George, as has been said, had never thought of the simple explanation of the amazing incident just related; but he readily accepted it when suggested by Terence, for his healthy mind revolted from the constant association with the apparently supernatural which circumstances forced upon him. It was better and wiser, he felt, to esteem these mysterious happenings capable of eventual solution, than to drift into the habit of regarding them as inexplicable by natural means.
'If it ever comes to a fight, you will have it all your own way,' laughed Terence, 'for none of them will have the nerve to tackle you.'
'When I left home, I had no idea that I should become a person of such importance,' George said, smiling. 'Come; let us get back to the chief.'
As they appeared at the edge of the clearing, Te Karearea came up all smiles and explanations; but the Hau-haus looked askance at them, those nearest to them hastening to increase their distance.
'I have postponed the march for two hours,' the chief informed them. 'I had no wish to disturb your devotions, Hortoni, and also, I did not wish to enter the pah without you. Meantime, Kawainga makes ready your meal.'
George acknowledged the courtesy, and, inquiring what had become of Pokeke, was informed that he had been sent ahead to the pah with Paeroa for his guard.
'Has anything been heard of the Arawa spies?' asked George.
'No,' replied the chief, with twinkling eyes. 'It was Paeroa who judged them to be Arawas; but we know better.'
'We!' echoed George. 'What can I know about them?' He spoke haughtily, while Terence, to whom he rapidly interpreted, assumed what he honestly believed to be an expression of most virtuous indignation.
'You can answer that best, Hortoni,' the chief said quickly; 'but, even for one so beloved of the gods as yourself, it is unwise to run too many risks.'
'You speak in riddles,' George began still more distantly, when he was interrupted by an outrageous noise at the outskirts of the camp, where two men were cutting chips from an immense log. In the twinkling of an eye this innocent occupation changed to a furious conflict; for six strange Maoris sprang from the fern behind the giant trunk and savagely attacked the hewers, whose roars for aid set the Hau-haus rushing towards them from all sides.
Realising that they could not fight a host, the six spies—for such they were—took to their heels; but one remained behind, cloven from shoulder to midriff by a mighty stroke from a hewer's axe. The others got clear away, for Te Karearea sternly checked pursuit, and, running up to the big log, hastily scrutinised the corpse.
'Arawa!' he shouted excitedly. 'Dogs of Arawa! They it was who spied upon us last night.'
He spurned the body with his foot, and the Hau-haus instantly flung themselves upon it, and with revolting accompaniments hacked it to pieces.
'Then that story was true after all,' George said in a low voice. 'We are safe; for I am sure the chief has no suspicion of our presence in the underground world.'
'No; and in my opinion——'
What Terence's opinion was, George was not to learn, for just then a spattering volley rattled in the bush, several bullets hummed past them, and they bolted for cover. In a moment the clearing was empty, and the Hau-haus, sheltered behind the great trunks, answered the challenge with a random fire.
Te Karearea had thrown aside his mats, and now, naked like his warriors, save for his waist-cloth and huia plumes, was dodging actively from tree to tree, firing with great coolness whenever he saw a chance. But, owing to the thick bush, little harm was done on either side, and to the interested onlookers the affair seemed very like a stale mate.
But Te Karearea had always to be reckoned with. No sooner had the spies fled, than he dispatched Winata Pakaro with fifty men to make a rapid flanking march and ascertain whether they had to do with a large force or a mere screen of scouts. In either case Winata had his orders, which he carried out to the letter, and in a few moments from the firing of the first shot, the clearing was filled with a mob of yelling combatants, and a hand-to-hand fight in the good old style began. The muskets, useless now, were flung away, or swung by the barrel, while tomahawk and club clashed and jarred and rattled in the shock of their meeting.
Presently the watchers heard Te Karearea's voice raised in a shout of savage triumph. 'Mataika! Mataika!' he yelled, and, grasping a young Arawa chief by the hair with his left hand, dashed out the man's brains with a single blow of the heavy club in his right. 'Mataika!' he yelled again. 'Ki au te Mataika!' and, brandishing the blood-stained mere, dashed into the midst of the foe.
'Is that his battle-cry?' called Terence from behind his tree.
'No. The first to be killed in a fight is called the Mataika,' explained George. '"I have the Mataika" is the cry of the successful slayer, and duels often arise after a battle, owing to disputes among the claimants to the honour.'
The Arawas, taken thus in the rear, and hopelessly outnumbered, had no chance, and the end of the skirmish came when some twenty of the brave, rash fellows—all that were left of fifty—broke through the packed masses of their enemies and fled, unpursued, through the bush.
'The Hawk has all the luck,' grumbled George. 'What a piece of folly for so small a force to attack five hundred!'
