INTRODUCTION.
The way in which the record of Wanaki, which it has been my compulsory task to edit, was placed in my hands forms not the least remarkable episode between these covers. On a certain night two months ago I was sitting in my library in Harley Street, writing. It was late, and I could hear the tinkling of many little bells in the street as the cabs brought home the gay theatre-goers. As I wrote on, the tinkling of these little bells grew to a merry chorus, yet it did not disturb me: I was used to it. But the night advanced, and the bells seemed to grow tired as the cabs rolled by less frequently. Then gradually I began to feel that a disturbing element was creeping in between me and my work. Indefinable at first, this feeling grew, until at last I recognised it as a vague expectancy, and, as each cab passed, I caught myself listening to hear if it would stop at the street door. This struck me as being a very absurd state of mind, for no one was due, and a patient would hardly call at that time of night. Yet the strange feeling of expecting someone grew upon me at such a rate that I put down my pen and listened in spite of myself as the cabs with the tinkling bells went by. At last, after a longer interval than usual, my ears fastened upon the bells of a vehicle that seemed to be approaching from beyond the horizon. They drew near rapidly, and the absurd feeling of expecting someone grew still more intense. Laughing at the stupidity of it, I rose from my chair and walked to and fro, wondering what had happened to my nerves, usually so strong. Suddenly I stood still. The rapid motion of the horse’s hoofs was slacking down. Would the cab pull up at the street door? Of course not—it would pass. It had almost done so when there was the sound of the scraping hoofs of a horse suddenly reined in, a violent agitation of the little bells, and then the cab drew up at the street door. I heard a ring at the bell, and then sat down in my chair to wonder what this late visitor wanted, and, above all, to ask myself again and again how I could account for my extraordinary feeling of expecting someone who was unexpected, and yet had arrived. While I was thus engaged my man Gapper came in with a face that announced the end of the world, and spoke in a voice which betrayed, in the same trembling breath, an overwhelming desire to impart news and a suffocating fear of being heard.
“There’s a strange man in the ’all, sir,” he said, “as wants to see you. I gave ’im to understand, sir, as you wouldn’t hever see no one after eleving, but ’e looks at me ’ard and says quiet like, ‘You will do as I tell you,’ ’e says.”
“What is he like?” I asked.
“Well, ’e looks to me as hif ’e ’ad just come ’ome from a fancy-dress ball. ’E’s got feathers in ’is ’air and drorin’s on ’is face, and a sort of long fur cloak and—but there it is, sir, I can’t describe ’im; ’e’s a-standin’ there hin the ’all just as if the ’ole place belonged to ’im. Shall I ask him to go away?”
Gapper’s knees were knocking together. I saw that he was morally incapable of asking this strange visitor to go. I myself felt slightly unstrung, and it may have been my fear of showing this that prompted me to say abruptly:
“Show him in, Gapper; I expect it’s some friend playing a joke upon me. At all events I will see him.”
Evidently relieved by these words, my man retired, and presently, with a humility born of a fresh access of fear, ushered in my visitor. He then retreated nimbly and closed the door behind him.
As the stranger stood in the centre of the room I rose from my seat in unfeigned astonishment. Well might Gapper have thought that he had just returned from a fancy-dress ball, except for the simple, and to me obvious, fact that he was not an impersonation at all, but the genuine thing. In fact, my visitor, who had been, so to speak, heralded by my inexplicable sensations, was a tall and stately Maori chief, dressed in a long robe or war-cloak of dog’s hair, which fell almost to his sandalled feet. He had both spear and meré, and in his hair were the white-tipped feathers of the huia. He was young, almost handsome, and his face was tatooed in a way that denoted an exalted rank, while in his fierce black eyes, in his noble bearing, in his profound composure as he waited for me to speak, one might have read his right to lead men, or else to drive them before him. He seemed to have come right out of the far King Country into my library at one stride, so uncivilised was his appearance. My surprise was immediately giving way to a feeling, half of admiration, half of fear, for, after my unwonted sensations preceding his arrival, I was assailed with the thought that there was a mysterious power about the man—a thought materially strengthened by his perfect ease and conscious dignity.
“May I ask your name?” I said with a brave attempt to appear complaisant.
