It was no time for delay. A plan suggested itself to my mind in a flash, and I acted on it without a second thought. Drawing a match from my pocket with my left hand and raising my revolver with my right, I struck the match on the granite and threw it fizzing into the darkness before me. The light lasted only a second, but in that brief space I saw two figures crouching on the spar ahead, fired point blank at the foremost, and saw him roll over into the abyss. The next instant something whizzed through the air two inches from my forehead, turning my hat half round upon my head. I knew that Ngaraki had also taken advantage of the momentary light to hurl his meré. The involuntary start backwards at this sudden surprise saved my head again, for, immediately after the missile, came the crashing sound of a heavy club on the rock a foot before me. This was the work of the other figure I had seen. Dropping my revolver, I leaned forward and seized the head of the club with both hands. A struggle ensued, and each tried to use the club as a means of pushing the other off the spar. The struggle did not last long. Giving the club a quick twist from my end, I at the same time pushed it violently against my antagonist, who made a sound in his throat and fell backwards, still holding his end of the club. But in doing this I swung and fell sideways. The next moment we were dangling one on each side of the spar, with nothing to hold by but the club lying like a cross-bar over the narrow rock. All this took place in the space of a few seconds, and it was while I was swaying in the air that I heard from far below the rattle of Ngaraki’s meré on the floor of the abyss.
Thank Heaven, the mute held on. If he had let go I should have gone down with him. Never was a man so anxious that his foe should keep his head.
In moments of danger different people act in widely different ways, but, in moments of extreme peril, when even fear itself seems paralysed, most men, I think, would do the right thing automatically. From what happened I am convinced that the man on the other side of the rock was doing exactly as I was doing, looking for some point of rock by which to cling. At all events I felt, by my end of the club, which I was now holding in one hand, that he was not hanging quietly. Never were two living beings weighed on a more extraordinary balance to determine which should be found wanting. One more second determined it. Failing to find a purchase with one hand, I had grasped the club with both again and drawn myself up with my chin over the end of it. Then, to find a good hold on the edge of the spar, I transferred my right hand while sustaining my weight with my chin and left arm. Quickly I slid my other hand along the club till it found the rock. It was done. The club went up as soon as I released it; there was a guttural exclamation on the other side, and the sound of clawing fingers on the granite as the man went down into the pit, leaving me hanging over the side of the spar.
I drew a long breath and proceeded to raise myself. With chin and one hand supporting my weight again, I reached forward and swept the surface of the spar with the other. The first thing I felt was my revolver, but it was little use to me just then. There was a rough point near it which would help me, but no sooner had I grasped it than I had to withdraw my hand, for I could just distinguish a shadowy form coming towards me from the basin end. I could hear him feeling his way along, and knew that he was looking for me. I would let him pass and then climb and shoot everything I met on the rest of my journey towards the basin. With this end in view, I found the revolver again, and placing it with difficulty in my coat pocket, got my hand back on the rock and remained hanging till the one who was looking for me had passed by.
To find the rough point of rock again was easy, but to draw myself up with nothing to place my knees or feet against was more difficult. At length I managed to get one foot up on the spar, and then gradually dragged my weight on to the upper surface. The light had grown considerably stronger in the last few minutes. I could now see the grey surface of the rock before me. By the time I had crawled twenty feet along the widening surface I could discern the vague outline of the great round stone above the outer lip of the basin, and could hear the gritting sound it made as it rolled and rocked slightly in its socket with the motion of the spar, set up principally by the man who was looking for me at the other end. I needed only a little more light in order to stand upright and make a rush.
A full minute I waited, straining my eyes before me to see if there was anyone barring the way. The spar was now quivering violently, and I knew the one who had passed me was near the further end. Another minute passed and the motion grew fainter; he was on his way back. Presently I heard him crawling along on his hands and knees not ten yards behind me.
Trusting now to the light, I rose and proceeded carefully towards the round stone. When I reached it I found no one there, but on the lip of the basin there were several shadows moving. The foremost, evidently thinking I was the man who had gone along the spar and was now returning behind me, gave the guttural challenge. There was no time to waste in purring, so I gave the countersign with my revolver. He staggered back and disappeared.
Then all was confused. Vague shadows flitted round the rim of the basin. I pushed one off into the abyss, another I shot as he came at me, and he fell into the water. A well-aimed stone carried my hat from my head back into the abyss, cutting the skin of my scalp to the bone as it passed. I heard feet pattering behind me and ran on round the lip of the basin. Now I was facing the place where I knew the opening in the mountain side lay concealed beneath twenty feet of water. I had two shots left; the one I fired at something I saw moving on my left, the other I reserved for the one who was running quickly round the lip of the basin behind me. Turning, I fired at a distance of five yards. He did not fall, but uttered a fierce “Ngha!” and came on.
With a quick plunge I leapt from the rock and struck out downwards into the dark with all my strength. Presently I felt the current rushing through my fingers. Another vigorous stroke would have sent me into it, but as I drew up my legs something touched my foot. I kicked back and encountered what felt like solid flesh. I was now head and shoulders in the current, and could see a round light before me, but an arm slid along my leg, a hand closed round my ankle, and I was dragged forcibly out of it again.
I turned in the water to face my antagonist, whom I now knew to be Ngaraki himself, and, guiding my hands along his chest and shoulders, caught him by a bronze pillar for all the impression I could make on the throat. But I might as well have tried to throttle it. The next thing I knew was that his hand had closed over my own throat with a grip like iron. He shook me in the water as if I were a mere rat, and we rose to the surface.
He still retained his terrible grip as he groped along the bank for the steps in the wall. By the time he had found them my senses were beginning to go. I could get no breath until he released my throat, and it was now nearly half a minute since I drew my last. I was getting confused, but I remember one thing which made a distinct impression upon me. My hands, in attempting to get at his own throat again encountered a small stream of something warm trickling from his chest, and, strange as it may seem, almost my last feeling was one of remorse that my final bullet had wounded this strange man, for whom, notwithstanding all his attempts to kill me, I had conceived a kind of savage admiration. In my dying condition, lying helpless in his grip, I seemed to lose my own selfish personality; and, in that brief moment, looking at things from his standpoint, I admitted I was in the wrong, and found time to wish at least that I had not fired that last bullet.
We were now on the margin of the lake swaying about. Suddenly a low moan escaped his lips. His fingers relaxed. He fell back against the cavern wall. Before he fell, however, he gave me a violent push which sent me reeling into the lake.
