“THERE HE STOOD, A LIVING EMBODIMENT OF TERROR.”
Though, on the way home, I was angry and contemptuous by turns, Puketawa refused to be comforted. To my ridicule or reproaches he answered only with a sickly smile. “No good,” he said. He was “tapu” right enough—could feel the spell “working inside him.” In vain I pointed out that the island was six miles distant from the “kainga,” hidden by a bend of the river, and that we had landed at night in a dense fog and had left again before sunrise.
“Ah!” he answered. “Te tohunga very wise. He know wi’out seein’.”
On arrival, contrary to custom, we found the beach below the store deserted. Not a soul was in sight. No Sunday crowd of mothers chatted as they squatted around the buildings; no piccaninnies dabbled in the water, and waited anxiously for sweets on my return. I knew these latter would not forego the weekly dole unless for serious cause. Could Puketawa be right after all? Had our infringement of “tapu” become known in some incomprehensible manner? It began to look very like it. That night at supper also Puketawa declined food. He even refused rum-punch, and when Puketawa refused rum things must be looking black indeed. He lay in his bunk with his face to the wall, silent save for long, shuddering sighs. So it went on through the night. Protests, reproaches, even vigorous shakings were of no avail; he lay like a log, with closed eyes, making no sign.
This was beyond a joke. No possibility of pretence was here. The man was dying, visibly, of sheer funk. Unless I could rouse him he would not live another day. I could not let him die, and, base surrender to heathen jugglery though it was, made up my mind to seek out the “tohunga” next day and entreat him to remove the spell.
In the long, dark watches I began to feel pretty queer myself. The silence seemed tangible, heavy, impermeable. I was not exactly frightened; the feeling was indescribable—a sort of nameless terror at nothing, a horror of some unknown impending fate against which it was useless to struggle and from which there was no escape. Mutuality, sympathy, hypnotism—call it what you will—a weight of fear lay on my senses, a veritable obsession of dread.
Was there any truth in heathen devilry after all, I wondered? Had the confounded “tapu” got me too? With an effort I shook off the growing lethargy and paced the floor through the night. In the morning I could eat nothing; food was repulsive. Shortly after sunrise I took my way to the “kainga.”
Within fifty yards of the gate I was warned by the young warriors to keep my distance. Presently Te Horo himself appeared in full war-paint of “korowai” (kilt) and feather mat, a spear in his hand.
“Thy sin is known,” he cried, sternly. “Come not near to bring contamination upon us. Thou and thy servant are accursed. It may be ye shall both die; I know not. Begone! At noon the ‘tohunga’ comes to confer with thee.”