“The crystal lake that stands against the sky,” I said, slowly repeating Hinauri’s own words; “is there a way to it?” I glanced towards the raft as I spoke, and my voice was lowered almost to a whisper.
“Yes, there is a tunnel,” he replied softly. “Come! our raft is now a bier. Let us carry out her wish.”
So we severed Tiki, the Progenitor of Mankind, and Tanemahutu, the strong god of light, from the others, and, using them as a bier, passed up through a narrow but lofty tunnel in the direction of the Southern peak. After we had ascended some hundreds of feet by a fairly steep incline, we came out on the margin of a large circular lake held in by towering crags against the side of the peak. The clear waters were still and pure, as befitted that high solitude, and in the crystal depths were reflected the lights of Heaven. We descended to the shelving, sandy shore, and set our burden down in the shadows. Then, by mutual understanding, we went back and carried up the rest of the gods and the pinehearts and the axe. And Kahikatea himself hewed the gods in pieces to supply the wood for the funeral pyre.
I cannot linger over that last sad scene by the silent lake. I cannot write of Kahikatea’s last kiss of farewell on those pure maiden lips. I stood apart, bareheaded beneath the moon and stars, gazing my last upon the serene white face as, with hands crossed upon her bosom, and her shrouding hair drawn over
“WITH HANDS CROSSED UPON HER BOSOM, AND HER SHROUDING HAIR DRAWN OVER HER LIKE THE CURTAINS OF THE NIGHT, HINAURI LAY UPON THE PYRE.”
her like the curtains of the night, Hinauri lay upon the pyre. Then the pinehearts blazed up, the bones of the gods crackled and hissed, and soon the form of the one we had loved and lost was enveloped in a clear, glowing pyramid of flame, which burned up to heaven like the light of a great lamp set in a spot well sheltered from the wind.
* * * * *
I recall but dimly our leaving that crystal lake against the sky, and, in the grey light of dawn, reaching the Table Land below by ways difficult and dangerous. Suffice it to say that the ‘way of the spider’ by which Kahikatea had scaled that mountain was such that no man who valued his life would attempt it. How we passed in safety is a matter that I can only account for by the fact that we did not value our lives at all.
The yellow, rolling plain was deserted when we passed across it, and none greeted us from the wharés dotted about here and there. We stopped nowhere until we reached the further end of the Table Land, and there we turned to gaze for the last time on the mountain wall that shut out half the eastern sky. It was a grand and solemn tomb of things forgotten; stupendous, majestic, threatening in its gloom. But on the snowy peaks above there rested a flush of sunrise—a rosy pink which touched them with a pure and radiant glory as they stood against a background of white rifted clouds. Though the giants’ temple, with beetling brows, frowned darkly at us, it seemed as if the rosy peaks were showing the sun which path Hinauri, the Daughter of the Dawn, had taken.