THE VILE TOHUNGAS OF THE PIT.
I must have sat there in the shadows nearly half an hour trying to
understand by what possible means the Maori tohunga had passed from
beneath that lake to the higher part of the cave. I was tolerably sure
that the water which now thundered down into the lake was the
deflected current of that which had formerly welled up from below, no
more no less in bulk, for the overflow into the abyss was neither
increased nor diminished by the change. Moreover, having witnessed
Ngaraki’s manœuvre with the long lever above the abyss, I felt
convinced that he had performed the same feat with a similar lever
under the lake, and I was strengthened in this conviction by the fact
that the dark thing which had reared its head above the water, where
it still remained at the back of the cascade, was obviously the end of
some rock which might serve that purpose.
The sunlight all this time had been slowly descending as the sun had
risen. Now its upper margin had disappeared over the margin of the
lake, and all above was getting dark again. No longer fearful of being
seen in the dim light, I crept round towards the cascade to inspect
the part of the rock which had appeared above the water. It was smooth
and rounded, and covered with black slime, appearing to be a portion
of a spar with hewn characteristics like the others. I was seized with
a wish to bring weight to bear upon this strange contrivance, and see
if it was balanced in any way. Accordingly I passed through the
battery of spray behind the cascade and secured the longest piece of
rimu I could find in the recess. Returning with this, I leaned forward
over the margin and gave a strong, steady push to the rock, but failed
to move it. It seemed as firm as the main rock on which I stood.
Evidently the raising of this lever opened a way for the water to come
down from above, and removed the pressure from some aperture below the
lake, thus leaving it free for the initiated to pass through.
When I attempted to review my position, I came to the conclusion that
until the water was shut off again by the great horizontal spar, I was
a prisoner in the cavern, unless I liked to take that plunge through
the opening in the side of the mountain. I went round the margin of
the lake and looked at it. The water was everywhere within six inches
of the continuous pathway of rock. It meant a dive of nearly twenty
feet before striking the current, and then there was no end of skill
required to avoid being bruised against the rocks in passing through.
I resolved not to try it--not just yet at all events. I had yet to
explore the cavern round the buttress and along the narrowing gulf
that led to the huge grating, so I determined to spend the remaining
time of my detention in discovering if possible what the lower parts
of the temple contained.
With great care I retraced my steps behind the cascade and round the
lake until I regained the darker shadows of the buttress. I made my
way on to the broad ledge, above which hung the wooden sprit of the
spar, and here, as I stood and gazed down into the abyss, I noticed
something which made my flesh creep. It was a simple thing perhaps,
but it touched me more nearly than anything I had as yet encountered
in that gloomy place. There, on the wall of the abyss, some hundreds
of feet below the basin, below the great spar hanging in space, I
could see all that was now left of the sunlight--a bright red patch
glistening upon the granite. Making my way a little further along to
the angle of the buttress, I could trace this shaft of light from the
abysmal depths up to the stupendous grating at the far end of the
gulf. It was the most glorious, and at the same time the most
awe-inspiring thing I have ever seen, this ray from the outer world
cutting through the darkness like a golden bar, and falling, all red,
upon the sheer wall far away below. It pointed to a depth at which my
brain reeled, but the dark which lay above it and the dark which
stretched below suggested a depth beyond the depth which was
positively awful to contemplate. I sat down upon the rocky lip of that
vast mouth of Porawa and gazed stupidly at this clear channel of
golden light running through the solid dark. The patch upon the wall
far down crept lower and lower, but found no floor. Was the place
indeed bottomless then?
As I asked myself this question the light faded away and all was gloom
again, save for a dull daylight that crept in for a little distance
through the giants’ window. A cloud had come before the sun. Now again
the ray came in like the thrust of a golden spear, then it was
withdrawn, and, though I waited for some time, it did not reappear.
With a great weight of awe and darkness upon me, I rose from the rock
resolved to reach that grating at the end of the gulf and there
restore myself with the ungarnished daylight. It was not, however,
without some recollection of what old Te Makawawa had said about the
Vile Tohungas of the Pit that I felt my way along the narrow ledge,
which seemed to have been hewn with design as an approach to the
grating. I felt I was going the right way to be cooked and eaten by
these same Vile Tohungas, wherever they might be in the darkness, but,
although naturally of a nervous disposition, I was always careless
whether I ran into unknown dangers with the right foot first or the
left, so I continued my way, holding on to the jagged points of the
wall with my right hand, while choosing every footstep with the utmost
care, for I was hardly the fool to risk a fall into the abyss, and
look for its ground floor head first without a light.
