards and wrenched the tube from his hand as he fell into the water, which had now risen above the aperture and was rapidly finding its level. My first impulse was to fling the accursed weapon of the Poisoner into the abyss; my second to keep it and use it against him, for I remembered how the darts had been arranged around the one I had taken from him at our first encounter. But, in case of accidents, Hinauri must be placed out of danger. With all my lungs I roared across the lake.

“Kahikatea! for God’s sake, and for her sake, get out of this infernal place as soon as you can.”

“Is it urgent?” he called back.

“Yes,” I yelled excitedly, “do as I say; go up the rope, quick!”

“All right,” he returned, and I knew he would not go alone.

Then I struck a match and directed my attention to the wizard, whom I could see struggling in the water below, surrounded by ghastly corpses. Not without an inward misgiving, even a feeling of dread, at what I was about to do, I turned away, and, detaching one of the poisoned darts from its receptacle, placed it in the tube. By the dying light of the match I saw the glistening of his skinny black back as he pushed his way between the floating bodies and made for the further wall. I raised the tube, took careful aim, and puffed the dart. The match, which was burning my fingers, fell into the water with a hiss, and all was dark. The wizard pushed on a little before he spoke, and then it was in a hollow guttural voice that rattled in his throat: “He got me!” he said, and this was followed by a harsh grating shriek which sounded like the final curse of an incarnate fiend who knew his time had come. Yet it seemed a trifle strange to me that he should not have cried out directly he was struck. Such an accurate aim with an untried weapon was a matter for self-congratulation, and having succeeded so far I went on to use his own black art against himself.

“You are powerless,” I said; “powerless to act except in obedience to my voice. Keep on swimming—you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear—and obey,” came from the wizard in meek, obedient tones.

I struck another match, and walked along the rim of the basin to the ledge of rock which Kahikatea had held against the Maoris. There I held the light so that he could see to ascend, and presently we were standing face to face. By still another match I examined his countenance. Hideous, repulsive it was, hate and malice written on every line, and in the piercing eyes was a suppressed alertness which did not seem natural in one in the passive state.

“I RAISED THE TUBE, TOOK CAREFUL AIM, AND PUFFED THE DART.”

“Who are you?” I asked, fixing my eyes on his; “and why are you here?”

“I am the servant of Cazotl,” he replied in fairly good English; “and I have come here to look for gold hidden in this mountain.”

“Why did you attempt to carry off the white maiden?”

“She has the power of spirit-sight,” he said again. “A witch described her to us, and I have been looking for her for years among the Maoris. When I had found her my master came from Mexico, for she could tell us where the gold is hidden—many, many tons of gold—and sparkling stones.”

I was nonplussed. Was it merely a matter of gold after all? I paused and, while I paused, the match went out. As I drew another from my waistcoat pocket I heard a faint movement before me; it was very faint, but I heard it and stepped back. Then as the lucifer fizzed—I remember it was a double-headed one—I saw the negro in the act of springing towards me with arm uplifted and a small pointed thing in his hand. In a flash I saw that he had been shamming so as to take me unawares, that my dart had never struck him at all, that he had a spare one in his hand, that—but the end of this lightning grasp of the situation was finished in the air, and the whole was checked point by point beneath the water, for I had sprung aside into the lake to avoid the possibility of a prick with that poisonous thing. That spring saved me so far, and when I reached the surface, still grasping the reed tube, I realised it was now a level fight in the dark—a weird, subtle, creepy contest to be determined by a mere prick of the skin.

The hissing of the water as it welled up from below, laden with bubbles that burst all about me, made a cover of sound sufficient to conceal my movements from the listening ear of my enemy. Still I made no more noise than was necessary in reaching the margin. But in grasping the rock, which was scarcely a foot above the water, the tube in my hand came in contact with it and made a slight click. Instantly I pushed it back in my armpit, and made my way a yard or two further along, knowing that he must have heard the sound. My next move was to push off a little again and extract two darts from their places. With one I loaded the tube, and the other I retained in my left hand ready for use at close quarters. Then I held the rock with one finger and strained my ears to catch the faintest sound. The ceaseless seething of the water disturbed the silence as little as it lightened the utter darkness, and here in this terrible suspense I recalled a moment, not long since, when my arms had enclosed the form of Crystal not many yards away on the rock. At that time I had felt with a wild thrill of delight that the whole heaven of a world contained only us two, but now the same thing came over me with shudderings, and it was again as if the whole hell of a world held only the thing of evil and myself, both watching in the dark.

Suddenly something touched my finger on the rock. Instantly I threw myself back on the water and, raising the tube to my mouth, puffed a dart at a venture. No sound followed, and I cautiously approached the bank again at a different spot, loading the tube with my spare dart as I went. But a better idea occurred to me. A light would give me a great advantage, for, having the tube, I could fire from a short distance, while my antagonist could only strike at close quarters. I remembered that the smouldering punk was kept near the heap of pinehearts in the recess in the wall; perhaps with care I should be able to get a light before I was seen. Accordingly I struck out across the lake, guessing the direction as nearly as I was able, and finally grasped the rock at a distance which conveyed to me the idea that I had cut off a considerable arc of the lake’s circumference. With great care, and a horrible feeling that at any moment I might feel the prick of the skin which would place me and everything else in the power of the wizard, I raised myself on to the ledge and groped along the wall to find the recess. The vividness with which I could see my surroundings—all except the position of my enemy—in my mental eye, surprised me: yes, the recess should be just here; no, it was not there, and for a moment I grew giddy and lost my bearings. I recalled myself with an effort, and continued my way. Suddenly I stopped, and selecting another dart from the tube, held it at arm’s length before me with one hand, while I felt the wall with the other, and suspended the tube from between my teeth. It seemed hours before I found the recess, and hours more before I crouched, with the punk in one hand and a torch in the other, gently blowing to get a flame; and all that time I endured the most frightful suspense lest the light, carefully as I sheltered it in the furthest corner of the recess, should be seen too soon.

At last the pineheart ignited, and the resinous wood began to hiss and blaze. I held it aloft, and placing the tube ready to my lips, advanced on to the side of the lake. The light fell on the swelling bosom of the water, on the rocky wall above, and on the narrow margin at my feet, but I could not see any enemy at first. Yet I knew I had now the best of the situation, and proceeded boldly round towards the basin. When I had gone some dozen paces I stopped suddenly, for there was the figure of the wizard crouching down on the ledge, with his eyes fixed on the water and his arm upraised as if about to strike. He seemed unconscious of the light, and, as I advanced nearer, remained fixed in the same position. Had the dart I fired before striking across the lake reached its mark, or was this another piece of cunning? I drew still nearer, covering him with the tube, and saw that his frame was rigid, while on his set face there rested a look of the most diabolical hatred.

I was not in a mood to trust to appearances, however, and, to make certain, I puffed another of his own poisoned darts at him. It pierced his shoulder, but he did not move. Then I realised that at last he was at my mercy.

I passed behind him, told him to stand up and follow me, for my voice was the only thing, and he would obey it. He prepared to follow me like a dog.

“Throw away that dart,” I said, pointing to the small thing he still held in his hand.

He did so without any hesitation.

“Now follow.”

I went before him with the torch, past the landing-place, and on to the rim of the basin, where I made him proceed first to the outer lip.

“Stand there on the very brink and do not move from it,” I said, and held the torch so that he could see.

He obeyed. Now I would have the truth, for I was convinced the information he had volunteered before was false. I drew near him and stood at his side.

I said, “Again, who are you? Speak, and speak the truth, and nothing but the truth.”

No sooner had I spoken than I heard the most extraordinary scheme of echoes imaginable. My last word—truth, multiplied from crag to crag about the vaulted roof, ended in strange gurgling sounds, in which the meaning was wholly lost. I had not heard this echo from any other spot of the cavern, and I wondered if this, too, was a mysterious device of the ancient giants, or whether it was one of Nature’s more accurate calculations, with mighty pebbles, in acoustics. When the wailing sounds had almost died away the wizard answered:

“I am one of the Brotherhood of Huo,” he spoke in deep, hollow tones, “and I have come here at their command to carry out their will—to degrade and destroy one who threatens their power in the world.”

“What is their power? Answer from your own knowledge and intelligence.”

The terms in which he answered astonished me; they were those of a man well versed in occult things.

“The power of the Brotherhood of Huo is the power of the Single Eye looking downwards. They strive for what men call Evil—Pure Evil; and when they attain it, they become one with all Evil on the earth, with increased powers to further it.”

“And why,” I asked, “why was it worth your while to come half-way round the world to do this particular piece of evil?”

“It was revealed to us in the great mirror of the Daughter of Darkness, whom we worship, that the ancient spirit of Hia would return to this temple with a magic sign of motherhood which would undo our work in the world. Cazotl, our chief, and I, his servant, then came to degrade and darken the maiden Hia, so that she might forget, as other women have forgotten, this sign which threatens our power. But the magic of this place is stronger than ours: Cazotl was overpowered by his own evil flung back on him by one stronger than our strongest—one who must have mastered our own magic to do it. Many of our number have set out to find the magic which controls our own in this place, but none of them has ever returned. I, too, was struck and crawled away to die, but recovered, and came here to find Hia and destroy her.”

“The sign is already given,” I said. “Hear me and understand: the sign of motherhood, of birth and remembering, is already given. What does that mean to you?”

“It means that our power is doomed. Our ancient enemies, the giants in what men call Good, will be born again upon the earth. These strong ones can only come back by means of the pure white magic of the woman. It has been the aim of our Brotherhood from earliest times to bind woman down in darkness, to narrow her mind, to degrade and blind her lest she should recall this magic. But now the sign is given, and we are doomed.”

