CHAPTER X.

KAHIKATEA AND HIS STRANGE BELIEF.

When a man wakes suddenly in the night, he may imagine that the head of his bed is where the foot should be. When he wakes from a deep swoon he is willing to admit that he may be anywhere. But imagine the feelings of a man, whose last recollection was that of being swept over the brink of an abyss, waking up and finding himself lying on his back on a mossy bank, with a well-known face bending over him.

Such was my case, and I thought the whole thing was so impossible that I gave it up, and, closing my eyes, continued my downward career through the blackness of darkness, wondering when the final crash would come.

Again my eyes opened and encountered the face of a friend between me and the blue sky. A pair of dark brown eyes, anxious and kind, looked down into mine, and I tried in vain to remember the name of that friend with the mane of flowing hair and the brown-bearded face. I knew him so well, but could not place him. After an effort I gave it up and closed my eyes with a sigh. Really it did not matter very much, for, just after being shattered on the granite floor at the far bottom of the abyss, it did not seem to signify what was the name that belonged to that face. I lapsed again into darkness, and I can dimly recollect having some such grim, absurd thought as this: that the fall on the rocks below had scattered my ideas and injured my brain in some way.

A third time I opened my eyes: the same position, the same face as before. I began to think there was something in it, and was prompted to put a question.

“Where am I?”

“Where are you?” replied the deep voice of Kahikatea--I knew him now--“Why, I hauled you out of the pool nearly half an hour ago. You came up from the bottom like a piece of limp seaweed. I thought you were dead at first.”

“So did I,” I returned wearily. “I thought I had gone down into the abyss, but it must have been the current through the basin that I was struggling against in the dark.”

Kahikatea looked down at me with a puzzled expression on his face, as if he thought I was wandering.

“Don’t talk now, old man,” he said presently. “You’ve a frightful bruise on the back of your head and a deep cut on the top; you’d better keep quiet.”

Thus admonished, I lay with my eyes half shut watching him, as he prepared a bandage to bind up my wounds--the one on the top and the one on the back, from both of which I could feel the blood still flowing.

“Now,” he said, when at last I was bandaged with something like a tenfold turban round what appeared to me a tenfold skull, “shall we camp here?”

“Rather not,” I returned; “they might see us from above and drop rocks on us.”

“Very well, but you mustn’t talk.”

With this he placed his hands under me, and, lifting me up easily in his powerful arms, strode away down the bank of the stream. I was too weak to protest, and said nothing. At length, coming to a sequestered spot enclosed in thick bushy foliage, he put me down gently and set about preparing a soft bed of dry fern. This done, and myself placed comfortably upon it, with some turfs of dry moss for a pillow, he lighted a fire and made this strange sick-room in the wilderness comfortable. I dozed off into a troubled sleep, and when I awoke my nurse sat by me, and administered a pannikin of hot broth, the effect of which was invigorating.

The fear that I had killed the fierce but noble tohunga--the guardian priest of that ancient temple from which I had just escaped by a miracle--was weighing heavily upon my mind. In a few brief sentences I told Kahikatea what had occurred within the mountain, and we considered the question as to whether, if Miriam Grey were somewhere in that strange place,--and from what I had seen I firmly believed she was,--she would starve without Ngaraki. We came to the conclusion that this was improbable, for if anything happened to Ngaraki, the mutes would no doubt know what to do, for, in an hereditary priesthood such as this claimed to be, it was not likely that the order of succession would be dislocated by a sudden death. Considering these things we concluded that Miriam Grey, if there, was as safe as ever she had been. But we knew that the way to her prison far overhead, impossible without a guide at ordinary times, was even more so now; a strict watch would no doubt be kept; and ‘the way of the fish’ was a difficulty, to say nothing of the ‘way of the winged fish.’ Accordingly, after well considering the matter, I determined to follow the aged chief’s advice, and take up the search of the child, feeling convinced that if she was living I could find her.

For two days and two nights I lay on my bed of dry fern, and was attended by Kahikatea. By all the laws of medical science, except perhaps one or two not yet thoroughly laid down, I ought to have had concussion of the brain, or some such thing, but, strange to say, on the morning of the third day I awoke perfectly clear in the head, and with every sign of fever gone.

I determined, however, to accept Kahikatea’s advice and rest for the remainder of that day and night. We passed the time in telling each other our adventures and in drawing what conclusions we could from them. My friend’s search for the ‘way of the spider’ had not been as successful as my exploration of the ‘way of the fish.’ He had found the place where on the first occasion the rock had let him through into a kind of tunnel, and had followed this for a considerable distance, only to be stopped by a blank wall of rock which had all the appearance of a rude portcullis let down from the roof.

