CHAPTER XX.

CRYSTAL LOVES KAHIKATEA, WHO LOVES HINAURI.

It was early dawn when I awoke. By the light of the fire, which had evidently been freshly made up, I cast my eyes round the camp scene. Everything was as it should have been. Grey was asleep on the other side of the fire; Crystal was sitting up against a fallen tree trunk, not far from me, in the attitude of one who had dropped asleep while watching, for her cheek was resting on her arm, which was laid along the rough support. Near the other fire I could discern the forms of Te Makawawa and Tiki, while at a little distance the slaves lay huddled up. Was it possible that nothing unusual had happened--that I had merely dreamed a frightful dream? The chief and Tiki had evidently returned in the night, but why was not Crystal rolled in her blanket? I swept my eyes round the open space of the camp, and asked myself what had become of the body of Cazotl, which, in my mind’s eye, I could see so distinctly lying face upwards on the other side of the fire.

I got up and shook myself; then felt for my revolver. It was not in its usual place. I clapped my hand to my chest and found a painful spot where the dart had struck me. Then I knew it was no dream. Stepping quickly to where Crystal was sleeping, I bent down and touched her on the shoulder.

She raised her head, wide awake on the instant.

“What has happened, Miss Grey?” I asked hurriedly.

“A strange thing,” she replied, standing up and facing me; “yesterday morning----”

“Yesterday morning?” I said in surprise; “then I’ve been asleep for nearly twenty-four hours?”

“Yes, and we have been taking it in turns to watch you. It was my turn, but I must have dropped off--forgive me.”

But I was busy wondering how much of the awful occurrence of the night she knew. I said: “Yes, well; yesterday morning----”

“Ah! just at sunrise father and I were awakened by a pistol shot, and I saw you fall to the ground. We both ran to you and found your revolver still smoking in your hand. But we could not rouse you--you seemed to be fast asleep, at least father said that you were, and that there was nothing whatever the matter with you. While he was feeling you all over I looked to see what you had fired at, and oh! Wanaki, I saw a horrible thing. On the other side of the fire a huge man with his clothes all torn, his hair and beard burnt, and his hideous face upturned, lay on the ground. When father had finished examining you, he searched the body of the horrible thing, said it was dead, and that there was a bullet wound right over the heart.”

“Thank God!” I said, for, as she seemed to know nothing of his terrible throes, I would not shock her mind with them.

“Wanaki!” she said, looking earnestly at me, “why did he come, and why did you kill him?”

“Do not ask me why he came?” I answered; “and I shot him for reasons best known to myself.” I turned my head away to say that.

“Don’t be angry with me,” she pleaded. “I have told you many things. I heard Tiki say that he came to steal ‘the little maiden’--he meant me, of course. Is that why you shot him?”

“Oh! Tiki said that, did he?” I asked quickly, and waited for an answer.

“Yes, but Te Makawawa, when he first arrived and saw the huge body, looked at the face a long while, shook his head at what Tiki said, and muttered to himself something about the ancient magic of Ngaraki. Then he walked up and down, gesticulating wildly and singing a chant about Ngaraki the Terrible. He stopped in the middle of it abruptly, walked to where I was standing, scanned my face as if it puzzled him, and, shaking his head, slowly walked away. Now what do you make of it?”

“I don’t make anything of it,” I said shiftily, for I saw that if I was not careful she would drag the whole story from me. “I know the man came and threatened you and I shot him. What have they done with him?”

“Te Makawawa and Tiki and the slaves took him to a mud swamp over there and sank him in it. Then the old chief sang another long, wild chant about Ngaraki, Hinauri, and the Vile Tohungas.”

I saw she was thinking of something at the back of her words as she said this. After a pause she resumed, speaking very slowly: “Do you know that when I looked at the dead man’s face I had a feeling that he was like the man in my dream who cried ‘Degrade the pure one! Whose is the task? Mine! Mine!’ There is something strange in it all, Wanaki.”

My eyes met hers, and we stood looking at each other until at last I said: “Miss Grey; there is something _very_ strange in it; but if I were to attempt to explain it in any way, I should only make it more mysterious. In the meantime we have much to think of. You will probably see your mother to-day.”

At this moment Grey awoke and staggered to his feet yawning.

“Ah! Warnock,” he said, coming towards me; “you’re awake at last. None the worse, eh? By Jove, that was a good shot of yours--right through his heart. What did the fellow want?”