“And what is your punishment?”

“We have no punishment,” he said. “Punishment exists only for those who have a spark of good left in them. We have severed all connection with that. Remorse, the hell of those who vacillate between good and evil, has no existence for us.”

“But you can suffer physical pain?” I exclaimed.

“Yes; pain and pleasure are in our bodies,” he replied.

“Then before you go out into darkness”—my words hissed out in a voice that sounded strange to my own ears—“you must suffer. You cannot act except in obedience to my voice; but you are conscious, acutely conscious in all your body, to feel what my words will work in you. You cannot stir from this spot, neither can you move a limb nor yet cry out. Servant of the Vile Brotherhood of Huo, hear your punishment. You have a raging fire in your vitals, so that your blood seethes and hisses through your veins. For one hour as we count time, this fire will rage through your being with the most horrible pain. In the darkness before you, you will see the face of a great timepiece, and every second as marked there shall seem to you like the time that passes between sunset and sunset, fully stretched out and crammed with agony. Yet you will neither faint nor fall, but endure the whole.”

My voice was the voice of cursing, and, as the last words echoed round the cavern walls and finally died away on shapeless granite lips in the high vaults overhead, I recoiled at the awful nature of the thing I had uttered. The torch fell from my fingers; then, in the darkness that ensued, I staggered and fell backwards into the water in the great basin.

I struck out for the rim, but no sooner had I drawn myself up than I was startled by another voice than my own in the darkness near by.

“Ngha! the lizard looks in vain into Ngaraki’s eyes,” it said fiercely.

At the sound, I knew that the terrible chief, having, in consideration of the indignity heaped upon him, accepted utu[26] from Tu, the war-god; and, having, moreover, left a full receipt and acknowledgment thereof on the cracked and battered heads of his foes outside, had now just come in by the ‘way of the fish.’ I heard him shake the water from his hair and climb on to the ledge. The drops dripped, pattering on the rock as he stood up, and then his quick footfalls passed away round the margin of the lake. Presently I saw a faint glow in the recess, and in another minute he came out holding a blazing torch above his head, and stood looking across the lake towards the abyss. But the light of the torch did not carry far enough, and he passed with rapid strides round the further side.

When he reached the ledge by the partition between the lake and the abyss, and held his flaring torch out and gazed forward at the empty air where the spar had been, a wild yell of triumph came from his great chest, ringing like a clarion through the spaces of the cavern above and below. Hinauri had hurled the long spar and the rolling stone down upon the heads of his granite enemies of old time in the pit. His meré, still in his hand, was whirled again and again round his head. Then his furious outburst was checked and, with a sudden fierce pant of the breath like an escaping throb of energy at bursting pressure, he stood still. He would take it more methodically. A high triumph over the broken heads of the Vile Tohungas of the Pit was now for him, and he would hold that triumph in due form. This was in his manner as the meré shook fiercely in his grasp, and he turned and strode, with head held high, along the path that led down into the abyss.

I knelt on the rock and watched him go, while my heart went out to him across the gulf. More than ever, the heroic bearing, the grand, fierce spirit, the noble and graceful dignity of this savage had my admiration. I would go and witness his triumph and hear the words he would speak to the Vile Tohungas.

Carefully I made my way round the lake, lighted another torch in the recess, and proceeded after Ngaraki; but when I came to the ledge where he had stood I began to wonder if the wizard negro on the other side of the abyss was suffering all the torture I had suggested. I stopped and pondered my doubt awhile. At last I determined to speak to him across the darkness, for the light of the torch fell short, and I could not see him standing there on the basin’s rim.

“Servant of the Brotherhood of Huo,” I called, “listen! my voice is the only thing. You cannot move from where you stand nor can you fall forward into the darkness, but your tongue is loosened for me to hear what you suffer and——”

But I proceeded no further, for as the words left my lips there came out of the darkness on the further side a sudden harsh roar, rising to a shriek, that seemed to strike and grate against the rocks of the gloomy place, wringing harsh echoes of an indescribable agony from their time-worn sides, and calling hollow murmurs of woe out of the abysmal abode of the Vile Tohungas. Weirder and more terrible came the cries of the tortured wizard, mingled with articulate gnashing of words that sounded like curses in a barbarous tongue. From the echoes of his cries the whole place seemed filled with the shrieking and moaning and dismal wailing of the vile ones of far time come back to be torn by fiends in the darkness. Had every granite facet of every crag on the walls and roof of that terrible place been a rack on which was stretched a living, shrieking victim, the effect could not have been more awful. My God! What had I done! Who was I to judge this man? The voice of mercy rose up in my soul, and I thought to retrace my steps in the hope of undoing this horrible curse, but before I could turn to carry out my purpose a strange thing happened. A chill blast of air came from across the abyss and struck my face. A thrill shot down my spine. My flesh crept and my hair rose. Then, far within my brain—it seemed to come from an immeasurable distance—a voice spoke, “Let him alone! it is our will, the will of the One above us. Who are you to show mercy when we, the Lords of Compassion, have set our seal to this man’s doom?”

I passed my hand across my forehead: it was cold and wet. Awed and full of tremblings, I turned and walked swiftly towards the giants’ window, hurrying away from those awful sounds which were still ringing in my ears like the imagined cries of hell. In the twilight that pushed the thick darkness back from the huge grating, I partly recovered myself and stood for a moment on the sill, looking out. I wanted a breath of air—some tonic sign of human life from the outside world, and chance gave it me in a small sweetened draught, for which I was thankful.

It came in this way. While I was looking out into the blue sky and listening to the faint music of the wind across the great stone bars, I heard a murmur of voices without, speaking in low tones. I set down my torch and stepped outside to listen. The sounds came from behind the rock on my left. It was the sweet, plaintive, happy-sad voice of a woman that spoke:

“And through all these long years you have forgotten me. I have had no existence to you, no part in your life, no place in your heart. I know the reason of it only too well, dear—Te Makawawa offered me the same forgetfulness, but I would not.” The owner of this voice evidently knew nothing of the terrible things which had just taken place in the interior of the cavern.

“I had no option,” replied a man’s voice, which I knew to be Grey’s; “but I did not wholly forget. Many times in the day and night a strange reminiscence of a tender face flitted across my memory like the face of an angel I might have seen long ago in dreams. They called me ‘Dreamer Grey,’ because at odd times I would stop in what I was saying or doing, and look into the air, trying to follow this fleeting glimpse which was all I knew of some forgotten heaven. But, as I told you just now, the memory of these intervening years is fading away, and I recall these things but dimly. It is beginning to seem but yesterday when I came with you a prisoner to this place. Strange—but I almost think that soon those eighteen years without you will be crowded out, and I shall take up my life again where I left it off—my old life and my old love for you, dear.”

The voice ceased and a happy sigh, breathed all about the one word “Husband!” fell upon my ears. It dismissed the faint, far-off wailings that came from the interior of the mountain; it swept away even the consciousness that I was playing the part of a paltry listener. When this did occur to me some time later the lump that had risen in my throat, and the mist that had gathered in my eyes seemed to take away the paltriness of my part.

Again the sigh, again the tender word as the happy wife replied: “When you saw my face it was when I, too, paused in what I was doing or woke from sleep and stretched out my arms to you. Oh! how I have loved you night and day through all these long years of my imprisonment, and now we are together again, never to be sep——”

The voice stopped, arrested perhaps by some sudden doubt.

“What is it, dearest?”

“You told me just now”—her words had a ring of pain in them—“that your old memory was coming back and the intervening years were slipping away.”

“Yes, they are almost gone. It seems as if some powerful hand is slackening its hold on my brain, and long-forgotten memories are flooding in and taking up their old places. Even now the eighteen years is a mere blank covered with flitting dreams.”

As I listened I remembered the aged chief’s words concerning the spell he had cast over Grey, and a strange thought came to me. I said within my breath, “Te Makawawa is dying. His aged face is turned to the golden west. Soon the lights of heaven will come out in the depths of the sky; soon the eyes of the great chiefs gazing down to see what noble needs are done among mortals will be opened, and Te Makawawa’s eye will shine there—a new star.”

But Miriam Grey spoke again, and her voice was like a moan of pain.

“Dear husband, tell me—I did not think of it before—and forgive me for thinking of it now—but when you forgot me—forgot that—that you ever had a wife, dear—did you—was there anyone——”

“Good God!” said Grey suddenly, “it’s too late; it’s all a blank—I remember nothing—nothing!”

And then I knew that the aged chief Te Makawawa was dead.

“No, it can’t be,” she cried, in answer to his words. “I should have seen it in your face before. I am certain it can’t be; I should have felt it. Dear husband! take me in your arms again and call me wife. No one has ever come between us.”

“And no one ever shall,” he replied.

In the silence that followed I withdrew, and when the manifold sound of agony and wailing, coming out of the far darkness of the interior, again fell upon my ears, I felt toned up to endure it. But another voice, rising up out of the abyss, high and jubilant, told me that Ngaraki was there holding his grim triumph. I picked up my torch and made my way down.

When at last my feet found the great granite steps at the bottom of the vast place, I saw lights flickering below. The chief was preparing many torches and placing them all about, chanting in measured tones the while. I put out my own light and crept down almost to the lowest step, where I stood and witnessed a scene of a savage drama so wild and strange that I must lay down my pen awhile before attempting to describe it.

CHAPTER XXVI.
NGARAKI’S HOUR OF TRIUMPH.

