'Possibly because he found out that we had got possession of firearms, and did not wish to give us a good target. By the way, Terence, have you got the third revolver? I lost mine as I crossed the ditch. My club is all very well; but——'
'Your club!' Terence's tone expressed amazement. 'You don't mean to say that the thing has come back to you!'
'No; I don't.' George laughed a little. 'However, I have found it. It was on the bank of the ditch where we crossed after our last excursion.'
'Oh yes; that sounds quite commonplace,' said Terence. 'All the same I'll warrant that you were mightily surprised when you found it.'
'I was; and thankful too,' admitted George. 'But you see how easily everything in connection with the club may be explained when once we begin to sift matters.'
'I should like to know, then, how it found its way back to you from the bottom of the sea,' Terence said slyly.
'It was I who brought it back, O Mura.' Paeroa's voice came out of the gloom ahead of them. 'I found it the first time that I dived, and, as I had been too hurried to take off my waist-cloth, I hid the mere therein and waited till I could give it to Hortoni. But he was sleeping with his face towards the gates of Reinga, so I slipped it under his mats as he lay on his litter—and after that he got well,' he finished innocently.
Terence drew a long breath. 'Another illusion gone!' he commented. 'Before we are done we shall be forced to believe that the wonderful mere is only a piece of common greenstone after all. I think that we should halt. What do you say, Paeroa?'
'Let us rest. The poor fellow must be worn out,' put in George. 'I feel tired enough myself, now that the hot excitement has died down.'.
After crossing the stream they had turned sharply to the left and struck into the blazed track which Te Karearea's axe-men had made on the night of their arrival. Otherwise they would not have been able to get through the thick bush, and must have fled through the forest by the beaten track, along which the Hau-haus even now trailed like so many dogs on the scent of a fox. As it was, their progress had been difficult enough, for the undergrowth had renewed itself in the intervening weeks, and their low-voiced conversation came in disjointed sentences as they struggled through the tangle of fern and creeper which strove to hinder their steps.