The Project Gutenberg eBook of The daughter of the dawn
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
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
[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.
III. A SECRET OF ANCIENT NIGHT
VII. THE INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE OF HIA
VIII. THE VILE TOHUNGAS OF THE PIT
X. KAHIKATEA AND HIS STRANGE BELIEF
XI. THE SEARCH FOR ‘THE LITTLE MAIDEN’
XII. THE MAN-WHO-HAD-FORGOTTEN
XIV. THE CHIEF OF THE VILE TOHUNGAS
XV. THE DARKNESS PUTS FORTH A TENTACLE
XVI. WHICH REVEALS THE WAY OF THE SORCERER
XVIII. TE MAKAWAWA IS STARTLED
XX. CRYSTAL LOVES KAHIKATEA, WHO LOVES HINAURI
XXIII. THE DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN
XXV. THE SERVANT OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF HUO
XXVI. NGARAKI’S HOUR OF TRIUMPH
XXVII. THE GIANTS CLOSE THEIR TEMPLE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
His long figure was suspended above the dark abyss
“This, O Pakehas, was the legend given me by my father”
Another twist and he rolled right across it, his hair and beard frizzling in the flame
I raised the tube, took careful aim, and puffed the dart
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 pa2 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 rangatira4 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 tiki6 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.”