'Men, distinctly; but with a strong dash of the devil in them, too.'
'Are they Maoris?'
'Very much so. The same among whom you have been adventuring this month past. Let us steal back to that hill and lay your ghost for once and all. I'll tell you what I know as we go.'
'I'm with you,' agreed George. 'I'm thankful to have fathomed this uncanny mystery. Hark! They are at it again.' Once more the unholy clamour swelled upon the quiet air.
Even the sentinels had left the camp and gone, presumably, to the hill, where, as they advanced, the friends could see great fires blazing and vomiting clouds of smoke into the blackness of the night. As they went, Terence discoursed in low tones of the rise and progress of the Hau-hau religion, and its effect upon those Maoris who had embraced it.
'I learned what I have told you from a friendly Arawa chief,' he said, as they drew near the ravine which formed the approach to the hill. 'He spun the yarn one night around the camp-fire, and by way of illustration gathered a few of his men and surprised us a little later with a very creditable imitation of the howling which so disturbed you. I must own that, until I knew what it was, I felt far from comfortable.'
'I don't blame you,' said George with a shudder. 'And there have been many converts to Hau-hauism, you say.'
'Plenty; and to-day the Hau-haus are the fiercest and most implacable of our foes. They have some very unpleasant customs, and that nasty yowling, with its blasphemous invocation of the Holy Trinity, is not the least atrocious of them.'
Their cautious march ceased now, and they began to crawl quietly up the side of the ravine, from the plateau above which came the hum of many voices.
'Te Karearea must have joined this sect before he was packed off to Chatham Island,' said George. 'I remember that he said something one day about being a priest among his own people.'