I moved my head towards Crystal and raised my eyebrows.

“Eh? Eh?” he whispered, drawing me aside; “would have drugged her and carried her off, eh?”

I nodded.

“The deuce,” he said, wringing my hand, while he regarded me with an expression of horror on his gentle face. “Thank God you saw him in time. Warnock, my friend! I’m beginning to look upon you as a special Providence.”

The events of that night had so horrified and perplexed me that I could enter on no explanation of them. I preferred to let things explain themselves as they would--as they had, in fact--yet I knew very well that I had not killed Cazotl with my poor bullet; it was his death from another cause that had unbound the spell from my will, and released my trigger finger from obedience to the controlling voice. There was some mysterious power, more unerring than that, which had struck him like the wrath of Heaven. Remembering a part of Ngaraki’s awful cursing chant in the abyss, I moved aside with some excuse to Grey and muttered to myself:

“Cursed in the light, writhe till the sun goes down; Cursed in the dark, writhe till the sun comes up.”

* * * * *

Impatient at the delay caused by my long sleep, Te Makawawa insisted on an early start, and after a hurried breakfast we set out for the mountain wall on the other side of the plain. The old chief informed me briefly that Ngaraki had left the mountain the morning before at sunrise, and would probably be away for another day. I tried to draw him out upon the mysterious affair of the _makutu_, but he stopped all further efforts of mine in that direction by the remark: “The flax that ties the tongue of the _ariki_ is not loosened even by the sun”; by which, taken together with an expression of perplexity I had seen several times upon his face, I gathered that something troubled him.

As we passed along I noticed many rough buildings placed by twos and threes near the streams that crossed the plain and sheltered by the various clumps of stunted bush. I overtook the chief and spoke to him again.

“O Chief, whose hair is the snow of Ruahine, these are not the abodes of the ‘children of the mist’ who come hither to snare the _kakariki_. What then are these houses that strew the plain?”

“It is as I said,” he replied absently. “The tribes are gathering from far and near; Ngaraki has spread a rumour that Hinauri will return shortly, and they are here to do her bidding when she comes.”

“Is there not danger in this?” I asked, for I saw that so warlike a people, led by violent chiefs, would be apt to differ among themselves; or, if not, some false prophet would surely arise and work them up to frenzy with the idea that they were now to drive the pakehas into the sea.

“There is small danger,” he said. “They are gathered for peace; but, if any should stir up among them, my warriors, who are now on the way to this place, will take their heads and restore peace.”

“But some violent chief,” I persisted; “some false prophet will certainly arise, saying he has been commanded by Hinauri in a dream to rouse the people to fight, and they will do it, Te Makawawa--I know the hearts of your people.”

“O Friend of the Forest Tree,” replied the old chief, “your words are not the dry leaves of foolishness scattered by the wind; yet, if it be even as you say, who can stand against Te Makawawa? And, if they should rise as the sands of the sea and cover the whole earth, could they escape the wrath of Ngaraki the Terrible?”

His eyes flashed and I felt answered, for though I smelt war very strongly I could not imagine the aged chief and the fierce Ngaraki on the losing side.

When we reached the Lion Rock that terminated the descending spur, the secluded valley and the stupendous outer wall of the temple were still in deep shadow. Dreamer Grey looked down at the stream welling out of the mountain’s side, then up at the everlasting granite, and finally turned to me.

“You know,” he said, “you know how sometimes you have a kind of vivid impression that you have seen some given thing before--well, that is exactly the feeling I have when I look at these rocks. I wonder if I shall remember as much of my wife’s face.”

I smiled at him as he gazed up at the rocks. “You will have one memory between you,” I said, “or perhaps her face will appeal to you ‘like glimpses of forgotten dreams,’ as Tennyson says.”

He did not answer: he was forecasting his happiness with his eyes fixed upon the mountain wall as if he could see through it. As I turned away to where Crystal was standing, she moved towards me and pointed to the aged chief sitting upon the mossy bank near the rock, buried in deep thought.

“He says that he will soon take us by the ‘way of the fish,’” she said; “but that for the present he has long thoughts to think--that the sun will set ’ere long, and that these last moments are for him.”

“He expects to die for revealing the secrets of this mountain to us,” I said. “Do you know, he seems to me like a man who is following some commanding voice, which draws him on and on, even to what he believes to be his death.”

