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.