“From what you have told me of the strange contrivance in the interior of the mountain below,” he concluded, in relating this part of his adventures, “I can quite understand that this rock blocking up the tunnel might have been so contrived by the ancients that it could be let down and made to close the entrance to the cave from above. I don’t know how thick it is, but I am going to find means to cut through it. By the time you have found the child I shall probably have got through to Miriam Grey--by-the-bye, did you look for the grave which old Te Makawawa spoke about?”

I had quite forgotten it. “No,” I replied; “I was too busily employed inside the mountain looking for my own. But now’s our time--let us make use of it. There’s only one rimu of any size in the ravine; it is unmistakable.”

“‘Beneath the great rimu where the tui sings’--those were the old chief’s words,” said Kahikatea, as we made our way along the bank of the river and past the deep pool into the valley, which was shut in against the mountain wall by the descending spur. There was no stream running out of the ravine, and the place was carpeted with moss and kidney ferns, upon which the afternoon sun here and there got in a smile through some crevice in the foliage overhead. At length we came to a fairly open moss-grown space around a mighty vine-laced trunk, which supported the dark green velvety foliage of a magnificent monarch of the bush.

“Splendid tree,” said Kahikatea, taking off his hat and gazing up at the fantails and tuis chasing the gnats about its sunlit sides.

“Yes,” said I, the prosaic, “but where is the grave?”

For the next five minutes we were searching in the open space around the tree. At length I found an inequality beneath the moss, and with our sheath knives we removed the superficial growth of fifteen years.

“There has evidently been something buried here,” said Kahikatea, as we looked at the grave-like ridge, about two feet in length; “if we find bones, or all that is left of them, old Te Makawawa’s a fraud, and you and I together will bore and blast a passage through by the ‘way of the spider;’ but, if on the other hand we find a stone, the old chief is to be trusted, in which case you must set out to look for Crystal Grey, and I will bore and blast alone.”

“Unless you will come with me,” I said.

He did not speak for a little while, and I saw he was hesitating. Then the dreamy look came into his eyes--the look which I knew meant his strange, mad desire to look into the face of Hinauri, who, lifeless, but full of meaning, stood praying up there in the forehead of the mountain.

“No,” he made answer presently. “Crystal Grey is your quest. You must go alone.”

We were digging into the soft ground with our sheath knives and scraping out the dirt with our hands. When we were nearly two feet down my sheath knife grazed upon something hard, and another minute disclosed the surface of a stone embedded there.

“We’d better get it right out to make sure,” said Kahikatea, and so we worked away until we had cleared its whole surface. Then, with the aid of a log for a lever, we hoisted it and placed it upon the moss.

“Without a doubt the old chief is to be trusted,” said Kahikatea.

“Without a doubt,” I rejoined. “There were points that I had made up my mind to disbelieve. This was one of them. But now I have verified so much of his story that I am inclined to accept the whole of it as true. I shall act on the assumption that Crystal Grey is still living, and I shall search for her.”

We replaced the stone in its grave and covered it up to look as much as possible the same as before, then found our way back along the bank of the stream to the camp beneath the mountain wall, where we spent the remainder of the day and part of the night in discussing our different undertakings.

Again I put the question to Kahikatea--a question which in after years I have often pondered as being one which was asked more wisely than I knew--“Will you not come with me and search for Crystal Grey?” and again he answered me with the madness of the poet who, in setting his mind on visionary things, forgets that flesh and blood is the working basis of all.

“Warnock,” he said, “I have hitched my waggon to a star and I’m not going to unhitch it now. I have made up my mind to look into the face of Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, and you would have me turn aside to help you search for Crystal Grey, the daughter of a mortal woman. No, my friend, the daughters of mortal women are not for madmen like me. Warnock!”--he smiled good humouredly at me--“the mother who freed Hinauri from her age-long prison must be the mother of a beautiful daughter. I prophesy that, when you have found the maiden, you will marry her and live happily ever afterwards.”

“And you?” I asked, smiling back, “you will wed an abstraction and beget great poems. Now look here, Kahikatea, face the thing squarely. Suppose, according to the tradition, which was probably hoary long before Pygmalion and Galatea were thought of--suppose that Hinauri should become a living, breathing woman, what would you do?”

