“I live,” she said sweetly; “I live, dear mother—why do you not take me in your arms?”
As the light fell upon the lovely face and form, all white and sculpturesque, Miriam Grey drew a quick breath—I heard it as I stood in the shadows—a gasp of unutterable astonishment. Her free hand clutched at the air, then swept quickly across her brow, while I wondered, for how could there be anything in that face for her to recognise after so many years? Yet it seemed there was something.
“Ah! God in heaven!” she cried. “Am I mad—or is this thing true? Te Makawawa, Chief and Tohunga! are you blind?”
I walked from the shadows round to where Crystal and Grey were standing, and together we watched this strange scene. I motioned silence to them, whispering that the chief would explain.
“I am not blind, O Miriami,” he said quietly; “but what my eyes see my thoughts put aside. My two eyes and your two eyes may speak false words in this dim light. The Light of Tane is in the cave above, and here are many eyes that may see and judge.”
He waved his hand towards us as he spoke. I was perplexed by his words, for as I understood the matter it was not a question of seeing clearly, but of simple confession on the part of the old chief.
“Your words are wise, O Friend of the Great Tohungas,” she said thoughtfully, with an almost terrified look at Crystal. “Give me the torch.”
He handed it to her and she moved towards the tunnel, holding it before her, and motioning us to follow.
“What did the chief mean?” asked Crystal, when I had translated his words to Grey; “he did not explain. My mother still thinks that I died when I was three years old. I do not understand.”
“Nor I,” said Grey. “Why was my wife so startled? I can understand her refusing to accept my statement when she had such good evidence that Crystal was dead, but why did she look so amazed? Surely she could not have imagined that Crystal had risen from the dead!”
“Yet she seemed to recognise me in some way,” said Crystal again.
“That is impossible,” I exclaimed. “The colour of your eyes would be the only thing that would not have altered, and in torchlight all dark eyes would look black. No! there is something to be explained. Do you know where we are going?”
“To the white cave you told us about?”
“Yes, the marble cave where Hinauri stands—Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn.”
Crystal was silent. Presently she said: “I don’t see how she can help us.”
The tone of her voice told me that the bitterness of her heart had come uppermost again. But I did not reply, for at that moment we came to some smooth white steps cut in the rock. Te Makawawa stood aside upon these steps, and as we passed him I saw, by the light of the torch moving into a dim but growing daylight before us, that he fixed his piercing eyes upon Crystal’s face in a long, bewildering scrutiny.
The steps led round to the right, and finally we stood upon the threshold of a pure white marble cave, lofty and spacious. Beyond the facts that the level floor was covered with snow-white dust, and that there was a large opening communicating with the outer air, I took small note of the details of the place, for there, standing where the fine, clear morning light flooded in, was the marble image of Hinauri, her arms held out in longing towards some vision she could see in the western sky through the opening of the cave. Her face was concealed from the side view by some of the waves of sculptured hair that fell over her left shoulder, but the lifelike pose of the figure showed the perfect body and lovely soul of one who had seen a vision of joy long sought, and, in yearning towards it, had for the moment “forgot herself to marble.”
Miriam Grey had now thrown down her torch, and was standing beyond the image with her hands clasped together, waiting. I was the first to move into the daylight and gaze into the face of Hinauri. What I saw there dashed to the ground my hopes of a heaven on earth. For one brief moment I looked upon that lovely face, startled, bewildered, dazed—but not at its loveliness. Then I staggered back into the shadow of the rocks and leaned against them, looking on at the scene in a helpless fashion. Grey, too, after one quick glance, started back and passed his hand over his brow, as if he doubted his senses. Then Crystal, who followed him, paused before the image. With a little cry she took a step towards it and stood in mute wonder. For a time they remained facing each other, the girl of to-day and the goddess of ancient night, for whom the giants of old had fought their grim battles—the pure woman whom the vile Cazotl had sought to degrade by his magic, and Hinauri who, from the time of Zun the Terrible, had been fiercely guarded from the Vile Ones of all time by a greater magic—Crystal Grey, who loved my perfect man, and the cold white being, which, set in the high solitudes of the world, my perfect man had loved. Crystal raised her arms to the radiant Daughter of the Dawn, and a single word fell upon the silence of the place: “Myself!”
Like a note of heavenly music the word fell from Crystal’s lips; like a discord of the tuneless earth it rankled through my brain. Then for a moment—so paramount is self—life and love forsook my heart, leaving it cold, like the stone on which I leant despairingly.
For some seconds no one stirred, and during that time I, grasping at the matter-of-fact, cast about for an explanation of this strange thing. Instantly there rolled through my mind that time when, before Crystal was born, Miriam Grey worked at the stone, absorbed in the contemplation of the vision she had seen—the vision of Hinauri. Was it possible that her work had been twofold? that, while her whole being, with all the concentrative power one might read in her eyes, was absorbed in contemplation of the beautiful image of her imagination, she had “found” that image at once actually in the marble and potentially in her unborn child? Kahikatea was right, but only half right, for the mother who had conceived the beauty of Hinauri in the stone had also conceived her wondrous image in the flesh.
Then came the same dull roar that we had heard from beneath the rimu in the valley, thundering down from the roof of the mountain above us. Crystal heard it, and as she raised her face I saw the love-light leap into her eyes and a radiant smile spread over her face. I saw her lips move, and the unspoken word seemed to fall like lead upon my heart: “Kahikatea!”
I turned my face away and laid my cheek against the marble wall. There was nothing between them now.
Miriam Grey moved out of the shadows into the daylight that flooded in through the opening of the cave and paused by Grey’s side, while they both gazed and marvelled at the wondrous thing that was now made clear.
“It is Crystal herself,” said Grey, when he had partly recovered from his astonishment.
“Crystal!” cried his wife quickly; “that was our daughter’s name, but I tell you, dear, she died; she was drowned, and Te Makawawa himself buried her. I will call him and he will tell you the same.”
She went to the top of the marble steps and called, but there was no answer. The aged chief who would face warriors, even if they covered the whole earth, had now clearly fled to avoid either facing the woman with the stars in her eyes, or confronting a matter through which he did not see his way clear.
As he had obviously left me to tell the tale of his deception, perchance of his sin against the Bright One, I gathered my thoughts together and went forward.
“Miriam Grey,” I said, “when first I undertook the search for you, Te Makawawa told me the story of the child, which, of course, you know up to the point where he took the little body away to bury it beneath the rimu. The part of the story he kept from you is this. Your child Crystal revived in his arms; he did not bury her but sent her away with a band of Maoris, whose instructions were to leave her with the first pakeha they met. The first white man they found was your husband, who, nevertheless, up to a month ago did not know she was his own daughter.”
“Not until Warnock here——” began Grey, but he stopped as he turned towards his wife, for, as was natural, my words had moved her greatly. She now stood looking at Crystal with a tender light of motherhood on her gentle face.
“My darling child!” she said slowly and hesitatingly, as if still unable to comprehend it.
