Loth as George was to yield to the superstitious feeling which the coincidences in connection with the greenstone club invariably engendered, he was almost stupefied at its reappearance at the present juncture. Yet there was nothing supernatural about it. He had jumped into the ditch almost at the exact point at which the mere had dropped from his belt, and had naturally stumbled upon it. He was too well balanced to remain long under the spell of the occurrence, and with a sigh of thankfulness picked up the club, stripped the mat from the shoulders of the unconscious Maori, and ran, light-footed, in the direction of the upper bridge. Before he had gone twenty yards he bounced into a number of Maoris hurrying towards the same spot.
'Have you caught them?' he said thickly, congratulating himself that the darkness and the mat about his shoulders would prevent immediate recognition.
'No hea?' grumbled a Hau-hau. The words, meaning literally 'from whence?' imply in Maori phraseology that the thing inquired for is nowhere. It was an admission that the superstitious fellows did not expect to retake the fugitives.
'Hortoni, indeed, is under the protection of TUMATAUENGA,' growled another. 'Else would the Hawk have slain him ere now.'
'But Hortoni has lost the mere—so they say,' returned George, quickening his pace a little, so as to pass the talkative Maori.
'Na! the mere of TUMATAUENGA cannot be lost,' a third observed sententiously as George drew ahead of him. 'By this time Hortoni again wears it by his side. Ehara! It is extraordinary, and I do not know why ATUA should favour a Pakeha. But so it is. Ea!' he grunted disgustedly. 'In my opinion Hortoni is a god. Who can prevail against a god?'
The first part of this speech was so true that George felt once more that curious thrill which had so often affected him when the greenstone club was in question. The last part shocked him and, forgetful of his assumed character, he impetuously contradicted the astounded speaker.
'Fool! I am no god,' he cried. 'There is but one God, the God of the Pakehas, and He——'
The next moment he was flying for his life across the tree bridge and down the hill, while the Maoris, ignoring in their turn his presumed divinity, scampered after him, their yells blending with the shouts of those who had already reached the plain.
Stumbling and slipping, George dashed along the track, bruising himself badly against a hundred obstacles, but grimly silent lest by any outcry he should drag his friends back into danger. Far behind him he could hear the voice of the arch-liar Te Karearea calling to him that the greenstone club had been found, and that all would be well if he would return. Once he collided with a Hau-hau who rose suddenly from behind a boulder; but his ready wit saved him, and the two ran side by side to the bottom of the hill, where George branched off to the right.
'Go that way, my friend, and I will go this,' he cried. 'We will meet at the bridge and scoop in the Pakehas as with a net.'
He spoke loudly now, confident that his friends were safe, and hoping thus to convey to them the assurance of his own escape.
Just then the cry of the weka arose almost under his feet, and George thought for a moment that he had disturbed a real bird, so natural was the startled note. The next, he remembered the signal they had agreed upon in case of separation, answered it, and instantly felt his arm grasped by some one who rose apparently out of the ground beside him.
'He! He!' Paeroa's voice sounded the note of caution and alarm. 'This way, Hortoni. Into the flax. Quick!'
Hard upon his brown friend's heels followed George, treading cautiously upon the rough track of manuka[1] which ran more or less interruptedly across the swampy ground in which the flax-bushes flourished. More than once his foot encountered bubbling ooze and slime; but Paeroa's hand was ever ready to help him over these gaps, and for a hundred yards or so they went along without serious mishap. Then the shouts and cries which came from scattered points about the plain seemed to concentrate in one long yell of triumph, a noisy hubbub arose at the point where the manuka pathway began, and a spattering volley followed them as they stumbled forward.
'They are after us,' panted George, swerving involuntarily as a bullet smacked into a flax-bush a few inches from him; but Paeroa whispered a hurried instruction and, even as another small hail of balls whimpered past, they leaped from the track into the heart of a flax-bush, thence into the midst of a second, out of that into a third, where George crouched, struggling fiercely to quiet his rough, laboured breathing, while Paeroa with a last encouraging word, slipped into a bush a little further on and squatted there.
With one hand grasping the stiff, upstanding leaves, and with the other fast closed about the handle of his club—the loop of which he had taken the precaution to secure round his wrist—George sat listening to the murmur of voices coming gradually nearer. As far as he could judge there were only two or three Maoris on the track, whence he argued that the commotion at the other end had been merely a ruse de guerre to induce the fugitives to believe that they were discovered. Still, it would not do to be too sure, for the Hau-haus were all over the place, and it might well be that while some advanced along the track, others were creeping through the swamp, searching each bush in turn.
Suddenly there fell a silence. The men on the manuka had either stopped to reconnoitre or given up the search and gone back, and George, feeling cramped and stiff, was about to change his position, when a low 'he! he!' from Paeroa warned him to remain still. A moment later a Maori leaped from the track into a flax-bush, searched it swiftly, and passed on to another.
The sound indicated that the man was coming in his direction, and George ardently wished that he had continued to hunt for his revolver, instead of gazing, moonstruck, at the greenstone club. Another leap and the man was in the clump next to him. One more and——
A stream of fire, the roar of a revolver, and with a loud, choking gasp the Hau-hau fell dead somewhere in the ooze, while from the adjoining bush came Terence's voice: 'Quick, George, after me! We are close to the spot where the river forks. Kawainga is already across. I came back for you.'
