CHAPTER XIII
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN
Crash! George's heavy body broke through the tangle upon which he had stepped, and down he went through impenetrable darkness to the bottom of the hole into which he had fallen.
Breathless and bruised he picked himself up, relieved to find his bones unbroken. The mystery was dispelled now, for Terence must have preceded him; but a spasm of fear gripped his heart as his foot struck against the body of his friend.
'Is that you, George? What a good fellow you are. I thought you wouldn't be long after me,' came from the ground, and in the fullness of his relief George laughed out.
'What a joker it is!' he said. 'One would have thought that a fall like this would have taken the sprightliness out of you, Terence.'
'I fell on my head,' the Irishman answered simply, 'and that, no doubt, saved my life. Strike a match and let us see where we are.' Then, as George obeyed, 'Why, you are covered with blood. Are you hurt, dear old fellow?'
'I fell upon my nose,' replied George dryly, 'and, as it is not so hard as your head, you see the result. But, thank God, we are no worse. We seem to be in a kind of tunnel. If the Maoris know of the place——'
'We shall be in a hole, indeed,' put in the irrepressible Terence.
But it was no tunnel into which they had fallen, but a vast, underground forest—a wonder of God's own working. Here and there in New Zealand these dead worlds exist, in which, when once you have found your way thither, you must believe yourself to be within the veritable home of the gnomes and elementals. The tops of dead trees, fixed in the earth above and cemented by the decay of ages, form the roof of your new world, while their great trunks, not so much decayed as changed by mineral deposit, stand like tall sentinels guarding the long gone past, the very emblems of the grandeur of repose.
Such a space as this may extend for miles, or may show as a comparatively small chamber, owing to subsidence from above; while from some such hole as that down which the friends had fallen, or from cracks in the upper earth, 'a dim, religious light' struggles through, which faintly illumines, while it does not dispel, the weird gloom of the subterranean forest.
Of course all this did not become clear in a moment to our adventurers; but one discovery George did make as he struck his third match, and he raised something from the ground as it flickered out.
'This looks as if the place was known and used,' he said, endeavouring to ignite the thing he had picked up. It was a torch, and a bundle of them lay at his feet. For some time he was unsuccessful, but at last the end caught, and the torch burned with a feeble light.
'These were not made yesterday,' went on George, lighting another from the one he held and handing it to Terence. 'Pick up a few and let us explore a bit.'
It was soon evident that they could not get out by the way they had come in, at least, not without the aid of a rope, and from this, and the condition of the torches, they argued that the place, though known at one time, had long ago fallen into disuse. But Terence was by no means disheartened, and was eager to go forward.
'Come on!' he cried. 'Our way lies in this direction as far as we know.'
'But, if we go forward among the mazes of these dead trees, we may discover no other outlet and be unable to find our way back to this one,' argued George.
'Never mind; let us chance it,' insisted Terence. 'There must be another entrance or outlet or these torches would not be here.'
George yielded against his better judgment, and for half an hour they wandered through what they now realised to be a dead forest, but no way out did they find. Suddenly the Irishman pulled up.
'Why, in all this new excitement I had quite forgotten that marvellous occurrence upon the hill,' he said. 'Of course I jumped to the conclusion that the Maori was Paeroa, of whom you told me; but what I want to know is—How came you to drag out your own club and hold it over your head just in time to guard his stroke?'
'My belt had got screwed round and the club was hurting my chest; so I took it out and laid it on the fern in front of me when first we "grassed" ourselves. But, if you will believe me, I have not the slightest recollection of picking it up again when I rolled over on my back as Paeroa struck at me.'
'Then you expected to be struck,' said Terence.
'I can hardly say. I know that I was mightily surprised when my mere broke the shock of the wooden club, for I did not see it in my hands as I stared up at Paeroa.'
'But you must have felt it,' persisted Terence.
'I did not,' returned George with equal earnestness. 'It seems to me that I had no knowledge of it whatever until Paeroa struck his blow.'
Terence rumpled his fiery curls. 'It is all very odd and uncanny. How do you account for it?' he asked.
'I can't account for it,' George answered. 'Perhaps the mystery, if there is one, will explain itself some day. Meantime, where are we?'
'One thing is certain,' said Terence, ignoring the change of subject. 'That greenstone club always seems to be interposed, or to interpose itself, between you and danger—if not death—in the nick of time. Well, it's no use speculating. Where are we? In goblin-land, I should say. The very place for them.'
They walked on for the best part of an hour and then found themselves at the bottom of a shallow gully, in the opposite steep of which gaped a large rent, which looked as if it might be the mouth of a cave.
The impulsive Terence dashed into the black opening, followed more sedately by George, and the cave turned out to be a short tunnel with a sloping floor, which descended to the level and then quickly sloped again upwards. Small rills of water trickled from the walls or splashed musically upon the floor, where, as from the roof, stalactites and stalagmites had formed during the slow march of centuries.
'I believe we have passed under the river,' said George, 'and that tunnel was made by the hand of man—though how long ago it is impossible to guess. Ah! Here is a poser.'