On the floor of the abyss was a mighty wreck. The falling spar had snapped the heads from the shoulders of the vile brood, and here and there a granite torso, topping the ruins, indicated the semicircle where they had once stood looking up at the moon, each nursing his stomach and curling his lips in that everlasting smile of calm disdain. One image alone was spared—and he stood apart facing the white gleam of the cataract and looking up through the dark with his back turned upon the colossal débris: the Twelfth Tohunga remained untouched, and, at his feet, not far from the abyss below the abyss, was the great round stone, still unbroken.

About the more open spaces of the floor between the shattered ruins and the sheer wall of the abyss moved Ngaraki—a tall figure clad only in his undergarment of tasselated flax, girded fast about his waist with a warrior’s belt. As he paced to and fro he chanted. Then, whirling his meré round his head, he danced and yelled like a very savage. His voice rose high with jubilant rage; it was his hour of triumph, and the fury of it was appalling. The blazing torch in one hand, the green flashing meré in the other, and his wild, illustrative gestures from the war-dance invested him with all the terrors of savagery. But always there was the dignity and masterly movement of the chief. To me, who loved this great Tohunga, it was a grand spectacle; to me, who feared him, it was awe-inspiring, terrible. And through it all, yet heard only in the pauses of the chant, there came the wailing shrieks and gnashing cries of the wizard standing far up there in the darkness on the basin’s rim.

In the midst of his wild vehemence the chief espied one of the heads lying face uppermost on the floor. Its glaring red eyes and the sneer upon its lips infuriated him on a sudden. In one spring he was upon it, and, with two mighty blows, each accompanied by a terrific yell, he brought red sparks from that Vile Tohunga’s eyes, and then broke forth in a wilder strain than ever. To my wrought mind the whole thing suggested a symphonic music scored by some Grand Devil of a Master, whose gamut ran from hell to heaven, whose instruments went raving mad in the rendering, whose world was earthquake and eclipse, with the lightning flashing through the dark, and the thunder of the storm gods roaring round him. Built on a bass of gloom, the triumphant strain of Ngaraki, the ghoul-motive of the shrieking wizard, the sad murmur of the rising wind in the giants’ window, and, above all, the unheard part called up here and there in the chief’s chanting: his love-strain of Hinauri—these were running through my prosaic soul in a way which hinted that perhaps the fate in store for me was to go forth from that awful place madder than that “some Grand Devil of a Master” himself.

After a full half-hour at this initial outburst, the fierce tohunga became more coherent. He calmed his wild gesticulations and paced to and fro striving to reduce his feelings to poetry—the poetry of a life’s labour and final triumph. There was a clear ring in his voice as he began his more ordered chant. His soul swelled with his voice, and I knew he felt like a whole victorious army marching steadily in column. His words came “straight from his breast” with that fluency so wonderful in the Maori tongue:

“Ngha! none can stand.

Headlong have they fallen.

The Vile Tohunga eat the dust

Their cursing power is gone.

They thought to bind the Bright One—

With a Stone they thought to bind her,

But she arose in all her beauty:

Hinauri, Rival of the Dawn,

Lovely as the mountain lily.

See! she leaps above the darkness.

Lo! the stone rolls from its place.

Down it falls, in anger roaring

Like the voice of Tongariro,

Like the waves that crash in thunder

On the cliffs of Waitariki.

Now it strikes the Vile Tohunga;

Snaps their heads from off their bodies—

Grinds them into many pieces.

Ngha! the magic of Hinauri!

Ngha! the cursing of Ngaraki!”

And so he went on, until he had fashioned their teeth into fish-hooks and their bones into darts to shoot rats; until he had plucked out their eyes and boiled their heads and eaten them in the course of a chant in which he summoned all his Maori ancestors by name to come and partake of the feast. Then he sought out each available head and triumphed over it separately, smiting with his meré until the sparks came again. After that he seemed searching for a head that was missing. For a long time he wandered about with his meré ready. At last he found what he was looking for—a head that had rolled away to the brink of the abyss below the abyss—the head of his most hated foe, the chief of the Vile Tohungas. He looked at it with high contempt; then crash! and crash! and the red eyes flashed for the last time. Crash! again, and the leering lips spat blood of fire.

He paused. An idea had occurred to him. He glanced at the awful pit that yawned hard by, then at his enemy’s head, and then at the great round stone

“HE ROCKED IT BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS UNTIL AT LAST HE RAISED IT ON ITS SIDE, AND THERE, WITH A FIRM HAND, HE HELD IT POISED UPON THE VERY BRINK.”

some little distance behind. I saw plainly that he would hurl the Vile One’s head into the bottomless pit, to be boiled and eaten in Porawa, and, when he had done that, he would roll the great stone on top of it to keep it down for ever and ever and ever. Having thrown aside his meré, and set his torch against the base of the Twelfth Tohunga, he placed his shoulder to the gigantic head, and put forth all his strength. Slowly it moved; for some time he rocked it backwards and forwards until at last he raised it on its side, and there, with a firm hand, he held it poised upon the very brink.

It was a great day for Ngaraki. It was not a day for beating his meré on the ground, but for plucking the very eyes and boiling the very heads of the gaunt images which were his hated foes. And now in a supreme moment he stood on the brink of Porawa with his arch enemy’s head in his hand. He looked into the awful depths, and would have chanted his crowning triumph. But words would not come. How could he chant on such a theme without striding up and down? All he could do was to express his utmost and fiercest contempt for the head of the Degrader of Women and all his brood.

“Ngha! Upokokohua!” and with his foot he spurned the head from him. Down, down it went into the silent darkness, and the chief, always willing to give his enemy the right of reply, leaned over the brink and listened. A minute passed, but there was no answer. All was as silent as the everlasting grave of things forgotten, save for the unfolding of the falling water, save for the wailing shrieks, now growing fainter, of the wizard far away above. I could see from Ngaraki’s listening attitude that no sound came up from the unfathomable gloom.

“Upokokohua!”[27] This is the final word of Maori invective—an insult invocative of the utmost depths of everlasting shame. And it was in a terrible voice of cursing that Ngaraki hurled it down a second time after his fallen enemy. Then he turned to the round stone. A glance showed that it would be a tremendous task, but his face and manner told plainly that he would roll that stone upon his enemy’s head if it took till sunrise to do it. The floor was level; if anything it sloped a little in the desired direction, and if once he could start the stone he would probably accomplish his object.

He went down into the shadows of the gulf, and soon returned with a long jade-tipped spear in his hand. With this he made two rough places in the granite in which to place his heels for a better purchase. Then, setting his back against the stone, he put forth the strength of a giant, but the stone did not move. He sprang up with a shout, snatched up his spear, and paced swiftly to and fro, chanting a karakia, naming the Samsons of his race, and telling of their mighty exploits.

Again he returned to the task and bent himself against the stone. By the light of the flaring torches I saw his face distinctly, the veins standing out upon his forehead, his nostrils distended. For a full minute he put forth his utmost strength, adding the power of will to that of sinew. The great stone began to move. It rolled slightly and stopped. Ngaraki straightened himself again, panting, and paced the floor to chant for the strength of a thousand men.

But the strength of a thousand is nothing compared to the power of one who knows the way. It might have been this idea that struck him, for he dropped his pacing and walked round the huge mass taking thought. There was a space of six or seven yards between the stone and the brink of the gulf, and this space, like all the rest, was strewn with the dust and grit of ages. Eagerly he set to work, and, with one tool and another, he scraped and polished the granite floor. At last the way was fairly smooth, and he seemed satisfied, but, instead of placing his back to the stone as before, he went off to search for something he had seen among the débris of the spar. It was the sprit that had snapped on the rocky ledge far above, and was now lying on the top of the ruins. It was still long enough for Ngaraki’s purpose. His ideas were enlarged. The sprit and the spar, with which he had controlled the round stone in its movements above the abyss, were still to his hand for a lever. And, to his mind—and mine—it was a fit and mystic thing that such symbols of his conquest and adaptation of the giants’ handiwork should now be used to roll the stone—their image of the ancient world—upon the already parboiled head of their mighty one.

So with a fragment of spar for fulcrum, he used the remains of the sprit as a lever against the stone, toiling at it steadfastly, until at last the great round mass rolled over the brink and disappeared for ever in the awful depths. Standing on the brink, the Maori hurled the fragment of the spar after it, and the sprit also; then, not satisfied with that, he took his spear and meré and sent them hurtling down with a cry of farewell—almost of lament—to each.

It was over, and he turned to take his torch. As his hand closed over it he gave a sudden start. There, on a ledge of the pedestal of the Twelfth Tohunga, something was looking at him. By the horror-struck face of the chief I guessed it was something of a terrible nature that he saw there. Then, by an exclamation of his, I knew that it was one of the little green lizards that run upon the rocks. The chief and the lizard remained motionless, face to face, and their eyes met. That was a death summons according to the Maori lore—a call to Reinga distinct and clear. I knew how it filled him with serious thoughts, which the excitement of triumph had banished from his mind, how Hinauri’s words recurred to him, and, finally, how a nameless foreboding took possession of him as he recalled his own part in the fight—a foreboding lest the vague alternative mentioned by the Bright One should have been realised, and he should be doomed to look for her in vain. Alas! he had not stayed the violence. He had left war and knife behind him at her feet, and had snatched them up again in the pa. With one gesture of despair the whole tide of his thought and feeling turned from his late triumph to the person of his goddess. He would go and search for her. It was at that moment the shrieking of the wizard suddenly died away. His hour of punishment was over. Ngaraki’s had just begun.