In the second that elapsed before I reached the water I may have taken in some air. I do not remember doing so, for I was almost gone; but I think I must have got some oxygen into my lungs, for, to a certain extent, consciousness revived as I felt myself going down in the tumultuous depths. Aided considerably by the water welling up from the bottom I arrested my descent and darted upwards again, but on reaching the surface and gasping for air, I found myself in a current. Oh! horror of horrors! I felt I must be going down into the abyss. My mother’s sweet, sad face rose in the darkness before me, and I called on God as all men do in their last extremity. For some time—I could not say how long—I struggled against that current with the strength of despair, but, wildly as I strained every nerve and sinew, I felt I was being gradually sucked in. I reached out to catch some point of rock, but there was nothing. Then with a feeling of blackest horror I realised all was over. But the horror gave way, and, as I swept down, I felt myself smiling up at my mother’s face like a child dropping off to sleep. There was a stunning crash as my head struck against some rock in the descent, and then I fell down, down for ever and ever into the black abyss of unconsciousness.
When a man wakes suddenly in the night, he may imagine that the head of his bed is where the foot should be. When he wakes from a deep swoon he is willing to admit that he may be anywhere. But imagine the feelings of a man, whose last recollection was that of being swept over the brink of an abyss, waking up and finding himself lying on his back on a mossy bank, with a well-known face bending over him.
Such was my case, and I thought the whole thing was so impossible that I gave it up, and, closing my eyes, continued my downward career through the blackness of darkness, wondering when the final crash would come.
Again my eyes opened and encountered the face of a friend between me and the blue sky. A pair of dark brown eyes, anxious and kind, looked down into mine, and I tried in vain to remember the name of that friend with the mane of flowing hair and the brown-bearded face. I knew him so well, but could not place him. After an effort I gave it up and closed my eyes with a sigh. Really it did not matter very much, for, just after being shattered on the granite floor at the far bottom of the abyss, it did not seem to signify what was the name that belonged to that face. I lapsed again into darkness, and I can dimly recollect having some such grim, absurd thought as this: that the fall on the rocks below had scattered my ideas and injured my brain in some way.
A third time I opened my eyes: the same position, the same face as before. I began to think there was something in it, and was prompted to put a question.
“Where am I?”
“Where are you?” replied the deep voice of Kahikatea—I knew him now—“Why, I hauled you out of the pool nearly half an hour ago. You came up from the bottom like a piece of limp seaweed. I thought you were dead at first.”
“So did I,” I returned wearily. “I thought I had gone down into the abyss, but it must have been the current through the basin that I was struggling against in the dark.”
Kahikatea looked down at me with a puzzled expression on his face, as if he thought I was wandering.
“Don’t talk now, old man,” he said presently. “You’ve a frightful bruise on the back of your head and a deep cut on the top; you’d better keep quiet.”
Thus admonished, I lay with my eyes half shut watching him, as he prepared a bandage to bind up my wounds—the one on the top and the one on the back, from both of which I could feel the blood still flowing.
“Now,” he said, when at last I was bandaged with something like a tenfold turban round what appeared to me a tenfold skull, “shall we camp here?”
“Rather not,” I returned; “they might see us from above and drop rocks on us.”
“Very well, but you mustn’t talk.”
With this he placed his hands under me, and, lifting me up easily in his powerful arms, strode away down the bank of the stream. I was too weak to protest, and said nothing. At length, coming to a sequestered spot enclosed in thick bushy foliage, he put me down gently and set about preparing a soft bed of dry fern. This done, and myself placed comfortably upon it, with some turfs of dry moss for a pillow, he lighted a fire and made this strange sick-room in the wilderness comfortable. I dozed off into a troubled sleep, and when I awoke my nurse sat by me, and administered a pannikin of hot broth, the effect of which was invigorating.
The fear that I had killed the fierce but noble tohunga—the guardian priest of that ancient temple from which I had just escaped by a miracle—was weighing heavily upon my mind. In a few brief sentences I told Kahikatea what had occurred within the mountain, and we considered the question as to whether, if Miriam Grey were somewhere in that strange place,—and from what I had seen I firmly believed she was,—she would starve without Ngaraki. We came to the conclusion that this was improbable, for if anything happened to Ngaraki, the mutes would no doubt know what to do, for, in an hereditary priesthood such as this claimed to be, it was not likely that the order of succession would be dislocated by a sudden death. Considering these things we concluded that Miriam Grey, if there, was as safe as ever she had been. But we knew that the way to her prison far overhead, impossible without a guide at ordinary times, was even more so now; a strict watch would no doubt be kept; and ‘the way of the fish’ was a difficulty, to say nothing of the ‘way of the winged fish.’ Accordingly, after well considering the matter, I determined to follow the aged chief’s advice, and take up the search of the child, feeling convinced that if she was living I could find her.
For two days and two nights I lay on my bed of dry fern, and was attended by Kahikatea. By all the laws of medical science, except perhaps one or two not yet thoroughly laid down, I ought to have had concussion of the brain, or some such thing, but, strange to say, on the morning of the third day I awoke perfectly clear in the head, and with every sign of fever gone.
I determined, however, to accept Kahikatea’s advice and rest for the remainder of that day and night. We passed the time in telling each other our adventures and in drawing what conclusions we could from them. My friend’s search for the ‘way of the spider’ had not been as successful as my exploration of the ‘way of the fish.’ He had found the place where on the first occasion the rock had let him through into a kind of tunnel, and had followed this for a considerable distance, only to be stopped by a blank wall of rock which had all the appearance of a rude portcullis let down from the roof.
“From what you have told me of the strange contrivance in the interior of the mountain below,” he concluded, in relating this part of his adventures, “I can quite understand that this rock blocking up the tunnel might have been so contrived by the ancients that it could be let down and made to close the entrance to the cave from above. I don’t know how thick it is, but I am going to find means to cut through it. By the time you have found the child I shall probably have got through to Miriam Grey—by-the-bye, did you look for the grave which old Te Makawawa spoke about?”
I had quite forgotten it. “No,” I replied; “I was too busily employed inside the mountain looking for my own. But now’s our time—let us make use of it. There’s only one rimu of any size in the ravine; it is unmistakable.”
“ ‘Beneath the great rimu where the tui sings’—those were the old chief’s words,” said Kahikatea, as we made our way along the bank of the river and past the deep pool into the valley, which was shut in against the mountain wall by the descending spur. There was no stream running out of the ravine, and the place was carpeted with moss and kidney ferns, upon which the afternoon sun here and there got in a smile through some crevice in the foliage overhead. At length we came to a fairly open moss-grown space around a mighty vine-laced trunk, which supported the dark green velvety foliage of a magnificent monarch of the bush.
“Splendid tree,” said Kahikatea, taking off his hat and gazing up at the fantails and tuis chasing the gnats about its sunlit sides.
“Yes,” said I, the prosaic, “but where is the grave?”
For the next five minutes we were searching in the open space around the tree. At length I found an inequality beneath the moss, and with our sheath knives we removed the superficial growth of fifteen years.