'Had we not passed through that tunnel, I should think that we had been walking in a circle all this time,' remarked Terence, rather hopelessly; for the scene upon which they issued was the counterpart of that which they had left behind them on the other side of the passage.
Still they walked on, always ascending now, as it seemed to them, and at last, just as they came to the base of a slope, between which and the opposite ridge a wide, shallow gully extended, Terence halted suddenly and gripped George's wrist with a warning 'Hush!'
He pointed to the left, where a number of Maoris sat in a circle; but none of them turned round or took the least notice of the intruders.
'Let us go nearer,' whispered Terence. 'You can speak to them if they seem inclined to be nasty.'
But the Maoris who faced them continued to stare unconcernedly, while the others neither turned their heads nor made any motion of inquiry towards their fellows. They were evidently men of distinction, for their mats were of the finest workmanship, while the hair of each, carefully dressed, was adorned with the coronet of huia[1] plumes, the invariable mark of a chief.
The two moved quietly forward until they were within six paces of the silent chiefs, who still neither moved nor spoke.
'Salutations, O friends!' began George. 'Far be it from us rudely to disturb your meditations; but——'
He broke off abruptly. Not a movement, not a change of expression upon the grim faces. Silent, motionless, rigid, the ten chiefs sat, and, suddenly, the truth flashed upon George.
'Terence!' He caught his breath. 'They are all dead men!'
'Dead men?'
'Yes. Where are their eyes?'
'Dead men without eyes!' The emotional Irishman shuddered, and, scarcely knowing what he was about, poked his bundle of torches into the back of the figure nearest to him. Instantly the uncanny thing fell over, and at the sight revealed Terence burst into wild, hysterical laughter.
But in an instant George's arm was round his neck, and George's strong hand was pressed firmly over his mouth.
'Control yourself,' was the stern order. 'These are dead, but the living may not be far away.'
Terence nodded, gasping, and, George having released him, the two bent over the fallen figure and pulled aside its mat. George held up a warning finger, for Terence again began to giggle at the extraordinary sight.
For the thing had no body! Not one in all that silent circle possessed aught but a head, stuck upon a pointed stick, with a crosspiece for shoulders, upon which the mat was hung. In the full glare of day the illusion would have been impossible; but here, in the gloom of the underworld, with only the smoke-veiled light of a couple of torches, it looked real enough, and horrible enough, too.
'We were a pair of jackasses to be taken in,' said Terence, politely including himself. 'It did not strike us that they were sitting here in the dark, and that, but for our torches, we should not have seen them at all.'
George was gazing thoughtfully at the heads. 'You know the established custom,' he said at last. 'When a Maori is killed in battle, or dies away from home, it is the duty of a friend to cut off his head and bring it to his relations, so that the family mana, or honour, may not be sullied. Then the head is preserved, and retains, as you see, a weirdly lifelike appearance.'
'I do see,' said Terence, whose lips were twitching.
'Now observe,' went on George. 'That is the head of Te Pouri, whom Te Karearea slew, and next to it is all that is left of old Te Kaihuia. Both of these were brought along by our contingent, so that they must have been placed here within the last few hours. It is reasonable to deduce from this that there must be an outlet not far away.'
'But why have these bodiless heads been set up here, do you suppose?' inquired Terence.
'This may be the storing ground for family relics, or, perhaps, there may be something peculiarly drying in the atmosphere. I really don't know; but——'
'Hush! Some one is coming,' in a fierce whisper from Terence, who instantly extinguished his torch upon the ground, George following his example.
'We must wait, for they will hear us if we run,' thought George, and then an idea came to him. He smiled grimly in the darkness, groping here and there with his hands. 'Do as I do,' he breathed into Terence's ear, rapidly whispering directions.
'Oh, lord, no; I can't,' sighed Terence.
'You must. We may be dead men else. Quick! There is no time to lose.'
Voices sounded now, not far away, and dancing flashes of light began to illumine the near distance. It was as well that a sharp rise of the ground intervened between the fugitives and the newcomers; for, otherwise, the glare from their own torches would long ago have betrayed the presence of the former.
Presently the light broadened, and, to the surprise of the watchers, Te Karearea, following the old tohunga, Kapua Mangu, appeared upon the crest of the ridge, some twenty paces away from the grim circle of heads, now once more complete.
Te Karearea, who had apparently shaken off the physical effects of his recent exertion, pulled up short as Kapua Mangu plunged his hand into a hole in the trunk of an enormous fallen tree, which formed a long, low arch across the ridge. Then, striving to hide his terror of some supernatural manifestation under a mask of cultured indifference, the chief advanced again with the evident intention of looking over the magician's shoulder.
But the old man swung suddenly round and, crying in a loud, clear voice the single word, 'Tapu!' flung a dark object at the feet of the chief.
With a howl of terror Te Karearea reeled away from the thing upon the ground. 'Ngara! Tuatara!' he screeched, and turned to flee from the spot.
[1] Neomorpha Gouldii—A rare bird.