Early next morning Bent climbed a tall rata-tree near his bivouac and scanned the wild country round. Nothing but forest, forest everywhere—vast waves of deep verdure sweeping away and away as far as the eye could see. No sign of human life—no guiding landmark. Somewhere beneath that impenetrable pall of green that clothed everything were his people. But where?
Ah! What is that blue, thin coil rising slowly out of the forest far ahead, westward?
A curl of smoke! A Hauhau camp; perhaps some hunting-party cooking their morning meal.
The white man joyfully descended from his tree-perch, and quickly getting into his pikau straps again, set out at as fast a pace as his load would allow him, steering in the direction of the smoke.
He toiled on and on, breaking through jungles of undergrowth and clinging vines, over logs and through watercourses, until suddenly he found himself at the foot of a rocky wall which rose perpendicularly above him for about thirty feet.
He endeavoured to clamber up the precipice, assisting himself by the forest roots and creepers which hung in trailing coils down its face, but they gave way under his weight when he had ascended but a few feet, and he found himself at the base of the cliff again, debating whether to try the climb again, or make a long detour, and perhaps lose the run of the point for which he was heading.
Suddenly, high above him, a voice cried, "Who's there?"
The startled white man, peering through the tangle of foliage and creepers, saw a man standing on the cliff-top—a Maori girt with a flax mat, a gun in his hand. It was Rupé, his chief and owner.
The Maori was gazing intently down the cliff. With him was a woman, the old chief's daughter Rihi, who was Bent's wife. He had heard the noise made by Bent in his attempt to scale the cliff, and he noticed the shaking of the bush-vines and leaves that screened the lower part of the wall, but the white man was so far hidden from his vision, Bent called to him: "Don't fire, Rupé! It is I, your pakeha—Tu-nui-a-moa!"
"E tama!" cried the old chief. "I am glad indeed! I came out searching for you, for your life is in great danger."