He assented, and we took up our beds and walked to the spot indicated, where we re-made them and settled down to our night’s rest. A small waterfall poured into a pool in the river near by, and, lulled by the monotonous sound, we lapsed into silence, and then into sleep.
I do not know whether it was the enchanted solitude of the place that aroused my imagination, or whether I was overtired, but my sleep was full of dreams based on the strange story of Te Makawawa. I saw the giant sorcerers of old coming and going out of the great temple with the two snow-capped spires; I heard their mystic chant echoing down through the ages; then, the fair queen who came down from the skies hovered like a misty moon-goddess above the mountains, and I had to move away from there. But my dreams went on. I saw the great city of old standing on the site of the yellow plain, its palaces glistening like alabaster in the moonlight, while faintly to my ears came the ghostly hum of a phantom race, hurrying through the ways of that city, bent on the business or pleasure of long ago.
Suddenly this ghostly murmur ceased abruptly, and I awoke with a peculiar sense of an unnatural silence, and found that day was just breaking. What had happened? I could no longer hear the waterfall. I suddenly fancied that I had been struck deaf, and, to make sure of the fact, I called out:
“Kahikatea! are you awake?”
Relieved at the sound of my own voice, I was still puzzled at his reply:
“Yes, just woke up. What’s become of that waterfall? River seems to have dried up.”
In another moment we were on our feet and making towards the spot where the waterfall had been. It was not there, and the channel was a mere string of pools. The flowing water had been shut off at its source, wherever that was.
“It must have been the sudden stopping of that waterfall that woke us,” I suggested.
“Yes, it must have been,” returned Kahikatea. Then, after gazing abstractedly at the bed of the channel for a time, he continued: “I’ve an idea that the drying up of this intermittent stream accounts for the other one’s spurting up in that extraordinary way. They must be connected at their source in such a fashion that the shutting off of the water in this one causes an overflow in the other.”
“I should like to see how it is managed,” I said. Then, having an idea in my turn, I went on excitedly: “I propose we follow this stream up and see if we can get to the source—now’s our chance while it is empty.”