Driven by a vague fear, the fierce ariki hastened up out of the abyss, and I, going before, remained in the shadow of one of the crags, where the path turned back upon itself, until he had passed me. On, past the giants’ window, along the level path, and by the place where the spar had stood, he went with long strides, his movements quickening with a growing anxiety. When he came to the lake he mounted the stone near the rim, flung his torch away behind him, and plunged into the depths. I reached the spot and took up the torch and waited. Again the lake heaved and twisted with the movement of great things below, and again the black head of the stone under water rose above the surface. Then the hollow thunder reverberated above, and the cascade came roaring down from the darkness overhead. He had gone by the ‘way of the winged fish,’ and I would follow by the rope.

I found it without trouble, and unhitched it from the rock, but the tube which I still held in my hand was a difficulty in the way of climbing. What should I do with it? From that my thoughts wandered to the wizard; what should I do with him? I passed round the lake to see if he was still there, thinking as I went that it would simplify matters if he had fallen forward over the brink. But when I gained the basin’s rim he was still standing as I had left him.

I stopped. It was enough. He might be dead, he might be living—I would leave it at that. If dead, his wickedness was over; if living, it was not safe to free him from the poisonous spell which held his will in an iron grip. Besides, after my eerie experience of the voice in my brain, I was disinclined to have anything more to do with him. When the poison had lost its power, no doubt he could fall forward into the abyss and add one item to the lumber of ages on the granite floor below.

With these thoughts I left him and hurried after Ngaraki. When I had succeeded in throwing my torch up on to the vantage ground above, I climbed the rope, and then drew it up after me, for where that wizard thing was concerned I was certain of nothing. I was anxious to overtake Ngaraki, and ran on and on through the lofty tunnels, until at length I came to the Place-of-Many-Chambers.

Just as I was passing through into the tunnel beyond, I stopped, for I saw, through the opening of one of the side chambers, two figures standing together. They were Kahikatea and Hinauri. Her hands were clasped in his, and she was looking up at him, while he, with drooped head, was speaking to her. They were both oblivious of all else but each other. Even my flickering torchlight did not rouse them.

“Till death do us part?” he said.

“Nay, Kahikatea,” she returned, “for ever and ever. Here, in this very place, in an age gone by did I plight my troth to you, and here again——”

I dashed on, the light of my torch blurred before my eyes, up through the tunnel towards the marble cave, whither I knew the chief had gone. When I came to the hewn steps I saw him striding before me; I flung aside my torch and followed, gaining the uncertain border of daylight and darkness, whence I could see into the cave, just as he reached the entrance.

There before him stood the statue of Hinauri, immovable, silent, all white, with arms outstretched. With a quick step he stood before her and looked into her eyes. There was no colour there. The living hues had fled. The tohunga’s lips quivered. He stretched forth a hand and touched her reverently upon the arm. It was cold stone.

Then despair crowded in upon his heart, and a terrible sorrow came upon his face. Anguish drew deep lines beneath his eyes, and the power of his presence dropped from him. His great chest shook convulsively, and he gave way to a grief as awful to behold as his savage triumph in the abyss. He prostrated himself at her feet and mingled the tears of his agony with the white dust of the floor. Raising himself upon his knees, he held up his arms and implored her to come back. With bitterness he reproached himself as the cause of this sad end to all his hopes. His words grew fierce against himself. He raved wildly, and addressed heart-broken appeals to the statue; but Hinauri answered not, nor pitied the Maori in his grief.

At last it was driven home into his tortured soul that the end had come. He had failed to do her bidding, and she was changed again to stone for ever. He stayed his wild woe and stood motionless, his face calm, his form erect, and in his eyes the splendid sadness of a god in pain. As he stood there the aspect of Zun the Terrible deepened on him. The sorrowful longing on the face of the Twelfth Tohunga was his again.

I could not stand there and look calmly on when a word of mine might explain the trick that had been unwittingly played upon him. My foot was on the step before me, and I was about to rush forward, when again a cold blast of air struck me in the face, again the thrill darted down my spine; my flesh crept and my hair rose. I was rooted to the spot. Then, far within my brain, the Great Tohungas of the Earth spoke a second time: “Let him alone! It is our will—the will of the One above us. This man is worthy of correction—may you be as worthy in your sin. In ages past, to trick the giants of evil, he substituted the False for the True, to protect the True; and now it comes back upon him in like manner, and he is tricked. Let him alone!”

Such words as these took shape within me, and I could neither speak to him nor move to his aid. As I stood shuddering helplessly, his mood changed, and he began to pace fiercely up and down the cave, passing and re-passing through the broad flood of twilight that came through the opening, and fell upon the face of the marble image.

“Ngha! she has withdrawn into the sky,” he said. “I will go to her, and she shall not return when I am one. It is but a stone that is here. It shall not remain. The world shall see the Bright One no more. It is the end; it is the end.”

He disappeared in the darkness of the inner cave, and came out again with a weapon, a heavy meré of the broad-leaf kind. Whirling this above his head, he paced to and fro, again chanting the long toil of his life. Now he stopped before the image and whirled the weapon within an inch of the lovely face.

“None other shall chant your loveliness,” he cried fiercely, and yet there was worship in his aspect; “none other shall say, ‘She came again at my bidding.’ Oh! Hine-tu-a-hoanga—sacred stone on which I sharpened my curses to cleave the heads of the Vile Ones—you are as a house that shall not stand. And this great house that holds your house shall be closed for ever.”

At this point I was sure of his purpose, and resolved to go in search of Hinauri herself in the Place-of-Many-Chambers. She would stay his hand if I could not.

The thrall that held my feet relaxed as I turned to descend. More fierce and high the chant of Ngaraki sounded behind me as I went. My torch was still burning where I had left it, and I picked it up to hurry on through the tunnels, sick with a vague fear that, as Hinauri had said, she and the stone had but one spirit between them; that the tohunga’s ancient magic, which had glanced from the granite Cazotl to the real, might—I fled on, striving to run away from the terrible thought. The chanting voice still reached me faintly through the high tunnels as I emerged into the Place-of-Many-Chambers. My God! What was that? A crash! and a yell! and another crash! echoing down through the tunnels from the marble cave above. My God! What was this? A woman’s shriek! a moan! and another shriek! coming from the chamber towards which I was hastening.

As I staggered forward I saw Kahikatea supporting the form of Hinauri drooping on his arm. Her face was as white as the stone image I had left in the marble cave. Yet another yell and another crash echoed faintly down the tunnels, and a tremor ran through the fair form, as Kahikatea sank upon a rock and supported her head upon his knee.

“She is dying, Warnock,” he said, in a voice of anguish, gazing down into her lovely face, while I held the torch so that the light fell upon it. The long lashes showed very black against the pale cheek, and her whole face and neck, to her cross-girt, white-robed bosom, showed too deadly white against the enveloping cloud of her hair. It was not a mere swoon.

“Yes,” I replied hoarsely, and the torchlight trembled as it fell on the rocks of the chamber, “it is death.”

As we gazed in too great agony for words, Hinauri’s dark eyes opened, her bosom rose and fell, and a sweet smile rested upon her lips as she looked up into Kahikatea’s face.

“Be patient, my lord!” she said, raising one arm and placing her hand against his cheek, “it is but a little time since we planned our work in this world, and now I have to go. It is hard, my love—but raise me up—it is sweet even to die upon your breast.” He raised her while she placed her arms about his neck and nestled to him.

“When I am gone,” she murmured, “take this poor body out on to the roof of the mountain, and there, on the shore of the crystal lake that stands against the sky——”

A low groan of agony came from Kahikatea, and she ceased!

“Be patient, my lord,” she said again, drawing his head down and raising her lips to his. “Hasten the world on to the brighter day when we shall meet again—kiss me, love, I am going.”

Their lips met. A shiver of joy ran through her last breath. Her head drooped forward and lay on Kahikatea’s shoulder, shrouded in her hair. Hinauri had withdrawn into the sky, and at that moment I stood like a stone among the everlasting stones, and asked myself, What is this world of many shows, of glimpses, and flitting shadows? And the answer came from the depths of my despair: A desolation of nothingness, a barren waste where the bright dead moon smiles down on the sapless ruin of things once living as herself; where the wild wind wails like a planetary spirit come back to view the scene of its buried hopes. To me this was a world where nothing mattered, and I scarcely know why I moved forward to Kahikatea and placed my hand upon his arm. Perhaps it was with a confused consciousness that his sorrow was even greater than mine. I strove to speak his name, but a throb of grief choked it back. My friend sat with his dead love in his arms, gazing straight before him. I shook him gently, and he looked up with speechless agony on his face. I saw his desire to be left alone with his pain, and stood away.

At that moment I caught sight of a light descending through the tunnels. It drew near, and I saw Ngaraki striding down. He came on and emerged into the Place-of-Many-Chambers. I almost barred his passage as I stood there with my torch, but he did not see me. His flashing eyes were too bright for the calmness of his bearing. Despair was on his face; a quick thought told me that I might increase it, but that thought passed away, and the feeling that nothing mattered was stronger than ever upon me. I stood and watched him like one sleep-walker watching another. He approached the strange-looking lever—the device of the giants, whose purpose in placing it there had been handed down through the ages.

“It is the end,” he said sadly, as he raised the tapering arm.

It swung to the roof and then fell back and struck the floor. I knew then that the great rolling stone that had rested on the weight of the lever was now speeding into the deep gulf below, on the gloomy errand it was designed to execute. The openings of this vast temple would be closed for ever—yes, but it did not appeal to me with any force; it was a matter of no consequence now, for who wanted to go out into that waste place called the world? I did not, and I was certain Kahikatea did not. Yet I noted the hollow rumblings that followed the fall of the stone, and wondered wearily what would happen.

CHAPTER XXVII.
THE GIANTS CLOSE THEIR TEMPLE.

