The daughter of the dawn

by William Reginald Hodder

I felt very thankful that I had not killed Ngaraki with that last bullet of mine, and still more thankful that my head was still on my shoulders. But I did not waste time in correcting her mistake. She concluded:

“That chamber of preserved heads, with many other things over which I have had ample time to think, has led me to believe in the traditions of this place, strange as they may appear to you of the outer world.”

I was silent, but in my silence I wished that I had kept the head of Cazotl to place among that gruesome collection.

At that moment Crystal, followed by Grey, came round the buttress.

“I want to kiss you again,” said she; “I have lived nearly sixteen years without a mother, and now I have found you I am so happy that I think I must cry.” She placed her arms round her mother’s neck, and drawing her down to a low ledge of rock near by, seated herself at her feet and buried her head on her lap and sobbed for very joy. Her mother placed one hand on Crystal’s hair, while Grey, seating himself beside her, took the other between both of his, and, leaving them thus, I walked back into the marble cave.

Again I stood before the statue of Hinauri and lingered over Crystal’s loveliness in stone. I felt a wild desire to kiss the beautiful cold lips, but I remembered that look of hers when she realised that Kahikatea loved her, and I held back. If ever a woman was pledged to a man Crystal was pledged to my friend. It was different now. I withdrew, and turned towards the opening.

This mouth of the marble cave was a little more than two yards in width, and nearly ten feet high. It admitted the lights of heaven on to the face of Hinauri. The outer surfaces of granite were worn by the age-long action of air and water, but the inner edges, of pure white marble, were accurately hewn with two parallel grooves, one on each side, similar to those down which a window might slide. Calling up the picture of the huge stone grating in the lower part of the temple, I remembered that the same grooves on a gigantic scale were there also. For a moment I wondered if these apertures were really so constructed in the first place that they could be barred with massive granite shutters. But it was useless to wonder, and I turned my attention to what was passing on the plain below, which was clearly visible to me as I advanced and stood in the opening.

On the left some outstanding crags shut out the view, but towards the right I could see, far below, the secluded valley, hemmed in against the mountain wall by the spur and the Lion Rock. On the further flank of the Lion was a small plateau of some forty yards square. On the one side of this was a precipice overlooking the plain, and, on the other, the open space was separated by a deep fissure from the thick bush that clothed the bases of the less precipitous mountains sloping off round the Table Land on the right. To this small plateau there led up a narrow path—a path which, as it ascended, became at one point so constricted by the steep precipice on its right and the yawning fissure on its left, that there was scarcely room for three men to stand abreast. The natural advantages of this position had been seen by the Maoris at a glance, and they had already set a high palisading round it, thus marking it for a stronghold. Scattered about on the yellow plain were small collections of rough dwellings—as many as might account for the presence of several hundred natives. And they seemed to be still flocking in, for, coming down off the spur of one of the rolling hills on the other side of the plain I saw a line of warriors.

In the marae^[25] of the fortified pa on the Lion’s flank was a chief striding up and down haranguing a crowd of savages. By his wild gesticulations and the fury of his words, whose connected meaning I could not catch, he was evidently a violent savage with a violent idea. As I asked myself what that idea could be my eyes fell on another figure in the open space near him. I sprang up and ran to the part of the cave where I had seen Grey set down his field glasses. Returning with these I looked long and steadily at the other figure. Yes, it was the wizard negro. Another of his infernal reed tubes was in his hand, and it at once occurred to me that he had this turbulent Maori under his influence, hoping, through him, to use the whole savage force for his own purposes.

While this was going on a tall chief, white-headed, and clothed in a dog’s-hair war-cloak, strode out of the pa and across the plain to meet the warriors, who were now banding themselves together on the level. He stopped them and then led them past the pa to the strip of bush that skirted the mountains to the right. As far as I could judge, the chief was Te Makawawa and the warriors were of his own tribe. I watched the scene on the plain for more than an hour, and the conclusion I came to was that the Maoris were gradually dividing themselves into two camps—the one under Te Makawawa and the other under the turbulent chief, who was evidently ruled by the negro wizard. From a few words that I had caught of the chief’s harangue in the pa I guessed that the wizard had depicted Ngaraki’s goddess as a pakeha, and had urged that the Maoris should rise in arms against such an imposture. In addition to this I saw clearly how the subtle wizard would erect another and a dark-skinned goddess on the pedestal and enlist their sympathies with her. Very gravely I noted how my fears had been only too well founded.