For some moments Te Karearea stood still, gazing up at the impaled head. Then suddenly he began to dance. Slowly he moved at first; but with each succeeding minute his steps grew quicker, his gestures more frantic, his gyrations more wild. Round and round, up and down, from side to side he sprang and whirled and bounded, until it seemed a marvel how he kept his balance. All at once, after a figure of extraordinary swiftness and duration, he stopped.
With arms outstretched and head thrown back, so that his eyes stared up at that poor head upon the pole, he stood an instant, and then from his open mouth there issued a piercing voice, which screamed and gabbled the most appalling mixture of frenzied prayer and blasphemous incantation.
And the voice which possessed Te Karearea was so unlike his own, so compact of yell and howl and bark and screech and frenzied raving, that George, shuddering where he lay, muttered to Terence: 'This man hath a devil.'
The awful voice ceased, and Te Karearea, falling headlong, writhed in a convulsion. As if at a signal, the whole crowd, men and women, broke ranks and rushed to form a circle round the niu, or sacred pole.
And then began a dance indeed. No one there but was pourewarewa—half-mad—with religious ecstasy, and wholly consumed with hatred of the detested Pakeha. So round and round they circled, hands joined, at an ever increasing speed, till the lighter of them, dragged off their feet by their stronger, swifter comrades, seemed to fly like witches and warlocks through the air.
And all the time the infernal din went on—the barking scream of Hau-hau! Hau-hau! the blasphemous invocation, the senseless jumble of word and phrase.
It was a revolting scene, but so wildly exciting, that the watchers forgot their fatigue and, more, the danger they ran from discovery.
Slowly the mad orgies came to an end, and as one by one the dancers gave way under the tremendous physical and mental strain, they fell to the ground. And where they fell they lay, to be pounded and bruised under the naked feet of those who still leapt and whirled around the pole.
'We had better make off,' whispered George,' for, if they find us here, we shall neither of us see to-morrow.'
'Right!' With the word Terence half-turned to begin the descent. But at that very moment he became aware of an ominous sound, unheard before in the hideous din—the soft pad-pad of scores of naked feet, running swiftly through the forest.