CHAPTER XXVII.
THE GIANTS CLOSE THEIR TEMPLE.
Ngaraki passed down through a side tunnel, and I returned to the place where Kahikatea still sat with his dead. After gazing at the scene awhile I withdrew again, mindful of my friend’s unexpressed desire to be left alone. Then Grey and Miriam floated into my mind; since I could do nothing else I could at least see that they were safe. Acting on this thought, I made my way down through the main tunnel, and at length reached the vantage ground high up in the wall above the lake. The cascade was silent again. Ngaraki had gone down by ‘the way of the winged fish’ beneath the water. Presently there was a flickering light below, and soon afterwards the chief, bearing a torch, passed round the lake and paused upon the ledge above the abyss. As mechanically and wearily as I had found my way down to this point, I now stood and watched him.
Pacing to and fro upon the rocky ledge, he chanted his last karakia--a lament in which the poetry of his despair struggled through all his fierceness.
“_Ihungarupaea! Hine-nui-o-te-po! Thou art hurled down, a sunken rock._
“_Thou canst not rise. Shattered into fragments; never will your dust be gathered from its everlasting grave._
“_Hinauri, Rival of the Dawn! thou too art gone for ever._
“_Alas! what melting sorrow fills my breast to overflowing._
“_Hinauri, Daughter of the Light! for whom I cursed and toiled--for whom I waited all my life--for whom my bosom yearned with love, alas! thou too art gone._
“_The gentle brooks of Marahau poured laughter down the sunlit slopes--ran glad with songs to Tinirau--with love songs to the Ocean Lord._
“_But now their waters flow like tears--while on Kaiteriteri’s shore the penguin wails with sobbing cry--_
“_Tears of Rangi and of Papa flowing to the lake of tear-drops where the waves of woman’s weeping rise against the sky._
“_Hush! those billows roll for ever, swollen with our lifelong tears--_
“_On and on into the distance till they break in lamentations on the far off Sacred Isle--_
“_Break with many mourning voices at the feet of Tinirau--_
“_Kiss those feet with sobbing tidings: Hinauri is no more._
“_She will never come again. No distant dawn will bear her feet, no sun ray bring her back to life._
“_Alas! Alas! the wild white crane against the cloud a moment shows her shining wing, then all is dark and all is lost._”
He paused for a moment on the brink of the abyss--a torchlight picture framed in the gloom of his ancient temple. For a moment his eyes were raised as if his glance could pierce through the darkness and beyond the cavern’s roof; then his voice rang out again in fiercer tones:
“_She stays not! neither will I stay! I’ll fling me to the dark! Ngha!_
“_Down, down into the black abyss, that I may gain the sparkling stars and look into her eyes once more._”
As a soul plunges down into the world of spirits from the heights of gloomy Reinga, so he hurled himself headlong into the abyss, lighting the way to death with his blazing torch. The sight of it wrung a cry from me. I slid down the rope and made my way to the brink of the abyss, where I leaned forward, gazing into the darkness. Far down a light burns still and clear--a night-lamp by a hero’s bedside. For a moment I think I see its ray light up the image of Zun the Terrible, for ever gazing upwards through the night. The love that does not die is stamped upon the granite face. “I will return,” is graved indelibly upon his breast, and the hands that graved it are clasped above his heart. The leaping flame springs up, and all is dark again. _Kia kotahi ki te Ao: kia kotahi ki te Po_: Ngaraki is dead, but clings to Life in the darkness.
While I remained standing on the brink of the abyss, full of a savage pathos for the noble Maori chief, as well as with sorrow for his goddess, my ear caught something unusual. A dull roar came up from the depths, faint and far away; could it be that the overflow from the lake had found a bottom at last? I listened intently, and even as I did so the sound seemed to deepen. Was this the work of the rolling stone which Ngaraki had launched from the mysterious lever in the Place-of-Many-Chambers, or had the great round rock which he had rolled down after the Vile Tohunga’s head blocked the channel and dammed the water back?
Whatever was the cause, I soon came to the conclusion that the water was rising rapidly in the abyss below the abyss. It would fill the gulf, and then would flow out through the giants’ window into the fissure beyond. But while concluding the matter thus there came back into my mind the words of Te Makawawa in reference to the ancient tradition of the mysterious lever: “When it is raised all the ways of the temple will be closed.”
