The daughter of the dawn

by William Reginald Hodder

Kahikatea was in the recess of the inner cave, holding in his hand the rope by which he had descended.

“I will go first,” he said; “then I will let the rope down a little so that you can make a double loop for her, and I will draw her up. After that I’ll let the rope down again for you. But wrap her in the mat, Warnock, and fasten the rope securely.”

He began to climb as he gave these directions, but he was scarcely five feet from the ground when the strands broke far up above and he fell heavily, the whole of the rope rattling down into the cave about us.

“Must have frayed on the edge of the rock,” he said, struggling to his feet. “Well, I suppose there’s nothing to do now, my friend, but sit down here quietly and wait for the end, for the water will be here presently, and there’s no other outlet. Certainly we might float up, but for my part I don’t think it’s worth while.”

So weary of life was I that I was tempted to agree with him; but I chanced to glance round the cave before I spoke, and my eye fell on the grotesque wooden gods grinning at our hopelessness as they nursed their stomachs serenely. A sudden idea struck me: why not make a raft of these wooden deities, and so float up on the rising flood? I mentioned my idea to Kahikatea, and he greeted it with a half-smile. Such a slight thing changes the course of mortals, and I believe it was the mere happiness of this idea that led us to combat what was at that time a great temptation to leave our bodies with that of the one we both loved, and go out into the starry sky with Zun to find her.

With a spontaneous movement we sprang up and set to work. I remembered that in the Place-of-Many-Chambers there was a deep gulf to fill, and consequently it would be some time before the water reached us.

So we took Tiki, the Progenitor of Mankind, and Tangaroa, the sea god, and Tawhirimatea, the god of storms, and Tanemahutu, and Rongomatane, and several others, and, laying them side by side on the floor of the cave, lashed them together with the rope. There was a store of torches in this as in all the other centres of the temple, and we set several going to light us in our work.

At length it was finished, and we laid the dead upon soft mats in the centre. I also placed on our raft the remainder of the torches, and an axe I found among the weapons. Then we sat and waited, Kahikatea at Hinauri’s head and I at her feet, both bearing torches in our hands. In time the water flooded in with gurgling sounds, and we rose on our raft of gods up through the opening in the roof of the mountain. When we had mounted some fifty feet I looked up between the dark crags that still towered above us and saw the stars in an indigo sky. Slowly we floated up with our fair burden until, upon a crag above us, we saw the silver moonlight glistening. In a few minutes we reached that crag, and found we were on the broad summit of the mountain temple, the twin peaks rising one on each side of us, their snowy summits standing up like sentinel spirits as the moonlight touched them in the clear, cold silence of the sky.

The raft now floated into a small oblong basin, and as the water rose in this I saw that it would flow out through an aperture beyond. Here, then, was our highest point. I stepped out on to the roof of the mountain temple. Kahikatea followed, and together we lifted our raft of gods with its burden out on to the rough rocks. As we did this the water escaped at the other end of the oblong basin, and I advanced with my torch to see what became of it. Beyond the aperture its surface shone in the moonlight, making a loop like a silver horseshoe; then it disappeared again into the rock at a spot not very far from where it issued.

I looked up at the southern peak, and then at Kahikatea, who stood beside me. “Yes,” he said, interpreting my thought, “there is a large lake up there. I came across it in my wanderings. It is no doubt the source of all this water.”