It took me nearly half an hour to travel that two hundred yards, but
once within fifty paces of the huge grating I could see more
distinctly. Soon I reached a spot beneath those tremendous bars, and,
looking up at them against the clouded sky without, saw clearly that
they must have been fashioned by the hand of man at some remote period
of the world’s history, concerning which our bravest anthropologists
are reticent, or speak only in whispers. Haeckel could show no
photographs of his speechless men of Lemuria, and many would have
laughed him down. Yet, if Haeckel had been with me on that
never-to-be-forgotten day when I explored that colossal place, he
would have wept for joy over those mighty stone bars, obviously hewn
by the hand of man out of the everlasting granite. There were four of
them, each fully thirty feet high. In places the action of air and
moisture had worn them very thin, and, as I seated myself on a broad
ledge that reminded me of a window sill, I heard the rising wind
making strange, weird chords as it swept these vibrating bars like the
strings of a gigantic harp.
The music of the wind playing through the bars of the giants’ window
reminded me of that ghostly hum of a phantom race which I had heard in
my dream. It rose and died away like a voice from the distant past,
calling up that peculiar feeling of “long, long ago,” until in my own
civilised way I became a veritable Tiki, and admitted that the ancient
temple was haunted by the wailing spirits of the giant sorcerers of
old. The men who had bound that great spar down with that huge round
stone--what else could have done it?--the men who had made the secret
way by which Ngaraki had disappeared beneath the lake, who had carved
the pathway out of the side of the abyss and fashioned this stupendous
window--the men of old who had done all this still haunted that
profound darkness down there, in which, perhaps, there were mysteries
of a stranger kind. Perhaps! certainly, at least, there was a pathway
leading down into the darkness on the opposite side to the one by
which I had come. I could see that plainly.
At length I roused myself from my reverie, and passing through the
stone bars, stood on a jagged platform without. Below was a great
fissure, and, facing me about forty yards beyond, was the rock which
formed the further boundary of this fissure. Its crest was just above
the horizon of the outer world. The depth of the fissure I could not
see, but it stretched some distance away to the left, where its
expansion was hidden by a bend in its course. On the left of the rock
on which I stood was nothing but a small crag, and beyond that the
mountain wall, but on the right was a rugged pathway, shelving
fearfully, but still a pathway, leading round the head of the fissure
to the other side.
I determined to see what came of this, and taking off my boots to get
a better foothold on the shelving rock, I followed it. I never fully
realised what a coward I was until I got to the other side and found
the cold perspiration rolling off my face. It was a blind pathway--at
least it seemed so, for it came to a sudden halt, as if the
pre-historic workmen had given it up. I went down on my chest and
looked over, but saw nothing but the gloomy bottom of the gulf far
below. I even took my little pocket mirror and held it so that I could
see beneath the rock below, but could make out nothing except a ledge
and a hole in the rock about twenty feet down. If it ever had been a
secret way it had long since been abandoned. No man could ascend from
below, yet it was possible one might reach that hole by means of a
rope. I retraced my steps and re-suffered my cold perspiration till I
reached the stone bars again.
A glance at my watch showed me it was now nearly twelve o’clock. I had
nothing to eat, so dinner was out of the question. The next best thing
was a smoke. There was no use in going back into the cavern, for I had
explored everything there except the lake, and candidly I did not feel
equal to exploring under water in the pitchy darkness, with a cataract
overhead and an outlet into an abyss below. Accordingly, I sought out
a little recess where the inner pathway joined the giants’ window
sill, and there put on my boots, after which I lighted my pipe and
smoked the smoke of the hungry.
The faint roar of the cataract within the cavern fell upon my ears
with a reassuring sound, for I knew that in all probability its
cessation would mark the time when Ngaraki would come down from his
unknown haunts above, perhaps to put up the spar again and leave the
exit clear. The hours passed slowly, but there was no change. Six
o’clock came, but still the cataract roared on with a dull, muffled
sound.
