"After all," he told himself, "it will be my last holiday for months, possibly for years. I shall never, perhaps, have such another ideal wandering through a 'londe of faerye,' certainly never again have 'so fair a spirit to be my minister.' A region of marvels and magic, a tribe of simple children of nature, ready to do my bidding! In this life of ours, so sad and mysterious at times, such conditions cannot last; why, then, should not one frankly accept a fragment of Arcadia?"
He lost no time in communicating his change of plan to Erena, whose features wore so radiant a smile at the announcement that he saw in it the fullest confirmation of the wisdom of his decision.
"I am so glad," she said, "that you are going to honour my country, my tribe, by your last visit among them. I was born here, have swum and paddled in the lake since I could walk; and though my father changed our abode to Hokianga, and dwelt there latterly, I have always loved Rotorua best in my heart."
For the next few days they roamed over the lakes and woods, the hills and dales, of this enchanted ground in unfettered companionship and joyous converse. They went in a canoe to Hinemoa's Isle, rowed by two Maori girls, and beheld the bath which bears her name to this day. They saw the beach on which stood the doomed Arawas, confident in the power of their hitherto inviolate wave. Here had they fallen; here had the cannibal feast, with all its horrid accompaniments, been held; here, where the grass grew thick and wild flowers waved to the very margin of the peaceful lake, had assailants and defenders waded in blood amid the dead and the dying.
And yet now how calm, how peaceful, was the historic water, how tranquil were all things, how happily flowed on the village life! Who could have believed that such horrors were transacted in this fairy isle, where now the voices of children at play, the crooning, low-voiced song of the girls, as they plaited the flax mats or made with deft fingers the neat provision-baskets, were the only sounds that met the ear?
Together they climbed the rocky summit of the island, and viewed the strangely compounded landscape, heard the dire sounds as of groans and murmurings of imprisoned fire-spirits, while from time to time an impatient geyser in the haunted valley of Whakarewarewa would fling itself in cloud and steam heavenwards with wildest fury.
Together they stood before the curious stone image, sacred under penalty of awful doom in the minds of the simple people, as having been brought in an ancestral canoe from the half-mythical Hawaiki in the dim traditionary exodus of the race. Together they forced their canoes up the glittering channel of Hamurama, and held their hands in the ice-cold fountain at its source, where it flows bubbling out of the breast of the fern-clad hill.
The moon was slowly rising over the dark range of Matawhaura as they left the further shore to return to Ohinemutu. The air was delicious, the lake a mirrored water-plain, across which the moonbeams showed silver-gleaming pathways, as if leading to other happy isles. The paddles of the Maori girls dipped softly into the placid water as the canoe stole silently across the lake's broad bosom.
"On such a night as this," said Massinger, "it would be most appropriate for you to tell, and for me to listen to, the legend of Hinemoa."
"It is a silly tale at best," answered Erena, with a tone half of sadness, half of playfulness, in her voice—"a tale of woman's love and man's fidelity. They had better fortune in those old days."