“Yes, he seems to have altered strangely. Even to me he is different. Often he looks at me with those piercing black eyes of his as if there was something he did not understand. At times I think that he doubts if I am the same person that he stole away from my mother in his zeal for Hinauri. Perhaps he still thinks I am a witch.”

“Ah! that reminds me,” I said. “While he is thinking his long thoughts--and I think that perhaps they are stranger than you or I can guess--while he is setting his face to the dying sun I will show you the place where you were not buried fifteen years ago.”

Leaving Grey with an unlighted cigar between his lips, still looking up at the great wall, and the aged chief, sitting motionless on the bank, we turned into the forest glade that led up into the valley and the ravine. When we gained the open space beneath the great rimu, and I showed her the spot where the tohunga had buried the stone, Crystal turned to me with a sudden thought in her face.

“Ah! Wanaki!” she said, touching me on the arm, “may all in us that is base as that coarse stone you have told me about remain buried here in the shadows.”

I was about to reply, but at that moment a dull roar, like the sound of a distant explosion, fell upon my ears.

“What was that?” she asked.

Well I knew what it was. Should I tell her? Why not? She had a right to know.

“It is Kahikatea,” I replied; “he is blasting the rocks high above the mountain wall. He hopes to clear a passage through the rocks to the cave where----”

“Where my mother is,” she broke in eagerly.

“Where Hinauri stands,” I said slowly. “Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, the Bright One who holds her arms out to the future of the world--Hinauri, whom he loves.”

Crystal moved her eyes slightly from mine. Was it a flash of jealousy or only pain that I saw in them as she steadfastly regarded a clump of daisies in the moss?

“He is mine!” she said suddenly, with a fierce blaze of passion that lighted her face as if with fire; “no one can take him from me--oh! what am I saying to you?--you, to whom I owe everything in the world: you, whom I would spare any pain--oh! forgive me, Wanaki!” The sudden fire, which in the depths of her eyes was like a threatening light flashed out of ancient darkness, concealed itself, leaving her face full of tenderness beyond my poor power of words.

I did not speak.

“Tell me,” she said again, swept on by the tide of her feelings, “tell me--if he believed this marble statue would return to life, according to the legend, would he love it in the same way as--as----”

“As I love you?” I suggested.

“Yes--as you--love--me.” She cast her eyes down, halting between the words as if she were measuring their exact meaning and influence upon her.

There was a brief pause, in which I felt like a man who, in some underground prison, can see daylight through a far small opening, and stumbles towards it. But it was no time for any but a fool to stand and think.

“Yes,” I said; “there is a personal element in his love for this legendary woman. Her face is the only face in the world for him, and he longs to look upon the fair form of the Bright One. When at last he does so, and touches the cold marble lips with his----”

I paused there with my eyes searching her face. My words had roused the natural woman in her. Between her parted lips I saw the pearly teeth set, as the colour fled from her cheeks. Clenching her hands, she turned to me with flashing eyes that had robbed her face of life, but not of a beauty that now was terrible in its anger.

“Do not tell me any more,” she said. “Oh! if my love should come to a blind end!” She drooped her head and was silent, mightily troubled in her bosom.

“What would you do?” I asked quietly.

She looked up and faced me calmly, but did not speak.

“Crystal,” I cried, seizing her hand and pressing it passionately to my lips, “may I hope that if--if----”

“Ah! Wanaki,” she said slowly and sadly, “I owe you everything in the world. I do not know what a woman will do. I never knew till now that it was possible I should feel as I have felt. Oh! tell me--is Hinauri so _very_ beautiful?”

“They call her the Rival of the Dawn,” I said, releasing her hand as she drew it away.

“The Rival of the Dawn,” she echoed with a pathetic ring in her voice; “Kahikatea loves the Rival of the Dawn; I, who am nothing in his eyes, love Kahikatea; and you----”

“Yes, I, who am nothing in your eyes, love you.”

There was a pause, in which the west wind pressed gently against the bosom of the rimu, and the tui sang on in the high solitude of the ravine.

“That you are nothing in my eyes is not quite true, Wanaki,” she said softly; “but at present I cannot say how false it is. Let us go back and see if Te Makawawa has finished his long thoughts.”

We retraced our steps for the most part in silence, and as we went I felt that perhaps--who knew?--there would be a daybreak to my darkness. I read into her words the possibility that she might give me some of the love that Kahikatea would most certainly thrust aside without ever dreaming of its existence.