I was about to follow this matter up and see for myself, when there was a sound like a great gush of water in the lake as if another sluice gate had been unbarred in its depths. Then I heard the increase of the flood as it hissed and tore through the aperture in the partition and fell into the darkness of the abyss. Presently the change was marked again by a louder thunder from the depths. In the midst of this I heard a shout from the direction of the gulf. I hastened towards it, and, midway on the path that led to the giants’ window, encountered Grey and his wife. Grey, the man who had forgotten, looked into my eyes without the slightest sign of recognition and said:
“Look there! What is to be done? That is the way out--I travelled it quite lately--and it’s closing up--my wife tells me there are two more here besides yourself. Where are they?”
I followed the direction of his finger, and saw what startled me. The moon was just showing above the sill of the giants’ window, and its light glinted on the under surface of a tremendous hewn stone that had already descended half way down over the upright bars like a colossal shutter.
“I know what has happened,” Miriam Grey was saying hurriedly; “the lever in the heart of the mountain has been raised, and all the apertures will be closed. Where is Crystal--Hinauri--where is she?”
“High up in the mountain,” I said slowly, for I had not the heart to tell them that she was infinitely higher than the highest mountain on earth. “Kahikatea will take her up through the roof by the way he came down. There is yet time for you to escape by the giants’ window.” Turning to Grey I added, “You say there is a way?”
“Yes,” he replied; “I remember the way perfectly, but it requires a rope.”
I glanced at the opening which still remained as the great shutter seemed to be descending slowly, and guessed there was time.
“Wait here,” I said to Miriam, “and, for the present, good-bye. If we meet again it will be at Wakatu.”
There was much more to say, but no time to say it. I grasped her hand, and with “Follow me, Grey, I will find you a rope,” I turned away.
She was a brave woman. “Good-bye, and God bless you; I trust you with my child.” This was all she said as she stood there against the rock to wait for her husband’s return.
With all haste I hurried along the level path, followed by Grey. Round the buttress on to the margin of the lake we went, and there we came to a halt, for the water flung back from the fountain, which now rose several yards high in the centre of the lake, was washing over our feet. But the halt was only for a moment. Knee deep in the wash and ripple that swamped the margin, I led the way round until we reached the place where the rope was hanging. There I handed the torch to Grey and said: “Wait here; I will cut the rope above and throw it down.”
With feverish haste I climbed up, and, when I had gained the upper landing, drew my sheath knife and severed the rope.
“Hold your end and stand away round the wall,” I shouted down to Grey. “Stand away, and I will drop it.”
I heard his answer from below, signifying that I might heave it down. I did so, and then heard him call up: “But what about you?”
“Make haste,” I yelled down; “damn it all, make haste. Save your wife, never mind about me.” Well I knew that my life was worth very little either to myself or anybody else.
He made some reply which I could not catch, then shouted “Good-bye! good-bye!” and something else which was lost in the tumult of the lake below. I watched his torch disappear round the buttress, and then fell to gazing at the small stream of moonlight that now pierced through the darkness above the abyss. Would Grey and his wife get through the giants’ window before that ray was darkened altogether? I prayed that it might be so.
In less than three minutes I was sure of it, for something obstructed the ray for a moment, and then it shone on clear as before, though perceptibly less. They had passed through, and now in a few minutes the giants would close their window for ever.
But before the ray died out it fell above the outer lip of the huge basin, and revealed the form of the wizard negro still standing there spellbound.
What would be his end? I knew the abyss was filling; by the roar of the falling water I judged it was filling rapidly. The picture of that figure in the moonray standing, as soon he must, with nothing but his head above water, unable to stir hand or foot to save himself, moved me strangely. I would release him from his bondage and let him have at least a rat’s chance of drowning on his own responsibility. But I feared it was too late. Would he hear my voice against the roar of the waters? At least I could try. Standing up, I shouted to him across the intervening space:
“Servant of the Brotherhood of Huo! My voice is the only thing--you are free to save yourself if you can.”
He heard me. I saw him crouching down on the rock. Then, as the moonray dwindled away to nothing, there came from the darkness the same wild, unearthly laugh I had heard so often before. It echoed from a thousand crags in the walls and roof of the vast cavern, and was finally bandied about in the central vault like the voice of a fiend chuckling to himself. But he could do no harm now; sooner or later he must drown like any rat.