“There has evidently been something buried here,” said Kahikatea, as we looked at the grave-like ridge, about two feet in length; “if we find bones, or all that is left of them, old Te Makawawa’s a fraud, and you and I together will bore and blast a passage through by the ‘way of the spider;’ but, if on the other hand we find a stone, the old chief is to be trusted, in which case you must set out to look for Crystal Grey, and I will bore and blast alone.”
“Unless you will come with me,” I said.
He did not speak for a little while, and I saw he was hesitating. Then the dreamy look came into his eyes—the look which I knew meant his strange, mad desire to look into the face of Hinauri, who, lifeless, but full of meaning, stood praying up there in the forehead of the mountain.
“No,” he made answer presently. “Crystal Grey is your quest. You must go alone.”
We were digging into the soft ground with our sheath knives and scraping out the dirt with our hands. When we were nearly two feet down my sheath knife grazed upon something hard, and another minute disclosed the surface of a stone embedded there.
“We’d better get it right out to make sure,” said Kahikatea, and so we worked away until we had cleared its whole surface. Then, with the aid of a log for a lever, we hoisted it and placed it upon the moss.
“Without a doubt the old chief is to be trusted,” said Kahikatea.
“Without a doubt,” I rejoined. “There were points that I had made up my mind to disbelieve. This was one of them. But now I have verified so much of his story that I am inclined to accept the whole of it as true. I shall act on the assumption that Crystal Grey is still living, and I shall search for her.”
We replaced the stone in its grave and covered it up to look as much as possible the same as before, then found our way back along the bank of the stream to the camp beneath the mountain wall, where we spent the remainder of the day and part of the night in discussing our different undertakings.
Again I put the question to Kahikatea—a question which in after years I have often pondered as being one which was asked more wisely than I knew—“Will you not come with me and search for Crystal Grey?” and again he answered me with the madness of the poet who, in setting his mind on visionary things, forgets that flesh and blood is the working basis of all.
“Warnock,” he said, “I have hitched my waggon to a star and I’m not going to unhitch it now. I have made up my mind to look into the face of Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, and you would have me turn aside to help you search for Crystal Grey, the daughter of a mortal woman. No, my friend, the daughters of mortal women are not for madmen like me. Warnock!”—he smiled good humouredly at me—“the mother who freed Hinauri from her age-long prison must be the mother of a beautiful daughter. I prophesy that, when you have found the maiden, you will marry her and live happily ever afterwards.”
“And you?” I asked, smiling back, “you will wed an abstraction and beget great poems. Now look here, Kahikatea, face the thing squarely. Suppose, according to the tradition, which was probably hoary long before Pygmalion and Galatea were thought of—suppose that Hinauri should become a living, breathing woman, what would you do?”
He did not answer for some little time, but remained looking straight before him. At length he gave a sigh and said, “Granting for the moment that such a thing were possible, Hinauri would be more to me than she is now. I should love her with my whole self.”
“That is to say, from your present standpoint of the impersonal, she would be less to you.”
“No, no; the greater includes the less as a part of its greatness.”
“That is to say,” I persisted, pressing him hard, but not against his will, for two in a solitude speak as brothers; “if she came to life you would still retain your ideal love for her, but would also give her the love that a man gives to a woman.”
“Yes, I cannot imagine that it should be otherwise.”
“Well now; I begin to think that you are not in love with an abstraction after all, but that your feelings stand on a basis essentially human—founded on the life-likeness of the image—on that, and on the further romantic tradition that she will return.”
Again he was silent. Then he said slowly, half to himself and half to me, “The yearning desire upon the face was human, it was living; the tenderness, the compassion, and that something more—a kind of sorrow-joy which I could not fathom, filled me with the strange thought that the stone could feel. I thought—I believe I said it aloud—‘if brightness would only leap into those eyes, if the raven gloss would only come upon those tresses, if the laced bosom would only move with the wonderful emotion of the face, what a glorious woman would be there.’ As I saw her she seemed to be waiting for a breath or a touch. One sandalled foot, showing beneath the robe, had been advanced with the outstretched arms and the other seemed to be in the act of following, while as yet a little breath of wind had pressed her robe gently against her. Ah! Warnock, you are right; it was not the cold stone I saw, but the living woman.”
“And it is that living woman you are in love with,” I concluded.
“Yes, and I am not so mad after all.”
“You would not be if only that woman had a real existence.”
“A real existence?” he said in surprise; “a strong idea will realise itself somehow. My dear Warnock,”—his voice fell almost to a whisper, and he spoke with a strange eagerness—“you think me mad as it is, but at what I am going to say you will think me too far gone for argument. The idea which, according to tradition, has lived in the minds of an hereditary priesthood from remote ages, has taken possession of mine also. I mean the strong belief that Hinauri, as she is in that stone, will return.”
I looked at him aghast. “Can you give a reason for your belief?”
“None whatever!”
“Then you admit it is contrary to all reason, and yet you believe it.”
“I do not admit it is contrary to all reason; it may be in accord with some reason of which you and I are ignorant.”
“It seems to me, that there can be no reasonable foundation for the idea that a stone will suddenly turn into flesh and blood.”
“Yet the idea that was made stone might also be made flesh.”
Kahikatea said these words in deep abstraction. I took small note of them at the time, though afterwards, when everything was made clear to me, when my own mind had yielded to nothing less than ocular demonstration, they were burnt deep into my brain as some of the truest and sanest words ever uttered. So deep was my friend’s abstraction that he was unconscious of having thought and spoken. This was evident, for, starting as if recalled from a deep reverie, he proceeded to reply to my last remark.
“No,” he said; “it is absurd to believe that a stone can turn into flesh and blood; yet I believe that Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, will return. That is my madness, Warnock, and yet it seems so sane that even now I regard her as a living woman—the only one in the world for me.”
He rose as he spoke, and knocked his pipe out against the mountain wall. Turning towards me with a smile, he added: “If your determination to find Crystal Grey is half as great as mine to reach the cave where the pure white woman stands, you will find her, and then—well, I have prophesied what I have prophesied: the woman who harboured the vision of Hinauri could not have borne an unlovely child.”
Early on the following morning we left the shadow of the mountain wall and passed out from the Table Land beneath the red birches crowned with mistletoe. By Tiki’s guidance we retraced our steps, and by nightfall again reached the pool beneath the high cliff where we had witnessed the phenomenon which had so terrified the Maori.
Here we prepared to camp, but when I went to draw water from the pool to boil the billy, I discovered something which not only threw an additional light on the inner workings of that temple in the rock which we had left behind us, but also had the effect of preventing our camping at that spot. As I was stooping to draw up the water, something floating on the surface near by attracted my attention. Taking a dry branch from the bank I fished the object towards me and held it up.
It was a hat!
