“And what then, O chief? Do we follow, or will you return?”
“I will let a rope down from above by the wall where you stand. Climb up the rope, O Friend. Then the Man-who-has-forgotten will tie the mountain lily to it, and together we shall draw her up, and let the rope down again for the Man-who-has-forgotten to ascend. Is my word clear?”
“Yes, O Chief,” I replied; “but if you fail, what then?”
“Then my end will have come,” he said, “and the ancient spell I cast over the Man-who-has-forgotten will return to me, his memory of all these years will be blotted out, and his new thought will link on to the old as if it were but yesterday. He will remember all—even the secret of the ‘way of the winged fish,’ for he has passed through it from above. Most clearly he will remember the ‘way of the lizard’ beyond the giants’ window, for by that path did he leave before forgetting the things he knew. Thus, if I perish, you shall escape through him.”
“It is good, O Tohunga,” I said, wondering at his strange words.
He turned and, torch in hand, passed round the lake to the rock behind which, on a former occasion, I had hidden while Ngaraki had plunged from it into the depths. I went back to the spot where Crystal and Grey were standing, close to the wall.
“Let me hold your hand,” I said to Crystal, and explained briefly to them both what strange thing would happen. I found her hand in the darkness, and as I held it in mine even the thought of Kahikatea did not intrude. Thus in silence we watched the movements of the tohunga across the lake. He removed his war-cloak and hung it somewhere in the shadows of the wall. Then he approached the edge of the lake and dipped the end of the torch in the water. The faint hiss reached us over the seething tide, and then there was darkness, in which, as I held Crystal’s warm hand, it seemed to me that we two were alone in space.
A sudden plunge in the lake aroused me; then all was still, except for the ghostly movements of the welling flood. Half a minute went by, in which my thoughts were with the chief who had undertaken I knew not what dangerous task in the depths. Would he fail?
As I asked myself the question my ears detected a change in the sound of the water. The boiling, seething motion ceased gradually, and there was a commotion in the depths of the lake—a commotion conveyed suggestively by a wave rolling round the margin, flapping over as it went, and again by the peculiar sucking sounds of whirling eddies which seemed to close together with little claps of the water here and there.
Ah! there was a sound I could interpret in the darkness. It was made by the water rolling off the sides of some object which had risen above the surface not four yards from us. It was, I knew, the head of the great stone lever in the depths. Then the profound silence which followed was broken by a hollow roar like that of some wild beast pent in a cave within the roof. Louder and louder it grew until, with a booming sound like thunder, the waters gushed from an opening above, and, their forefoam showing vaguely in the darkness, fell with a deafening tumult into the lake. The spray dashed up in our faces and I drew a long breath, for I knew that Te Makawawa had passed by the ‘way of the winged fish.’