As I sat beside the bewitched man and awaited the coming of the priest the night fears that had assailed me passed, giving place to a feeling of rising anger at the whole thing. Here was I—a fairly decent Englishman, reared in the Anglican faith and living in the nineteenth century—hindered from going about my business, outcast, excommunicated, shunned as a leper, my servant dying; all on account of some fiendish diablerie of heathen fetish. The affair was preposterous, incredible, ludicrous. Then I looked at poor Puketawa, moaning, prone in his bunk, and was answered. That at least was real.
Punctually at twelve o’clock the old “tohunga” came over the hill. He was a tall man, grey-headed and handsome, and in his full robes of office he looked imposing enough. Halting at a short distance he called us to come forth. I started forward to expostulate, but he waved me sternly back.
“Approach not,” he commanded. “You are unclean, you have incurred the anger of the great spirits. Yet will I intercede, and it may be purge you of the offence. Now, therefore, bring out your ‘taonga’ (goods) and everything that you have touched, in order that I may destroy it and the purging be complete.”
This was beyond a joke. Give up my household goods and knick-knacks to be burnt? Never! I’d see him hanged first.
“Be off, you old scallywag!” I shouted. “Give you my things, indeed!” And I began to tell him what I thought about it. He stood impassive, inexorable.
“Young man,” he answered, “be not mad. Fool! Can you fight the spirits? Look to your servant. Delay not, lest he die.”
This was unanswerable. I surrendered, and we carried the things out, Puketawa moving as though in a mesmeric dream. All my bachelor treasures, bedding, rugs, chairs, cooking-pots, and crockery—everything went. The pots and crockery he smashed with his tomahawk, the house and all else he burnt to ashes. Luckily, I had not been near the store, or that and its contents would have gone too.
What next, I wondered? Had the old heathen done with us? Evidently not.
“Remove your clothing,” he commanded. Here was a pretty state of things! Being naturally of a modest disposition, I demurred, at which he lost his temper.
“Hinder me not,” he cried. “Your life or death is naught to me. Beware, lest I depart and leave you to your fate.”