He did not answer for some little time, but remained looking straight before him. At length he gave a sigh and said, “Granting for the moment that such a thing were possible, Hinauri would be more to me than she is now. I should love her with my whole self.”

“That is to say, from your present standpoint of the impersonal, she would be less to you.”

“No, no; the greater includes the less as a part of its greatness.”

“That is to say,” I persisted, pressing him hard, but not against his will, for two in a solitude speak as brothers; “if she came to life you would still retain your ideal love for her, but would also give her the love that a man gives to a woman.”

“Yes, I cannot imagine that it should be otherwise.”

“Well now; I begin to think that you are not in love with an abstraction after all, but that your feelings stand on a basis essentially human--founded on the life-likeness of the image--on that, and on the further romantic tradition that she will return.”

Again he was silent. Then he said slowly, half to himself and half to me, “The yearning desire upon the face was human, it was living; the tenderness, the compassion, and that something more--a kind of sorrow-joy which I could not fathom, filled me with the strange thought that the stone could feel. I thought--I believe I said it aloud--‘if brightness would only leap into those eyes, if the raven gloss would only come upon those tresses, if the laced bosom would only move with the wonderful emotion of the face, what a glorious woman would be there.’ As I saw her she seemed to be waiting for a breath or a touch. One sandalled foot, showing beneath the robe, had been advanced with the outstretched arms and the other seemed to be in the act of following, while as yet a little breath of wind had pressed her robe gently against her. Ah! Warnock, you are right; it was not the cold stone I saw, but the living woman.”

“And it is that living woman you are in love with,” I concluded.

“Yes, and I am not so mad after all.”

“You would not be if only that woman had a real existence.”

“A real existence?” he said in surprise; “a strong idea will realise itself somehow. My dear Warnock,”--his voice fell almost to a whisper, and he spoke with a strange eagerness--“you think me mad as it is, but at what I am going to say you will think me too far gone for argument. The idea which, according to tradition, has lived in the minds of an hereditary priesthood from remote ages, has taken possession of mine also. I mean the strong belief that Hinauri, as she is in that stone, will return.”

I looked at him aghast. “Can you give a reason for your belief?”

“None whatever!”

“Then you admit it is contrary to all reason, and yet you believe it.”

“I do not admit it is contrary to all reason; it may be in accord with some reason of which you and I are ignorant.”

“It seems to me, that there can be no reasonable foundation for the idea that a stone will suddenly turn into flesh and blood.”

“Yet the idea that was made stone might also be made flesh.”

Kahikatea said these words in deep abstraction. I took small note of them at the time, though afterwards, when everything was made clear to me, when my own mind had yielded to nothing less than ocular demonstration, they were burnt deep into my brain as some of the truest and sanest words ever uttered. So deep was my friend’s abstraction that he was unconscious of having thought and spoken. This was evident, for, starting as if recalled from a deep reverie, he proceeded to reply to my last remark.

“No,” he said; “it is absurd to believe that a stone can turn into flesh and blood; yet I believe that Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, will return. That is my madness, Warnock, and yet it seems so sane that even now I regard her as a living woman--the only one in the world for me.”

He rose as he spoke, and knocked his pipe out against the mountain wall. Turning towards me with a smile, he added: “If your determination to find Crystal Grey is half as great as mine to reach the cave where the pure white woman stands, you will find her, and then--well, I have prophesied what I have prophesied: the woman who harboured the vision of Hinauri could not have borne an unlovely child.”

Early on the following morning we left the shadow of the mountain wall and passed out from the Table Land beneath the red birches crowned with mistletoe. By Tiki’s guidance we retraced our steps, and by nightfall again reached the pool beneath the high cliff where we had witnessed the phenomenon which had so terrified the Maori.

Here we prepared to camp, but when I went to draw water from the pool to boil the billy, I discovered something which not only threw an additional light on the inner workings of that temple in the rock which we had left behind us, but also had the effect of preventing our camping at that spot. As I was stooping to draw up the water, something floating on the surface near by attracted my attention. Taking a dry branch from the bank I fished the object towards me and held it up.

It was a hat!

I looked at it more closely in the uncertain light and recognised the article. It was my own hat that had gone down into the abyss in that terrible fight with Ngaraki and his speechless men in the interior of the mountain. With my body full of shudders at the thought of what else had fallen into the abyss on the same occasion, and my head full of the only possible explanation of this remarkable find, I sought Kahikatea, and we agreed to move on and camp on the bank of some tributary stream lower down; which we did.