Amid the tumult of pursuit, crackling rifle fire and yells, as now and again an incautious Maori floundered into the swamp, they left their cover and leaped from bush to bush across the space between the broken end of the track and the small strip of hard ground by the river. Here Paeroa joined them and, guided by him, they crossed the stream and plunged into the bush.
Map of the 'Pah' of Death and its surroundings
'Safe!' muttered Terence. 'I had to shoot that fellow, George, for he landed almost on top of me. I don't think that they will find us now; but we had better get away as far as possible before we halt. We are not out of the wood yet.'
'Very much in it, I should say,' answered George, as a thorn-branch smacked him sharply across the cheek. 'Don't go too fast, Paeroa. It will not do for us to lose touch with one another. Besides, you must be almost worn out. Where is Kawainga?'
'Here I am, Hortoni,' said the girl. 'I waited for you on the flat with Paeroa, though you did not see me.' There was a note of pride in her voice.
'You are both good friends, I know,' replied George. 'Are you weary, Star of the Morning?'
'Nay; the Maori is never weary when a friend is in danger,' the girl answered simply. 'Press on, Hortoni. Day is very near.'
'Ay! It must be,' put in Terence. 'Hark, George, those fellows are still roaring under the impression we have been kind enough to wait for them in the swamp. I can't understand why that astute chief did not order torches to be lit.'
'Possibly because he found out that we had got possession of firearms, and did not wish to give us a good target. By the way, Terence, have you got the third revolver? I lost mine as I crossed the ditch. My club is all very well; but——'
'Your club!' Terence's tone expressed amazement. 'You don't mean to say that the thing has come back to you!'
'No; I don't.' George laughed a little. 'However, I have found it. It was on the bank of the ditch where we crossed after our last excursion.'
'Oh yes; that sounds quite commonplace,' said Terence. 'All the same I'll warrant that you were mightily surprised when you found it.'
'I was; and thankful too,' admitted George. 'But you see how easily everything in connection with the club may be explained when once we begin to sift matters.'
'I should like to know, then, how it found its way back to you from the bottom of the sea,' Terence said slyly.
'It was I who brought it back, O Mura.' Paeroa's voice came out of the gloom ahead of them. 'I found it the first time that I dived, and, as I had been too hurried to take off my waist-cloth, I hid the mere therein and waited till I could give it to Hortoni. But he was sleeping with his face towards the gates of Reinga, so I slipped it under his mats as he lay on his litter—and after that he got well,' he finished innocently.
Terence drew a long breath. 'Another illusion gone!' he commented. 'Before we are done we shall be forced to believe that the wonderful mere is only a piece of common greenstone after all. I think that we should halt. What do you say, Paeroa?'
'Let us rest. The poor fellow must be worn out,' put in George. 'I feel tired enough myself, now that the hot excitement has died down.'.
After crossing the stream they had turned sharply to the left and struck into the blazed track which Te Karearea's axe-men had made on the night of their arrival. Otherwise they would not have been able to get through the thick bush, and must have fled through the forest by the beaten track, along which the Hau-haus even now trailed like so many dogs on the scent of a fox. As it was, their progress had been difficult enough, for the undergrowth had renewed itself in the intervening weeks, and their low-voiced conversation came in disjointed sentences as they struggled through the tangle of fern and creeper which strove to hinder their steps.
'Now, listen to me, all of you,' George said earnestly, as they gratefully stretched themselves on the fern and divided the food which Kawainga had carried. 'As soon as it is dawn Te Karearea will organise a hunt for us. If any of us should be captured, those who escape must not think of the plight of their friends, but hurry on to the camp of the British or the Friendlies. It is important that this nest of rebels should be cleared out. Is that agreed, Terence? Do you understand, Paeroa?'
After some hesitation Terence muttered 'Agreed!' and Paeroa, who had waited for him to speak first, answered, 'I hear, Hortoni!' and George was satisfied, knowing that with him to hear was to obey.
As Terence had had most sleep at the beginning of the night, he now took the first watch and, as the grey dawn stole through the bush in ghostly, almost ghastly silence, he thought how different it all was from Australia, where the morning would have been heralded in by the beautiful matin-hymn of the magpie, so called, the cheerful hoot of the laughing-jackass, and the exquisite treble and alto of hundreds of smaller birds. Here was nought but solitude and stillness—a stillness so profound that it began to get upon Terence's nerves, and he more than once stretched out his hand towards George; for the sense of companionship was somehow greater if he only touched his friend's coat—or so he thought.
Presently the sky grew lighter, and the outlines of various objects began to appear. Right ahead of him, a quarter of a mile away, was the hill where George and he had lain and watched the Hau-haus at their weird and blasphemous rites. Down that hill and through this very bush they had run until pulled up by that tumble into the underground world. If he could only find that hole again! Why should he not try? The desire grew with the idea.
'I believe I could find it,' he said within himself, rising and stretching his arms above his head. Then in the midst of a satisfying yawn he dropped noiselessly out of sight behind the tree against which he had been sitting.
From a hundred different points, ahead and on each side of him, brown forms were dodging from tree to tree, and from as many different spots among the fern scarred, brown faces peered, as it seemed, malevolently at him.
[1] Leptospermum scoparium.