Ngaraki passed down through a side tunnel, and I returned to the place where Kahikatea still sat with his dead. After gazing at the scene awhile I withdrew again, mindful of my friend’s unexpressed desire to be left alone. Then Grey and Miriam floated into my mind; since I could do nothing else I could at least see that they were safe. Acting on this thought, I made my way down through the main tunnel, and at length reached the vantage ground high up in the wall above the lake. The cascade was silent again. Ngaraki had gone down by ‘the way of the winged fish’ beneath the water. Presently there was a flickering light below, and soon afterwards the chief, bearing a torch, passed round the lake and paused upon the ledge above the abyss. As mechanically and wearily as I had found my way down to this point, I now stood and watched him.

Pacing to and fro upon the rocky ledge, he chanted his last karakia—a lament in which the poetry of his despair struggled through all his fierceness.

“Ihungarupaea! Hine-nui-o-te-po! Thou art hurled down, a sunken rock.

“Thou canst not rise. Shattered into fragments; never will your dust be gathered from its everlasting grave.

“Hinauri, Rival of the Dawn! thou too art gone for ever.

“Alas! what melting sorrow fills my breast to overflowing.

“Hinauri, Daughter of the Light! for whom I cursed and toiled—for whom I waited all my life—for whom my bosom yearned with love, alas! thou too art gone.

“The gentle brooks of Marahau poured laughter down the sunlit slopes—ran glad with songs to Tinirau—with love songs to the Ocean Lord.

“But now their waters flow like tears—while on Kaiteriteri’s shore the penguin wails with sobbing cry—

“Tears of Rangi and of Papa flowing to the lake of tear-drops where the waves of woman’s weeping rise against the sky.

“Hush! those billows roll for ever, swollen with our lifelong tears—

“On and on into the distance till they break in lamentations on the far off Sacred Isle—

“Break with many mourning voices at the feet of Tinirau—

“Kiss those feet with sobbing tidings: Hinauri is no more.

“She will never come again. No distant dawn will bear her feet, no sun ray bring her back to life.

“Alas! Alas! the wild white crane against the cloud a moment shows her shining wing, then all is dark and all is lost.”

He paused for a moment on the brink of the abyss—a torchlight picture framed in the gloom of his ancient temple. For a moment his eyes were raised as if his glance could pierce through the darkness and beyond the cavern’s roof; then his voice rang out again in fiercer tones:

“She stays not! neither will I stay! I’ll fling me to the dark! Ngha!

“Down, down into the black abyss, that I may gain the sparkling stars and look into her eyes once more.”

As a soul plunges down into the world of spirits from the heights of gloomy Reinga, so he hurled himself headlong into the abyss, lighting the way to death with his blazing torch. The sight of it wrung a cry from me. I slid down the rope and made my way to the brink of the abyss, where I leaned forward, gazing into the darkness. Far down a light burns still and clear—a night-lamp by a hero’s bedside. For a moment I think I see its ray light up the image of Zun the Terrible, for ever gazing upwards through the night. The love that does not die is stamped upon the granite face. “I will return,” is graved indelibly upon his breast, and the hands that graved it are clasped above his heart. The leaping flame springs up, and all is dark again. Kia kotahi ki te Ao: kia kotahi ki te Po: Ngaraki is dead, but clings to Life in the darkness.

While I remained standing on the brink of the abyss, full of a savage pathos for the noble Maori chief, as well as with sorrow for his goddess, my ear caught something unusual. A dull roar came up from the depths, faint and far away; could it be that the overflow from the lake had found a bottom at last? I listened intently, and even as I did so the sound seemed to deepen. Was this the work of the rolling stone which Ngaraki had launched from the mysterious lever in the Place-of-Many-Chambers, or had the great round rock which he had rolled down after the Vile Tohunga’s head blocked the channel and dammed the water back?

Whatever was the cause, I soon came to the conclusion that the water was rising rapidly in the abyss below the abyss. It would fill the gulf, and then would flow out through the giants’ window into the fissure beyond. But while concluding the matter thus there came back into my mind the words of Te Makawawa in reference to the ancient tradition of the mysterious lever: “When it is raised all the ways of the temple will be closed.”

I was about to follow this matter up and see for myself, when there was a sound like a great gush of water in the lake as if another sluice gate had been unbarred in its depths. Then I heard the increase of the flood as it hissed and tore through the aperture in the partition and fell into the darkness of the abyss. Presently the change was marked again by a louder thunder from the depths. In the midst of this I heard a shout from the direction of the gulf. I hastened towards it, and, midway on the path that led to the giants’ window, encountered Grey and his wife. Grey, the man who had forgotten, looked into my eyes without the slightest sign of recognition and said:

“Look there! What is to be done? That is the way out—I travelled it quite lately—and it’s closing up—my wife tells me there are two more here besides yourself. Where are they?”

I followed the direction of his finger, and saw what startled me. The moon was just showing above the sill of the giants’ window, and its light glinted on the under surface of a tremendous hewn stone that had already descended half way down over the upright bars like a colossal shutter.

“I know what has happened,” Miriam Grey was saying hurriedly; “the lever in the heart of the mountain has been raised, and all the apertures will be closed. Where is Crystal—Hinauri—where is she?”

“High up in the mountain,” I said slowly, for I had not the heart to tell them that she was infinitely higher than the highest mountain on earth. “Kahikatea will take her up through the roof by the way he came down. There is yet time for you to escape by the giants’ window.” Turning to Grey I added, “You say there is a way?”

“Yes,” he replied; “I remember the way perfectly, but it requires a rope.”

I glanced at the opening which still remained as the great shutter seemed to be descending slowly, and guessed there was time.

“Wait here,” I said to Miriam, “and, for the present, good-bye. If we meet again it will be at Wakatu.”

There was much more to say, but no time to say it. I grasped her hand, and with “Follow me, Grey, I will find you a rope,” I turned away.

She was a brave woman. “Good-bye, and God bless you; I trust you with my child.” This was all she said as she stood there against the rock to wait for her husband’s return.

With all haste I hurried along the level path, followed by Grey. Round the buttress on to the margin of the lake we went, and there we came to a halt, for the water flung back from the fountain, which now rose several yards high in the centre of the lake, was washing over our feet. But the halt was only for a moment. Knee deep in the wash and ripple that swamped the margin, I led the way round until we reached the place where the rope was hanging. There I handed the torch to Grey and said: “Wait here; I will cut the rope above and throw it down.”

With feverish haste I climbed up, and, when I had gained the upper landing, drew my sheath knife and severed the rope.

“Hold your end and stand away round the wall,” I shouted down to Grey. “Stand away, and I will drop it.”

I heard his answer from below, signifying that I might heave it down. I did so, and then heard him call up: “But what about you?”

“Make haste,” I yelled down; “damn it all, make haste. Save your wife, never mind about me.” Well I knew that my life was worth very little either to myself or anybody else.

He made some reply which I could not catch, then shouted “Good-bye! good-bye!” and something else which was lost in the tumult of the lake below. I watched his torch disappear round the buttress, and then fell to gazing at the small stream of moonlight that now pierced through the darkness above the abyss. Would Grey and his wife get through the giants’ window before that ray was darkened altogether? I prayed that it might be so.

In less than three minutes I was sure of it, for something obstructed the ray for a moment, and then it shone on clear as before, though perceptibly less. They had passed through, and now in a few minutes the giants would close their window for ever.

But before the ray died out it fell above the outer lip of the huge basin, and revealed the form of the wizard negro still standing there spellbound.

What would be his end? I knew the abyss was filling; by the roar of the falling water I judged it was filling rapidly. The picture of that figure in the moonray standing, as soon he must, with nothing but his head above water, unable to stir hand or foot to save himself, moved me strangely. I would release him from his bondage and let him have at least a rat’s chance of drowning on his own responsibility. But I feared it was too late. Would he hear my voice against the roar of the waters? At least I could try. Standing up, I shouted to him across the intervening space:

“Servant of the Brotherhood of Huo! My voice is the only thing—you are free to save yourself if you can.”

He heard me. I saw him crouching down on the rock. Then, as the moonray dwindled away to nothing, there came from the darkness the same wild, unearthly laugh I had heard so often before. It echoed from a thousand crags in the walls and roof of the vast cavern, and was finally bandied about in the central vault like the voice of a fiend chuckling to himself. But he could do no harm now; sooner or later he must drown like any rat.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
FAREWELL.

Louder and louder came the thundering roar from the abyss. The sound seemed to have risen several tones in pitch, and from this fact I strengthened my conclusion that the vast cavern was gradually filling. There was now no way out except that by which Kahikatea had come in—the ‘way of the spider.’ Should we scale that way, or should we sit in darkness, with the body of Hinauri between us, and wait while the rising water surged up through the tunnels and covered us? I thought the latter grim alternative would be the end; at least I felt like it as I turned and toiled again up through the tunnels.

The way was dark and I had no light now, but with slow and heavy footsteps, groping my way with both hands, I at last gained the Place-of-Many-Chambers. Even there all was dark and silent. I fell over the arm of the lever on the stone floor, and Kahikatea cried out, “Who goes there?”

“I, Warnock; strike a light—my matches are wet.”

As I gathered myself up I heard him strike a match on the rock, and, by its light as he held it up, saw that he was still sitting where I had left him, holding Hinauri to his breast. He did not speak; his face was set with grief, and I was moved with a great sympathy towards him. In the endeavour to show this I went up to him, and, placing my hand on his arm, looked into his eyes, saying nothing.

He understood. “Thank you, Warnock,” he said softly and sadly; “have you ever lost someone who was all the world to you—someone whose going left a dreary darkness, which you wrapped closer about you while longing for death?”