I looked at it more closely in the uncertain light and recognised the article. It was my own hat that had gone down into the abyss in that terrible fight with Ngaraki and his speechless men in the interior of the mountain. With my body full of shudders at the thought of what else had fallen into the abyss on the same occasion, and my head full of the only possible explanation of this remarkable find, I sought Kahikatea, and we agreed to move on and camp on the bank of some tributary stream lower down; which we did.
On the following morning I parted with Kahikatea, who was going back to his hut among the mountains, and thence to the nearest civilised part to procure such things as he required for his exploration. Tiki and I continued our way south towards the cottage on the bank of the stream where his band had left the child in Grey’s care fifteen years before; not that we expected to find Crystal Grey still there, but for all that it was the right point at which to begin our search. I may say here that I no longer had any doubts as to whether the child left there by the Maoris was Miriam Grey’s daughter, and, as we journeyed along towards the gap between two lines of snow mountains, I talked with Tiki about her.
“What clothes had she on when you took her south?” I asked.
“A kaitaka of kiwi feathers,” he replied, with a readiness that assured me he could recall it perfectly. “She also had huia feathers in her hair, sandals on her feet, and a small heitiki19 hung round her neck.”
I pictured the little mite as a kind of “pakeha Maori” chieftainess travelling south in the arms of a band of cannibals, but as safe as, perhaps even safer than, a well-guarded child in a Christian family, for was she not under the word of protection of the ariki Te Makawawa? Under such conditions she might have journeyed through the Uriwera, entering it in childhood and emerging at womanhood, without so much as a hair of her head being harmed.
“What was she like to look at?” I asked again.
Tiki made an expressive gesture of admiration with his hands.
“He Pakeha! She was like a rising star. The young wild swan was not more beautiful. When it was my turn to carry the little maiden I had strange feelings, and when she looked at me with her dark eyes a waiariki20 sprang up in my heart—ah! she had the eyes of a witch, pakeha, but her words were like the sweet hymns of our ancestress Paré. My heart flies out of my breast, like a bird into the south, to search for the little white maiden beyond the snowy peaks there in the distance.”
“But she is not a little maiden now,” I said. “If she is alive she is grown up—almost a woman. And quite possibly she may have left this land to cross the Ocean of Kiwa.”
“Ah! wherever she is she will be like the graceful nikau palm among the trees of the valley, and her laugh will be like running water. I remember her laugh, pakeha! and her lips! they were as red as the titoki berry in its sheath, but they will be blue with the tatoo now, if she is almost a woman!”
“I should hope not,” I said, laughing. “They will still be as red as the cherry, or as the titoki berry in its sheath, if you like that better.”
“But her black hair will fall upon her shoulders, and she will wear a kaitaka like our maidens,” he persisted.
I did not wish to damp his ardour in the search for ‘the little maiden,’ so I said, “Perhaps—we shall see!”
Day after day, as we journeyed on, we talked of the object of our quest, and I saw from the Maori’s words that he worshipped the memory of this little maiden as that of a divine thing. What had he seen in her eyes to produce this lasting impression upon him? I conjured before my mind the fresh, fair young face of a girl of seventeen or eighteen, with laughing lips and coal-black eyes, harbouring, perhaps, a look of the sorceress in them—a look made more emphatic by enshrouding masses of raven hair. This face glanced down at me between the fleecy clouds of the far south, but I recall the vision now only to dismiss it, for it possessed not the dawnlike flush of radiant beauty that heaven had cast on Crystal Grey.
On the evening of the fourth day we came to the river along the right bank of which Tiki remembered taking the child. He led the way and I followed, marvelling at his memory of cliffs and dark pools, and outstanding trees which he had not seen for fifteen years.
Twilight fell over the bush and the roaring river. I suggested camping and continuing the journey next morning. But Tiki said we were now not far from the hut, so we held on for another half mile. Tiki was right, as he always was in matters of locality, for there, between some trees a little withdrawn from the bank, we saw a small cottage; but no smoke came from the chimney, nor was there a light in the window.
“Is it the place?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied, looking about him; “it is the place. There is the totara beneath which we waited while our chief carried the little maiden up to the hut.”
As we advanced towards the cottage we soon saw that it was deserted. The little bridge that spanned a stream was lying with one end in the water, the gate opening on the garden path was leaning sideways from one hinge; and, as we passed on up to the door, the overgrown path, the wilderness of tangles in the garden, and, finally, the broken windows of the hut itself showed that it had long since been deserted.
Opening the door on its creaking hinges, we went inside. The place was quite bare, except for a bed of fern in one corner, where some traveller had camped. There was no evidence of its having been regularly occupied for, I thought, at least ten years. However, I resolved to sleep there that night, and in the morning push on to the nearest sheep run, accommodation house, or digging township, as the case might be, and make inquiries. Accordingly we swept the floor, brought in more fern, boiled our billy on the hearth, and slept in more comfortable quarters than those to which we were accustomed.
A strange thing happened in the night—a thing which was the first in an extended series of inexplicable occurrences, in the progress of which I almost began to imagine I was being haunted. I awoke suddenly, and saw the bright moonlight flooding in through one of the empty casements, and there, looking in, was what I accepted as a mean trick of my imagination. It was a face—the most vile and wizard-looking face I have ever seen. The features were those of a negro, wizened, withered, evil-looking to a degree. I started up into a sitting posture, and rubbed my eyes, but when I stared at the open square of moonlight again the face was gone. I sprang to my feet, went over to the casement and looked out, but saw nothing. Yet what I heard chilled my blood. From very far away in the bush came a wild, hideous laugh, like that of a triumphant devil. Bah! was the place haunted, or was I ridden by some nightmare which had grown out of my fearful experiences in the mountain cavern? I could make nothing of it, so I went back to bed, and when I awoke in the morning I laughed it away as a grotesque nightmare.
When day came I had a good look round the place to see if I could find anything that would give me some sort of clue to the whereabouts of Grey, but nothing that I saw afforded me anything to the purpose. There was an overgrown and almost obliterated bullock-dray road, however, which I knew must lead to some run or settlement, and this I proposed to follow, as it led away to the south-west, and would in all probability bring us to the West Coast Goldfields, or, at all events, to the sea; so that, at least, we could find our way to Hokitika.
A last look round the interior of the hut before setting out afforded a peculiar piece of evidence to the effect that some child, six or seven years old, had left that hut in, or shortly after, the year 18—. I arrived at this conclusion in the following way. While I was making a careful survey of ceiling, floor, and walls, my eye fell upon some horizontal scratches on the bare wall near the fireplace. At first glance they appeared like markings made by a carpenter, but a closer scrutiny showed me in a flash what they really were—measurements of the growth of some child. There were eight or nine. The first, dated June, 18—, was about three feet six inches from the floor. The next stood an inch above, and so they ran up, some with dates and others without, to the height of four feet and a little over. There at a certain date the measurements stopped, from which I concluded that the child, whose growth had been registered in this way, may have left at that time. There were no markings anywhere else to give the idea that any other children had lived in the hut, so the only conclusion I could draw was that these referred to the child who had been left there with Grey some fifteen years since.
