"Leaves of the Bible! If this is the use they make of the sacred writings, I pity the missionaries. They will have difficulty in founding Maori libraries."
"And what passage of the Scriptures have these natives fired at us?" asked Glenarvan.
"A mighty promise of God," replied Captain Mangles, who had also read the paper. "It bids us hope in Him," added the young captain, with the unshaken conviction of his Scottish faith.
"Read, John," said Glenarvan.
He read this line, which had so strangely reached them:
"Because he hath set his love upon Me, therefore will I deliver him:" Psalm xci. I.
"My friends," said Glenarvan, "we must make known the words of hope to our brave and dear ladies. Here is something to reanimate their hearts."
Glenarvan and his companions ascended the steep paths of the peak, and proceeded towards the tomb, which they wished to examine. On the way they were astonished to feel, at short intervals, a certain trembling of the ground. It was not an irregular agitation, but that continued vibration which the sides of a boiler undergo when it is fully charged. Steam, in large quantities, generated by the action of subterranean fires, seemed to be working beneath the crust of the mountain.
This peculiarity could not astonish people who had passed between the warm springs of the Waikato. They knew that this region of Ika-Na-Maoui is volcanic. It is like a sieve, from the holes of which ever issue the vapors of subterranean laboratories.
Paganel, who had already observed this, called the attention of his friends to the circumstance. The Maunganamu is only one of those numerous cones that cover the central portion of the island. The least mechanical action could provoke the formation of a crater in the clayey soil.