"That is good for the Arawa and the Ngapuhi, but the Waikato will not regard it. It may be that the white man's Atua will keep him from harm."
With which sentiment the audience terminated.
With the exception of the world-famed terraces, no spot on earth was so rich in strange and wondrous surroundings as this great lake of unfathomable depth, a thousand feet above the sea, sleeping amidst its volcanic blocks of quartzose lava and huge masses of pumice-stone. To the north-west they gazed at the wooded ridges of Rangitoto and Tuhua, and, three thousand feet above the sea, the bare turreted pyramids of Titerau, towering in pride, as might, on the castled Rhine, the ruined fortress of a forgotten robber-baron. White pumice-stone cliffs gleaming in the sun bordered the eastern shore. Behind the sombre forest ranges, pyramidal monoliths, piercing the heavens at yet greater altitudes, gave to this amazing landscape the fantastic aspect of a dream-world.
"When shall we awaken?" said Massinger, as he and Erena, lingering behind their guide as they strolled towards the camp, became conscious that the day was declining. "This is the newest land of enchantment. I feel like a lotus-eater, removed from the world of everyday life. I could almost be tempted to cast in my lot with this careless-living race, wandering here till life grew dim, and the distinctions between what our fathers used to call right and wrong faded into uncertainty. I can imagine some men doing it."
"But not you. Oh! do not talk in that reckless fashion. Another might waste his life among these poor ignorant people; but you have a man's work yet to do in the world—a name to make, a family to remember. But"—as he smiled at her vehemence—"you are only joking; you are laughing at the poor Maori girl, who thought for a moment that you were in earnest. Let us walk faster; it will soon be dark, and we have some distance still to go."
A change seemed suddenly to have come over the spirit of the girl. From being carelessly playful in manner, as she had been in their rambles all the day, she became silent and reserved till they reached the camp. There she retired at once to where the other women had fixed their quarters, merely remarking that they would have to leave early if they hoped to reach the terraces.
The night was strangely, magically lovely. Massinger had no great desire to sleep. He felt, indeed, that one might easily watch till dawn amid this region of magic and sorcery. Brightly burned the stars in the dark blue heavens. There was no moon, but the constellations, to his excited fancy, seemed strangely lustrous and of intense, almost unreal, brilliancy. Warwick and he stood near their camp fire, only occasionally speaking, when all suddenly there arose a wild shout, then a succession of cries, from the direction of Te Heu Heu's pah, which pointed to some unusual occurrence. A wailing cry came, too, from the natives of their own encampment, whom they observed to have left their whares and gathered in a group.
"What is the meaning of all this?" said Massinger, who had been gazing over the lake, and listening to the low calls and whispering notes of the water-fowl which sailed in flocks amid its sedges and reeds. "What do they mean by that long-drawn sound? And now there is a shout—a sort of herald's proclamation."
"You are right," said Warwick. "The Tohunga calls aloud, 'Behold the sacred fire on Tongariro! The Atua commands war. Listen, O men of the Arawa.
"'The pakeha desires to take the country of the nga iwi (the tribes). He will take the forests and the kumera plantations, the valleys and the mountains, the rivers and the shores of the sea. The Maori canoe will no longer be paddled on the broad bosom of the Waikato, on lakes which have been our fathers since they came from Hawaiki. The steamboat will drive away the Maori canoe; the sheep and cattle of the pakeha will feed on our plantations; the white magistrates will put our young men in prison; our old men will break stones for the pakeha roads. We shall all be slaves, working for a pakeha conqueror.