“My own mother!” cried Crystal quickly—she had no hesitation in the matter—and, like a bird, she flew to, and nestled in, her mother’s arms. And they stood for a moment in a close embrace.
Crystal held back her head, and, smoothing her mother’s glossy locks away from her brow, looked at her lovingly, saying with a sweet repetition:
“Mother! Mother! Mother! My own mother!”
As Miriam Grey looked again on the lovely face so near to hers, and saw the dark eyes gazing into her own, there came once more the expression of bewilderment and awe which I had seen at their first meeting in the Place-of-Many-Chambers. Could she not account for this perfect likeness to the stone, as I had done? Surely she did not think that Hinauri’s ancient spirit had come back in the flesh?
No sooner were these questions asked in my mind than they were answered in a way that mystified me. As the look of awe deepened on the mother’s face she spoke in hushed tones:
“I saw your image in the stone before I was a mother. ‘Out of the distant past I will come to you,’ you said, as you held out your arms to me from the stone. Is it possible that the ancient prophecy is fulfilled in this way?—that you are Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, who has returned according to her promise, out of the distant past? O dear and lovely one, your eyes gaze down on me from the beginning of the world.”
Crystal seemed to be attaching her mother’s words to the feelings of which she had once spoken to me—the feelings of a “long, long ago,” hidden in some inmost tomb of memory. She was silent; but I, not willing to admit this thing by my silence, and moreover, having another explanation, spoke my thoughts.
I said: “That Crystal is your daughter is beyond doubt; but it seems to me that in the matter of the perfect likeness there is an explanation other than the one of which you speak. Of two marvels we must choose the less. My explanation is this: you yourself created an image which, in moments of deep concentration, you saw as if within the stone. Then, as day by day you visualised it more clearly, striving to give it visible shape in the marble, your desire was realised not only on the lifeless stone, but also on the face and form of your unborn child. Your idea was made stone, why not flesh?”
“Warnock is right, my dear,” said Grey, “no one believes in previous existences nowadays.”
Miriam Grey turned to me, leaving Crystal listening to her father, as he attempted to uphold and justify his view.
“Mr. Warnock!” she said gently, touching my arm; “what you say explains only the means employed. I recognise the law that we become, more especially in our offspring, what we contemplate; yet would I say that this was merely the means by which Hinauri’s spirit clothed itself in flesh.” She had lowered her voice almost to a whisper, and now she drew me further aside. A breath of the rising wind wailed about the ancient crags as it swept the side of the mountain without. It awoke strange feelings in me, as I stood in that high cave where Hinauri had waited through the ages. “There are strange things in this ancient temple,” she resumed, “things which point to the possibility of beings, who lived when the temple was founded, returning to earth again.”
I remembered the Vile Tohungas and replied: “Yes, I have seen a granite image and its living replica—do you mean that?”
“The one who stands apart I mean,” she said. “His face is that of Ngaraki, and what is more, the meaning of that granite statue that gazes ever upwards through the dark is the meaning of Ngaraki’s life.”
I was silent, wondering if this could be. I recalled the other thing in favour of her belief—the resemblance that Cazotl had borne to the chief of the Vile Tohungas, not only in face, but in purpose. I did not speak of it, but I began to detect a deep underlying connection between things that seemed formerly to be isolated. The ancient traditions, the happenings of the past month, the more immediate revelations of that very day—all seemed to be woven together in a definite pattern, real and visible to my inner eyes. I realised that, given this belief of Miriam Grey’s, the whole matter was a unity such as is made by independent witnesses who speak the truth. I could now understand, too, Te Makawawa’s bewilderment and hopeless confusion in finding what he regarded as a discrepancy in this unity, viz.: that Hinauri seemed to have moved to life, while yet the image remained immovable. These thoughts, which take so long to write, passed through my mind while the woman before me was dwelling on her last words.
“Come here!” she said again, leading me into the darkness round a buttress which divided the cave into two apartments; “you have matches. I will show you one of the strange things this place contains—a thing which will prove, if anything can, whether my child is that ancient one reclothed in flesh.”
I struck a match, and she lighted a torch that stood upright in a crevice in a ledge of rock. By the glow of the clear-burning pineheart I glanced quickly round the place. The jagged stone walls were not of marble, but of fine granite, and the furthest ray of the torch revealed no closing in of the rocks overhead. Dim reaches and shadows I could see, but no roof—indeed, by the freshness and purity of the air alone it was evident that there was an outlet above. That was surely the way by which Kahikatea had first entered the cave. As I swept my eyes round the lower walls and floor of this inner apartment I saw that in former times it must have been the abode of some of the savage priesthood who had in turn guarded the sacred stone. Thick Maori mats were laid about the level floor. Maori spears occupied the recesses of the rocks, and merés of jade rested on the ledges. Rich garments of dog’s-hair or woven flax hung from points upon the walls, and ranged around the place were the grotesquely carved wooden gods of the Maori, lolling their tongues and caressing their bodies with three-fingered hands, while their eyes of paua shell glistened in the torchlight.
While I had been engaged in looking at these things Miriam Grey had withdrawn a little stone box from a part of the wall. With this in both hands she approached, and, saying it was heavy, bade me place it on the ledge where the torch blazed. I did so, and the light of the pineheart revealed the frosty glitter of gold dust. She plunged her hands into this and withdrew a curiously wrought circlet of gold, set with a large diamond at one part and with a brilliant sapphire at another.
“This,” she said in a whisper, “so legend tells, is Hinauri’s crown. The very ancient giant priests took it from the city which stood on the plain below, and, when they brought the queen to this cave, it was placed in this receptacle, where it has remained until now.”
I took it in my hands. This actual tangible relic of a bygone civilisation helped me to understand those emotions of “long, long ago,” about which Crystal had spoken. I looked at the circlet and then at the walls of granite, and a feeling of extreme age possessed me. Had I, too, perchance lived in that far time when Hinauri, the Bright One, had attempted to rule a violent people by the law of love? Had I been among her counsellors in that long ago—a man of humble aspect, nursing an unrequited love for his dark-eyed queen?
I cast out the thought, for my unrequited love for Crystal was a thing of which I could not yet think calmly,
“This,” I said, “conveys to my mind no proof except that it once had a wearer.”
“Wait,” she replied. “Tradition says it is a talisman whose virtue is restricted to the one for whom it was made. See! there are some characters engraven inside which are supposed to relate to this tradition. In times long since it pressed the brows of the ancient queen, and the legend runs that, on her return, it will not be until it is placed upon her head that she will recall the memory of her ancient life.”
“Let us place it on Crystal’s head now,” I said quickly, making a movement towards the outer cave.
“No,” she returned, detaining me by the arm; “not now. At sunset to-night Ngaraki returns to sing his karakias before the statue. It is the time of the year when for a few days the sun-ray strikes in through a rift in the outstanding crags. We will remove and conceal the statue, and when he comes he will find Crystal posed in its place; then, while I place this circlet upon her head, he and the event shall decide if she be Hinauri or only my child.”
“If the talisman should have lost its power!” I objected.
