They followed on, listening to the shouts, which came nearer, till Ngati suddenly took a sharp turn round a great buttress of lava, and entered a wild, narrow, forbidding-looking chasm, where on either side the black, jagged masses of rock were piled up several hundred feet, and made glorious by streams which coursed among the delicately green ferns.
“Look’s damp,” said Jem, as Ngati led them on for about fifty yards, and then began to climb, his companions following him, till he reached a shelf about a hundred feet up, and beckoned to them to come.
“Does he think this here’s the rigging of a ship, and want us to set sail?” grumbled Jem. “Here, I say, what’s the good of our coming there?”
The chief stamped his foot, and made an imperious gesture, which brought them to his side.
He pointed to a hole in the face of the precipice, and signed to them to go in.
“Men—boat,” he said, pointing, and then clapping his hand to his ear as a distant hail came like a whisper up the gully, which was almost at right angles to the beach.
“He wants us to hide here, Jem,” said Don; and he went up to the entrance and looked in. A hot, steamy breath of air came like a puff into his face, and a strange low moaning noise fell upon his ear, followed by a faint whistle, that was strongly suggestive of some one being already in hiding.
“I suppose that’s where they keeps their coals, Mas’ Don,” said Jem. “So we’ve got to hide in the coal-cellar. Why not start off and run?”
“We should be seen,” said Don anxiously. “Don’t let us do anything rash.”
“But p’r’aps it’s rash to go in there, my lad. How do we know it isn’t a trap, or that it’s safe to go in?”