“Be patient, my lord,” she said again, drawing his head down and raising her lips to his. “Hasten the world on to the brighter day when we shall meet again—kiss me, love, I am going.”
Their lips met. A shiver of joy ran through her last breath. Her head drooped forward and lay on Kahikatea’s shoulder, shrouded in her hair. Hinauri had withdrawn into the sky, and at that moment I stood like a stone among the everlasting stones, and asked myself, What is this world of many shows, of glimpses, and flitting shadows? And the answer came from the depths of my despair: A desolation of nothingness, a barren waste where the bright dead moon smiles down on the sapless ruin of things once living as herself; where the wild wind wails like a planetary spirit come back to view the scene of its buried hopes. To me this was a world where nothing mattered, and I scarcely know why I moved forward to Kahikatea and placed my hand upon his arm. Perhaps it was with a confused consciousness that his sorrow was even greater than mine. I strove to speak his name, but a throb of grief choked it back. My friend sat with his dead love in his arms, gazing straight before him. I shook him gently, and he looked up with speechless agony on his face. I saw his desire to be left alone with his pain, and stood away.
At that moment I caught sight of a light descending through the tunnels. It drew near, and I saw Ngaraki striding down. He came on and emerged into the Place-of-Many-Chambers. I almost barred his passage as I stood there with my torch, but he did not see me. His flashing eyes were too bright for the calmness of his bearing. Despair was on his face; a quick thought told me that I might increase it, but that thought passed away, and the feeling that nothing mattered was stronger than ever upon me. I stood and watched him like one sleep-walker watching another. He approached the strange-looking lever—the device of the giants, whose purpose in placing it there had been handed down through the ages.
“It is the end,” he said sadly, as he raised the tapering arm.
It swung to the roof and then fell back and struck the floor. I knew then that the great rolling stone that had rested on the weight of the lever was now speeding into the deep gulf below, on the gloomy errand it was designed to execute. The openings of this vast temple would be closed for ever—yes, but it did not appeal to me with any force; it was a matter of no consequence now, for who wanted to go out into that waste place called the world? I did not, and I was certain Kahikatea did not. Yet I noted the hollow rumblings that followed the fall of the stone, and wondered wearily what would happen.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE GIANTS CLOSE THEIR TEMPLE.
Ngaraki passed down through a side tunnel, and I returned to the place where Kahikatea still sat with his dead. After gazing at the scene awhile I withdrew again, mindful of my friend’s unexpressed desire to be left alone. Then Grey and Miriam floated into my mind; since I could do nothing else I could at least see that they were safe. Acting on this thought, I made my way down through the main tunnel, and at length reached the vantage ground high up in the wall above the lake. The cascade was silent again. Ngaraki had gone down by ‘the way of the winged fish’ beneath the water. Presently there was a flickering light below, and soon afterwards the chief, bearing a torch, passed round the lake and paused upon the ledge above the abyss. As mechanically and wearily as I had found my way down to this point, I now stood and watched him.
Pacing to and fro upon the rocky ledge, he chanted his last karakia—a lament in which the poetry of his despair struggled through all his fierceness.
“Ihungarupaea! Hine-nui-o-te-po! Thou art hurled down, a sunken rock.
“Thou canst not rise. Shattered into fragments; never will your dust be gathered from its everlasting grave.