“It is well,” he said with dignity, drawing his mat closer around him. “My heart flows out to both of you; to you, O Dreamer of dreams, and to you, O Seeker in the dark, I will speak words straight from my breast, but in hearing them know that they may not be repeated to other ears while I live. That is understood between us.”
CHAPTER III.
A SECRET OF ANCIENT NIGHT.
For some minutes the aged chief sat silent, looking out far away over the sea, where the white-winged taniwhas[7] of the Pakeha pass through Raukawa, to gain the great ocean of Kiwa. His thoughts were as far away as the blue Isle of Rangitoto, marked vaguely in the horizon. What thing was he pursuing over the dim trail of the past? Of a truth he seemed to see those who were not present, to hear those who did not speak. Would he begin his story at the time when those fierce old history-makers of yore—the Waitahi and the Ngaitahu—dwelt in the valley of the “Pensive Water,” and held their land against the fierce invaders coming down from the land of Tara? No, he turned towards us, and the words from his breast were of things long, long before the Waitahi fought their frays upon the sounding shore.
He spoke in a hushed voice; for our ears alone were the secret things he was about to unfold.
“O men of the great land beyond the mountains and the sea, why should I tell to you those things which none but our priesthood of ancient night have known? It is because I have heard the voices of the Great Tohungas of the Earth speaking to me in sleep, and I have had no rest. Therefore I will obey the words that have come to me in the whistling winds of heaven, and reveal a secret of the ancient tohungas of my race. Yet in doing this I know full well that, by the occult law of the ages, I shall incur my death.
“Know then, O children of another world, that the blood of the Great River of Heaven has run through the veins of an unbroken hereditary priesthood from the further shore of Time to this day that we see beneath the shining sun. Men who do not know speak of Te Kahui Tipua; a band of man-eating demons, they say, who dwelt here in Aopawa. Sons! these are no demons, but the powerful priesthood of which I speak to you, extending back into the far night of the world. The Rangitane and the Ngaitahu have nursed our priests in their wahine’s laps; the Ngatimamoe also, and before them the Waitahi, skilled in spells—all these came and passed away like the leaves of the kohutukutu,[8] but the father blood of the ancient Kahui Tipua is of the Great River of Heaven flowing down the ages from times when this land of the Maori was without a shore from the rising to the setting sun.
“What the west wind has whispered in the branches of the Kahikatea, what his friend has spoken with his tongue about the woman, and my own word to you about a lost child, are the head, the back, and the tail of one story. Hearken to me then, O men from over the sea, while I show to you a hidden thing which has never been shown to a pakeha before, nor revealed to any but our own priesthood. Then, when Te Makawawa has trodden the Highway of Tane, and you see his eye set as a star in the sky, you will tell this sacred thing to your brethren of the other side, for it is a word of power to the Maori and Pakeha alike. But know that whoever reveals this hidden thing to the outside world must die.
“Not three days’ journey towards the setting sun is a high plain rolling like a yellow sea beneath a great mountain wall. On that sacred plain waves now the golden toi-toi, and it is desolate; but there was a time when a great city stood there in which dwelt a mighty race of long ago. And within that mountain wall is the vast temple of Ruatapu, cut out of the ancient rock by the giant tohungas of old. This, O children of the sun that rose to-day, was long before the wharekura[9] of our lesser tohungas, many ages before the Maori set sail from Hawaiki to find these shores. In that temple of the ages are strange things preserved from the wreck of the ancient world—things which one day you shall see, but I now shorten my words to tell of a sacred stone under the protection of the Good Tohungas of the Brow of Ruatapu, and yet again of another, an accursed stone, the plaything of the Vile Tohungas of the Pit.
“In that far time, when this land of the Maori was but a small part of a vast land now eaten by the sea, the people who dwelt in the city of the high plain were powerful giants, and they were ruled by a priesthood of tohungas, among whom two kinds of magic were practised: the Good and the Vile. The Good Tohungas derived their spells, like Tawhaki, from the heavens above, where the Great Spider sits weaving his web around him, and they dwelt in the forehead of the mountain wall. The Vile Tohungas obtained their spells, like Tangaroa, from the depths of the sea, and from the gloom of Porawa; they inhabited the foundations of the mountain. But although both dwelt in the same temple, there was a deadly hatred between them, and, when they met in battle, fierce lightnings were seen to issue from the rocks.
“I am not now the hereditary priest of that temple, but many moons ago, before the snows fell on my hair, I was called by the Great Tohungas, whose eyes look down from the northern sky, to enter the mountain and take the place of my father, who was growing old. My father, worn with doing the will of the tohungas in the temple, came out to die, and I took his place, even as I, after many years, have come out to die, while my son, Ngaraki the Fierce, has taken my place. When I entered the mountain by a path any brave man might find and follow, and further, when I ascended to the upper part of the mountain, by a way that no man could find unless he were guided as I was, I found there the sacred white stone, before which it was the work of the priest to sing the magic karakia, which have been handed down from the time of the ancient city. For the tradition given to me by my father, O Pakehas, told that in this stone stood the form of a woman, beauteous as the dawn; and the prophecy attached to her was that one day the stone which enclosed her would be broken, and she would stand free.