But a sudden thought arrested my mind. I was getting along a little too hastily. There might be another explanation of the sudden termination of this systematic scale of measurements at the height of four feet something. That last measurement might have had a black edge to it, in which case it occurred to me with a shade of sadness that its date might be found again burnt into some little wooden slab at the head of a grave four feet something in length, in a sheltered spot in the garden about the hut.
To exhaust this alternative I explained my discovery to Tiki, and together we went out and made a thorough search all over the tangled wilderness of a garden, but, to my great relief, found no such grave or wooden slab. It was more probable, I thought, judging from the deserted state of the place, and the growth of the quick-hedges since they had last been cut, that Grey and the child had left the hut somewhere about the year specified in the last measurement, nine years before the time of which I am writing.
“The little maiden is not dead,” said Tiki anxiously, when we had concluded our search; “no, she is not dead. We should have counted another star in the sky, if the little maiden had passed over Wai Ora Tane.”
“She is not buried here at all events,” I replied with dry logic, which I fear compared but poorly with the poetical thought of the Maori. Then we found the bullock-dray road and set out on our tramp.
Overgrown, bestrewn with débris from the thick bush, and in parts almost impassable, it led straight down into the south-west, and when we had followed it for two or three miles it opened out into another dray road which was in good repair. Here we found fresh bullock tracks, with the ruts of dray wheels, and after travelling some five miles in our right direction with the rising sun behind us, we heard a sound of ‘language’ ahead. It was the bullock-puncher talking in his most persuasive tone to his long-suffering team.
Presently, turning a slight bend in the road, we came up with him—a raw Irishman of the lankiest, boniest type imaginable, with fiery hair and a nose that had been blunted in Heke’s war in the ’forties. His trousers were not what they used to be; his boots were eighteen by four; his shirt should have been at the binder’s in several places, except where it was fashionably fastened at the collar with a tie of undressed flax clean that day from Nature’s laundry; his socks, which one looked for in vain between the bottoms of his trousers and the tops of his boots, were at the wash; and his clay pipe, stuck like a dagger in his belt of raw bullock’s hide, looked as if it wanted renewing; but—his language was divine, I mean profane, and his whip, as it curled in air and dusted last year’s hair from the leader’s flank, was eloquent with the sublimity of perfect punctuation.
I was drawing out this bullock-puncher, when the off leader stopped, and, turning his lowered head to the right, gave a violent snort that scattered the dust and dry leaves from the ground. In a trice the great whip was unfolding itself in the air, and, as it came down on the startled bullock’s flank, the well of Irish much defiled overflowed its banks; but, in the confusion, I heard distinctly from far away the same wild, mocking laugh of my nightmare. Again I asked myself if I was haunted, and if so what earthly or unearthly thing had scared the bullock at that moment. Again I could make nothing of it, and dismissed the matter from my mind.
We walked by the side of this son of Erin for a mile, and I learned in the course of conversation that there was a small digging township ten miles further on. Seeing that he could not talk to his bullocks properly with anyone else constantly interrupting the thread of his argument, and that he neither knew anything about Grey nor could tell me who had last lived in the hut on the river bank, we soon left him behind, coming along slowly to the tune of “Woo comother byke—Skipper! byke—Skipper!! ye (crack) byke! Skipper!!!” which tune had no “grand Amen” in it, but went on and on until, as we drew ahead, it died away further and further in the distance.
Towards evening we reached the digging township—a quaint, mushroom growth of tents and rough wooden buildings. Here I began my inquiries, but no one could give me any information. The floating population of the gold diggings was not an easy field in which to find traces of a man who had probably left the district ten years before. The Hindu saying, “A piece of wood and a piece of wood may meet in the ocean, and having touched, float away again—like this is the meeting of mortals,” is especially true in a gold-seeking world, where men come from everywhere, and drift about between California, Bendigo, and New Zealand. But late that night chance favoured me. I dropped into the tap-room of an accommodation house a little way out of the township, and put my inquiries to the landlord. He shook his head, then turning to the ten or twelve occupants of the room who were playing euchre at a large table, he addressed them collectively.
“Say, do any of you chaps know anything of a man named Grey, who lived in these parts about ten years ago?”
The diggers paused in their play and looked up. One honest-looking ruffian—a Scot, with sandy whiskers and quick grey eyes, paused with his arm upraised in the excited attitude a man assumes when he is about to plank down the right bower. I saw his eyes pass over me in a quick scrutiny; then, when the others had answered the landlord’s question with negatives of various kinds, he spun the winning card on to the table instead of banging it down with a noisy thud in the usual way among diggers, and, pushing his chair back, asked another man to take his place, and sauntered out of the room.
I did not think this had any bearing on the matter in hand until afterwards, when, on leaving the place and proceeding along the road that led back to the township, I was surprised to see this rough Scot step out of the shadows by the roadside and come towards me.
“I heard ye askin’ for Grey up yonder,” he said, “and I thocht maybe it’s Dreamer Grey ye want.”
“Dreamer Grey?” I repeated, laying stress upon the strange Christian name as I rolled it over in my mind. “I don’t know him by that name—in fact, all I know about him is that he disappeared from Hokitika seventeen years ago, and lived for some time in a small hut on the bank of the river about twenty-five miles down. He was a tall, soldierly man, with curly black hair, brown eyes, and a short moustache——”
“Ay, that’s Dreamer Grey,” he interrupted; “but tell me noo, what are ye wantin’ him for?”
“Are you mistaking me for a detective on his track?” I asked laughing.
“I’m no so sure,” he said gravely as his keen grey eyes met mine in the starlight. “I’m no so sure, and until I weel ken what ye’re wantin’ him for I canna tell ye.”
“All right,” I replied. “Grey’s wife has been left a large estate at home and a lot of money, and I’m searching for her—if living—or, failing that, for evidence of her death.”
“Grey’s wife? eh, man, but Grey had nae wife. It canna be the same man?”
“Oh, yes it is,” I persisted. “He had a little girl named Crystal with him, had he not?”
“Ay, he had then, a bonny wee lassie.”
“With black hair and black eyes.”
“Ay, I mind the wee lassie weel. Ah! man, but she was bonnie.” His rough voice softened as he said the words.
“That little girl was his own child,” I went on.
