He spoke loudly now, confident that his friends were safe, and hoping thus to convey to them the assurance of his own escape.
Just then the cry of the weka arose almost under his feet, and George thought for a moment that he had disturbed a real bird, so natural was the startled note. The next, he remembered the signal they had agreed upon in case of separation, answered it, and instantly felt his arm grasped by some one who rose apparently out of the ground beside him.
'He! He!' Paeroa's voice sounded the note of caution and alarm. 'This way, Hortoni. Into the flax. Quick!'
Hard upon his brown friend's heels followed George, treading cautiously upon the rough track of manuka[[1]] which ran more or less interruptedly across the swampy ground in which the flax-bushes flourished. More than once his foot encountered bubbling ooze and slime; but Paeroa's hand was ever ready to help him over these gaps, and for a hundred yards or so they went along without serious mishap. Then the shouts and cries which came from scattered points about the plain seemed to concentrate in one long yell of triumph, a noisy hubbub arose at the point where the manuka pathway began, and a spattering volley followed them as they stumbled forward.
[[1]] Leptospermum scoparium.
'They are after us,' panted George, swerving involuntarily as a bullet smacked into a flax-bush a few inches from him; but Paeroa whispered a hurried instruction and, even as another small hail of balls whimpered past, they leaped from the track into the heart of a flax-bush, thence into the midst of a second, out of that into a third, where George crouched, struggling fiercely to quiet his rough, laboured breathing, while Paeroa with a last encouraging word, slipped into a bush a little further on and squatted there.
With one hand grasping the stiff, upstanding leaves, and with the other fast closed about the handle of his club—the loop of which he had taken the precaution to secure round his wrist—George sat listening to the murmur of voices coming gradually nearer. As far as he could judge there were only two or three Maoris on the track, whence he argued that the commotion at the other end had been merely a ruse de guerre to induce the fugitives to believe that they were discovered. Still, it would not do to be too sure, for the Hau-haus were all over the place, and it might well be that while some advanced along the track, others were creeping through the swamp, searching each bush in turn.
Suddenly there fell a silence. The men on the manuka had either stopped to reconnoitre or given up the search and gone back, and George, feeling cramped and stiff, was about to change his position, when a low 'he! he!' from Paeroa warned him to remain still. A moment later a Maori leaped from the track into a flax-bush, searched it swiftly, and passed on to another.
The sound indicated that the man was coming in his direction, and George ardently wished that he had continued to hunt for his revolver, instead of gazing, moonstruck, at the greenstone club. Another leap and the man was in the clump next to him. One more and——
A stream of fire, the roar of a revolver, and with a loud, choking gasp the Hau-hau fell dead somewhere in the ooze, while from the adjoining bush came Terence's voice: 'Quick, George, after me! We are close to the spot where the river forks. Kawainga is already across. I came back for you.'