Whether it was the monotonous murmur of the falling water, or the
wailing music of the wind in the great stone bars, I do not know, but
I fell into a sleep, from which I was awakened some time later by the
full moon, which had just risen above the further boundary of the
fissure, and was shining full upon me. Its pale, silver light flooded
into the far interior of the cavern, and fell upon the crags of the
buttress, the sides of the basin, part of the spar, and the lake
beyond in the distance.
As I looked at these things and collected my faculties, I suddenly
realised that the roar of the cataract had stopped. The wind had
fallen; it no longer moaned in the stone bars. All was as silent as
the grave of things long dead.
My first thought was to see if the passage out of the mountain was
clear. Accordingly I made my way along towards the buttress--part of
the pathway was in the moonlight--but when I reached it I found that
the great spar was still hanging horizontal above the abyss, while the
moon rays flooding on to the surface of the lake showed the water
boiling up from below as when I had first seen it.
For a long half hour I crouched in the shadows there, thinking that
the fierce tohunga would again appear on the scene, but all was quiet:
nothing moving except the overflow into the abyss, and the moonlight
slowly creeping down after it.
At the end of this half hour a happy idea occurred to me. Perhaps the
moonlight would serve me to explore the abyss by the descending
pathway I had noticed on the other wall of the gulf. I retraced my
steps and stood again by the giants’ window. The moon was in a
cloudless sky, and one of the slanting beams fell upon a part of the
path some ten yards down. Beyond that the way continued in darkness,
but from a brief calculation I concluded that in less than an hour the
moonlight would illumine the very depths of the abyss; and if I
started at once on my hands and knees I might be able to keep up with
it.
It was hard work going down that rough road on all fours, but it was
the easiest way in the long run, for a single false step in the
darkness would have been fatal. There were no loose stones, but for
the first fifty yards the way was very uneven; and, though not steep
enough to reach the point where I had seen the patch of sunlight in
the morning, sufficiently downhill to make my progress slow and
laborious.
From time to time I glanced at the moonlight, which streamed past me
on the left, and fell on the perpendicular wall some hundred feet
below the basin. I saw more clearly now that as the night wore on and
the moon rose higher, its light would flood down into the profound
depths of the pit. Already it revealed the outstanding arm of some
crag projecting from the other side of the gulf.
When I had proceeded nearly a hundred yards along the descending way,
I found that by the help of a granite crag which stood out from the
wall, the path turned back upon itself. In this new direction it was
less uneven, and, after traversing its length for some fifty yards, I
discovered that it turned back upon itself again, leading down in the
original direction. It was strange work, crawling along an unknown way
in total darkness, and it was in vain that I endeavoured to make light
of it.
But the moonlight reassured me somewhat. It was now far below, resting
on the perpendicular granite, the bed rock of the world. But still it
crept down and down: where was the bottom of this fearful place?
Higher and higher rose the moon into the sky; lower and lower her rays
sank into the pit. The light was now striking down at an angle of
forty-five degrees to the horizontal, and as I scanned its whole
length it seemed to me like a solid silver bar strong enough to bear
one’s weight from the giants’ window away into the depths below.
The path was now smooth and even, and I gained on the moonlight. When
within sixty or seventy yards of its resting-place I was surprised to
find a blank precipice in front of me. At least, as I groped before me
with my hands, I felt that the rock took a sudden descent. Thinking
that this might be anything from a small precipice of three feet to a
yawning gulf of a thousand yards, I took a small stone and dropped it
over the edge. It fell on solid rock three or four feet below.
Scrambling down I found a level step, and, two paces further on,
another break leading down again to another step. It was not until I
had passed down over several of these that I came to the conclusion
that it was a regular staircase on a vast scale. Each step as I stood
on that below it reached nearly to my shoulder, and its breadth was
quite five feet. Surely I was getting down into the region of the Vile
Tohungas, but I was not yet on a level with the moonlight. Another ten
or twelve steps brought me to a spot where, thirty yards in front of
me, I saw the lower margin of the moonbeams strike upon the grey
granite wall, which as yet gave no hint of where it might find a
basement in the yawning gulf below. I sat down to wait, knowing that
between forty and fifty yards lower down the staircase must meet the
wall and turn back again upon itself in order to continue the descent.
