Against the din of the cascade I heard Crystal trying to make herself heard.
I raised the hand I was clasping, and, placing her finger and thumb on the lobe of my ear, bent my head towards her.
“He is safe!” she cried, and I felt her warm breath on my cheek. Then she guided my hand to her own ear, and I cried back: “Yes; he will soon let down the rope.”
My hand still retained hers, and as I spoke in her ear a wisp of her hair strayed across my lips. I forgot everything. The roar of the cataract seemed to drown all except my passion, and that overwhelmed me. Suddenly I enclosed her in my arms and, drawing her to me, kissed her wildly on the brow and cheek and lips. For a moment she lay still in my arms, then she pushed herself gently away from me as if she were saying, “I do not know what a woman will do.… I owe you everything, but not this—at least not yet.”
At length, after waiting several minutes, I felt something swing against my shoulder. I stretched out my hand and caught it. It was the rope. When I had shouted the old chief’s directions again in the ears of my companions—that Crystal was to come second and Grey last—I tried my weight on the rope, and, finding it firm, climbed up. It seemed a long way in the darkness, and I was nearly exhausted when at length a hand slid down over the rope and touched me. Another hand found my other wrist and, as I climbed a little further, both gripped me beneath the armpits, raised me over a barrier of rock, and set me on my feet on a level foothold.
“He Pakeha!” said the deep voice of the chief; “is the mountain lily safe?”
“Quite safe,” I replied.
My first thought was to strike a match to see what space there was to move about in. I did so, and found that the old chief and myself were standing on a level platform let into the wall of the cavern. He went into the shadows and returned with a torch, which I lighted from the match, and set in an upright position in a crevice. He then unwound the rope from a rounded knob of rock on the inside of the barrier, and let down a few more yards for Grey to make a kind of swing for Crystal. A rough flax mat protected the rope from the irregularities of the rock, and the barrier itself projected far enough from the wall to enable her to keep clear of it in the ascent.
It was not until, by our united efforts, she was drawn up and stood safely beside us, that I breathed freely. The rope was let down, and Grey came up soon afterwards like an acrobat. Te Makawawa then made a sign to me to draw the rope up again, and, as I was doing so, it resisted my efforts for a moment, as if someone was holding it; however, it came loose, and I thought that perhaps a knot on the end must have caught on some projecting piece of rock. Yet the matter puzzled me a little, especially when I felt the end of the rope soon afterwards and found there was no knot there.
But it was no time for fancies. Te Makawawa took the torch from Crystal, and showed the way into a high tunnel which, as we followed him, led us right into the backbone of the rock, and gradually took the form of a spiral ascent, though I could only guess at this from the somewhat steep grade, and the continual curve to the left. We soon lost the roar of the cataract as we circled up higher and higher into the silent heart of the mountain.