He stepped back with a stately gesture of heroic feeling, chanting in an awed and subdued voice:
“It is not Hingarae I see,
Not Ihungarupaea,
’Tis Hinetuahoanga
Standing there!
The axe is sharpened,
The axe unloosened by the sun,
And now the tree which stifles Tane
Shall be laid low.”
He ceased with the poetry of his fierce heart unspoken in his eyes, for at that moment Miriam Grey advanced from the shadows with the circlet of gold in her hands. Motioning Ngaraki to stand aside and be silent, she drew near and placed the talisman with its sparkling gems upon the head of the living image. As she did so the pallor and abstraction, the weariness and sadness, fell from the face and form of Crystal. She no longer drooped. The warm blood mounted to her cheeks and sparkled in her eyes. Power and stateliness came into her pose. She awoke. And at that instant the expected sun ray burst in, and the dazzling beauty of the Daughter of the Dawn was revealed.
In all my dreamings I had never dreamt of beauty as divine as that. My poor words fall on their faces in helpless confusion. Miriam Grey caught her breath and stepped back, the limit of human wonder upon her gentle face. The Maori chief stood erect, his eyes shining like stars, but his countenance motionless with a control that seemed more than human. Grey moved a sudden step forward, and, as I turned my head, I saw in the shadows beyond him the vague outline of a giant figure I knew. It was Kahikatea, standing with one hand on the buttress, his head bent forward to view the form of Hinauri in the sun ray. He had come
“AT THAT INSTANT THE EXPECTED SUN RAY BURST IN, AND THE DAZZLING BEAUTY OF THE DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN WAS REVEALED.”
by the ‘way of the spider,’ and had arrived at a moment when he well might stand there speechless with amazement, shaken with the sudden realisation of desires which seemed impossible of fulfilment.
As the sunlight wrapped Crystal about with splendour, sparkling in the gems of the golden talisman, glistening on her raven tresses and close-girt raiment of white, a mysterious change came over her. She dropped her arms to her side and shivered slightly. Then the sweet longing deepened upon her form. The lovelight leapt into her glorious eyes as she gazed into the western sky. Yearning forward, she held out her arms to some vision which seemed to call her pure soul out of the depths to array itself in light upon her radiant face.
Surely this was no acting! None could imitate so faithfully the pose of longing and expectancy which had been so startling in the marble. No; as I gazed with all my soul, wonder forced the settled conviction into my mind that it was in reality Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, waking from her age-long trance. Reclothed in flesh, it was the ancient spirit of the pure one who, in a far-off period of the world’s unwritten history, had come down from the skies to rule the people by the Law of Love. A storm of deep feeling swept doubt from my mind and gave me clear-seeing eyes to view this thing. Hinauri had returned. The Daughter of the Dawn had taken up the thread of memory where she had dropped it in the ages that Time has buried in the Eternal Sea.
Still bathed in the glowing light she stood motionless, her arms outstretched to her vision. A little breath of wind sighed without, then came in at the opening of the cave and swayed the edge of her skirt till it revealed one sandalled foot. It rippled her raven tresses and caressed and pressed them gently about her form. Then her beauty became unearthly in its splendour. Her bosom heaved, her eyes sparkled with a holy light, and her parted lips uttered a cry of joy in an unknown tongue—strange, and wild, and sweet, like an echo of forgotten song. It thrilled the place with music for a moment; then the sun ray fled and bore it on its bosom away, through all the happy fields of space.