Now that I had nothing to do but to await developments, I felt the
silence and the darkness resting like crushing weights upon my senses.
Not far away on the left I could hear the faint swish of the torrent
from the lake as it fell through the darkness, but no sound came up
from below to tell that it had found a bottom in that profundity
beneath. With my physical eyes I could see little, but the scene as I
viewed it in my mind’s eye was one of stupendous grandeur. Behind, far
above, was the moonlight flooding through the giants’ window, and
striking down through the dark until it fell upon the granite,
glistening with a pale grey before me. High overhead I knew the long
spar hung suspended, and below, shrouded in impenetrable gloom, was a
world of unknown things hidden in the blackness of darkness for ever.
Into this gloom I peered and waited. The edge of the light cut the
dark as sharp as a knife, leaving a surface like jet. By whatever
agency--human, natural, or diabolic--this pit had been hewn out of the
solid rock in the remote past, it seemed that on clear nights the moon
must still hew it out again from the solid dark. Here then was the
Pit: where were the Vile Tohungas?
I was aroused from my dreams of the “giants in those days”--the Vile
Tohungas who, according to Te Makawawa, inhabited this lower part of
the temple--by the moonlight impinging upon something standing up out
of the darkness towards my left. I fixed my eyes upon the object,
thinking it was the
[image: images/img107.jpg
caption: “THE LIGHT SANK LOWER AND SHOWED MORE. THEN TO MY ASTONISHED
EYES WAS UNVEILED, INCH BY INCH FROM THE DARKNESS, THE MASSIVE GRANITE
BROWS OF A GIGANTIC HEAD.”]
pinnacle of some outstanding crag. The light sank lower and showed
more. Then to my astonished eyes was unveiled, inch by inch from the
darkness, the massive granite brows of a gigantic head. Suddenly the
light flashed back from two bright red eyeballs, which shone like
petrified blood. The nose and mouth and chin then came into view, and
at length the whole head and neck stood out clear above the gloom.
The face of this image, which, if in due proportion, was evidently
thirty feet high, was strong and terrible. The eyes looked up at the
moon from beneath a receding brow, the nose was long and flat, and the
lower lip of the firm, evil mouth was curled as if in disdain. It was
a sinister face that thus greeted the Queen of the Night--sinister,
proud, and contemptuous in its power. This was perhaps the lord of a
fallen race--one of those
“Mighty pre-Adamites who walked the earth
Of which ours is the wreck.”
Perchance--who knew?--he might represent the mighty and terrible
Nephilim spoken of in the book of Enoch. Such thoughts as these
crowded through my brain as I watched.
But this giant image was not alone. Slowly, and one by one, other
heads appeared above the darkness, until I counted eleven. Huge
shoulders and chests now gleamed in the light of the moon. Eleven
pairs of red eyes flashed back her rays all bloodshot. The terrible
images seemed to be worshipping the great luminary, but it was the
worship of scorn, for each one looked up and curled his lips with a
calm half smile of masterly disdain. They were set in a semicircle,
and I saw that originally there might have been twelve, for there was
a gap in the line where one was missing. Thinking that this one might
be much smaller than the rest, I waited for the light to fall upon his
head, but the gap remained a gap, and I concluded that one of these
Vile Tohungas of the Pit had fallen from his place.
By this time the moonlight fell full thirty feet below the head of the
tallest statue, and showed that the images were merely busts, carved
only to the waist, where in each case the hands were clasped over the
abdomen. It showed also that the pedestals were each in one piece with
the statue. At last the light reached the floor of the abyss, and the
Vile Tohungas stood out in bold relief, casting great shadows upon the
granite wall behind. I saw their bases, and wondered to find that they
were of a piece with the bed rock. They had been fashioned bodily out
of the very plutonic ground-floor of the earth. Vying with the moon
herself in age, these figures had stood up from the floor of the abyss
to greet her with that scornful sneer upon their faces for untold
ages. My imagination travelled back through vast stretches of time
until I was weary and spent.