“Yes,” I replied slowly, “I have.” The match went out. My hand slid along to his, and they met in a clasp of silent sympathy. He did not know—I think he never knew—that the one I had lost was the one lying cold and still upon his breast.

“Stay here, Warnock,” he said presently; “stay here and lighten my darkness. I have given way beneath this load of grief, and must rouse myself. Stay here and talk; I will listen, and try to struggle up out of my black despair.”

“I will,” I said, though it occurred to me that my own feelings were scarcely such as would lighten anyone’s darkness. “But first give me the matches, and let’s dispel this outer gloom.”

He handed them to me, and I went in search of a pile of pineheart torches which I had seen on my first exploration of the place. I lighted one, and then carried an armful into the open space and set a light to them. Soon there was a blazing fire, which cast a ruddy glow on the rocky walls and ceiling of the Place-of-Many-Chambers. Tenderly Kahikatea disengaged the fair arms from about his neck, and, bearing the white form into the open space, laid it gently down upon the rocky floor not far from the fire. Her head rested upon the soft pillow of her floating hair, and her limbs fell into the beautiful pose of one who is sleeping sweetly. As I looked down at her peaceful face, and saw still resting upon it the last smile of joy that had marked her spirit’s flight, I could scarcely realise that she was dead.

Then Kahikatea and I sat down one on each side of her, but neither of us spoke; it was a kind of vigil, and I could not break its silence. I had made the fire, and that was all I could do towards lightening the darkness of my friend. But I will not say what thoughts came to me in the presence of the lovely dead. They were strange thoughts of another world, where, in some inexplicable way, eternal love means eternal possession of the thing loved, where beings that love the same are one with their beloved. But these are not thoughts we can explain.

I know not how long we sat there; it was probably a matter of hours, and we might have sat for other hours had not something aroused me. It was a vague shadow moving like a tentacle of the darkness about the opening of the lower tunnel.

“Who’s there?” I shouted sharply, and Kahikatea raised his head inquiringly.

The answer to my challenge came from a very long way off; it was the wild and hideous laugh of the wizard. I sprang to my feet and stood looking into the gloom, where all I could see of him was his eyes, which caught and reflected the glare of the fire. He was crouching in the shadows as I advanced towards him.

“Servant of the Vile Brotherhood of Huo,” I said, “you are no longer free to move; you are——”

But the harsh laugh, sounding again nearer than before, cut my words short, and I knew the power of the poison had passed. He was again the powerful agent of evil, a thing to be feared, and, if possible, to be strangled.

“Come out here!” I said, “and I will fight you on equal terms now that your infernal poisoned darts are gone. But, first, what are we to fight about? You have been punished, and Hinauri, the Bright One, is dead—her body lies there.” I pointed to the open space by the fire where Kahikatea sat almost unheeding by the side of his lost love.

The negro came out of the dark at my words and stood before me. I saw his eyes rove quickly over me, and they bore a devilish glint of triumph as he saw that his reed tube was not in my hand.

“We will fight for the body of the Bright One,” he said, “and when I have bound you I will bind your friend there. Then”—he concluded by pointing his skinny finger at the white form of Hinauri.

I ground my teeth, but, before I could spring at him, Kahikatea’s deep voice arrested me.

“Stop!” he cried, springing to his feet and coming forward with fingers crooked and brows let down; “it is my privilege to strangle this black villain, whoever he is.”

In three strides he was upon him, and in another moment the negro was twisting and twining in a strong grasp from which his soul, if he had one, might possibly find escape towards hell, but his body never. Kahikatea had gripped him by the arms. Now he transferred one hand to the wizard’s throat, and the end began. As I stood by and watched, I thought it strange that the negro did not use his liberated arm and hand to clutch at the one which gripped his throat. Instead of doing that, as they swayed to and fro, he was feeling with it for something in his hair. His eyes were starting out of his head, but his fingers were still searching through his hair as Kahikatea shook and strangled and shook him again.

Presently the fingers drew forth a slender thing—a small, reed-like dagger, only large enough to give a needle’s prick, but I knew it was poisoned. With a quick shout of “Take care!” I darted forward just as the negro was raising his arm. I caught him by the wrist, but, with a quick side twist, he wrenched loose, scratching my skin with the cursed thing as he did so. Then, swift as lightning, before I could intervene, he raised his arm again, and drove the point into Kahikatea’s shoulder.

A last horror swept through me as I realised that in less than three seconds we should both be at his mercy by virtue of the swift poison; and the form lying still in death behind us—great God! should

“KAHIKATEA STOOD LIKE A BRONZE STATUE, WITH ONE ARM STRETCHED OUT. IN THE HAND OF THAT ARM WAS THE THROAT OF THE WIZARD, WHOSE BODY HUNG FROM IT, LIMP AND LIFELESS.”

the body of the Pure One pass into this foul wizard’s hands after all? In another moment all would be over. I felt my senses going, when I saw that the negro was trying to speak, but Kahikatea’s hand was still too tight on his throat. Not until it relaxed under the influence of the poison could he speak the words which would take command of our failing wills. Then, when I saw that, a lightning thought flashed through my mind: the commanding voice should be mine. I was going fast, but I still had strength enough to cry: “Kahikatea! my voice is the only thing! You cannot let go! Kill him! Kill him! You cannot let go!”

The last words seemed to come from everywhere. Myself seemed blotted out, and my own words sounded like many voices crying as one from beyond the horizon: “You cannot let go!” Then I know not what happened. Consciousness fled to this extent—I was conscious of nothing but a blank.

* * * * *

When I awoke I found myself on the stone floor. I sat up and gazed about me. The fire was burnt low, and I could see only the form of Hinauri still lying where it had been. The place was too dark to see more. I rose hastily, and kicked the remains of the fire together. A bright blaze sprang up, and I turned towards the spot where I had last seen the wizard in the grip of my friend. They were still there. Apparently the fight was not yet finished, for I could see vaguely the two figures standing together in the gloom. How could this be? The fire could not have burnt down in less than two hours.

I snatched a piece of smouldering pineheart, fanned it to a blaze, and, hastening to where they stood, held it up. The thing that I saw was as grim as it was weird. Kahikatea stood like a bronze statue, with one arm stretched out. In the hand of that arm was the throat of the wizard, whose body hung from it, limp and lifeless. Kahikatea’s face was set, his teeth clenched; the command, “You cannot let go!” was written on iron in every feature, muscle, and limb; and, with his eyes fixed on the lifeless thing he held suspended by the throat before him, he was still strangling that wizard, whose last twisted hideousness was too frightful to describe.

A pale ghost of a “Thank God!” fell from my lips; then I set about undoing the voice-and-poison spell.

“Kahikatea!” I said; “my voice is the only thing; you are yourself again; wake up! you can let go.”

His fingers relaxed, and the wizard corpse fell in a huddled heap upon the floor. Kahikatea turned to me with a look of amazement on his face.

“What happened?” he said; “I felt my senses going when I heard you shout ‘Kill him! you cannot let go!’ and then I seemed to be spending a long lifetime in strangling him with all my strength.”

As briefly as possible I explained the strange action of the wizard’s poison and the power of the first will that came into possession by means of the voice. I had not finished when, at a sound from the darkness in the direction of the lower tunnel, I suddenly broke off, and we both faced round to listen. Again the sound came to our ears; it was the soft splash of water against the rocks. I advanced with the blazing wood in my finger tips, and saw with dismay that the flood was rapidly rising in the tunnel. It was already within ten yards of where we stood, and was encroaching visibly.

I turned to Kahikatea. “Quick!” I cried; “all the outlets are closed, and the place is filling. Up through the tunnels to the marble cave. I will follow.”

He turned and tenderly lifted the body of the Bright One in his arms; then, taking up a fragment of burning wood, he proceeded into the tunnel which led up into the marble cave. I remained, and dragged the body of the Vile Thing of Darkness towards the breast-high barrier upon which the lever had rested as on a fulcrum. Then, raising my burden above my head, I heaved it into the gulf that yawned on the other side. Something of the triumphant feelings of Ngaraki, when he had hurled the Vile Tohunga’s head down to Porawa, came over me as I listened, fancying that I should hear that wild laugh again echoing from the depths of Darkness. But there was no reply; the Poisoner had gone down for ever.

I was aroused by the wash of the water rising on the rocks where I stood. Even as I sprang forward and caught up another blazing fragment, the tide surged in and swamped the fire with a quick hiss. I darted into the tunnel with the waves lapping at my heels, and followed Kahikatea.

When I reached the marble cave I stood and surveyed the scene before me with feelings of regret, dismay, and despair. A great slab of stone had slid down in the grooves that I had noticed on each side of the opening, and the place was closed even to the moon and stars; but what called up all my grief afresh was a thing of which I had been convinced ever since I left the cave to find Hinauri. The marble statue no longer stood in the centre of the cave with its arms outstretched. There, on the floor, broken and shattered, were the fragments of the lovely image which Miriam Grey, as a sculptress, had hewn out of the sacred stone; and there, a little beyond, lying upon a soft Maori mat, was the still cold form of the lovely spirit which she, as a mother, had led out of the distant past.

As I made my way among the fragments, I picked up the golden circlet, and, bending down, gently placed it upon Hinauri’s brow. At once the prophecy came to my mind—the prophecy she had read after solemnly identifying herself with the statue: “Thou, Hia, shalt return at the dawn of a new age, but ere the sun shall have shone twice upon this, thy crown, thou shalt withdraw into the sky.”

Kahikatea was in the recess of the inner cave, holding in his hand the rope by which he had descended.

“I will go first,” he said; “then I will let the rope down a little so that you can make a double loop for her, and I will draw her up. After that I’ll let the rope down again for you. But wrap her in the mat, Warnock, and fasten the rope securely.”