“Eh! What’s that? what’s that? his ain child? Weel noo; he telt me that the bairn was left at his hut one night when he was asleep by the fire. Hoo d’ye ken it was his ain bairn? Dreamer Grey wasna the man to tell his mate a dam lee, an’ I’m no the man to stand by and——”
He was getting excited, and I hastened to explain.
“Now, you listen,” I said, “and I’ll tell you how I know what I know; and, at the same time, you’ll see that what Grey told you was perfectly true. I have gleaned from the Maoris that they took Grey and his wife prisoners when they had only been married a few weeks. They kept the woman, but set Grey free, having first inoculated him with some strange poison which clouded his mind, and, as they gave me to understand, entirely dislocated his memory. In due time the little girl, his daughter, was born, and when she was two years old one of the chiefs, not wishing to kill her, but wanting to be rid of her, sent her with a party of Maoris southwards, with orders that she should be left with the first pakeha they encountered. They came across the hut where Grey was living and left her there while he was asleep. Of course, he adopted the child not knowing it was his own.”
“Ay, ay,” said the Scot slowly. “Man, that’s a strange tale ye’re tellin’ me. But I mind weel that Dreamer Grey telt me he had forgotten his past life, and he was sae mysterious aboot it that I thocht he had done something that he didna wish to mind, and that’s why I heid ma tongue when I heard ye speerin’ aboot him up yonder at the hoose.”
“Ah!” I said. “And how did he come by his strange name?”
“I’m comin’ to that. He said that when the wee lassie was left wi’ him she telt him her name was ‘Crystal Grey’ as near as a bairn could say it; and so he ca’d himsel’ Grey, an’ we ca’d him Dreamer, because every now and again he would stop in his work and look straight ahead in an oncanny way, as if he was tryin’ to reca’ somethin’ he had dreamt. Ay, he was a queer body, and what ye say aboot his mem’ry explains many and many a thing that I couldna mak’ oot.”
“Well now,” I said, anxious to come to the point, “the Maori tohunga who doctored him with the poison knows where Grey’s wife is and will reveal her hiding-place to me on one condition—that I find and bring back the child. Whether his conscience is troubling him, or whether some strange superstition is at the bottom of it, I cannot say; but I have reason to trust him, and, if I return with the child, I have no doubt I shall find her mother. So if you know where Grey and the child are and have quite given up the idea that I’m on Grey’s track for something he doesn’t want to remember, perhaps you can give me some information.”
At this the honest Scot opened his heart, and told me how he and Dreamer Grey had worked together on the goldfields; how, some ten years before, Grey had made his pile, and had bought a large tract of land at the head of one of the sounds on the south-west coast, where he settled down with one aim in life, to care for the well-being of the wee bit lassie; and, finally, how, if I were to go there and say that old Jim Crichton directed me, I should be welcomed with open arms.
“And noo ma bonnie lad,” he concluded, when he had told me this much and more, “it’s a dry tale that doesna end in a drink. Come on!”
As he put his arm through mine and drew me away towards the accommodation house, a stone rolled from the top of a bank twelve or fifteen feet high on one side of the road.
“Did that fall of its own accord?” I asked myself, and as if in answer to my question there came again that wild, unearthly laugh from far away back in the bush.
“Did you hear that?” I asked excitedly, catching my friend by the arm.
“Yes; someone laughing in the bush—sounds oncanny.”
“I heard it once before,” I replied, “but thought it was fancy—some mad hatter, I suppose.”
And we continued our way to the house.
Our journey to the coast, first through the dense bush and afterwards by goldseekers’ tracks, was not marked by any adventure worth mentioning. Arrived at a village on the coast line near Hokitika, we booked our passage by a whaler bound southward, and in less than a week we reached the Sounds.
Grand, solitary, majestic are the bold features of this coast line which faces the westerly breezes of the Pacific. Gentle arms of the sea caress and almost entwine great mountain rocks that stand waist deep in ninety fathoms.
Following the Scot’s directions accurately, I arranged with the captain of the whaler to put us ashore in a boat as soon as we came opposite the required Sound, which I recognised at once from Crichton’s description. The opening was almost hidden by the perpendicular rocks which stood about the entrance, but, when we passed between these in the small boat pulled by two sturdy sailors, we found a broad arm of smooth water within stretching for several miles between rugged mountains, which grew gradually rounded and verdant as they sloped away inland.
As we passed over the glassy surface of this still water among still surroundings, it seemed that we were entering a world where we should encounter no living thing but penguins and wild fowl.
The steady sound of our oars echoed from the rugged and precipitous shore; some ducks wheeled by overhead and disappeared round an elbow some hundred yards beyond, and high up above the towering rocks, the distant fleecy clouds shone in the rays of the setting sun. It was a splendid solitude, whose substance and shadow were clearly defined and divided by the millpond surface of the water.
But immediately on rounding the elbow beyond which the ducks had disappeared, we came in view of something which jarred upon our sense of solitude. There, riding at anchor in a little wooded cove before us, was a large yacht.
“Whose is that?” I asked one of the seamen who had come with us.
“I couldn’t tell you, sir,” was his response; “but there’s a bit of the Yankee about her. See them there spars”—he broke off suddenly in his speech to me and addressed the continuation of his remark excitedly to his fellow seaman—“why, blow me, Bill, if that ain’t the craft as we seen in Astrolabe Roads nigh on a month ago. What was the big chap’s name, him as was the owner?”
“Señor Cazotl,” returned the other, regarding the yacht intently. “I heard the skipper tellin’ the doctor that he was a Mexican with whips of money and a nasty look in his eye; and what’s more, if a man could be judged by his crew, he was more like Old Nick himself out for a holiday than anyone else.”
“What was the matter with his crew?” I asked.
“The matter! why, the skipper said he’d never seed a more hang-dog lookin’ lot; a man with a crew like that ought to be hanged on general principles, he ought. Some was half-castes; there was two Spaniards with murder scribbled all over ’em, and a Portuguese hunchback with a face like a wild gorilla; but the worst and curst of the whole swag was a grey-headed, skinny wisp of a nigger what gave our skipper fantods, and made him think of Thugs and Areois, and them sort of uncanny sarpints.”
“The skipper evidently didn’t care for Señor Cazotl and his crew,” I said.
“You’re right there, sir. He ups anchor an’ gets away the very next mornin’ before the Mexican had a chance of returning his visit.”
