The eyes of generations upon generations of man.
Beautiful to behold from all the lands was the great love of the giants; now all covered with glittering snow, now hiding in the clouds and bursting forth, covered with strange and wonderful beauty; now girdling their bodies with clouds and lifting their endless heads into the golden heavens; and now again breaking forth into terrible passions, covering the earth with blackness.
Ah, Tongariro roused the passions of the giants: she made the volcanoes tremble! Their blood of fire and boiling stones shook them, the thundering of their voices, roaring insults at each other, made the earth tremble. Streams of lightning pierced the nights, and black smoke of deadly hate darkened the days, and the ears of man were filled with the roaring hate of the giants, and their wondering eyes beheld the beauty of Tongariro, smiling at both!
At last the two rivals decided to fight for Tongariro!
Now followed days of silence. The giants stood there grim and silent to the world, but they were gathering strength, and were melting stones in their insides, and lit terrible fires, their powerful weapons. So they stood silent and grim; the sun gilding their beautiful garments of snow, and Tongariro smiled at them with her graceful swaying column of steam; and the Maori people looked wonderingly upon the peaceful landscape.
Then a rolling grew into the nights, and rolling filled the days; louder and louder, night after night, day after day—a terrible groaning, damp and deep. Suddenly a crashing thunder shook the earth, and bursting forth from the mouth of Ruapehu a fiery mass of molten stones and black hate and fury fell upon Taranaki, covering him with a terrible coat of fire, whilst the flying winds howled and the melted snow-waters fled thundering down into the valleys.
A beautiful straight form gave the mass of fire and ashes to Taranaki—but he shook in terrible rage! He tore himself out of the ground, shaking the earth and breaking the lands asunder; he tried to fly at Ruapehu, to kill him with his weight. But Ruapehu made the water of his lake, high up in the snows, boil, and, hurling it down, it filled all the rends Taranaki had made in the earth, and burned all the inside of the earth and of Taranaki himself. He now, tearing the air with his roaring cries of pain and thundering howling of rage, threw a tremendous mass of stones at his enemy, and broke the highest cone, the loftiest peak of Ruapehu, so that his looks were not so majestic, and his reach not so far into the skies.
Ruapehu now, in deadly hate, swallowed his broken cone and melted it; he lit terrible fires in his inside, which spread to the lake Roto-aira, so that it rose and boiled, the steam covering all the world and blinding Taranaki. Then Ruapehu filled himself with the boiling water, and, throwing it out of his mouth down upon Taranaki, it filled all the crevices, and it lifted him, for he himself had loosened his bonds with the earth; and now, darkening day into night, he sent the molten mass of his swallowed cone against his enemy, so that he was compelled to retreat: blinded by steam, burned in his inside by the boiling water, and covered with the molten mass of the cone of Ruapehu he himself had broken.
He groaned, and rose, and tumbled, and shook himself; and he felt for a way to the sea to cool his burning pain; howling in unbearable pain he had to run, in order to get out of reach of Ruapehu, deeply hollowing his path through the lands. But his conqueror, Ruapehu, melting all his ice and snow, sent it as boiling water into this deep path, that his enemy might not come back again, for his strength also was exhausted.