Suddenly a voice from the darkness to the left below startled me. A
voice in that dread place! It sent the blood back on my heart as with
crooked fingers I gripped the rock. In another instant, however, I
recognised the chanting of Ngaraki, and remembered the mention Te
Makawawa had made of cursing the Vile Ones of the Pit at the full of
the moon. By the alternations of his chanting with the strange silence
of the place, I knew that he was passing up and down there in the
darkness before the colossal figures. By the increasing vehemence of
his wild song I knew also that he was working himself up into a fury
of wrath. It was a chant more terrible and savage than that which I
had heard on the bank of the pool outside the mountain, more wild and
fierce than the hollow murmurs which had reached me from far above
while smoking at my camp fire. He may have been a savage then, but he
was something more, or something less, now. His words, ringing high
with growing rage, almost infernal in their intensity, struck a note
of horror in my listening soul:
“Ha! stand out; Lurkers in the Dark!
Come out of your hiding places;
Come out and stand up in the light of the moon.
Bold Taranaki cleaves the sky:
I call his ancient fire to eat your bones;
And Tongariro spits his rage aloft--Ngha!
’Twill fall and boil your heads in pitch.
The earth was young, the moon scowled from the sky
With laden breasts of poisoned milk,
And ye scowled up at her, vile sneering ones,
And drank destruction to the world.
The earth is old--your words are living still:
I will make you eat your words--Ngha!
I will make you eat the heads of the words you spoke to men!
To what shall I place my cursing power?
To your heads? They’re fit for the feast of a chief.
To what shall I place my cursing power?
To your eyes? I will snatch and eat them raw.
To what shall I place my cursing power?
To your bones? Ngha! Hooks for the shark god!
To what shall I place my cursing power?
To _your_ cursing power? Yes, to your cursing power!
Cursed in the light, writhe till the sun goes down, Ngha!
Cursed in the dark, writhe till the sun comes up, Ngha!”
At this point I caught sight of the fierce tohunga as he advanced each
time into the line of light to within a few paces of the granite
figures. His garment swayed about him as he rushed forward, his long
hair was dishevelled, and in his hand was a greenstone _meré_, which
glinted in the moonrays as he whirled it high above his head in the
rising fury of his cursing. Constantly advancing into the light like
an infuriated savage, and retreating again into the shadows with his
chin upon his breast, like a man in profound thought, he chanted
louder and more fiercely as his onward rushes became more terrible in
gesture and his retreating movements more profound in their repose.
Thus with hurricane and calm, hurricane and calm, he approached the
climax when the hurricane should end in frenzy and the calm in trance:
“Where is the pot shall hold your heads?
Where is the fire shall boil the pot?
I’ll spend my life in making it--Ngha!
Beyond Kaikoura’s rugged crest,
Beyond Raukawa’s rolling tide,
Are pots of pitch that seeth and hiss--
Mountain pots that roar and rage--
Lakes of fire whose billows roll and dance and leap into the air.
I hear them calling for your heads.
But fiercer fires have louder tongues:
A fire of raging hate is here,
Fed by deadly cursing--Ngha!
Here! Vile Lurkers! Here!”
He beat upon his breast to show them where the fire was hissing, and
seething, and roaring for their heads--
“’Ere Taranaki glowed with love
For fair Pihanga’s pure embrace,
’Ere thundering Tongariro burned
With angry thought to call her his,[17]
This fire was made with ancient hands.
Tawhaki fanned it with his breath
(His footsteps thunder in the sky
I curse you with his mighty breath--Ngha!
Now Taranaki’s fires are low:
He stands apart.
His flame is fled, his voice is still,
But mine will roar with countless tongues
That shake the earth with Ruaimako.
Nor storm, nor sea, nor Rangi’s tears
Can quench this raging fire of hate
Which leaps with curses at your throats--Ngha!
The time will come! the time will come!
Hinauri sleeps aloft and waits--
Lo! She starts, she moves, she wakes.
Now she takes the stranded spar
And hurls it down into the pit.
The crash is heard through all the earth--
See! I snatch your heads in triumph,
And place them in the mighty pot.
_Whaka ariki_[18]--your heads are mine
To boil in everlasting pitch.
Upokokohua--Ngha!”