“I am Aké Aké,” he replied, speaking in good English; “Aké Aké Rangitane, the son of Ngaraki, who was the son of Te Makawawa, who was the son of——, but O man of another race, who is to do my bidding, I will not relate to you my ancestry. It would take many moons to do that; many thousand generation boards would not contain it, for lo! it stretches back to a far-off age of which your wise men know nothing. O Pakeha, the blood of the Great River of Heaven, which flowed down from the skies before the darkness of ancient night fell upon the earth, runs in my veins.”
I looked at him narrowly. There was no denying that his aspect was that of a man whose blood knew well its own unbroken channel through the ages. Something in his eyes, something more in his stately aspect, and a very great deal in the fierce, sudden nature hidden beneath his utter serenity, constrained me to take him solemnly.
“You come to me in a strange way, Aké Aké,” I said; “like a man from another world. Tell me why you have come, and what it is you want of me.”
Instantly he awoke from his apathy, and his eyes quickened with the fire that had been slumbering.
“Hearken, then, O man of another land, and I will tell you why I have come. The Great Tohungas of the Earth spoke to me in my sleep and said, ‘Aké Aké, thou art the last of our ancient blood; the temple of the ages is closed for ever and needs no longer a guardian priest to keep its ancient secrets; therefore thou must withdraw into the sky, leaving no son behind thee. But thy last act is under our guidance. Seek out the record of one Wanaki, the “Pakeha Maori,” and take it beyond the great Ocean of Kiwa to the land of the mighty King who rules the whole world. There give it to the man whose face thou hast seen in dreams, and to whom we will guide thee. Bid him make a book of this record, so that, though thy race is fading away, all knowledge of its secrets may not die with thee.’ I followed the word of the Great Tohungas, and when I reached this great city I was taught your name and the name of your abode. Then, to-night I discarded my pakeha garments, dressed myself as becomes a Maori chief, and came to find you. Without doubt I have been guided aright, for your face is the face that I saw in my dreams.”
He paused, scanning my features still more intently. I was amazed beyond measure at his strange words. The affair was getting more and more inexplicable.
“But why,” I gasped; “why have I been selected to make a book of Wanaki’s narrative?”
“Because you have sought to discover traces of some lost secrets in our lore,” he replied. “I will speak your own words to you—they are words which you put into a book. ‘We know not the ancient glory of the Maori nor yet the wisdom which lies hidden behind his karakia.[1] Some have said that the strange words of his incantations mean nothing, but there is reason for believing that they are the surviving fragments of a priestly language which was spoken many thousands of years ago by a pre-Maori race dwelling on a great southern continent, of which the present land of the Maori is but a small remaining part.’ Those are your own words, O Pakeha, and it is because you have had such long thoughts of the Maori and the race that came before the Maori that I have been bidden to seek you out.”
“Yes,” I said, “those are my words; I remember them. But what do you know of the race that was before the Maori’s coming from Hawaiki?”
He was silent, seeming unwilling to speak of that race. At length he said, “Far back in the ages my ancestors were of that race, but when the Maori came they joined hands with them. Here is the gulf that you cannot bridge in the history of our land; and, O Pakeha, it is unbridged save by the platted rope of our priesthood, woven without break, and stretching across the ages of Day and Night and Day. Here before you is what seems the end of this rope; hidden in a great light of long ago is the rock to which the other end is bound. But I have not come to you to reveal the ancient wisdom which has come down to me from the beginning of the world.” He laid his spear in the hollow of his left arm and drew from within his robe a small bundle, wrapped in a piece of neatly woven flaxcloth.
“This is the record of Wanaki,” he said, placing it upon the table before me. “Make a book of it, and let not the moon die twice before you have completed the task. That is my word, and behind it lies the word of the Great Tohungas of the Earth.”
“But, my dear, good man,” said I, with rising temper, “Great Tohungas of the Earth or no Great Tohungas of the Earth, I have other things to do. I have other books to make; look here”—I turned to the piles of manuscript on my table and placed my hand upon the largest—“this book must be made before the moon has died once.”
“I care not,” he replied imperturbably. Then there was a flash of quick anger in his eyes as he added: “You will obey my word, for the cursing power of Ngaraki, my father, dwells in my eyes, and before him no man could say ‘I will not!’ and live.”