He began to climb as he gave these directions, but he was scarcely five feet from the ground when the strands broke far up above and he fell heavily, the whole of the rope rattling down into the cave about us.

“Must have frayed on the edge of the rock,” he said, struggling to his feet. “Well, I suppose there’s nothing to do now, my friend, but sit down here quietly and wait for the end, for the water will be here presently, and there’s no other outlet. Certainly we might float up, but for my part I don’t think it’s worth while.”

So weary of life was I that I was tempted to agree with him; but I chanced to glance round the cave before I spoke, and my eye fell on the grotesque wooden gods grinning at our hopelessness as they nursed their stomachs serenely. A sudden idea struck me: why not make a raft of these wooden deities, and so float up on the rising flood? I mentioned my idea to Kahikatea, and he greeted it with a half-smile. Such a slight thing changes the course of mortals, and I believe it was the mere happiness of this idea that led us to combat what was at that time a great temptation to leave our bodies with that of the one we both loved, and go out into the starry sky with Zun to find her.

With a spontaneous movement we sprang up and set to work. I remembered that in the Place-of-Many-Chambers there was a deep gulf to fill, and consequently it would be some time before the water reached us.

So we took Tiki, the Progenitor of Mankind, and Tangaroa, the sea god, and Tawhirimatea, the god of storms, and Tanemahutu, and Rongomatane, and several others, and, laying them side by side on the floor of the cave, lashed them together with the rope. There was a store of torches in this as in all the other centres of the temple, and we set several going to light us in our work.

At length it was finished, and we laid the dead upon soft mats in the centre. I also placed on our raft the remainder of the torches, and an axe I found among the weapons. Then we sat and waited, Kahikatea at Hinauri’s head and I at her feet, both bearing torches in our hands. In time the water flooded in with gurgling sounds, and we rose on our raft of gods up through the opening in the roof of the mountain. When we had mounted some fifty feet I looked up between the dark crags that still towered above us and saw the stars in an indigo sky. Slowly we floated up with our fair burden until, upon a crag above us, we saw the silver moonlight glistening. In a few minutes we reached that crag, and found we were on the broad summit of the mountain temple, the twin peaks rising one on each side of us, their snowy summits standing up like sentinel spirits as the moonlight touched them in the clear, cold silence of the sky.

The raft now floated into a small oblong basin, and as the water rose in this I saw that it would flow out through an aperture beyond. Here, then, was our highest point. I stepped out on to the roof of the mountain temple. Kahikatea followed, and together we lifted our raft of gods with its burden out on to the rough rocks. As we did this the water escaped at the other end of the oblong basin, and I advanced with my torch to see what became of it. Beyond the aperture its surface shone in the moonlight, making a loop like a silver horseshoe; then it disappeared again into the rock at a spot not very far from where it issued.

I looked up at the southern peak, and then at Kahikatea, who stood beside me. “Yes,” he said, interpreting my thought, “there is a large lake up there. I came across it in my wanderings. It is no doubt the source of all this water.”

“The crystal lake that stands against the sky,” I said, slowly repeating Hinauri’s own words; “is there a way to it?” I glanced towards the raft as I spoke, and my voice was lowered almost to a whisper.

“Yes, there is a tunnel,” he replied softly. “Come! our raft is now a bier. Let us carry out her wish.”

So we severed Tiki, the Progenitor of Mankind, and Tanemahutu, the strong god of light, from the others, and, using them as a bier, passed up through a narrow but lofty tunnel in the direction of the Southern peak. After we had ascended some hundreds of feet by a fairly steep incline, we came out on the margin of a large circular lake held in by towering crags against the side of the peak. The clear waters were still and pure, as befitted that high solitude, and in the crystal depths were reflected the lights of Heaven. We descended to the shelving, sandy shore, and set our burden down in the shadows. Then, by mutual understanding, we went back and carried up the rest of the gods and the pinehearts and the axe. And Kahikatea himself hewed the gods in pieces to supply the wood for the funeral pyre.

I cannot linger over that last sad scene by the silent lake. I cannot write of Kahikatea’s last kiss of farewell on those pure maiden lips. I stood apart, bareheaded beneath the moon and stars, gazing my last upon the serene white face as, with hands crossed upon her bosom, and her shrouding hair drawn over

“WITH HANDS CROSSED UPON HER BOSOM, AND HER SHROUDING HAIR DRAWN OVER HER LIKE THE CURTAINS OF THE NIGHT, HINAURI LAY UPON THE PYRE.”

her like the curtains of the night, Hinauri lay upon the pyre. Then the pinehearts blazed up, the bones of the gods crackled and hissed, and soon the form of the one we had loved and lost was enveloped in a clear, glowing pyramid of flame, which burned up to heaven like the light of a great lamp set in a spot well sheltered from the wind.

* * * * *

I recall but dimly our leaving that crystal lake against the sky, and, in the grey light of dawn, reaching the Table Land below by ways difficult and dangerous. Suffice it to say that the ‘way of the spider’ by which Kahikatea had scaled that mountain was such that no man who valued his life would attempt it. How we passed in safety is a matter that I can only account for by the fact that we did not value our lives at all.

The yellow, rolling plain was deserted when we passed across it, and none greeted us from the wharés dotted about here and there. We stopped nowhere until we reached the further end of the Table Land, and there we turned to gaze for the last time on the mountain wall that shut out half the eastern sky. It was a grand and solemn tomb of things forgotten; stupendous, majestic, threatening in its gloom. But on the snowy peaks above there rested a flush of sunrise—a rosy pink which touched them with a pure and radiant glory as they stood against a background of white rifted clouds. Though the giants’ temple, with beetling brows, frowned darkly at us, it seemed as if the rosy peaks were showing the sun which path Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, had taken.

A day’s march brought us to the place below the great cliff in the hillside, where we had seen the water spout up in a fountain, and where, subsequently, I had found my hat which had fallen into the abyss. The channel was dry, and the pool from which it issued had sunk several feet. I conjectured that if that underground stream could be followed, the explorer would come up against the great round stone, stopping the water’s flow somewhere in the bowels of the earth.

Two days’ march brought us to Kahikatea’s hut, where he put a few papers together, and announced his intention of journeying with me as far as Wakatu, and thence taking a boat for the north, and finally for England. When he informed me of this I looked at him inquiringly. He saw the question in my eyes, and said:

“Friend! my dreams have ended sadly, but the strange madness that drew me to this solitude was, I know now, full of hidden method. You heard what she said: ‘Hasten on the world.’ Warnock! if ever a man tried, by putting his shoulder to the wheel of time, to hasten the dawn of a brighter age, I am going to try. She told me many things that you did not hear and that I cannot tell you—things throwing light on the world’s failure in the past to grasp its opportunities—plans to pave the way for an inborn greatness of a coming generation. When you think of me, Warnock, think of me as one who is toiling incessantly with dull, heavy foundation stones at the bidding of a voice which to him is the sweetest thing in all the world.”

At Wakatu we found Grey and his wife, and together we helped one another through the story of Hinauri’s death. The Man-who-had-forgotten heard it as a thing far off; it touched him like the sadness of a dream, for eighteen years were struck from his life, and he remembered neither his own daughter nor the Daughter of the Dawn. But Miriam’s grief, the grief of such a mother for such a child, was beyond words. For many weeks after Kahikatea’s departure she lingered between life and death in Wakatu, and it was not until three months after the events narrated in the foregoing pages that I told Grey all I knew about his forgotten years, and sailed with them both to the Sounds—to the home and the garden where I had first met Crystal Grey. In due time they went home to claim the property, which, as I have somewhere stated, had been left to Miriam. I remained behind to take care of the old place until they returned a year later, when they refused to let me go.

Here, then, in the rustic retreat beneath the nut-trees, where the sweet influence of Crystal Grey seems to linger round me, I have spent the summer days in writing these pages. Now it is finished, and again I recall the words of my aged friend the chief and tohunga, Te Makawawa:

“O Son, the word of our ancient law is death to any who reveals the secrets that are hidden in the Brow of Ruatapu. The secret of Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, the mystery of the Vile Tohungas of the Pit, the traditions of far time preserved in the heart of the great Rock—all, everything, is a death-blow returning on the head of him who reveals it. Yet, O Son of the Great Ocean of Kiwa, I, who was once the guardian priest of the temple of Hia and the hereditary curser of the Vile Ones of the Abyss of Huo, now show these things to you, for I am weary of climbing the snows of Ruahine, and long for rest and Tane’s living waters. The great Tohungas of the Earth have taught me in my sleep with words like the voice of the wind in the forest trees: ‘O tohunga of the Great Rock, the mystery of Hinauri is not for the Maori unless thou tell it first to the Sons of the Sea, but know that if thou tell it thou must die.’ Therefore, Son, I show it to you, for what though I fear the eye of the fierce Ngaraki, I fear not death. Friend! perchance, when I have descended by the sacred Pohutukawa root, you, too, will tire of life and tell this thing to your brethren; ‘but know that if thou tell it thou must die.’ ”

I am content that it should be so. Last night I dreamed that I wandered astray in the forest, and that is an omen that no Maori could misinterpret. Perchance it is the shadow cast before a welcome event, in terms of the Maori lore so dear to my heart. And now as I write, another and more striking omen is vouchsafed me in the same quaint terms. A ray from the golden sun of the autumn evening slants through the broken screen of yellowing leaves and falls upon the woodwork of my rough table placed against the hazel stems. Suddenly a little green lizard runs from a bundle of papers I have but lately lifted from the ground and placed on the corner of the table. It reaches the sunlight and pauses, moving its head strangely in the air. In another moment its bright little eyes meet mine, and for some seconds it remains motionless. A cloud comes before the sun, the ray fades, and the little creature wriggles off the table on to the ground, where I hear its faint rustle among the leaves. Well I know this is a call to Reinga, thence to the living waters of Tane, and thence to the bright Beyond—a summons, clear and sweet, to the Living Waters of Tane, where mortals fling off their garments of clay, and, plunging deep, renew their strength. Oh! let it be soon. How often have I longed, with the great chief who now clings to Life in the Light, to throw my body headforemost into the jaws of Darkness, that I, with him, may gain the sparkling stars, and look into her eyes once more!