Giving out the last few words in a voice of thunder that woke strange
rumbling echoes far above, the Maori rushed forward more like a demon
than a human being. I saw his strong face twisted with rage. I saw the
_meré_ gleam in the moonlight. Then with a final curse--a savage yell
which seemed to shake the granite statues of the dead--he hurled the
weapon at the head of the tallest image. Like a flash of green light
it darted through the moon rays. It struck upon the forehead of the
Vile Tohunga, and sparks came forth. With a crashing sound it struck
and then glanced off and fell upon the rock at my feet.
I picked up the _meré_ and looked again at the image. The mark of the
weapon showed clear and distinct above the left eyebrow. But the
sudden silence was unearthly. What of Ngaraki? I looked below, where
I had seen him halt in his last mad rush. He was lying prostrate on
his face upon the granite floor, motionless.
For some minutes I watched him, then, as he did not move, I climbed
down the remaining steps, and, keeping out of the moonlight as much as
possible, reached a point near to the prostrate figure. His hands were
stretched out before him, with fingers bent as if clawing at the rock,
and his head rested on one side, so that the moonlight showed the
glassy stare of one of his wide open eyes. I saw that he was either
dead or in a trance, and, as the tohunga Maori of the old régime was
not unlike Balaam, I concluded that Ngaraki had induced a trance in
the regular way, and would now remain like one dead perhaps for hours.
I lingered in the shadows watching him for some time; then my eyes
wandered mechanically round the semicircle of figures that towered
above. Surely I had made a mistake! Where was the gap left by the
Twelfth Tohunga?
Falling back a few paces I counted them again. Surely I had been
deceived. There were twelve of them, and the one that now stood where
the gap had been, raised his gigantic head above all the rest. His
face was not like those of the other images. There were traces of
nobility upon the brow, and the lips were more sad than disdainful.
But what struck me most was the fact that it seemed less substantial
than the others. Could it be a phantom of the imagination--a thing
conjured up before a mind unbalanced by the awful gloom of the place,
by hunger, and thirst, and fatigue? As I glanced again at the features
of the face, now more distinct than before, I passed my hand over my
forehead and felt it was wet. And well it might be, for the
unsubstantial image that stood before me had features and an
expression closely resembling, though in a gigantic way, those of
_Ngaraki himself_! With an impulse that I could not restrain, I
hurried across the open space, and, approaching the Twelfth Tohunga,
put out my hand to touch it. My fingers closed on empty air, and lo!
there was the gap again unoccupied as before.
At that moment the prostrate figure of the Maori moved upon the
ground, and I darted again into the darkness. Looking back I saw him
get up and shake himself, then move away into the shadows, whence he
presently reappeared with a piece of smouldering punk and a crooked
stick of wood. With these he sat down, and blowing the punk into a
blaze, ignited the wood, which, by its combustible qualities, I knew
to be a piece of the heart of the rimu. At length he held the torch
high above his head and came towards me, but, as he passed by on one
side of the figure near which I was standing, I crept round with the
shadow on the other. Unconscious of my presence, he kept on his way
until the light of his torch shone upon the body of water which fell
through space with mysterious sighs, whipping the air and throwing off
fine, floating spray as it went on its inexplicable course past the
very foundations of the mountain, for I now saw that it disappeared in
a circular opening in the ground floor--an abyss below the abyss.
A few paces before the brink of this road to Porawa the tohunga
paused, and, holding his torch high, shed its light upon the face of
another figure carved out of the granite, and standing apart with its
back turned upon its fellows. Again the eerie feeling assailed me, for
that rugged face gazing upwards through the dark was the face of the
Twelfth Tohunga, having the same strange resemblance to the Maori
himself. It was a noble countenance, and the contour of the lips
expressed, not disdain like the others, but humility and
sadness--perhaps repentance. Unlike the others, too, his hands were
joined over his heart. Perchance this was one of the Great Ones who,
as Te Makawawa had told us, had fallen from his high magic to consort
with the vile to trick them, and, having completed his design, had
turned his back upon their evil faces and set his image there apart to
gaze up through the age-long night towards that distant point far
above where the radiant Hinauri stood and waited. But how could I know
anything? I could only conjecture, for Ngaraki said no word, and I
could not read the strange characters engraven on the granite breast
of this Twelfth Tohunga.