By this time we were abreast of the yacht, but we could not discern anyone on board; and, after weighing the remarks of the sailors, I did not feel greatly inclined to have anything to do with the strangers. But it fell out contrary to our inclinations, for, having avoided the yacht, we had no sooner reached the next bend than we nearly ran into its owner and two of his crew in a small boat coming down from the upper part of the sound. We were within twenty yards, when the man who was steering, evidently Cazotl himself, called upon his two rowers to cease pulling, and waved his hand to us, evidently wishing to speak. The sailors reluctantly obeyed the intimation, and, as we drew up within two oars’ lengths of each other I observed the huge, ungainly proportions of Cazotl sitting in the stern, and his evil face, whose low forehead, square protruding jaw, and leering lips were half concealed by a wealth of glossy black hair. His long, flat nose lent a peculiar interpretation to his face, and filled me with the strange fancy that if one of his first parents may have been a fiend, the other might certainly have been a giant ape. Moreover, there was a peculiar suggestion of red fire in his eyes which riveted my attention. As he drew nearer and was about to speak, I found myself wondering where I had seen that face before. The general cast and expression were familiar to me, but I could not recall where or when I had seen it.
“Good day to you,” he said. “Do you live in these parts, or are you a wandering star like myself?”
“Going to the head of the Sound for a time,” I replied shortly; “got a friend living there. Just come off a small sailing craft outside. That’s your yacht down there, isn’t it? You, I presume, are Señor Cazotl?”
“Yes, at your service. I should be very pleased if you and your friend at the head of the Sound would do me the honour of looking me up some evening.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I will mention your kind invitation to my friend, but his house is some miles up the Sound. We must push on if we hope to reach it before dark.”
The two sailors were not slow to ply their oars, and, as we began to move off, Señor Cazotl said: “I shall be very pleased to see you, if you care to come.”
But I did not reply, for my glance had fallen for the first time on the two who were handling the oars in his boat—and what I saw deprived me of speech for the moment. The one was a Spaniard with “murder scribbled all over him,” and the other was the white-haired, skinny, Thug-like wisp of a negro. I stared in amazement, for I recognised his wizened face as that which I had seen in the moonlight at the window of the hut on the bank of the river. In another moment I jerked out some reply—I cannot remember what—and we passed on towards the head of the Sound, while Cazotl’s boat continued its way towards the yacht.
The sailors, as they rowed on, talked to each other in a manner not flattering either to Cazotl or his crew, but I sat silent. Two things troubled me. Had that lithe negro tracked me through the bush, and, if so, why? And where had I set eyes on Cazotl’s face before? His yacht had been seen some weeks since in l’Astrolabe Roads, which locality was not far either from Te Makawawa’s pa or from the place where I first landed from Wakatu. A shudder ran through me as I asked myself if it was possible that the Thug-like creature I had just seen had tracked me from the moment when I landed until now. In answer to my question there came into my mind that far-away laugh which I could not understand, as in each case it had followed some false step or semi-exposure of someone near at hand. The more I thought the more I was convinced that I had been tracked by this thing with the evil face; and, as it dawned upon me that, if it was so, there must be some connection between that fact and the appearance of the yacht down there near our destination, I felt forebodings which I could not dispel. I was aroused from these dark thoughts only to be plunged into darker by Tiki, who, gazing steadily after Cazotl’s boat, remarked: “Wanaki! if that taepo21 catches the little maiden he will roast her in the oven. Oa! I have heard the ariki say, ‘Beware of the children of the Great Woman of Death and Darkness; and by this you shall know them: they have the gleam of the red fire in their eyes.’ ”
It was dark when the two sailors landed us at the head of the Sound, and made their way back to their ship. As far as one could see by the uncertain light of the stars, the rugged characteristics of the place here sloped off into rounded hills enclosing a broad, fertile valley, which widened out considerably before being lost among the hills inland. There were banks of trees not more than a quarter of a mile up the valley, and there I concluded we should find Grey’s house.
It was not very long before we struck a path leading up from the water. This, as we followed it, took us through green fields, where sheep and horses were grazing. Then before us we saw the great banks of trees. Coming at last to some slip bars beneath high blue-gums, we gained a square enclosure some acres in extent, in the midst of which, embowered in trees, we discerned vaguely the gables of a house. In the upstairs window of the gable facing us a light was showing through the close-drawn blind. Someone was going to bed.
Our path led us round an umbrageous orchard and brought us out on to a well-kept lawn, where, passing beneath some cedars which stood apart, their boughs moving gently between us and the stars as they whispered in the night wind, we approached the picturesque old country house.
“You stay here beneath the trees,” I said to Tiki, thinking his appearance might frighten the inmates; “and I will come for you presently.”
Then, finding my way round the verandah, I sought out the front door and knocked. Presently, through the glass panel at the side of the door, I saw a light approaching along the hall, and a moment later the door was opened by a tall man with a candle in his hand.
“Are you Mr. Grey?” I asked, recognising him from Te Makawawa’s description—a soldierly man with curling hair, brown eyes, and short, black moustache.
“That is my name,” he replied, holding the candle up and scanning my face.
I said, “I am a stranger to you, but I come from Jim Crichton, whom I met in the Karamea; and I have something important to tell you.”
“From Jim Crichton!” he said, with pleased surprise. “You are welcome, then, if your news is good or bad. Come in.”
He led me into a room that looked like a library, and proceeded to light the lamp.
“Everybody’s gone to bed,” he said, as he turned the wick up, “and I was just going myself. We’re early to bed and early to rise here. Take a seat, Mr.—let me see, you did not tell me your name.” He smiled at me kindly. In the smile and the expression of his face anyone could see that he was a man with a large heart.
“Warnock—Dick Warnock.”
“Ah! sit here, Mr. Warnock, and before you tell me your news let me get you something to eat; I daresay you’re hungry.”
He went out of the room, and I glanced around at the pictures on the wall, the books in the shelves, and the delicately arranged flowers on the table. It was the room of a successful man with refined tastes, and in many places there were gentle evidences of a feminine hand.
In a few minutes he returned, bearing a tray with various things to eat and drink, and while I was partaking of these he talked about his old friend Crichton, recalling incidents of the goldfields.
When I had finished my meal, and had tuned my pipe to his cigar, I leaned back in my chair and said: “Now to my news.”
“All in good time,” he replied with a pleasant smile; “is it good or bad?”
“It is good, but I have no doubt it will startle you, even to the extent of leading you to doubt my sanity, or at least my story.”
He raised his eyebrows and looked steadily at me for a while; then, blowing forth a cloud of smoke, he remarked quietly: “All right. I’m not easily startled. Proceed.”
“In order to find the exact point at which I must begin,” I said, “I shall have to ask you a few questions. In the first place, do you remember the hut on the bank of the river where you lived?”
“Yes, perfectly well.”
“Good. Do you remember your first coming to that hut through the Karamea bush?”
“Yes, I remember that.”
“Well now, one question more; can you remember the place you set out from on that occasion?”