'Never mind,' Terence said cheerfully. 'It shows, at all events, that some one is on our trail, and that our sweet chief is not to be allowed to have everything his own way. Here he comes. Lo, what a swelling port!'
Te Karearea stalked up to them, his chest heaving, his eyes still aflame with the fierce light of battle. His scarred visage looked grimmer than ever as he grinned balefully at his 'guests.'
'Ha! Even without the mere of TUMATAUENGA, it seems that we can still win a fight,' he said truculently.
'You outnumbered the Arawas by ten to one,' began George, but added hastily, as the chief's brows knit in a frown: 'That flanking movement to take a probable foe in the rear was fine generalship.'
Te Karearea was never above nicely judged flattery. 'Praise from a soldier's son! That is good,' he said, nodding his plumed head. 'Had you been fighting by my side, Hortoni, not one of the dogs had escaped. Why not become my Pakeha?'
'One might really do worse,' returned George lightly. 'You have all the luck.' Whereat the chief looked mightily pleased.
'We will talk of this again, Hortoni,' he said. 'I remember that your parole expires to-night. Will you renew your promise?'
'Yes,' George answered at once.
A gleam of suspicion came into the chief's eyes at this ready concession. 'For how long, Hortoni? A week? A moon? What?'
'I promise; that is enough,' returned George carelessly. 'When I am tired of liberty I will tell you.'
Te Karearea's eyes burned into his own, but he met their stare unflinchingly, and presently the chief said: 'And you, O Mura—whom I had not forgotten—do you also give your word?'
'Oh yes,' replied Terence, when George had interpreted.
Once again Te Karearea stared at them as if he would read their inmost thoughts. Then with a curt 'It is good!' he stalked away, and they heard his voice ringing out as he issued orders with regard to the twice-interrupted march.
They stood on one side, watching the eager Maoris, fine men for the most part, and handsome too, despite the intricate patterns which scored their faces—records, each of them, of some deed of derring-do. For the Maori, not content with simple tattooing, cut and carved his history upon brow and breast and cheek and chin, the absence of such scars indicating either extreme youth, or a lack of courage very rare among the men of their race.
'He is beckoning to us. Come along,' said Terence. 'You first, please, by reason of your exalted position.'
Te Karearea, who had resumed his mat and kilt, cordially greeted them as they fell in on either side of him, and amid inexpressible uproar the march to the pah began.
But presently the men settled down, and, as they took the road across the island to the hill, broke into a roaring chorus of the days when all the land was their birthright, and again, of the time to come when the Pakeha should be swept into the sea, and Ao-Tea-Roa,[1] the Land of the Long-lingering Day, return to the Children of Maui once more.
George, toiling up the steep and difficult ascent, and wondering how, when their parole was withdrawn, they should ever escape from such a stronghold as that upon the hill-top, was startled out of his reverie by the sound of a harsh, dry sob. He glanced round, to find Te Karearea, with bowed head and anguished face, stumbling almost blindly along the rough track.
'Aue! Aue!' wailed the chief, his low, tense tones scarcely reaching beyond the ear of him for whom they were intended. 'Aue! Oh, that the mere of TUMATAUENGA might be mine but for one short hour, that the god might see it in the hand of the last of the House of Te Turi! Oh, that I might bear it into the pah, and hold it while I pray to the gods and to my ancestors. Only for one little hour. Aue! Aue!'
He made no direct appeal, but his restless brown eyes dwelt wistfully on George, who felt distinctly uncomfortable.
They had reached a point some three hundred feet below the outer palisades of the pah, and now George saw for the first time, what had been invisible from the plain, that some convulsion of Nature had cloven the hill into two unequal parts. The gash ran clear across the face of the hill, forming a deep gulch with precipitous sides of jagged rock. The chasm, like the river, was bridged, but more securely, and provided with hand-rails of twisted flax which also served as draw-ropes.
Believing, as he did most firmly, that his own fate and the fate of his House depended upon his possession of the greenstone club, Te Karearea's emotion was not altogether feigned, and George, despite the knowledge that his own life would not be worth a day's purchase if he surrendered the mere, felt again that throb of sympathy for this man who pleaded for what meant to him his very existence.
Nevertheless, and though he grew more uncomfortable than ever, his resolution hardened not to yield the club while he had strength to retain it; so, to avoid the sight of Te Karearea's woebegone face, he moved a pace or two ahead of the chief.
They had come almost to the centre of the great tree which spanned the chasm, and the main body had halted at the bridge-head in order not to incommode the chief and his 'guests' during the crossing, which, if not actually dangerous, was a matter requiring caution. For, though wide enough to allow the three to walk abreast, the bridge was yet so narrow, that the right arm of George and the left arm of Terence brushed the ropes.