“Then the tradition will not be of a piece with the general body of tradition which has been handed down within the ancient walls of this temple,” she said. “I have learned step by step, by proofs which I cannot show you now, that there is truth in these priestly traditions. I will tell you one thing briefly: in a circular recess in the side of the wall of the great abyss are the preserved heads of men who at various times have found their way into this mountain to destroy the sacred stone which was supposed to contain the form of the Pure One. The faces of these I have recognised by their resemblances to the faces of the Vile Tohungas of the Pit—the Destroyers of Women—and I believe firmly that the ancient brotherhood of sorcerers exists to this day, their initiates returning again and again in the flesh to work out their destiny. Even quite lately one found his way into the lower part of the mountain, but he escaped after nearly killing Ngaraki, whom I nursed for many days, thinking he would die.”
“If they had caught him what would they have done with him?” I asked.
“His head would now be hanging among the others, where it ought to be.”
I felt very thankful that I had not killed Ngaraki with that last bullet of mine, and still more thankful that my head was still on my shoulders. But I did not waste time in correcting her mistake. She concluded:
“That chamber of preserved heads, with many other things over which I have had ample time to think, has led me to believe in the traditions of this place, strange as they may appear to you of the outer world.”
I was silent, but in my silence I wished that I had kept the head of Cazotl to place among that gruesome collection.
At that moment Crystal, followed by Grey, came round the buttress.
“I want to kiss you again,” said she; “I have lived nearly sixteen years without a mother, and now I have found you I am so happy that I think I must cry.” She placed her arms round her mother’s neck, and drawing her down to a low ledge of rock near by, seated herself at her feet and buried her head on her lap and sobbed for very joy. Her mother placed one hand on Crystal’s hair, while Grey, seating himself beside her, took the other between both of his, and, leaving them thus, I walked back into the marble cave.
Again I stood before the statue of Hinauri and lingered over Crystal’s loveliness in stone. I felt a wild desire to kiss the beautiful cold lips, but I remembered that look of hers when she realised that Kahikatea loved her, and I held back. If ever a woman was pledged to a man Crystal was pledged to my friend. It was different now. I withdrew, and turned towards the opening.
This mouth of the marble cave was a little more than two yards in width, and nearly ten feet high. It admitted the lights of heaven on to the face of Hinauri. The outer surfaces of granite were worn by the age-long action of air and water, but the inner edges, of pure white marble, were accurately hewn with two parallel grooves, one on each side, similar to those down which a window might slide. Calling up the picture of the huge stone grating in the lower part of the temple, I remembered that the same grooves on a gigantic scale were there also. For a moment I wondered if these apertures were really so constructed in the first place that they could be barred with massive granite shutters. But it was useless to wonder, and I turned my attention to what was passing on the plain below, which was clearly visible to me as I advanced and stood in the opening.
On the left some outstanding crags shut out the view, but towards the right I could see, far below, the secluded valley, hemmed in against the mountain wall by the spur and the Lion Rock. On the further flank of the Lion was a small plateau of some forty yards square. On the one side of this was a precipice overlooking the plain, and, on the other, the open space was separated by a deep fissure from the thick bush that clothed the bases of the less precipitous mountains sloping off round the Table Land on the right. To this small plateau there led up a narrow path—a path which, as it ascended, became at one point so constricted by the steep precipice on its right and the yawning fissure on its left, that there was scarcely room for three men to stand abreast. The natural advantages of this position had been seen by the Maoris at a glance, and they had already set a high palisading round it, thus marking it for a stronghold. Scattered about on the yellow plain were small collections of rough dwellings—as many as might account for the presence of several hundred natives. And they seemed to be still flocking in, for, coming down off the spur of one of the rolling hills on the other side of the plain I saw a line of warriors.
In the marae25 of the fortified pa on the Lion’s flank was a chief striding up and down haranguing a crowd of savages. By his wild gesticulations and the fury of his words, whose connected meaning I could not catch, he was evidently a violent savage with a violent idea. As I asked myself what that idea could be my eyes fell on another figure in the open space near him. I sprang up and ran to the part of the cave where I had seen Grey set down his field glasses. Returning with these I looked long and steadily at the other figure. Yes, it was the wizard negro. Another of his infernal reed tubes was in his hand, and it at once occurred to me that he had this turbulent Maori under his influence, hoping, through him, to use the whole savage force for his own purposes.
While this was going on a tall chief, white-headed, and clothed in a dog’s-hair war-cloak, strode out of the pa and across the plain to meet the warriors, who were now banding themselves together on the level. He stopped them and then led them past the pa to the strip of bush that skirted the mountains to the right. As far as I could judge, the chief was Te Makawawa and the warriors were of his own tribe. I watched the scene on the plain for more than an hour, and the conclusion I came to was that the Maoris were gradually dividing themselves into two camps—the one under Te Makawawa and the other under the turbulent chief, who was evidently ruled by the negro wizard. From a few words that I had caught of the chief’s harangue in the pa I guessed that the wizard had depicted Ngaraki’s goddess as a pakeha, and had urged that the Maoris should rise in arms against such an imposture. In addition to this I saw clearly how the subtle wizard would erect another and a dark-skinned goddess on the pedestal and enlist their sympathies with her. Very gravely I noted how my fears had been only too well founded.
At length I rose and sought out Miriam Grey in the inner cave. The three were still sitting talking together in low tones, and I hesitated before disturbing them. But I felt that the matter was urgent.
“I’m afraid there will be a battle among the Maoris before long,” I said, standing before them. “They have arranged themselves into two hostile camps, and look as if they mean fighting.”
Miriam Grey rose to her feet.
“I knew it,” she said; “I knew there would be trouble, but Ngaraki would bring the tribes together. He has told them too much, and now they have the idea that they are to win their land back and drive the English into the sea. But Te Makawawa knows better. Is he there?”
“Yes,” I said. “He controls one camp, and another warlike chief who occupies the stronghold commands the other.”
“There may still be time when Ngaraki returns at sunset,” she said. “He will know nothing of it, for he will come by the secret entrance at the back of the mountain—the ‘way of the lizard’; but he will quiet them if Te Makawawa cannot. When he comes and sees what he shall see he will be like a thousand men, and at ordinary times he is terrible enough, for I have watched his face while he has chanted his karakias in this cave.”
Under Miriam’s direction Grey and I removed the statue from its place and concealed it among the wooden gods in the darkness of the inner cave. It appeared that this removal was only rendered possible by the fact that, some years before, Ngaraki, impatient at Hinauri’s delay, had, with great toil and by means of an old sword—apparently the gift of an early explorer to some ancestor of the Rangitane—found among the weapons in the inner cave, achieved the difficult task of sawing through the base of the statue, where it was in one piece with the marble floor. This was to loosen one more of the fetters of Hinauri, for, as he said, “How could she move to life when her feet were fast bound to the rock?” Thus the place where Hinauri had stood through the ages was now left vacant, so that her living image might stand there with her arms outstretched to the western sky, with the same loveliness of old upon her face, and the same age-long prayer upon her parted lips. This, Miriam maintained, was not a trick, but a test, for none knew as well as Ngaraki the form and features of his ancient goddess! None could say with him, “This is she for whom I waited, for whom I prayed and toiled my whole life long.”
