"Stop your antics," said Hal, cowering against the gigantic trunk which was sheltering Mr. Lee from the keen winds, "and tell us what that means." He pointed to a huge white thing towering high above his head, with open beak and outstretched claw—a giant, wingless bird, its dry bones rattling with every gust.
"It is a skeleton," said Edwin, walking nearer to it to take off the creepy feeling it awakened.
"It is a moa," said Whero, continuing his dance—"the big old bird which used to build among these hills until my forefathers ate him up. They had little to eat but the fern, the shark, and the moa, until the pakeha came with his pigs and his sheep. There may be one alive in the heights of Mount Cook, but we often find their skeletons in desolate places." Then Whero went up close to the quivering bones, and cried out with exultation when he discovered the hole in its breast through which the spear of the Hepé had transfixed this ancient denizen of his fortress.
"It is an unked place," muttered Hal, "but dry to the feet."
He lit his pipe, and settled himself on the roots of the tree for a smoke and a sleep. He had been existing for so many days in the midst of the stifling clouds of volcanic dust and the choking vapours from the ground, through which chloride of iron gas was constantly escaping for a space of fifty-six miles, that the purer air to which they had ascended seemed like life, and robbed the place of its habitual gloom.
Even Whero, with the Maori's reverential horror of a dead man's bones, coiled himself to sleep in the rustling fern by Beauty's side, his dream of future greatness undisturbed by the rattling bones of the moa, and the still more startling debris which whitened amidst the gnarled and twisted roots.
But it was not so with Edwin. He sat beside his father, feeding him with the undiluted bovril—for water failed them on the rocky height—and wondering how long the slender store would last. He refused himself the smallest taste, and bore his hunger without complaint, hiding the little jar with scrupulous care, for fear Whero should find it and be tempted to eat up the remainder of its contents. So he kept his silent vigil. The storm-clouds cleared, and the grandeur of the view upon which he gazed banished every other thought. He could look down upon the veil of mist which had hidden the sacred mountains, and Tarawera rose before him in all its grandeur. He saw the awful rent which had opened in the side of the central peak, and from which huge columns of smoke and steam were fitfully ascending. He watched the leaping tongues of flame dart up like rockets to the midnight sky, once more ablaze with starshine, and a feeling to which he could give no expression seemed to lift him beyond the present,—"Man does not live by bread alone."
CHAPTER XV.
WHO HAS BEEN HERE?
"Edwin," said Mr. Lee, when he saw his son shivering beside him in the gray of the wintry morning, "what is the matter with you? Have you had enough to eat?"