Yet their love remains unshaken, and Earth's sighs of longing, draped in clinging mist, every day ascend to Heaven; while Heaven's tears, a rain of refreshing dew, fall all night long upon Earth's sorrowful breast.
Rangi and Papa were in part avenged. Their dutiful son, Tawhiri-ma-tea, rushed against the rebels, thunder rolling, lightning flashing, hailstones rattling and hurricanes raging in his van. Scared by this stupendous manifestation of wrathful force, Tangaroa hurled himself into the sea, Rongomatane and Haumiatikitiki buried themselves under the earth they had insulted, and Tane Mahuta called upon his forests to cover him. Only Tumatauenga, father of men and god of war, stood firm, scowling defiance at his brother of the storm.
So has it been ever since, and Tawhiri-ma-tea, unable to overthrow his brother, continues to take a bitter vengeance upon the war-god's children. Men, whom he pursues on sea and land with tempest and tornado, ever seeking to slay and make an end.
Under the collective name of Atua, the above were the principal gods of the Maori. Every tribe possessed an honoured tohunga-whakairo, or woodcarver; but the quaint finial figures upon the gables of their houses were not adored as gods, the Children of Maui never having been idolaters.
The Maori looked forward to a future existence wherein their state and condition would remain very much as they had been in this world. A slave in life continued a slave after death, and, when a great chief died, several of his slaves were slain, that he might not go unattended among his fellow shades.
The abodes of the departed were Rangi, occupied on different planes by gods and men of heroic type, and Reinga, under the sea at the extreme north of the North Island, where dwelt only the spirits of men.
There was no question of reward or punishment. The dead simply continued to exist in spirit form, occasionally revisiting the scenes of their former life. These visitors preferably occupied the bodies of lizards, which explains the abhorrence in which these reptiles were held by the Maori, who, though they revered and prayed to their ancestors, were terribly afraid of meeting their pale ghosts, or transmigrated souls.
The tohunga, or sorcerers, exercised unbounded influence over the minds of the Maori. Their duties on occasion coincided with those of the ariki, and their position, too, was hereditary; but, while men revered, and often loved their chief, their respect for the tohunga was tinctured with fear and, not seldom, with hate. The chief could lay tapu upon a man, which was bad enough; but the tohunga could bewitch him outright, condemning the poor wretch to loss of worldly gear, aches and pains, and even to death itself. The ariki thought it no shame to go in dread of the tohunga, while, let the tutua, or common fellow, be once convinced that the malign eye of the wizard had bewitched him, and he not infrequently laid him down and died.