In a flash George grabbed him by the wrist. 'Lie close! We are cut off. A number of them are coming up the hill.'
Still as mice they lay, while the noise of the onrush grew louder, and at last Te Karearea, raising himself wearily, shouted hoarsely, 'Awake, fools! Awake, and stand to your arms, unless ye desire to be slain as ye lie. Ha! Awake!'
Instantly a deep voice shouted from the ravine, 'All is well, O Far-darting Hawk! We come from afar to do thy will. Forward, brothers, to salute your chief!'
A loud yell responded to this exhortation, and the men coming up the hillside charged forward at a tremendous rate, while George and Terence, feeling that now, indeed, their lives were the sport of fate, threw themselves flat upon the ground and awaited the issue.
George's belt had worked round, so that his greenstone club was in front, the hard handle pressing painfully against his breast-bone. As he had no time to adjust the belt, he cautiously raised himself on his hands and knees, drew out the weapon, and laid it among the fern in front of him. Before he could sink to earth again, the vanguard of the new company crashed up the side of the ravine and broke, a wildly-rushing wave, on all sides of him.
Not daring to move, he held perfectly still, while the reinforcements poured by, the tramp and clatter of their bare feet upon dead wood and fern sounding a jarring undernote to their yell and song. The hindmost of them passed swiftly, avoiding almost miraculously the crouching figures in the fern, and George and Terence, half-suffocated, breathed again.
'Safe!' muttered George, hallooing, like many another, before he was out of the wood; for, ere he could move, two more Maoris, the whippers-in, perhaps, came racing up. The first sprang clear over Terence, who still lay flat, but the second was neatly 'rabbited' over George's broad, arched back and sent flying upon his face a dozen feet ahead.
In an instant the Maori was up and back with a panther-like bound at the spot at which the accident had occurred. He knew that his fall had been caused by a man, and his fears, actively working, assured him that the man must be an enemy.
With a loud, snorting 'Ha!' the Maori brought down his heavy wooden club with deadly accuracy of aim, and Terence, who had scrambled up, involuntarily closed his eyes, and would fain have closed his ears, too. But instead of the dull scrunch which his quivering nerves were expecting, he heard a sharp, rattling smack, an exclamation of wild surprise, and, as he looked again, saw the wooden mere sailing through the air, to be caught, as it descended, by the outstretched hand of the active Maori.
For a moment Terence was stupefied, and then enlightenment came. The greenstone club, which George had held in his upraised hands, had once more come between him and death, intercepting the murderous blow, and disarming his assailant.