For, as it happened, his last coherent words exactly described the behaviour of two of the heads. Incredible to relate, they were nodding at one another, and gruesome enough was the sight in that gloomy underworld. It was too much for the old tohunga, and with another yell of fear and horror, he fled from the awful scene which, as he fully believed, his own magic had evoked.
More scared by the wild talk of the wizard than he would have cared to admit, Te Karearea glanced over his shoulder at that first panic-stricken yell. Then he turned his head again, and his own blood froze.
For he, too, now saw the nodding heads and—oh, fearsome sight!—their voiceless conference at an end, the pair came rushing at him with a strange, bobbing motion, enough of itself to scare any wretched mortal. But, as if that were not sufficient, the two frolicsome heads stopped suddenly in their wild career, threw themselves back, and burst into peal upon peal of harsh, demoniac laughter.
It was the last straw. One horrified look Te Karearea cast behind him in frenzied appeal to the tohunga, and thus becoming aware of that ancient fraud, who with flapping mat and twinkling, skinny legs, raced along the back-track, he turned and rushed after the discomfited magician, who just then afforded an admirable example of an 'engineer hoist with his own petard.'
No sooner did the chief take to his heels, than a still more singular phenomenon was exhibited; for the two heads developed bodies, arms, and legs, not to speak of trousers and boots, materialising, the one into George, the other into Terence. The latter caught up the torch from the ridge, the former secured the two heads with whose personality they had made so free, and together they sped after the vanishing couple, who were much too scared to think of looking behind them.
As they passed an immense jumble of logs and broken boughs, George dropped the heads into the midst of it. 'This place may be useful to us by and by,' he said, 'and if those two return and find them lying about, they will smell a rat.'
Terence burst into a sputtering laugh. 'I thought I should have died when you squatted on your hocks and went hopping down on the chief. And the face of his mightiness! Oh, oh, oh! I shall never forget it.'
'Steady, old fellow!' cautioned George, with a responsive grin. 'It's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and the chief's scare has proved our salvation.'
Closely following Te Karearea's line of flight, they soon passed through a hole into the midst of some thick bushes. Then the cool night air blew in their faces, and overhead blazed the myriad stars of the southern sky. They were in the upper world once more.
But what was their surprise when the black mass of the stockade surrounding the pah loomed in front of them, some forty rods away. There was no doubt of it; for far below them, across the river, they could see the twinkling fires of the bivouac in the forest, while in the intense stillness the splash and scurry of the leaping water in the cañon came plainly to their ears.