[[1]] Their influence was not always wholly bad.
His meditations were cut short by the arrival of a Maori, who informed him in picturesque language, that the feet of those who waited to carry Te Kaihuia to Reinga were without the old man's door, and that the aged chief had sent to beg Hortoni to come to him at once, as he had a word for him before he himself departed for the abode of the shades.
Greatly shocked at this totally unexpected news, George hastened to the spot where lay the withered form of the venerable chief, who was travelling fast towards the valley of the great shadow.
'O my poor old friend, I am grieved to see you like this!' cried George. 'What is the matter? You were not ill this morning.'
The dying chief gasped once or twice and by an effort raised his hand and pointed, while he mumbled half-articulate words which smote the listener with sudden, sickening horror. For they made it plain that the old man had been done to death, partly because his age and weakness would have rendered him a burden to the rest of the band on their march through the bush.
'Ah, who has done this dastardly thing?' raged George, angered out of himself at the cruel indifference to suffering which could so coldly rid itself of probable embarrassment.
Te Kaihuia's attenuated body writhed under the agony of the poison, and he stared, glassy-eyed, at George.
'Be-ware,' he gasped. 'Be-ware—Te ... Beware—the—Hau——'
The quivering jaw dropped, the palsied head fell back. Old Te Kaihuia had gone down to Reinga with his warning word unspoken.
'Thank heaven, we shall make land, and all this horror will be over by to-morrow night at latest,' George said gloomily to himself, as he crawled into his hammock an hour or so after poor old Te Kaihuia's remains had been dropped overboard. 'The loathsome cruelty of poisoning the harmless old creature because he was likely to be in their way! I can't believe that Te Karearea had any hand in the shameful business. The chief is high-minded in his way. Yet—oh, what devils men can be! ... What was it, I wonder, against which the poor old fellow wished to warn me?' He fell asleep still wondering.