From the chief’s attitude it was evident that this image perplexed him
sorely. Was it that he detected some resemblance of its face to his
own, or was he communing in spirit with the ancient being who had set
his image there with such ideal meaning? I could not tell, for he was
silent, and when at last he turned, torch in hand, and, holding his
arms up towards some vision he seemed to see above the darkness,
chanted some words that were full of tenderness and yearning, it was
in the ancient priestly language which few even of the _ariki_ can
understand. It was an unknown tongue to me, but I recognised it from
its likeness to some of the more ancient karakias or mystic hymns I
had often heard repeated as charms by the lesser tohungas. But the
meaning of Ngaraki’s gestures, and the soft inflections of his voice
showed plainly that he was addressing Hinauri as from the breast of
the Twelfth Tohunga standing in the darkness of the abyss. His cursing
mood had fallen from him like a garment, and in my heart I felt drawn
towards this strange savage; yet I knew that any profane person found
trespassing within the precincts of his sacred temple would find small
mercy at his hands, and therefore I took good care to keep out of his
way. I knew that if my presence was discovered I should be taken for
one of those visitors mentioned by Te Makawawa as “certain men who had
the fire of the Vile Tohungas in their eyes.” I should be accused of
planning the destruction of Hinauri, and then my head would be taken
and hung up in the abyss.
Ngaraki now turned in his ancient chant with a sudden quickening of
his words, and, as most men do when a thing appeals to them in a new
and surprising light, spoke in the tongue which came more fluent to
him:
“See! the city is silent”--he appeared to be interpreting the ancient
characters on the breast of the Twelfth Tohunga--“the great queen
sleeps above the darkness, my fellow seers have withdrawn into the
sky, and I, Zun, with these vile Brethren of Huo, am all that is left
of the people of the South. Mine is the task”--yes, Ngaraki seemed to
speak these words, which had been graven on the breast of the image,
as if they stated exactly his own case--“mine is the task to watch
over the tapu of the Bright One, and to this end I have cast myself
down to consort with the vile, to know them, to know their names, to
understand that of which they are the embodiment. And I record that I
know what I do, and none shall say that I fell through weakness. It is
done. The city is silent. The great queen sleeps above the darkness,
but she sleeps in safety, for I have confounded the Vile Ones with
their own magic. Lo, I have delivered a gross image into their hands
to bind down and oppress, and now in scorn I turn my back upon them
and gaze up towards the future of the world. They will return, and I
shall return, and in the far future Hia will arise and hurl their
gross image of Woman upon their heads. Then shall I conquer and
triumph over the Vile Ones and cast their lord into the pit that yawns
before me. And through the everlasting night I wait for Hia, praying
that life shall be long and death short; praying that the Rival of the
Dawn will obtain for man a life that ever rises again from the
darkness.”
He paused and seemed lost in thought; he had evidently read the words
in a new light. Then, as if seeking more of this new light from a
familiar thing, he passed to the back of the image and held his torch
up again till the rays fell upon the strange characters therealso
engraven. As one who reconsiders what has long puzzled him he read:
“We, the Brotherhood of Huo, laugh in scorn at the windy words of Zun.
He sees a phantom up there in the darkness. Hia is swallowed up in
Huo, whose body we have bound down to the rock for ever. Her spirit we
have bound also to the moon-face, that we may see to work our will. By
her bondage we shall live, but the life of Hia’s people shall be short
and their death long. They shall die and become like soil, and those
they leave behind them shall weep and wail and lament. Therefore we
laugh in scorn at the windy words of Zun. We shall live and rule the
world while our images endure.”
Ngaraki remained silent a space. Then the last I saw of him for many
weeks was characteristic of the man. He slowly approached the brink of
the abyss below the abyss, and stood for a moment gazing down. In a
second his sudden blood boiled over with a return of his former
fierceness and, pointing downwards with outstretched arm, while he
turned his head towards the chief of the Vile Ones, he yelled:
“Ngha! Destroyers of the Woman! My enemies of the ancient night! That
is the way by which your heads go down to the pot.”
A moment the torch was held aloft; then, with a fierce gesture, he
flung it into the depths below, and all was dark again, save for the
patch of moonlight, which had now retreated far along the level floor.
I said this was the last I _saw_ of Ngaraki, and that is quite true,
for though I came into close contact with him that very night, and
felt more of his strength than I have any desire to feel again, it was
all transacted in the darkness of that terrible place.