THE END OF WANAKI’S NARRATIVE.

CONCLUSION.

(A letter from Aké Aké Rangitane, the son of Ngaraki, to the Editor.[28])

O Friend of the Maori Race,—These are my last words to you, for while you remain here among the chills of winter, I go to the land which laughs beneath the southern sun. My experience of the will of the Great Tohungas of the Earth teaches me that it will be obeyed concerning the record of Wanaki. When you have done my bidding and the book is made, then you will remain at peace. I send to you with this a letter that has been given to me by the Pakeha Kahikatea. Set it at the end of Wanaki’s record, but do not write the Pakeha’s other name, for it may be that he has the spirit of one of the Great Tohungas of the Earth whose names are tapu. When your task is done, fear not that the fate of Wanaki will overtake you. Now I go, but you remain. Follow me not with your thoughts. When I see the book that is made the love of my heart will flow towards you like a mountain stream. There is no Maori word to tell of “gratitude,” but, O Pakeha, in the Maori heart there are feelings which cannot be hidden behind a word. My letter to you is ended. Farewell.

A letter from Miriam Grey to Sir… Bart.,… St. James’ Chambers, London.

Dear Kahikatea,—It is with feelings of deep regret that I write to tell you of the death of our dear friend Wanaki. The circumstances of his end were very strange. It was a night when a thunderstorm was brewing, and Wanaki, instead of going to bed, put on his mackintosh and went out to look at the storm. But it did not break till near midnight, and then there was only a single vivid flash, followed by a peal of thunder directly overhead. In the morning, finding our dear friend’s room unoccupied, we searched the garden and the plantations, and at length discovered him lying dead on the grass at the foot of one of the great bluegums. That he had been struck by lightning while standing with his back to the tree was evident, for the grass where he had stood was burnt, and his watch chain was fused. But the strange thing that I have to tell you is this: On the trunk of the tree against which Wanaki had been standing, the lightning had left a mark which is evidently a duplicate tracery of the course the electric fluid took through his body, but at the same time—this is no woman’s fancy—I recognised it as an exact picture on a small scale of the principal ways of the ancient temple, from the marble cave to the foundations. I say again, this is not my fancy, for if anyone could recognise the diagrammatic representation of the spiral tunnels and spaces of that ancient place it would surely be myself. Is this another instance of the strange magic of that terrible priesthood of the ages, which has now left its sign to show that Wanaki has suffered the penalty for revealing the secrets of their temple, or is it capable of a simpler explanation? Is it possible that the lightning followed some occult line of least resistance through that temple of the ages—that mysterious epitome of the universe, the human body, and left the track of its passage burnt in on the tree behind? But I cannot do more than merely suggest the mystery of this exact correspondence, for both my husband and myself are heartbroken at the loss of our dear friend, the story of whose snow-white hair and gentle, weary face, you already know.

I will not write more now except to add, as ever, that my heart is with you in your work—with you as constantly as my thoughts are with her whom we love, and as earnestly as my prayers are with those of all women who stand in the “Brow of Ruatapu” and raise their arms of longing to the heaven where greatness waits to be revealed on earth.

Yours sincerely,
MIRIAM GREY.

THE END.

ENDNOTES.

[1] karakia] Philosophical and meditative hymns used as incantations.—Editor.

[2] pa] A pa is a fortified village, a stronghold.

[3] Kahikatea… my friend the Forest Tree] The Maoris regard the Kahikatea, or white pine, with much poetical feeling.—Editor.

[4] rangatira] Gentleman.

[5] the green lizard that will summon me to Reinga] The Maori believes that when the little green lizard looks at him meaningly it is a summons for him to depart for the spirit world within three days.—Editor.

[6] tiki] An ornament of jade fashioned in the image of Tiki, the first man, and worn round the neck.—Editor.

[7] white-winged taniwhas] The taniwha of the Maoris is a mythical monster of the deep. When they first saw the Pakehas’ ships they set them down as taniwhas.—Editor.

[8] kohutukutu] The wild fuchsia—the only deciduous native tree.—Editor.

[9] wharekura] An ancient Temple of Mysteries.—Editor.

[10] Zun the Terrible] Wanaki has a note here to the effect that, although the Maori’s pronunciation of this name was ‘Tunu,’ he prefers to preserve it in what he avers was its original form, viz., ‘Zun.’—Editor.

[11] matakite] Clairvoyant.

[12] tapu] Sacred.

[13] its spirit had fled beyond Wai Ora Tane] The bourne from which no traveller returns.—Editor.

[14] matakite] A seer—a clairvoyant.—Editor.

[15] mana] Power, prestige.—Editor.

[16] kumara] The kumara is a kind of sweet potato.

[17] Taranaki glowed… thundering Tongariro] According to ancient legend Tongariro and Taranaki, standing together, were rival volcanoes for the hand of a smaller mountain near by, named Pihanga. They fought, hurling great rocks at each other, until at last Taranaki withdrew to the seashore, where he now stands.

[18] Whaka ariki] A battle-cry.

[19] heitiki] A small image of polished jade, held very sacred.

[20] waiariki] A warm spring.

[21] taepo] Devil—the hobgoblin of the night.—Editor.

[22] weka] The Maori hen—a rare ventriloquist.

[23] Makutu] Bewitchment.

[24] crying ‘Utu! Utu!’] Utu is payment, compensation for injury.—Editor.

[25] marae] The open space.

[26] utu] Payment, compensation—an eye for an eye.

[27] Upokokohua!] “Boil your head.” All Maori curses relate to cooking or giving in cookery, to boiling or being boiled.—Editor.

[28] This letter, with its enclosure from Miriam Grey to Kahikatea, reached me just as the task of editing this work was finished.—Editor.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

The Hodder & Stoughton edition (London, n.d.) was consulted for most of the changes listed below.

Minor spelling variances (e.g. lovelight/love-light, nut-trees/nut trees, etc.), the inconsistent italicization of foreign words, and redundant footnotes (matakite, utu) have been preserved.

Plain text edition only: note markers are given in [square] brackets.

Alterations to the text:

Convert footnotes to endnotes.

Punctuation: quotation mark pairings/nestings, missing commas, etc.

[Chapter IV]

Change (“Tanawha lives there,” he said, “it is tapu. The Maori) to Taniwha.

[Chapter XII]

“Arrived at a village on the coast line near Hokitiki” to Hokitika.

[Chapter XIII]

“An easel and pallette reclined against the hedge” to palette.

[Chapter XXI]

“the narrowing gulf could be seen the giant’s window” to giants’.

[Chapter XXIII]

“descend the marble steps when his controlled emotions brake loose” to broke.

[Chapter XXV]

“Yet it semed a trifle strange to me that he should not” to seemed.

[End of text]

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Table of Contents

- The Daughter of the Dawn

- [COPYRIGHT.]

- [DEDICATION.]

- CONTENTS.

- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

- INTRODUCTION.

- WANAKI’S FOREWORD.

- The Daughter of the Dawn.

- CHAPTER I. A SPLENDID MADMAN.

- CHAPTER II. THE AGED CHIEF.

- CHAPTER III. A SECRET OF ANCIENT NIGHT.

- CHAPTER IV. THE HAUNTED REGION.

- CHAPTER V. ON THE GREAT TAPU.

- CHAPTER VI. NGARAKI—CHIEF AND TOHUNGA.

- CHAPTER VII. THE INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE OF HIA.

- CHAPTER VIII. THE VILE TOHUNGAS OF THE PIT.

- CHAPTER IX. NGARAKI THE FIERCE.

- CHAPTER X. KAHIKATEA AND HIS STRANGE BELIEF.

- CHAPTER XI. THE SEARCH FOR ‘THE LITTLE MAIDEN.’

- CHAPTER XII. THE MAN-WHO-HAD-FORGOTTEN.

- CHAPTER XIII. CRYSTAL GREY.

- CHAPTER XIV. THE CHIEF OF THE VILE TOHUNGAS.

- CHAPTER XV. THE DARKNESS PUTS FORTH A TENTACLE.

- CHAPTER XVI. WHICH REVEALS THE WAY OF THE SORCERER.

- CHAPTER XVII. LOVE AT SECOND SIGHT.

- CHAPTER XVIII. TE MAKAWAWA IS STARTLED.

- CHAPTER XIX. THE DREAD MAKUTU.

- CHAPTER XX. CRYSTAL LOVES KAHIKATEA, WHO LOVES HINAURI.

- CHAPTER XXI. CRYSTAL AND HINAURI MEET.

- CHAPTER XXII. THE TALISMAN.

- CHAPTER XXIII. THE DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN.

- CHAPTER XXIV. ZUN THE TERRIBLE.

- CHAPTER XXV. THE SERVANT OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF HUO.

- CHAPTER XXVI. NGARAKI’S HOUR OF TRIUMPH.

- CHAPTER XXVII. THE GIANTS CLOSE THEIR TEMPLE.

- CHAPTER XXVIII. FAREWELL.

- CONCLUSION.

- ENDNOTES.

- TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE