"When I do see it, it will be well described. Between Erena and yourself, I shall lose no part of legend or tradition."
"She is far better at the legendary business than I am," said Warwick. "She has such a wonderful memory, and knows all the old tales and waiatas by heart. I tell her she should write a pukapuka about the place and the people. One is just as strange as the other."
"I think I must," said the subject of their conversation, who had now approached, after concluding a colloquy with the women of the expedition. "It seems hard that so many of these legends should be lost. When I was a child, they used to be sung and repeated at every camp fire. Now they are on the way to be forgotten. My father was always promising to make a collection of them, but they strayed into 'By-and-by Street, which leads to the House of Never.'"
Massinger smiled. "I know that street myself, I must confess; but while I live in your country it shall be tapu. The land of Maui is the place, and this year of grace the appointed time, for my work and adventure."
"And if there should be war?" said she, regarding him with a searching look, not wholly, as he thought, without a shade of doubt.
"All the more reason," he replied. "There is such a scarcity of honest fighting nowadays, that it will be a treat to face the real thing in one's own person."
For one instant an answering smile lit up her face as she gazed at Massinger, who unconsciously drew himself up and raised his head, as though fronting an advancing column. She sighed, as she came forward, and lightly touching his shoulder, looked wistfully into his face. "You love war; it is in your blood. So do my people; it is the breath of their nostrils. My father, too, is a war-chief of the Ngapuhi, and fought with them in the old wars. But if you had ever seen Maoris in or after a battle, you would think you were in a land of demons, not men."
"A man can only die once. Your tribe, too, is on our side, is it not? I can't think the hostile natives will stand long before regular troops."
"Look at that bush," she said, pointing to a dense thicket of Koreao, where all sorts of horizontal climbers and clingers seemed struggling for the mastery, and into which the van of the little cortége had cast themselves, and gliding through, apparently without effort, had in part disappeared. "How do you think that a company of a regiment would advance or retreat, with Ngarara" (that amiable savage had just passed from view) "and a few hundreds of his tribe firing at you from behind it?"
"To tell truth, I think Ngarara would rather like it now, if he could get the chance; but I am a fair snapshot, and would try for first pull. However, we won't anticipate disagreeables. How far is Rotomahana? I am dying to see the terraces."