Towards sunset I stood at the opening of the cave and looked down upon the rolling plain below, with the Lion Rock enclosing the little valley against the mountain wall. About the banks of the stream the afternoon sun, obscured from me by some crags that stood out upon my left, slumbered upon beds of moss, and all was hushed. Thistle-down floated along the slow currents of the air; gnats and bright-coloured beetles winged their way above the tops of the dreamy trees, while here and there a tui flashed out from the foliage to chase them in the sunlight. And in the bosom of the quiet was felt at intervals the single bell-like note of the korimako—a drop of liquid sound falling into the deep well of silence—the ping of some little heart of air bursting in a single throb of pure delight. These sights and sounds below were to me the points of a great hush which reigned beneath the cloudless sky, as if Nature, like a fair quietist, had fallen into a trance, yet having her blue eyes wide open.
As I leaned against the side of the cave’s mouth and gazed down upon the dreamy scene, the melancholy of it all laid hold upon me—that melancholy, I mean, which is at once the matrix of joy and sadness, and which, like beauty, is far within the eyes that see it, deep within the heart that feels it. In its atmosphere our souls may almost bridge vast gulfs of time and enclose far-sundered points in space.
It was so with me. I wished that those feelings which seemed to come to me out of the long-lost past might abide with me for ever, or I with them. Knowing them as the enemies of littleness, I loved them, not because they were mine, but because they were not. In this still air of melancholy the things of ancient night breathed at my side, and the things of to-day were set far back in the dim recesses of eld. The pre-Adamite city of the plain which Time had trodden in the dust was a present reality, but the murmur of my friends’ voices from the inner cave was a ghostly echo from a bygone age.
The silence deepened on my soul, the melancholy mood forgot itself, and the mellow poetry of “long ago” vanished like the glamour of a dream. “All things happen here and now,” I said, and the sound of my own voice disturbed the stillness. Time rolled itself out into ages. Space unfolded into vast stretches. The melancholy brooding of my dream returned, but with something added: a thread of fleeting memory connected with some old-world life. I tried to assure myself that it was a mere freak of the brain, which may be able to dress a present thought in the past tense in such a way as to deceive even its own father.
But it was in vain. I shall never forget the deep impression made upon me by my instantaneous dream that all things happen here and now. When it had passed I regarded it as the true waking state, and this other the dream into which I had slipped once more. An eternal dreamer dreaming non-eternal dreams had been aroused for a moment, and then had slept again with less reverence for the clumsy, sprawling consciousness of his dream. I had laid hold of some evidences of a life buried beneath the strata of memory: a monstrous tooth of an old-world passion, a blunted flint-head of some dart of high desire, a tablet inscribed with a deed of darkness, a clouded stone in labour with a gem for a sometime crown—these were unearthed at random as if from some pre-tertiary strata of recollection; and so I dreamed on and on into the past until, turning my head at a slight sound within, I saw a white figure advance from the shadows of the inner cave into the daylight, and pause on the spot where, with her giant priests around her, Hinauri, the Queen of the City of the Southern Cross, had set her feet. I passed my hand quickly across my brow and said to my senses, “Fools! it is merely a girl of to-day draped in the style of the queen of ancient night to cheat a Maori chief.” But these words did not multiply, for I saw at a glance that Crystal’s lovely face was full of those wistful dreams of long ago which had come to me. Her form was burdened as if with a sweet, but heavy sadness, and her head drooped, so that her long, black, rippling masses of hair enveloped her arms and shoulders like a shroud of darkness, in the depths of which was the veiled light of her eyes. She was abstracted and did not observe me as I passed before her gaze and found my way into the shadows of the inner cave, where Miriam and Grey were standing watching her.
“Is this to trick Ngaraki?” I asked of the former, with a return of my former scepticism.
“Hush!” she replied, “it is no trick. She is like one walking in her sleep. Within the unhewn marble I saw the queen of old stand like that in deep abstraction before she held out her arms to me and the future. It is no trick. In ten minutes Ngaraki will be here, and he shall judge if this is the one he has toiled and prayed for all his life.”
Her hand trembled on my arm, and I was silenced. I looked into her sweet face in the vague light, and saw there again my own strange dreams of “long ago.” At that moment the thunder of Kahikatea reverberated far away overhead. He was blasting the rocks to force a passage through the tunnels. Crystal heard the sound as if it had been a chord of music in her dream, for she raised her head, crossed her hands upon her bosom and stood there, rapt, serene, expectant. The daylight, now falling full upon her upturned face, revealed a pallor and a look of endless waiting which did not pass away, but remained unaltered, as if her spirit had flitted from her body and left them there. Minutes passed and she did not move. I called her name, but she did not hear. I stepped from the inner cave and stood before her. She did not see me. Her deep black eyes of night, wide open and full of mystery, seemed sad and tired of waiting through the ages, and upon her cheek, pale as the moon-face in the light of day, her long lashes cast heavy shadows of weariness. It was the beauty of the marble Hinauri, touched with the conscious stress of her long and lonely vigil. Awed and silent, I returned to the gloom of the inner cave to watch and wait.
Sunset was drawing near. The exact moment when the sun ray would strike in was known to the woman who had spent the best part of her life in this cave. “A few minutes more,” she whispered to me; “but it will not come before Ngaraki. He must be already approaching through the tunnels.”
I heard a slight movement in the darkness among the Maori gods, and was about to ask who was there, when Miriam clutched my arm and pointed towards the head of the marble stairs which led up into the cave. There, framed in the rugged archway, stood the tall figure of Ngaraki the Terrible, clad in his flowing robe—a magnificent Maori, whose flashing eye was hard to meet, whose proud, fierce, but noble bearing marked him out as a ruler of men. His eyes were fixed upon the white figure in the centre of the cave, standing where Hinauri had for ever stood. The thick tresses of hair that fell about the graceful form of his goddess were now jet black. He passed his hand across his eyes and hit his breast a sounding blow.
No, he was not dreaming. But was it a trick? Had Miriami blackened the statue’s hair?
He took quick strides and stood before the form in white. Ngha! the eyes were no longer dull, white stone, the parted lips were faintly red, and the cheeks, though white as death, were those of a living soul.
He stepped back with a stately gesture of heroic feeling, chanting in an awed and subdued voice:
“It is not Hingarae I see,
Not Ihungarupaea,
’Tis Hinetuahoanga
Standing there!
The axe is sharpened,
The axe unloosened by the sun,
And now the tree which stifles Tane
Shall be laid low.”