At this barbarous attempt to browbeat a civilised human being with the mention of a savage hereditary cursing power I was so amused that I forgot both my anger and my fear and laughed loudly. But even while my laugh was at its height my glance encountered that of my visitor, and I became unaccountably silent. There was a fierce power in his eyes which backed up his words, and my ill-timed amusement gave place to a cold fear. What was this? His gaze held me as if in a grip of iron, and though I struggled inwardly to free myself from its strange hold, I was unable to do so. I tried to rise from my seat, but could not. I made a frantic effort to cry out, but my voice refused to act. With those terrible black eyes burning into mine I shivered and fell back in my chair. Then I saw, or thought I saw, behind the form of Aké Aké a line of grim and stately chiefs, standing in an unbroken chain, which, ascending gradually into the far horizon, finally disappeared in the distant mists of antiquity. As I looked sleep pressed my eyelids down with a masterful hand, and I sank into oblivion.
When I awoke half an hour later and found myself alone, my first thought was that I had dreamed fantastically, and I had almost confirmed myself in this conclusion when my glance fell upon the package lying upon the table. I snatched it up and got at the contents. I soon saw that it was indeed what my visitor had said—the record of one Wanaki. With this record in my hand I could hardly dismiss the matter as a dream. I rang the bell, and Gapper came in smiling, just as he is wont to smile when some caller has been generous. I questioned him as to whether he had let the visitor out.
“O yes, sir,” he replied; “some time ago.”
“Well, Gapper,” I asked carelessly, “what did you think of him, eh?”
Gapper grinned. It was the grin dedicated to gold, not mere silver.
“In the first place ’e was a gentleman, sir,” he said; “and in the second place ’e kep’ up ’is disguise remarkable well. ’E looked like a lord, sir. Might I make so bold as to ask who ’e reely was?”
“He is Aké Aké,” I said severely; “Aké Aké Rangitane, a great Maori chief. And look here, Gapper, if you had as many pounds in the bank as that chief has eaten men in his time you would be a rich man.”
My man gaped at me in astonishment; then, when he was fully assured that I was not joking, he went away and double-bolted all the doors and windows.
But the record of Wanaki’s adventures—what of it? If the reader will permit me to stand talking a little longer in another man’s doorway, as an old writer of prefaces puts it, I have yet something to say in reference to the ‘Pakeha Maori’s’ manuscript. At first I tossed it aside as worthless, willing to take my chance of the wrath of the Great Tohungas of the Earth, for it was written in such an indecipherable hand that I could not bring myself to bear upon it. I then set to other work that had to be completed by a certain date; but, though all was plain sailing with this other work, I could make no headway. My subject was void of difficulties, but I seemed to be beating against a heavy wind. Several days passed in this fashion, and it struck me that if the cursing power of Aké Aké and all his ancestors was not at work upon me, I was afflicted with some obscure nervous ailment.
At length, late one night, after many days of unrest, I took up the manuscript again and managed to get through the first page, from which I gathered that Wanaki’s adventures were of a remarkable character. Then I felt drawn to follow his narrative, and would certainly have done so but for the fact that his handwriting was a thing that made me long for a cursing power of my own; I could not arrive at its hidden meaning. When almost in despair, however, a bright idea came to me. I would send the record to a man skilled in the art of deciphering the indecipherable—I refer to my typist. I sent it to him, and before one moon had died I received it back with the mortifying assurance that as my handwriting had proved considerably clearer than usual, he would be pleased to make a proportionate abatement of the usual terms.
Now the second moon is nearly dead, and I have prepared the work for the press. I am resolved it shall leave my hands this very night, for, after a careful study of this remarkable history of Wanaki’s adventures, I am fain to admit that, even when I smile most incredulously at his experiences of the ancient magic of the Maori, and the terrible cursing power of the hereditary priesthood, I shiver most coldly at the thought that if the third moon sees my task unfinished, I shall again be listening for a cab to stop at the street door, for a bell to ring, and then—and then it will come to facing the inscrutable eyes of Aké Aké. Reader, I will be frank with you. The set scientific smile of scorn with which I, as a sane and sober medical man, am wont to ornament my face at the mention of the cursing formulæ of savage magic, and at other things contained in the record of Wanaki, is now a matter of long habit, and will continue until death comes with a powerful screw-wrench to remove it; but behind that bold front of second nature there lies a disquieting memory of a moment when, laughing, I encountered the gaze of Aké Aké, and was bound by some mysterious spell to do his bidding.
The Maori chief has not visited me again, but I have just received a letter from him with another, from a third person, enclosed. Both of these I have inserted at the close of Wanaki’s narrative, which I now lay before the reader in the following pages.
The Editor.