"Let us have a look round," said the coachman, turning to Whero, "before your mother gets here."
"I have been watching in the long grass all night," sobbed the boy; "and when the tramp of the last footsteps died away, I crept out and groped my way in the darkness. I got to the door, and called to my father, but there was no answer. Then I turned again to the bush to find my mother, until I heard our own horse neigh, and I thought he had followed me."
Ottley soothed the poor boy as best he could as they surveyed the scene of desolation. The fences were all pulled up and flung into the lake, and the gates thrown down. The garden had been thoroughly ploughed, and every shrub and tree uprooted. The patch of cultivated ground at the back of the whare had shared the same fate.
It was so late in the autumn Ottley hoped the harvest had been gathered in. It mattered little. The empty storehouse echoed to their footsteps. All, all was gone. They could not tell whether the great drove of pigs had been scared away into the bush or driven off to the pah. Whero was leading the way to the door of the principal whare, where he had last seen his father. In the path lay a huge, flat stone smashed to pieces. The hard, cold, sullen manner which Whero had assumed gave way at the sight, and he sobbed aloud.
Edwin was close behind them; he took up a splinter from the stone and threw it into the circle of bubbling mud from which it had been hurled. Down it went with a splash—down, down; but he never heard it reach the bottom.
"Did that make anything rise?" asked Ottley anxiously, as he looked into the awful hole with a shudder.
"They could not fill this up," retorted Whero exultantly. "Throw in what you will, it swallows it all."
To him the hot stone made by covering the dangerous jet was the embodiment of all home comfort. It was sacred in his eyes—a fire which had been lighted for the race of Hepé by the powers of heaven and earth; a fire which nothing could extinguish. He pitied the Ingarangi boy by his side, who had never known so priceless a possession.
"Watch it," said Ottley earnestly. "If anything has been thrown in, it will rise to the surface after a while incrusted with sulphur; but now—" He pushed before the boys and entered the whare.
There lay Nga-Hepé, a senseless heap, covered with blood and bruises. A stream of light from the open door fell full on the prostrate warrior. The rest of the whare was in shadow.