He ceased with the poetry of his fierce heart unspoken in his eyes, for at that moment Miriam Grey advanced from the shadows with the circlet of gold in her hands. Motioning Ngaraki to stand aside and be silent, she drew near and placed the talisman with its sparkling gems upon the head of the living image. As she did so the pallor and abstraction, the weariness and sadness, fell from the face and form of Crystal. She no longer drooped. The warm blood mounted to her cheeks and sparkled in her eyes. Power and stateliness came into her pose. She awoke. And at that instant the expected sun ray burst in, and the dazzling beauty of the Daughter of the Dawn was revealed.
In all my dreamings I had never dreamt of beauty as divine as that. My poor words fall on their faces in helpless confusion. Miriam Grey caught her breath and stepped back, the limit of human wonder upon her gentle face. The Maori chief stood erect, his eyes shining like stars, but his countenance motionless with a control that seemed more than human. Grey moved a sudden step forward, and, as I turned my head, I saw in the shadows beyond him the vague outline of a giant figure I knew. It was Kahikatea, standing with one hand on the buttress, his head bent forward to view the form of Hinauri in the sun ray. He had come
by the ‘way of the spider,’ and had arrived at a moment when he well might stand there speechless with amazement, shaken with the sudden realisation of desires which seemed impossible of fulfilment.
As the sunlight wrapped Crystal about with splendour, sparkling in the gems of the golden talisman, glistening on her raven tresses and close-girt raiment of white, a mysterious change came over her. She dropped her arms to her side and shivered slightly. Then the sweet longing deepened upon her form. The lovelight leapt into her glorious eyes as she gazed into the western sky. Yearning forward, she held out her arms to some vision which seemed to call her pure soul out of the depths to array itself in light upon her radiant face.
Surely this was no acting! None could imitate so faithfully the pose of longing and expectancy which had been so startling in the marble. No; as I gazed with all my soul, wonder forced the settled conviction into my mind that it was in reality Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, waking from her age-long trance. Reclothed in flesh, it was the ancient spirit of the pure one who, in a far-off period of the world’s unwritten history, had come down from the skies to rule the people by the Law of Love. A storm of deep feeling swept doubt from my mind and gave me clear-seeing eyes to view this thing. Hinauri had returned. The Daughter of the Dawn had taken up the thread of memory where she had dropped it in the ages that Time has buried in the Eternal Sea.
Still bathed in the glowing light she stood motionless, her arms outstretched to her vision. A little breath of wind sighed without, then came in at the opening of the cave and swayed the edge of her skirt till it revealed one sandalled foot. It rippled her raven tresses and caressed and pressed them gently about her form. Then her beauty became unearthly in its splendour. Her bosom heaved, her eyes sparkled with a holy light, and her parted lips uttered a cry of joy in an unknown tongue—strange, and wild, and sweet, like an echo of forgotten song. It thrilled the place with music for a moment; then the sun ray fled and bore it on its bosom away, through all the happy fields of space.
Hinauri’s arms fell to her side, and she turned to the chief, who stood silent. With a swift glance she scanned his stately form, and, when her eyes met his, a look of recognition came upon her face. In the half-bewildered way of one who is linking the memory of a dead past on to the living present, she said in even, solemn tones, speaking in the Maori tongue:
“I know thee. I know thy name. I know that of which thou art the meaning. Zun! my counsellor in an age gone by; the one who stood by me in the darkest hour of danger; but stooped from the high magic that I taught my priests—stooped, and sinned, and fell, to save me when all seemed lost. Lo! the gross image of myself—the stranded spar bound down with a stone!—whose was the splendid lie that gave that image to the Vile Ones to oppress, saying ‘This is Hia’s real self’? The lie was thine, O Zun! the substitution of the false for the true to save the sacred stone from their polluting hands. Misguided friend of long ago! thou hast suffered for love of me and still must suffer——”
She broke off suddenly, and my thoughts, which were recalling Ngaraki’s interpretation of the characters on the breast of the Twelfth Tohunga, found a sudden ending; for, at that instant, there came from the plain below a sound that shook the air. A sudden tramp of many feet as one, then silence and a short sharp yell, harsh and terrible, rending the silence like a savage spear thrust—these were the signs that told the first terrific movements of the Maori war-dance on the plain.
Ngaraki’s hand closed tightly on his meré, and he advanced one foot; but Hinauri’s eyes were sad, and her face sorrowful, as she mutely questioned him, while we all stood silently by in the shadows, feeling it was not for us to speak or act.
At length the fierce chief spoke:
“Hinauri has returned, and her people are ready to fight for her. Ngha! they will fight the whole world and drive them into the sea.”
The sound of the war-dance—evidently a sudden surprise to him—had half aroused his fierce nature, and for the moment his great joy could plan no higher tribute to his goddess than to fight for her. But in another moment he was recalled from his wild impulse, for Hinauri’s face grew sad beyond words as she answered:
“Zun—Ngaraki—my word is peace, not war; my rule by love, not violence. Ah! I have awaked too soon from my long sleep. Thou wert ever fierce and too ready to fight for me. Well did they call thee Terrible. But hear me, Zun—they may heed my words. If they would be my people they must live by the law of love and not by that of war. Go to them. Tell them that my message is peace, and stay their violence. They make war, not for me, but against me. Go with all speed, lest it be too late, and thou return to look for me in vain.”
The chief’s fierceness fell from him at these words, and there appeared upon his face a look of wondering worship, softening his aspect with the high poetry which lingers long in the heart of his race. He bowed his head in submission and moved to go. But Hinauri called him back.
“Ngaraki! Depart in peace: leave war and knife behind you!” She pointed to his weapons as she spoke, and there was a command in her voice and eyes.
The chief turned and laid his spear and meré on the white dust before her, saying: “Not only his spear and meré will the Maori lay at the feet of the Daughter of the Dawn, but his heart and life also. He was startled by the sound of war, and thought only of fighting for his queen. He will go to his people and tell them that the word of the Bright One is peace and love.”
He turned, and was about to descend the marble steps when his controlled emotions broke loose. Facing round he held forth his arms to her, while the answer to his lifelong prayers shone out upon his rugged face.
“The world is glad!” he cried; “no more shall Papanui’s daughters weep. Ihi-Ihi has come from the west. Hinauri has burst from her ancient tomb. By the magic of a woman has she burst her bonds. And now the long-sealed fountains of the Maori’s breast leap and dance and sparkle in the sun with music sweeter than the korimako’s joy. Ngha! I will hasten to my people: my heart is breaking with a mighty song.”
He hurried away, and his stately form was soon lost in the shadows below the stairway.
