He paused, for he had seen, as I had, a passing movement on the old chief’s rugged face.
“Do you know of such a mountain wall, O Te Makawawa?” pursued Kahikatea.
A long silence ensued, and we both watched the aged chief’s face, while his eyes rested on the ground. He seemed debating in his mind whether he should answer; but at length, with a craftiness through which I thought I saw the truth, he raised his eyes and said:—
“I have myself in dreams wandered astray in a forest at the foot of a mountain wall, by which I know that my death is waiting for me there. Your words, O Kahikatea, carried me back to my own dream—did you ask me a question?”
This was artful. He had evidently made up his mind that he knew nothing of such a mountain wall, at all events not until he had heard more.
But my friend did not repeat his question. I think he saw with me that the old chief had been startled, but had extricated himself gracefully, and that, now he was on his guard, we should have no further clue.
“I was saying,” Kahikatea went on, “when I saw that the spirit of your ancestor was speaking to you, that I climbed up a mountain wall, I know not how, for it seemed to me that no man could have passed that way before. In my dream, as I stood on a great platform at the summit of the wall against the sky, a thin crust of rock beneath my feet gave way and I fell into a narrow cavern. Not being able to get out again I groped my way along and found that it communicated with a passage cut in the rock, narrow, but high, as if it had been made by, and for, giants. I followed this passage, winding in and out in the darkness of the rock, and at length came out again on the summit of the wall.
“Then my feet were guided to a funnel-shaped chasm, down which—by means of a long, stout pole, which I slanted from ledge to ledge again and again across the narrow chasm—I made a perilous descent. At last I felt a solid floor beneath my feet, and, moving cautiously, made my way across a dark cavern towards a faint light showing round a buttress of rock. When I gained this point, O thou prop of the tribes, I saw a sight which startled me—even in my dream.”
He paused, and I wondered what he was coming to. Te Makawawa’s piercing eyes were fixed upon my friend in a penetrating scrutiny as if he would read his inmost soul. But his own rugged, tatooed face betrayed no thought, no feeling.
After a silence Kahikatea continued: