"We are going to take them their supper," added Whero. "When the men are eating I can get my father to hear me; then I put this bag in his hands and tell him all. Then, and not till then, will it be safe for you to be seen."
"The Ingarangi boy lies safely here," whispered Marileha, smiling, happy in her womanly device for keeping the peace. "My skirt shall cover him. I leave not the canoe. You, Whero, shall take from my hand and carry to your father the supper we bring to himself and his people."
Edwin guessed what Marileha's anticipation might embrace when he found his pillow was a bundle of carefully-prepared flax fibres, enveloping little bunches of chips—the splints and bandages of the bush. Edwin had a vision of broken heads and gaping spear-thrusts, and a ride in an ambulance after the battle. What had taken place that day?
But the question was shortly answered. They were not bound for the lake, or the ruins of the Rota Pah, but the nearer wreck of the ford-house.
His visions grew in breadth and in detail; smoke and fire were darkening their background when the canoe stopped at the familiar boating-stairs. What did he see? A party of dusky-browed and brawny-armed fellows hard at work clearing away the last remains of the overturned stables.
Mr. Hirpington, giving away pipes and tobacco with a lavish hand, was walking in and out among them, praising the thoroughness of their work, and exhorting them to continue.
"Pull them down," he was repeating. "We will not leave so much as a stick or a stone standing. If the bag is there we will have it. We must find it."
The emphasis on the "will" and the "must" called forth the ever-ready smiles of the Maori race. Mother and son were radiant.
With a basket of cakes in his hand and a joint of roast-pig on a mat on his head, Whero marched up the landing-stairs, and went in amongst his countrymen as they threw down their tools and declared their work was done.
He was talking fast and furiously in his native tongue, with many outbursts of laughter at the expense of his auditors. But neither Edwin nor Mr. Hirpington could understand what he was saying, until he flung the bag at his father's feet with a shout of derision—the fifth commandment being unknown in Maori-land.