Then Hinauri, the daughter of Miriam Grey, turned to her mother with a strange blending of emotions upon her face. The dazzling glory of the ancient queen was now softened by the pure and tender light of a daughter’s love. She drew near to Miriam, and, placing her arms about her neck, folded her close, saying in a soft, low voice: “Mother! my mother! It is all clear to me now. I know myself; I know my name—it is written on the rocks that are buried beneath the dust of ages on the plain below, and upon the walls of this everlasting temple. Now I know the meaning of all my vague yearnings for some forgotten glory, some mellow splendour of the past, some memory of my ancient self. Now I know why the thought of ‘long, long ago’ brought tears to my eyes and yearning to my soul; and why I longed to fill the hearts of women with great thoughts and prayers, for it is by the high magic of Woman that my giants will come back. Look at me!” She stood away and held her arms aside, while there rested upon her face a perfect certainty that none could find a defect in her person. “Am I not as I came to you at the very first, perfect as the image that was reflected in the depths of your pure soul? Am I not the one who came to you and touched your highest thoughts with fire, who led your soul to the father of my choice? Yes, it was I that fanned that double flame with the breath of my desire. I gave my life to you and you preserved it by your constant prayers. Nay, more—I came to you because you were the only one in whom I could find myself. In your great love for what is pure and beautiful you held out all that belonged to me, and I came and took it, for it was mine to take as well as yours to give. And yet there are some who would say that I was not; that the full extent of this sign of power is that you fashioned me according to the model of your mind; that I was one with formless substance, and you moulded me to this form by the power of your imagination.”
She smiled and placed her arms again about her mother’s neck. Miriam Grey’s lifelong prayer for what is pure and beautiful was answered. She drew her child to her, and the beating of her heart against her daughter’s bosom spoke first. Then she said:
“You were the love that came to me out of the distant past—a ray of light from the golden skies of long ago. You are Hinauri, the Bright One, and yet—and yet you are my child.”
Her goddess stepped back, and again the dazzling regal beauty flashed out, but with a softened splendour, as she cried: “Ah! pure mother, whom I chose to be my guide! The stars in your eyes foretold my birth.” Her beauty changed to loveliness, and, as she drew nearer and continued, we in the shadows bent forward to catch her words, they were so low and tender: “Mother, sweet mother!”—she was nestling to Miriam’s bosom now—“if every woman mounted to the gates of heaven to find her child, and bore it from the skies sheltering it all the way, as you have done, there would be no more sorrow, no more death—only a coming and going of gods descending and ascending, from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven. For long ages men have been only half-born. Earthward-bound souls have striven with their mothers for whole and perfect expression in flesh, but Motherhood has fallen from its grandeur, and they have striven in vain. The Bright Ones ever come to earth, but when their witless mothers misconceive their power and beauty, what godlike likeness can they bear? Alas! that women should have forgotten that their ideals may rule the world. Alas! too, that they should caricature the gods. It is to restore Motherhood to its first sublimity and power that I have come, and the mystery of my coming is the ground-plan of a mighty race.”
Hinauri paused and placed her hand to her forehead, as if she feared her memory was flitting.
“Though I can recall the past,” she said sadly, “I have no knowledge of what my future is to be; yet I feel that this clear memory will not be mine for long. Before the world’s oblivion closes in upon me again I would search out and look upon certain things in this ancient place—symbols of constant love for the higher things of beauty, and symbols, too, of the downward progress of those Vile Ones who have made stepping stones of their dead selves to grosser and to grosser worship. And when we go down to work and pray in the world, should we not leave the pure white image here as a symbol of our higher selves, for ever holding out its arms to the glory of the future?”
I glanced at the shadowy figure of Kahikatea, half expecting that he would make some sign, but he stood motionless, straining forward, with one hand clutching a projection of the buttress. Obviously he was too thunderstruck by this fulfilment of his dreams to act, to move, to speak. I went to him, and grasping his hand, said:
“Your dream is fulfilled. Wait a little longer and you will understand.”
He answered by a silent pressure of my fingers. Then Grey and I, in answer to the wish we had heard expressed, brought forth the marble statue from the recesses of the inner cave and placed it in its former position. I remember noting that, as we stood away leaving it there, the sounds of the war-dance on the plain sounded louder and more furious; but all thoughts, all sounds were for the time set aside by what followed.
As Hinauri stood before the stone gazing for a moment upon the finest, loftiest expression of herself, I heard a deep breath taken in the shadows near me. Then a hand trembling with a bodyfull of excitement gripped my arm, and a voice whispered hoarsely, “God, Warnock—I understand!”
Then Hinauri spoke, and her words seemed to gather to themselves all the loving prayers that have risen from the lips of women since the human world began. The thrilling music of her voice struck some invisible but responsive harp-strings in the air of the silent cave, and the song of it went singing on and on, coalescing with the sweet tones that underlie the universe of women’s hearts—on and on until the Great Tohungas of the Earth quieted the music of their deeds to hear the strain, and, listening, to whisper: “Hush! we toil in vain. A woman prays and all is done. Gentle hands knock at the door of heaven, and the Sons of God come forth to walk among us”—on and on, a voice made universal, welling from the heart of every woman and falling on the ear of That-which-Listens in the throbbing heart of all. Her black eyes—dark with excess of light—were fired with all the intensity of a woman’s love, as she raised her arms and voice to the image that was to remain in the high solitudes of the mountain:
“My pure white Higher Self! I go down to the world, but thou must stand for ever gazing out into the future, thy very look a prayer for all that Heaven holds back. Pray on, pure self, and may thy prayer be ours. When we weak women of a darkened world lose heart, and almost fall into forgetfulness, then may we look up to the everlasting hills and see the age-long hope upon thy face, the vision of the Golden Age within thine eyes, and crystal purity upon thy brow. Symbol of ideal woman! In every deed may we live always in the silence of the age with thee, for thou art in the stillness, and the stillness is with beauty, and beauty is with God. Thine arms are raised in constant longing; thine eyes look forth into a further and a further sky. So may our arms be raised for ever; so may we look beyond the level of the earth and pray that we may always know that, far above the world’s loud roar, our pure white Higher Self stands ever as we might stand—clear seers of a pristine beauty, seekers of a further God and, like thee, crowned with precious gems of womanhood.”
She removed the circlet from her head, and, approaching the image, paused before it with the talisman in her hands.
“This will link thee and me together in one life, so that there shall be one spirit between us. For long ages have we been spoken of as one: let us so remain, and I, below upon the earth, will never stain thy glistening white, for all the holy blessings that have fallen on thee since the world began will fall on me and hold me up. So I remain while thou remainest, breathing this same pure air. Lo! in token that we are one life and one spirit, I place my crown upon thy brow.”
She raised it, but her eyes fell upon the characters engraven upon the inner surface, and, with hands arrested, she read aloud:
“Thou, Hia, shalt return at the dawn of a new age, but ere the sun has shone twice upon this, thy crown, thou shalt withdraw into the sky.”
She paused, while this strange prophecy wrought a sadness very human on her face. Then she placed the circlet upon the head of the image.
Something now prompted me to lead the woman I loved to the man whose face she had seen in her dreams. Acting on this sudden impulse, I emerged from the shadows and said to the one so far above me, “He is there in the inner cave. He is there—my perfect man!”
As I pointed towards the buttress she turned her dark eyes on mine; her lips trembled, and her eyes burned with a light that was not for me. Then with a troubled and sorrowful sigh—yes, that sigh was for me—she said, “Wanaki! he was always mine.”