Grey took his cigar from his lips and fixed his eyes on the lamp, while a dreamy, puzzled expression came on his face. At last, drawing his hand over his brow, he turned to me and said: “Perhaps it will be your turn now to doubt either my sanity or my story; but, nevertheless, what I am about to tell you is the sober truth. Four or five days before reaching that hut something happened to me, I don’t know what, but at all events I have never been able to recall anything that transpired previously. The last I can remember, and it is a very dim memory, is that I found my way down from a high place among the mountains. All beyond that is a blank in my mind—a blank containing nothing but the consciousness of something forgotten.”
“I doubt neither your sanity nor your story,” I hastened to reply. “Besides, I have ample evidence of the truth of what you say; and not only that, but I can set before you various important details of your past life which, as I said, will startle you.”
He scanned my face again more eagerly than before. “Are you an old friend whose face and name I have forgotten?” he asked wistfully.
“No, not that,” I replied. “I have my information from the Maoris. Do you know that you have a wife and daughter, Mr. Grey?”
He started. Then leaning forward over the table and looking earnestly in my face, he asked, hoarsely:
“Still living?”
“I have every reason to believe that your wife Miriam is still alive——” I paused, wondering if in his oblivion he had married again, and if, perhaps—it was a painful thought—the woman of his choice was at present the head of his household. His face, wrought with nervous emotion, told me nothing of this kind; and if I had not paused he would have interrupted me in his excitement.
“Thank Heaven!” he said, striking the table with his fist, and rising from his seat to pace the carpeted floor; “thank Heaven I have never married again. And my daughter—speak, sir—my daughter?”
“Was left at your hut fifteen years ago while you were asleep by the fire.”
He stopped in his pacing to and fro on the other side of the table and faced me with a countenance from which all traces of excitement had fled. Slowly a fine light began to burn in his brown eyes. Like a man walking in his sleep, he felt his way round the table, and, seating himself again in his chair, said in a deep, hushed voice, which had a strange ring of sweetness in it: “Crystal Grey my own child—the mother whom she has led me to love above all other women—my—own—wife. I, I, Warnock!”—he started from his chair again—“can you prove this? Quick! or I shall go mad; man, it is more than I ever dared to dream.”
Then, as clearly as I could, I laid before him the facts which the reader already knows, telling the story of Te Makawawa, but, in accordance with our understanding with the old chief, omitting all mention of the legend of Hinauri and the statue in the marble cave. As I proceeded I strengthened point by point with evidence derived from my own adventures in the mountain, with the carved piece of wood, which I handed him across the table, and with that part of Kahikatea’s adventure which involved no mention of the sacred stone.
“It is strange,” he said, when I had finished; “but for the last seventeen years, which is the only part of my life that I know, there has passed scarcely a day without some flitting reminiscence of giant rocks, with an additional dream-glimpse of something which has always eluded me. In the midst of my work, or perhaps when I am in conversation with someone, I will suddenly see in my mind’s eye a woman’s face—ah! very often that woman’s tender face—then a patch of grey rock, a smooth white stone, or a gigantic crag against the blue sky; but, beyond that, nothing, except a vague consciousness of some long chain of events which will not disclose themselves.”
When I continued my tale, and concluded with the statement of Te Makawawa’s express condition that when I returned with the child he would inquire of his ancestors concerning the whereabouts of Miriam Grey, but not before, Dreamer Grey’s eyes sparkled with purpose and resolve.
“We will go, Warnock,” he said, “we will go, the three of us together, and find my wife, if she is still alive.”
“The three of us?” I said. “You, I, and——?”
“Why, Crystal of course; she went to bed before you came. But, by Heaven! I must go and wake her and tell her this news.”
Before he had finished speaking he was out of the room and half way up the stairs. Suddenly remembering Tiki waiting beneath the cedars, I went softly out of the house with half a loaf of bread in one hand and a large piece of cold pork in the other, with which, having found him, I advised him to regale himself. But, hungry as he was, he did not begin until he had asked the question which probably he had asked himself a hundred times since I had left him: “Is the little maiden in there?”
“Yes,” I replied, “she’s in there; you’ll see her to-morrow, perhaps. Stay here and I’ll come out again soon with Pakeha Kerei, and he’ll find you some place where you can pass the night.”
“He Wanaki,” was all he said, but it meant a great deal. It meant that eating and sleeping were matters of no moment now that he knew ‘the little maiden’ was alive.
Leaving him, I returned to the house and waited for Grey. When he came back some time later his face was full of a gentle happiness. The discovery that Crystal Grey was not an adopted child, but his own daughter, had touched the very depths of his soul.
“Warnock,” he said, grasping my hand, “how can I ever repay you for this?”
“I am already a paid servant,” I faltered, “drawing my salary from certain trustees of a large estate at home.”
“Ah! yes,” he replied, “money might repay you for your trouble, but how can I discharge the debt of gratitude I owe to you, who have brought me this great happiness?”
“I give it up,” I said laughing; “and I advise you to do the same. In the meantime, I have a Maori waiting outside, and I took the liberty of taking him some food while you were away. He’s a bit of a savage, and perhaps it would be best for him to sleep in the barn—he would be more comfortable.”
“Yes, yes; where is he?” he asked. Then, as I led the way, he added with a merry laugh: “I suppose he’d never forgive us if we put him between sheets in a feather bed—he’d think his days were numbered, eh?”
I laughed in reply. I was becoming infected with my host’s happiness.
“Do you talk Maori?” I asked, as we found Tiki finishing his meal beneath the cedars; “this fellow can’t speak a word of English.”
“No, I can’t,” he replied, “but Crystal can. She’ll put him through his facings in the morning. Where shall we bed him down, in the barn or in the hay loft?”
“I think a bundle of straw in the corner of the verandah would be a luxury to him.”
“Right! you wait here. I’ll soon fix him up.” And he disappeared, to return presently with a lantern and a large bundle of straw which he deposited in the most sheltered part of the verandah, where, following my instructions, Tiki made his bed and turned in. We then went inside the house; and when, after a long, earnest talk, my host had shown me into the best bedroom, he said “Good-night,” and retired to rest.
Until long after everything was quiet I leaned upon the window-sill gazing at the stars, and basking in the atmosphere of happiness which had fallen upon that house. The cloth of gold roses that clustered round the window gave a faint odour, which stole softly out upon the quiet air, for the night wind had died away in the blue-gums, and the garden below was very still. The sound of a breaking twig, the sighing of the guilty aspen as its leaves turned restlessly in their sleep, the chirping of a cricket on the lawn, the munching of the horses in the stable, the hooting of an owl in the plantation, and the baying of a shepherd’s dog on the hills—these were the sounds that emphasised the stillness of the night. But suddenly, from far away, came the faint refrain of a wild, heathenish chant, rising and falling on the still night air in weird, barbaric changes. As I listened it chilled my blood, breaking through the sweet, happy silence of the place like a note of horror. I knew it came from the direction of Cazotl’s yacht. With a shudder I closed the window to shut it out.