The pakeha, changing his position so that Rupé could see him, explained his predicament.
"Remain where you are," said Rupé, "and I will lower a rope to you."
In a few minutes a line, made of split leaves of the harakeke flax, knotted together, and strengthened with aka, or bush-vines, was thrown down the cliff to Bent. The upper end of the hastily made bush rope the old man had made fast to a tree on the cliff-top.
"Send your pikau up first, and you can follow," ordered Rupé.
Bent tied his flax basket of eels and honey to the line. Rupé hauled it up, lowered the line again, and Bent tied it round his body below the arms. Then the chief and his stalwart daughter hauled the light-weight pakeha safely to the summit of the wall.
Rihi and her father both wept as they took Bent's hands, so great was their relief at finding their pakeha safe and sound. Rupé told the white man that he had feared he was dead.
"Why?" asked Bent.
"Why? There are a score of armed Hauhaus searching the forest for you, and had they found you before I did they would have killed you."
The old chief explained, further, that when Bent did not return to the bush-village the previous night, his fellow-eelers had come to the conclusion that he had given them the slip on the journey home, and had made off to the white men's camp. So at daylight a party set out to scour the forest round the kainga, fully intending, if they found the deserter in hiding, to summarily execute him. Old Rupé, too, had taken to the forest with his daughter—before daylight—but for a different reason: he did not believe his pakeha would desert him, and as he concluded Bent had lost himself in the bush, he had kindled a fire on the most prominent hillside in the forest, in the hope that the wanderer would see it and make his way towards it. His bush-craft was successful, and no doubt it saved Bent's life, for had he gone wandering on he would most probably have run into the arms of his hunters.
So the three of them—the rangatira and his "tame white man" and the Maori girl—travelled homeward as quickly and as quietly as they could, seldom speaking to one another for fear some prowling Hauhau should hear them. "Even now, if they find you out in the forest," said Rupé, "I may not be able to save you. Be cautious, for this may be your last day!"