She moved slowly in the direction of my outstretched hand. She seemed to pause and flutter a moment on the verge of the shadows, then, with the same joyous cry in an unknown tongue that she had uttered in her vision, she flew to him, and, from the darkness, I heard her murmur his name, dwelling upon it as lovingly as her head now dwelt upon his breast.
“Kahikatea! Kahikatea!”
I turned and hastened down the marble steps, leaving Grey and his wife to make what they could of it. I would go out and kill someone—that negro wizard by choice—or be killed by someone, it mattered little. But at the thought of the Destroyer of Women—the Poisoner—I pulled up short in my chaos. Yes, everything mattered. From that evil source danger might still threaten the woman I loved. What meant the prophecy engraven on the talisman, that before the sun shone twice upon it she must withdraw into the sky? The other prophecies had been fulfilled, why not this? It was not fate. It could not be fate. It was a warning. Filled with a dread presentiment as dark as the utter darkness I passed through, I went down through the tunnels and reached the place to which we had climbed from the margin of the lake. The rope was still there, drawn up as I had left it, and the cataract was no longer thundering down from above. By this I knew that the hidden contrivance beneath the water had again been set in motion, and that both Te Makawawa and Ngaraki had passed out by the ‘way of the winged fish.’ For me there was no way but to descend by the rope, and when I stood on the margin of the lake below, I feared to leave the rope hanging there. Accordingly, I swung it over a projection near the recess where the torches were kept, so that no one could find it in the darkness.
When, a minute later, I passed out at the opening in the side of the mountain, the hideous yells of the savages beyond the Lion Rock told me that fierce battle was near, if it had not already begun.
To reconnoitre the position of the two camps I determined to mount the back of the Lion from the valley side. I ran across the open space and climbed half-way up the flank of the great rock, but, finding it was impossible to reach the summit, I selected the tallest pine that grew on the side of the spur and went up it in all haste. When I reached the feathery top I found myself above the level of the Lion’s back, swayed by the wind to and from the topmost ledge. Here I had a clear view of the plain, where the savages of both camps were drawn up in two long lines facing each other. The war-dance was over, and the time had arrived for single warriors of each side to rush out, and, with wild gestures illustrative of the coming slaughter, to hurl taunts at the other.
But my attention was directed more particularly to a scene that was being enacted in the open space of the enclosure on the plateau not twenty yards from me. Ngaraki, who had evidently been unable to quiet the savages on the plain, had found his way into the hostile pa, where he now stood confronting a small band of chiefs, who, by their violent manner and occasional bursts of savage laughter, looked as if they had been drinking waipiro to rouse their utmost ferocity for the coming conflict.
The violent chief whom I had seen haranguing them was there, seated upon the ground, while the others stood behind him. His aspect was one of treacherous hatred as Ngaraki, calm and careless, yet a savage of terrible presence, stood before him. Then, before a word was exchanged the tohunga of the temple burst forth into his message, delivering it in a half song, half speech, while he paced to and fro with dignified mien in the open space. He told them that Hinauri had returned, and that he was her messenger. He told them that her word was peace and love, that she had sent him to stop the approaching battle, that, if they fought, they would fight, not for her, but against her. While the yells of mutual defiance came up from the plain like the manifold voice of Tu—that god of war who ate his own brothers—Ngaraki’s tones resounded within the pa, impassioned and eloquent. But his words would find a heart of peace in the rocks themselves sooner than in the breasts of the savages before him.
He ceased, and the violent, blustering chief, whom he had addressed as Amukaria, sprang to his feet.
“He says Hinauri has come,” he yelled, brandishing his axe. “Can he show her to us? No; he says she is white as the mountain lily: then we don’t want to see her. Hinauri is no wahine pakeha; she is Maori like ourselves. I have seen her spirit: she is no pakeha. She bade me collect a thousand canoes. I have done so, and they will land at Wakatu to-night. Curse the pakeha! A pot for his head. This is my word to him.”
He turned and, rushing towards an effigy of the white man, which stood at one end of the enclosure, its head already half severed from its body, he struck a furious blow with his axe. The blow completely severed the head, which fell and rolled upon the ground. At this a shout arose from the other chiefs; then Amukaria took the effigy’s head in his hand, and holding it up cried, “A pot for the pakeha’s head!”
Ngaraki stood looking on in silence. Would his fierce blood stand this test? When the chiefs were quiet again he said calmly:
“O Amukaria, your words are wild. Your plans will come to nothing. Those who were to come in the thousand canoes are on my side. I have spoken to them and they have listened to my words. They come, but they leave war and knife behind them.”
A savage yell from Amukaria announced his baffled rage on hearing this. Maddened by drink and lust of blood, he appeared like a demon, with tongue protruded in deadly insult. He danced with rage before Ngaraki, who stood silent, regarding him with his stern black eyes. Verily the spirit of Zun the Terrible slumbered within him. A smile of contempt curled his lip, and Amukaria saw it. Unable to contain his fury any longer he rushed at Ngaraki with axe uplifted, saying, “I will cleave your head as well, and heat the oven for you.”
The wary chief did not move. He was unarmed, but he had left his outer robe within the mountain, and his limbs were free. For a moment only the axe was poised in the air, but that moment was the last of Ngaraki’s most unnatural forbearance with such a foe. His face changed. He would have said “Ngha!” but there was not time—so sudden was his spring. He caught the axe by its handle and wrenched it with a sudden twist from Amukaria’s hand; then, bounding off a pace, he whirled it far away beyond the palisades of the pa. Before his antagonist could grasp another weapon he had sprung upon him, and in a moment they were locked in a terrible struggle, in which I marked down Amukaria as already a dead man.
But as they rocked and swayed in the open space, one of the watching chiefs took a long-bladed knife and threw it carelessly upon the ground a few paces from the combatants. It would have been fair enough if it had been done openly, but the moment chosen was when Amukaria’s quick eye alone could notice the act. He had Ngaraki by the hair, but the ariki had his antagonist by the throat with one hand, and by the wrist with the other. Fully aware that no man could live many minutes with his throat in such a hand as his, he was content to keep his grip and wait. But all the while they were swaying to and fro nearer and nearer to the knife which he had not seen.
The other chiefs stood by in silence. They saw their leader’s face grow livid, but they knew that he would get the knife. His eyes were starting from his head, and his tongue was lolling, still in insult, from his mouth; but they saw, as I did, that he would reach the knife, and they did not interfere. I drew my revolver, determined to risk a shot at twenty yards if a good chance presented, but I held my hand, thinking that Ngaraki was not the kind of man to need my assistance in a single combat. I would only fire at the last possible moment; but I could warn him, and I thought to do so by shouting at the top of my voice. But my words were lost in the general uproar of savage yells on the plain, and were unheeded.
