CHAPTER IX.
NGARAKI THE FIERCE.
When Ngaraki had thrown his torch down into the bottomless pit, there seemed nothing left but the darkness and the silence. Presently I heard what I judged to be his footsteps hurrying towards me, and, in my haste to get out of the way, lest by chance he should touch me, I trod on a loose stone and fell. I was on my feet again in an instant, and was edging away from the spot, when the chief’s voice, three paces away, cried, “Ngha! who comes?”
Feeling secure in the impenetrable darkness, I made no reply, but proceeded to creep silently away towards the foot of the staircase, listening intently all the while for the tohunga’s movements. But he was evidently standing stock still. Presently he repeated his challenge more fiercely, and, receiving no answer, hurried away towards the end of the gulf.
I felt somewhat relieved at this, as I felt sure I could find the foot of the staircase, and so get up the pathway; and, if the worst came to the worst, try the plunge through the aperture in the mountain wall. But I found it was no easy matter to find my bearings. I could see the patch of moonlight some distance up the ground floor of the abyss, and, facing it, knew that the giant statues were behind me. I proceeded to feel my way from statue to statue in what I fancied was the right direction, but I had not gone far in this way when faint sounds of footsteps around me arrested my attention. I stood still, and all was silent. A minute passed, and, when I moved on, the fall of these phantom footsteps on every side again brought me to a sudden halt. Was this some dreadful nightmare, or was I surrounded and hemmed in by the minions of Ngaraki? The nervous tension of this would soon have driven me into raving lunacy. I felt I could not stand it much longer, and tried to steal away quietly on tiptoe, but the footsteps followed me and I stopped again.
To put an end to this nightmare I thought the best thing I could do was to kill someone and make a rush. I took my revolver from my pocket, but merely went through the motion of shooting men down on every hand just to relieve my nervous tension. After reflection I did not dare waste a shot in the darkness, for I might want the whole six later on, and I had left my ammunition outside the mountain; so I tried to take things quietly. While in the midst of this, something, not three paces away, collided with something else. “Kuk, kuk!” said a throat, and another throat answered with a guttural, purring noise, followed by a long-drawn sigh. After that there was a silence, in which I was sorely tempted to shoot in the direction of those sounds. Presently, however, under a further development of the situation, I thought it was my wisest course to spend at least one of my six bullets. Standing under cover of the darkness, but haunted by these ghostly footsteps, I saw, twenty yards on my right, a dim glow. As soon as this caught my eye I knew what was going to happen. Somebody was blowing a piece of smouldering dry punk into a blaze; a torch, or several torches, would be lighted, and I would be hunted out like a rat. I was determined that this should not be if I could possibly help it. I much preferred the dark and the ghostly footsteps. Now the punk was glowing red, and, just above it, the wizened face of someone blowing it appeared distinctly. I could not bring myself to the idea of potting at this man out of the dark; it seemed a little unfair; so, moving about again, I listened for the footsteps and fired into the thick of them.
The effect was magical. The report rang up through the abyss and reverberated with a thousand echoes in the high galleries above. But this was not the only effect. Immediately following the shot there arose a guttural, inarticulate howl, and a strange clucking noise began all around. It suddenly dawned on me that these sounds came from men who had lost their tongues: these were no doubt the speechless men Te Makawawa had spoken of. But I did not stop to find out any more about them. Taking advantage of the general confusion, I felt my way to the last stone figure in the semicircle, and, with a guess at the position of the foot of the staircase, struck out to find it.
I could now hear no footsteps about me, and thought that if I could only get up out of the abyss I should feel happier. After proceeding some twelve or fifteen paces, I touched a rock and felt my way along it until I came to a corner. A sigh of relief escaped me at the discovery that it was the lowest step of the giants’ staircase. I was just about to mount it when a peculiar guttural “Kuk, kuk!” came like a challenge out of the darkness five feet away on the left. My first impulse was to spring towards the sound and get at the throat from which it proceeded. But suddenly I remembered having heard this sound answered by a kind of guttural purring. It was evidently the tongueless challenge equivalent to “Who goes there?” Why should I not give the answer? On the spur of the moment I did so, making the most guttural purr I could find in my throat, and following it up with a long-drawn sigh. It was met with silence. My challenger evidently took me for a friend who, actuated by a cleverness equal to his own, had conceived the idea of guarding the only way out of the abyss.
It was with a conceited feeling that I was infinitely cleverer than all of them that I mounted the step and listened before groping my way upwards. There was still confusion in the abyss. To judge by the excited noises I heard, someone had evidently been touched by my revolver shot. There was no sign of the glowing punk, and I gathered from this that in the presence of firearms they felt safer in the darkness. That they stood in fear of another shot was also evident from the fact that gradually the strange sounds ceased, and all was quiet.
Presently I heard footsteps hurrying towards me. They were those of other clever mutes who wished to prevent my escaping that way. I was the first to give the peculiar challenge, which was answered by a purring and a ghostly chorus of sighs from several throats. Then, feeling that I had hoodwinked them, I ventured to creep away as silently as possible, raising myself from step to step. Several times I stopped to listen, but all was quiet behind me and I went on and on, up towards the giants’ window.
It must have been nearly an hour before I gained the approaches to the huge grating. When I reached it I stood for a moment looking up at the moon, then, turning, I followed the bright ray through the darkness until it fell upon the floor of the abyss, a patch of light considerably less in area than an hour ago. It had travelled nearly the whole length of the gulf.