From where the friends lay they looked across a rude plateau, dotted with ti-tree, koromiko, and other bushes, and upon this, at intervals of a dozen yards, three huge fires blazed and roared and crackled under frequent additions of fuel. The ground swarmed with Maoris, many of whom Te Karearea had recruited on his march, and most of them were naked, save for their katikas, or short kilts of flax. As their bodies were splashed and streaked with red and white paint, it required but little imagination to conceive them an array of petticoated skeletons, gouted with blood, dancing round the wild fires of a witches' sabbath.
Between two of the fires there had been set up a long pole, upon whose spiked summit, pitiful to see, was a human head, wonderfully preserved after the Maori fashion. It was the head of a white man, too, as was plainly shown by the fair hair and whiskers which still covered the dried, stretched skin of scalp and cheeks.
'All that is left of poor Lloyd,' whispered Terence. 'Te Karearea must have sent for it. Look, here he comes with Winata Pakaro and another. Where is the old wizard?'
With stately tread the three chiefs approached, the Maoris forming in two long lines on opposite sides of the great fires, while every eye was bent upon the dignified figure of their commander.
For some moments Te Karearea stood still, gazing up at the impaled head. Then suddenly he began to dance. Slowly he moved at first; but with each succeeding minute his steps grew quicker, his gestures more frantic, his gyrations more wild. Round and round, up and down, from side to side he sprang and whirled and bounded, until it seemed a marvel how he kept his balance. All at once, after a figure of extraordinary swiftness and duration, he stopped.
With arms outstretched and head thrown back, so that his eyes stared up at that poor head upon the pole, he stood an instant, and then from his open mouth there issued a piercing voice, which screamed and gabbled the most appalling mixture of frenzied prayer and blasphemous incantation.
And the voice which possessed Te Karearea was so unlike his own, so compact of yell and howl and bark and screech and frenzied raving, that George, shuddering where he lay, muttered to Terence: 'This man hath a devil.'
The awful voice ceased, and Te Karearea, falling headlong, writhed in a convulsion. As if at a signal, the whole crowd, men and women, broke ranks and rushed to form a circle round the niu, or sacred pole.
And then began a dance indeed. No one there but was pourewarewa—half-mad—with religious ecstasy, and wholly consumed with hatred of the detested Pakeha. So round and round they circled, hands joined, at an ever increasing speed, till the lighter of them, dragged off their feet by their stronger, swifter comrades, seemed to fly like witches and warlocks through the air.
And all the time the infernal din went on—the barking scream of Hau-hau! Hau-hau! the blasphemous invocation, the senseless jumble of word and phrase.
It was a revolting scene, but so wildly exciting, that the watchers forgot their fatigue and, more, the danger they ran from discovery.
Slowly the mad orgies came to an end, and as one by one the dancers gave way under the tremendous physical and mental strain, they fell to the ground. And where they fell they lay, to be pounded and bruised under the naked feet of those who still leapt and whirled around the pole.
'We had better make off,' whispered George,' for, if they find us here, we shall neither of us see to-morrow.'
'Right!' With the word Terence half-turned to begin the descent. But at that very moment he became aware of an ominous sound, unheard before in the hideous din—the soft pad-pad of scores of naked feet, running swiftly through the forest.
In a flash George grabbed him by the wrist. 'Lie close! We are cut off. A number of them are coming up the hill.'
Still as mice they lay, while the noise of the onrush grew louder, and at last Te Karearea, raising himself wearily, shouted hoarsely, 'Awake, fools! Awake, and stand to your arms, unless ye desire to be slain as ye lie. Ha! Awake!'
Instantly a deep voice shouted from the ravine, 'All is well, O Far-darting Hawk! We come from afar to do thy will. Forward, brothers, to salute your chief!'
A loud yell responded to this exhortation, and the men coming up the hillside charged forward at a tremendous rate, while George and Terence, feeling that now, indeed, their lives were the sport of fate, threw themselves flat upon the ground and awaited the issue.
George's belt had worked round, so that his greenstone club was in front, the hard handle pressing painfully against his breast-bone. As he had no time to adjust the belt, he cautiously raised himself on his hands and knees, drew out the weapon, and laid it among the fern in front of him. Before he could sink to earth again, the vanguard of the new company crashed up the side of the ravine and broke, a wildly-rushing wave, on all sides of him.
Not daring to move, he held perfectly still, while the reinforcements poured by, the tramp and clatter of their bare feet upon dead wood and fern sounding a jarring undernote to their yell and song. The hindmost of them passed swiftly, avoiding almost miraculously the crouching figures in the fern, and George and Terence, half-suffocated, breathed again.
