'Hush!' warned Terence. 'I hear them moving just above us.'
They flattened themselves against the side of the ravine and waited their opportunity. Suddenly a succession of yells burst from three hundred lusty throats, and the ground shook to the trampling of the mob as they hurled themselves this way and that in their fierce ecstasy.
'Now is our chance,' whispered Terence, and under cover of the tumult they dragged themselves up the bank and lay flat among the fern at the top.
What a sight met their astonished eyes!
CHAPTER XII
VANISHED
From where the friends lay they looked across a rude plateau, dotted with ti-tree, koromiko, and other bushes, and upon this, at intervals of a dozen yards, three huge fires blazed and roared and crackled under frequent additions of fuel. The ground swarmed with Maoris, many of whom Te Karearea had recruited on his march, and most of them were naked, save for their katikas, or short kilts of flax. As their bodies were splashed and streaked with red and white paint, it required but little imagination to conceive them an array of petticoated skeletons, gouted with blood, dancing round the wild fires of a witches' sabbath.
Between two of the fires there had been set up a long pole, upon whose spiked summit, pitiful to see, was a human head, wonderfully preserved after the Maori fashion. It was the head of a white man, too, as was plainly shown by the fair hair and whiskers which still covered the dried, stretched skin of scalp and cheeks.
'All that is left of poor Lloyd,' whispered Terence. 'Te Karearea must have sent for it. Look, here he comes with Winata Pakaro and another. Where is the old wizard?'
With stately tread the three chiefs approached, the Maoris forming in two long lines on opposite sides of the great fires, while every eye was bent upon the dignified figure of their commander.