After a full half-hour at this initial outburst, the fierce tohunga became more coherent. He calmed his wild gesticulations and paced to and fro striving to reduce his feelings to poetry—the poetry of a life’s labour and final triumph. There was a clear ring in his voice as he began his more ordered chant. His soul swelled with his voice, and I knew he felt like a whole victorious army marching steadily in column. His words came “straight from his breast” with that fluency so wonderful in the Maori tongue:
“Ngha! none can stand.
Headlong have they fallen.
The Vile Tohunga eat the dust
Their cursing power is gone.
They thought to bind the Bright One—
With a Stone they thought to bind her,
But she arose in all her beauty:
Hinauri, Rival of the Dawn,
Lovely as the mountain lily.
See! she leaps above the darkness.
Lo! the stone rolls from its place.
Down it falls, in anger roaring
Like the voice of Tongariro,
Like the waves that crash in thunder
On the cliffs of Waitariki.
Now it strikes the Vile Tohunga;
Snaps their heads from off their bodies—
Grinds them into many pieces.
Ngha! the magic of Hinauri!
Ngha! the cursing of Ngaraki!”
And so he went on, until he had fashioned their teeth into fish-hooks and their bones into darts to shoot rats; until he had plucked out their eyes and boiled their heads and eaten them in the course of a chant in which he summoned all his Maori ancestors by name to come and partake of the feast. Then he sought out each available head and triumphed over it separately, smiting with his meré until the sparks came again. After that he seemed searching for a head that was missing. For a long time he wandered about with his meré ready. At last he found what he was looking for—a head that had rolled away to the brink of the abyss below the abyss—the head of his most hated foe, the chief of the Vile Tohungas. He looked at it with high contempt; then crash! and crash! and the red eyes flashed for the last time. Crash! again, and the leering lips spat blood of fire.
He paused. An idea had occurred to him. He glanced at the awful pit that yawned hard by, then at his enemy’s head, and then at the great round stone
“HE ROCKED IT BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS UNTIL AT LAST HE RAISED IT ON ITS SIDE, AND THERE, WITH A FIRM HAND, HE HELD IT POISED UPON THE VERY BRINK.”
some little distance behind. I saw plainly that he would hurl the Vile One’s head into the bottomless pit, to be boiled and eaten in Porawa, and, when he had done that, he would roll the great stone on top of it to keep it down for ever and ever and ever. Having thrown aside his meré, and set his torch against the base of the Twelfth Tohunga, he placed his shoulder to the gigantic head, and put forth all his strength. Slowly it moved; for some time he rocked it backwards and forwards until at last he raised it on its side, and there, with a firm hand, he held it poised upon the very brink.
It was a great day for Ngaraki. It was not a day for beating his meré on the ground, but for plucking the very eyes and boiling the very heads of the gaunt images which were his hated foes. And now in a supreme moment he stood on the brink of Porawa with his arch enemy’s head in his hand. He looked into the awful depths, and would have chanted his crowning triumph. But words would not come. How could he chant on such a theme without striding up and down? All he could do was to express his utmost and fiercest contempt for the head of the Degrader of Women and all his brood.
“Ngha! Upokokohua!” and with his foot he spurned the head from him. Down, down it went into the silent darkness, and the chief, always willing to give his enemy the right of reply, leaned over the brink and listened. A minute passed, but there was no answer. All was as silent as the everlasting grave of things forgotten, save for the unfolding of the falling water, save for the wailing shrieks, now growing fainter, of the wizard far away above. I could see from Ngaraki’s listening attitude that no sound came up from the unfathomable gloom.
“Upokokohua!”[27] This is the final word of Maori invective—an insult invocative of the utmost depths of everlasting shame. And it was in a terrible voice of cursing that Ngaraki hurled it down a second time after his fallen enemy. Then he turned to the round stone. A glance showed that it would be a tremendous task, but his face and manner told plainly that he would roll that stone upon his enemy’s head if it took till sunrise to do it. The floor was level; if anything it sloped a little in the desired direction, and if once he could start the stone he would probably accomplish his object.