Amukaria was near the knife now. His rolling eyes had marked its position. His fingers slackened from Ngaraki’s hair, and mine sought the trigger, while I steadied myself. His body drooped as if he were falling. At that instant, judging by what followed, Ngaraki must have seen the hand which had held him reach out and grasp the haft of the knife. A yell of triumph came from the watching chiefs, but it was quickly silenced. As the knife was grasped firmly in the murderous hand, Ngaraki suddenly let go his fatal grip; then, as the lolling tongue was protruding still further in triumphant insult, his knee came up with a terrific crash against his antagonist’s chin. I heard Amukaria’s jaws clap together like a trap. It was a death-blow. His neck was broken. He fell back like a log and lay there with the lower half of his tongue bitten off by his own teeth.
“Ngha!” said Ngaraki at last, as he picked up his half of the tongue that had insulted him and tossed it to some dogs that were in the enclosure. As he did so the chiefs sprang upon him unawares, and after a prolonged struggle he was overpowered, and was soon lying bound hand and foot with flaxen thongs. Among these chiefs there was one who urged the others not to kill Ngaraki, but to bind him to the stake on which the headless effigy stood, so that when they returned with the pakehas’ heads they might hold a triumph over him before preparing him for the oven.
“Now let us hear you call on Hinauri to come and set you free,” said one of them, when the deed was done. Their tongues were protruded at him, and they taunted him in a manner that is hard for a Maori chief to bear. But Ngaraki stood in silent contempt, yet his black eyes blazed with wrath, and his flesh quivered with the indignity of his position. He tugged and strained at his bonds, and I saw that if he could but free himself it would be a bad day for his foes.
At this time the battle broke with a rattle of musketry and a rising babel of yells on the plain, and the chiefs that were still in the pa hurried down for the fray. The two lines which had been sending out single combatants for some time now fused in one mass, the muskets were cast aside after the first few shots, and the fighting was carried on hand to hand in the grim savage style. In the midst of the throng I could see the grey-haired Te Makawawa fighting fiercely. Even as I singled him out he killed his man, and, whirling his club round his head, raised the savage war-cry, “Whaka ariki!” He and his warriors were now driving the opposing force back against the stronghold. As soon as I saw this an inspiration struck me to liberate Ngaraki, or they would certainly kill him when they were driven back into the pa. In a very few minutes I was down the tree and rushing round the great rock. The fighting was close upon me as I reached the path that led up from the plain, and when I gained the narrow strip of rock in front of the pa I looked back and saw that some of them had turned and were retreating rapidly up the path by which I had come. There was no time to lose. I darted in through the opening left between the palisades and rushed across the open space towards Ngaraki, who seemed to be trying to tear the flesh off his bones in his efforts to free himself and get at the foe.
In less than ten seconds, and just as the foremost Maori entered the pa, the thongs were cut. The chief turned his fiery eyes upon me, said “He Pakeha!” and bounded off to strangle the only foe he could see—the savage who had just entered the pa. Stepping quickly aside from a fierce blow, he seized the unfortunate man by the throat with both hands, lifted him off his feet and shook him like a rat in the air, after which he broke his skull against one of the palisades. Then, picking up the weapon of his foe, a large greenstone meré, he turned to the opening of the pa to meet two who were rushing in. Both of them continued their rush into Reinga, the abode of spirits, with a clear understanding that they were to leave the door open, for more were coming that way.
Ngaraki now stood in the opening and fought grimly against the savages that Te Makawawa and his warriors were driving in. To help him I shot one here and there as occasion demanded, and at last he stood on the narrow strip of rock—an object that struck terror to the hearts of his enemies, for they only faced him as they were compelled by the fierce onslaught of Te Makawawa and his warriors behind. For the most part they were demoralised, and were pushed headlong into the fissure by the press of the throng. Some of the bolder chiefs rushed yelling on to the narrow way, but Ngaraki’s terrible club whirled and flashed like green lightning all about him, and they went down. At last one brave fellow sprang forward and closed with Ngaraki, and I had to hold the narrow way myself; but not for long, for, before I had emptied my revolver, I saw bare legs whirling in the air near by, and in another moment a Maori was hurled into the fissure. It was not Ngaraki, for that fierce ariki was again standing on the rock—a majestic figure, dealing death. In the side-glance that I caught of his flashing eyes and commanding front, I understood what it meant to a Maori to have the blood of the Great River of Heaven running in his veins. Verily the spirit of Zun the Terrible was awake within him.
In the midst of this I saw moving round to the left at the base of the Lion Rock a large band of savages who had not retreated up the path to the pa, but were evidently bent on some other object. They were led by a tall fierce fellow, and I thought I saw the negro wizard darting to and fro among them. Could they be heading for the opening of the mountain? I fired at a foe who seemed one too many on the narrow strip and looked again. The leader pointed his club towards the mountain, and with a yell pressed forward. At the same instant a rifle shot echoed from high up in the mountain wall, and the savage fell forward on his face. Thank Heaven! Kahikatea was on the alert, but if that band got into the mountain, what could two men and two women do against them? It was with a sickening sensation that I had remembered I had descended by the rope and left it there. Would anyone think to draw it up? Again, I shuddered as I reflected that in all probability the negro wizard had been into the mountain while we were in the marble cave. Could it have been he that tried to hold the rope when I pulled it up?
Filled with apprehension, I noted with one eye that Ngaraki and Te Makawawa’s warriors were nearly through their terrible work, and with the other that the band heading round the Lion Rock were in some confusion and hesitation. There was yet time to gain the mountain before the negro wizard could urge them into the precincts of what many of them regarded as the stronghold of the taniwha.
I knew that in every pa there must be a way of escape by the back, but, failing to find it, I made for the back of the Lion, and presently stood on the steep rock near the top of the pine from which I had watched the curtailing of Amukaria’s offending tongue. The tree-top was six feet from me, and a glance to right and left showed me there was no other way down. Every moment was precious if I were to have a hand in guarding the woman I loved from that most subtle tool of the Vile Ones—the Poisoner. Gathering myself together, I sprang as the tree-top swayed towards me, and, passing through the feathery pine foliage, found myself clasping the slender top of the stem with arms and legs. For the moment I thought it would break, and there would be an end, but it held good, and I made my way rapidly down the trunk, bruising and scratching myself in my haste. Once on the ground, I sped across the mouth of the valley as fast as my legs would carry me, but I had scarcely gained the bank of the channel when I was overtaken by a Maori running at full speed, with a musket in each hand and a kitful of something heavy round his neck. At first I thought he was an enemy, and I prepared to meet him as such, but when we came face to face on the bank I found to my surprise that it was Tiki.
“That Taepo is coming to take ‘the little maiden,’ ” he said fiercely. “Here, Wanaki—lead the way.” He handed me one of the muskets and motioned me to proceed. In a very short space of time we were standing inside the opening, and then Tiki disburdened himself of the kit which I found contained a goodly supply of cartridges.
While I was filling my coat pockets I heard footsteps coming down the rock from the ledge above, and soon afterwards Kahikatea strode forward into the light, with the sword of the early explorer between his teeth and Grey’s rifle in his hand.
“Are they coming?” he asked coolly.
“Yes, fifty or sixty of them,” I said. “Where is she?”
“Waiting on the ledge above. But I don’t know where Grey and his wife are. I don’t think they know anything about this.”