“THE LIGHT SANK LOWER AND SHOWED MORE. THEN TO MY ASTONISHED EYES WAS UNVEILED, INCH BY INCH FROM THE DARKNESS, THE MASSIVE GRANITE BROWS OF A GIGANTIC HEAD.”
pinnacle of some outstanding crag. The light sank lower and showed more. Then to my astonished eyes was unveiled, inch by inch from the darkness, the massive granite brows of a gigantic head. Suddenly the light flashed back from two bright red eyeballs, which shone like petrified blood. The nose and mouth and chin then came into view, and at length the whole head and neck stood out clear above the gloom.
The face of this image, which, if in due proportion, was evidently thirty feet high, was strong and terrible. The eyes looked up at the moon from beneath a receding brow, the nose was long and flat, and the lower lip of the firm, evil mouth was curled as if in disdain. It was a sinister face that thus greeted the Queen of the Night—sinister, proud, and contemptuous in its power. This was perhaps the lord of a fallen race—one of those
“Mighty pre-Adamites who walked the earth
Of which ours is the wreck.”
Perchance—who knew?—he might represent the mighty and terrible Nephilim spoken of in the book of Enoch. Such thoughts as these crowded through my brain as I watched.
But this giant image was not alone. Slowly, and one by one, other heads appeared above the darkness, until I counted eleven. Huge shoulders and chests now gleamed in the light of the moon. Eleven pairs of red eyes flashed back her rays all bloodshot. The terrible images seemed to be worshipping the great luminary, but it was the worship of scorn, for each one looked up and curled his lips with a calm half smile of masterly disdain. They were set in a semicircle, and I saw that originally there might have been twelve, for there was a gap in the line where one was missing. Thinking that this one might be much smaller than the rest, I waited for the light to fall upon his head, but the gap remained a gap, and I concluded that one of these Vile Tohungas of the Pit had fallen from his place.
By this time the moonlight fell full thirty feet below the head of the tallest statue, and showed that the images were merely busts, carved only to the waist, where in each case the hands were clasped over the abdomen. It showed also that the pedestals were each in one piece with the statue. At last the light reached the floor of the abyss, and the Vile Tohungas stood out in bold relief, casting great shadows upon the granite wall behind. I saw their bases, and wondered to find that they were of a piece with the bed rock. They had been fashioned bodily out of the very plutonic ground-floor of the earth. Vying with the moon herself in age, these figures had stood up from the floor of the abyss to greet her with that scornful sneer upon their faces for untold ages. My imagination travelled back through vast stretches of time until I was weary and spent.
Suddenly a voice from the darkness to the left below startled me. A voice in that dread place! It sent the blood back on my heart as with crooked fingers I gripped the rock. In another instant, however, I recognised the chanting of Ngaraki, and remembered the mention Te Makawawa had made of cursing the Vile Ones of the Pit at the full of the moon. By the alternations of his chanting with the strange silence of the place, I knew that he was passing up and down there in the darkness before the colossal figures. By the increasing vehemence of his wild song I knew also that he was working himself up into a fury of wrath. It was a chant more terrible and savage than that which I had heard on the bank of the pool outside the mountain, more wild and fierce than the hollow murmurs which had reached me from far above while smoking at my camp fire. He may have been a savage then, but he was something more, or something less, now. His words, ringing high with growing rage, almost infernal in their intensity, struck a note of horror in my listening soul:
“Ha! stand out; Lurkers in the Dark!
Come out of your hiding places;
Come out and stand up in the light of the moon.
Bold Taranaki cleaves the sky:
I call his ancient fire to eat your bones;
And Tongariro spits his rage aloft—Ngha!
’Twill fall and boil your heads in pitch.
The earth was young, the moon scowled from the sky
With laden breasts of poisoned milk,
And ye scowled up at her, vile sneering ones,
And drank destruction to the world.
The earth is old—your words are living still:
I will make you eat your words—Ngha!
I will make you eat the heads of the words you spoke to men!
To what shall I place my cursing power?
To your heads? They’re fit for the feast of a chief.
To what shall I place my cursing power?
To your eyes? I will snatch and eat them raw.
To what shall I place my cursing power?
To your bones? Ngha! Hooks for the shark god!
To what shall I place my cursing power?
To your cursing power? Yes, to your cursing power!
Cursed in the light, writhe till the sun goes down, Ngha!
Cursed in the dark, writhe till the sun comes up, Ngha!”