“He says that he will soon take us by the ‘way of the fish,’ ” she said; “but that for the present he has long thoughts to think—that the sun will set ’ere long, and that these last moments are for him.”
“He expects to die for revealing the secrets of this mountain to us,” I said. “Do you know, he seems to me like a man who is following some commanding voice, which draws him on and on, even to what he believes to be his death.”
“Yes, he seems to have altered strangely. Even to me he is different. Often he looks at me with those piercing black eyes of his as if there was something he did not understand. At times I think that he doubts if I am the same person that he stole away from my mother in his zeal for Hinauri. Perhaps he still thinks I am a witch.”
“Ah! that reminds me,” I said. “While he is thinking his long thoughts—and I think that perhaps they are stranger than you or I can guess—while he is setting his face to the dying sun I will show you the place where you were not buried fifteen years ago.”
Leaving Grey with an unlighted cigar between his lips, still looking up at the great wall, and the aged chief, sitting motionless on the bank, we turned into the forest glade that led up into the valley and the ravine. When we gained the open space beneath the great rimu, and I showed her the spot where the tohunga had buried the stone, Crystal turned to me with a sudden thought in her face.
“Ah! Wanaki!” she said, touching me on the arm, “may all in us that is base as that coarse stone you have told me about remain buried here in the shadows.”
I was about to reply, but at that moment a dull roar, like the sound of a distant explosion, fell upon my ears.
“What was that?” she asked.
Well I knew what it was. Should I tell her? Why not? She had a right to know.
“It is Kahikatea,” I replied; “he is blasting the rocks high above the mountain wall. He hopes to clear a passage through the rocks to the cave where——”