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.
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.
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
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 ariki18—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.
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.