But Te Karearea was desperate. Ignoring the warning that guile, not force, must be employed to recover the mere, or that only by voluntary surrender or carelessness on the part of Hortoni could it become his own, he made a sudden snatch at the club, which hung rather in front of George's right hip. The natural consequence followed. George moved on with long, swinging stride just as Te Karearea stooped with eagerly extended hand, the chief missed the club, lost his balance, and, in full view of the horrified spectators, rolled over the bridge.
A howl of dismay went up from the Maoris, and George, turning sharply, saw with amazed eyes the unfortunate chief sliding head-downwards into the profound abyss.
Without a thought of his own danger, George flung himself down upon his face with hands outstretched, and succeeded, only just in time, in seizing the chief's left ankle, to which he clung with the tenacity of desperation.
For the position was now awful in the extreme. Head downwards over that frightful abyss the chief hung, held back from instant and dreadful death only by the strong clutch of his intrepid captive, who, with his own arms and face over the edge of the trunk, looked down into the horrid rift into which he was slowly being dragged.
But Terence was to the fore as well, and down he went on his knees and hung on to his friend's legs with all the strength of his mighty muscles. Then he shouted to Winata Pakaro, who ran lightly across the bridge, stooped over the edge, and caught Te Karearea's right ankle, thus allowing George to take a fresh grip of the left.
And so, in a somewhat undignified manner, the great chief was hauled slowly back from what a moment earlier had seemed, and a moment later would have been, certain death.
No loud expressions of delight greeted Te Karearea as he resumed the perpendicular; for every Maori there had seen his attempt to possess himself of the greenstone club, and noted, too, the swift and terrible retribution which, by the magic of the Pakeha, had overtaken him. Truly, the magician had chosen to arrest the fall of the victim, but not until he had given striking evidence of his power.
While the Maoris murmured together, Te Karearea addressed George in a voice a little less firm than usual: 'I thank you, Hortoni. There is a bond between us; for I owe you my life.'
'Not so, O Chief,' answered George coldly. 'You saved my life aboard the brig; so now we are quits.'
Te Karearea merely nodded his head and echoed George's remark: 'Very well, Hortoni; we are quits.'
'I wish you had let the rascal slip through your hands,' remarked Terence, as they ascended the slope. 'It would have been a good riddance of a particularly bad form of rubbish. No, no,' he went on, reddening as George looked at him; 'I don't mean that. You couldn't have done it. Original instincts too strong and all that. I—oh, you know.'
'You need not apologise.' George smiled. 'The thought actually crossed my mind as I held him up.'
'He is brave, George. He bore that ordeal as few could or would have done. Perhaps it is a pity that he is not on our side.'
'No, no,' said George, with a passionate gesture. 'If there be any excuse for his slyness, his lies, his murders, it is in the fact that he acts as he does in the sacred name of patriotism. Were he in arms against his own race, and still displayed his present characteristics, he would be intolerable.'
'Here he comes back,' exclaimed Terence; 'and beaming, by Jove! What a man!'
The wily Te Karearea had been quick to perceive the effect of his accident upon the emotional minds of his countrymen, and with characteristic effrontery set himself to efface the unfavourable impression. Standing between the friends, he began a stirring address to the warriors, who had now crossed the bridge and were waiting to enter the pah, by the outer gate of which were grouped the tohunga and his small garrison, ready to welcome the conquering chief.
With every trick of gesture and impassioned tone of the born orator, he spoke to them until their fierce eyes were fastened upon his own, and the sullen apathy dropped from their stern faces. Then, pausing, he stepped back a pace, and, pointing to George and Terence, cried: 'But here, my friends, are two Pakehas whose hearts are even as those of the Maori. You have seen for yourselves. For if Hortoni and Mura had not been my friends, they would have left me to perish. Here they stand, and'—his voice swelled to a triumphant shout—'friends, they are ours!'
George had listened with growing impatience to this splendid liar's talk, and at the final cunning assertion he took an angry step forward. But Te Karearea had anticipated this, and ere he could protest, turned about with a magnificent sweep of his arm and pointed to the open gate of the pah.
Not another word was needed. He had won. Six buglers blew prolonged, discordant blasts upon as many great teteres,[2] the garrison yelled shrilly, and with a thunderous roar of triumph the impatient Maoris surged forward, breasting the slope, and charged furiously into the courtyard of the pah.
[1] New Zealand was thus poetically named by the early Maori settlers there because of the twilight, to which they had been unaccustomed in 'Hawaiki.'
[2] A huge wooden trumpet, about six feet long.