'Safe!' muttered George, hallooing, like many another, before he was out of the wood; for, ere he could move, two more Maoris, the whippers-in, perhaps, came racing up. The first sprang clear over Terence, who still lay flat, but the second was neatly 'rabbited' over George's broad, arched back and sent flying upon his face a dozen feet ahead.
In an instant the Maori was up and back with a panther-like bound at the spot at which the accident had occurred. He knew that his fall had been caused by a man, and his fears, actively working, assured him that the man must be an enemy.
With a loud, snorting 'Ha!' the Maori brought down his heavy wooden club with deadly accuracy of aim, and Terence, who had scrambled up, involuntarily closed his eyes, and would fain have closed his ears, too. But instead of the dull scrunch which his quivering nerves were expecting, he heard a sharp, rattling smack, an exclamation of wild surprise, and, as he looked again, saw the wooden mere sailing through the air, to be caught, as it descended, by the outstretched hand of the active Maori.
For a moment Terence was stupefied, and then enlightenment came. The greenstone club, which George had held in his upraised hands, had once more come between him and death, intercepting the murderous blow, and disarming his assailant.
The Maori still held George at a disadvantage, but made no effort to follow up his attack. Bending down until his lips were close to the Englishman's ear, he muttered in agitated tones, 'Hortoni! Master! Forgive! I knew thee not, and have brought danger upon thee. Fly swiftly. I will hold them back.'
The case was not one for argument, and as George and Terence raced down the hill, Paeroa—for it was indeed he—sprang out of the bushes with a yell and bounded after his comrade.
The latter, of course, had heard the commotion, and was coming back to inquire into its cause; but Paeroa met him with the frightful announcement, 'It was a lizard! A taipo! I have slain him.' Then screeching 'Taipo! Taipo!' at the top of his voice, he sped towards Te Karearea, closely followed by his friend, who had no desire to investigate further. For the mere mention of a lizard is horrible to a Maori, so ingrained is the superstition that evil spirits of most malignant type invariably assume this shape.
But Paeroa had reckoned without his over-lord. Te Karearea was by no means free from superstition, but he was a man of keen intelligence, and he instantly perceived that Paeroa's story did not square with the noise of fast-retreating footsteps. So he rapidly issued orders which sent a score of the newly-arrived Maoris hastening upon the track of the fugitives, while Paeroa, who attempted to lead them with a view of helping the Pakehas, was sternly ordered to remain where he was.
The Maoris, uncertain whether they were chasing men or demons, made a lusty noise to scare the latter and keep up their own courage, and with the roar of the pursuit thundering in their ears, George and Terence dashed down the hill at what was very nearly breakneck speed. For a fall among the boulders or a headlong crash against the trunk of a tree might easily serve to smash a skull or snap a spinal column.
But, fortunately for them, the nature of the ground soon became such as no man could pass through at a run.
Had they struck the rough path which Te Karearea's axe-men had hewn while they slept, or chanced on one of the numerous tracks which pierced the forest for miles around for the convenience of hunters, all would have been well; for all these roads led to the river or to the bivouac. Once there, ahead of the Hau-haus, they might have defied detection, since no one but Paeroa could certainly have said who were the intruders upon their grim rites.
But in the first mad rush of their flight they had plunged deeply into the maze of the forest, where, dark as it was, for the half-moon was low, they were almost at the mercy of the thorns, which rent their clothes and tore their bodies, and of the thousand-armed, clinging kawakawa, the supplejack, whose tough, all-embracing tendrils held them back with the power of ropes.
'We are trapped,' panted Terence. 'Let us turn and make a fight of it.'
For behind, alongside, and even ahead of them pealed the vengeful shouts of the Hau-haus.
'Range up alongside me,' George answered over his shoulder. 'I have a better plan than that.' His temper seemed to cool and his brain to grow clearer the greater the emergency.
'All right! Wait until I catch up to you,' said Terence. 'Then I will—Ah-h-h——'
Before he could finish what he was about to say, there broke from him that strange, solitary note of alarm, sharp at first, then long drawn and dying away in a curiously muffled shriek. Then silence, save for the occasional yell of a pursuer, and a faint rustling near by, as of branches coming gradually to rest after a puff of wind. But there was no wind.
'Terence!' George called softly. 'Terence! Where are you?' But he got no answer, and, full of terror, began to grope his way to the spot whence his comrade's voice had seemed to come.
'Terence!' he called again loudly, careless of his own safety, if only he might bring help to his friend. 'Terence! Speak to me. Oh, what has happened? Where can he be? There was no sound of a blow or—Ah-h-h——'
Just as with Terence, that one sharp, quavering cry—and then George's voice, too, died away, and a terrible silence fell upon the dark bush.