The daughter of the dawn

by William Reginald Hodder

While I was looking at it before passing on I heard a chorus of guttural sounds far down. I started and moved away, as it dawned upon me that my tell-tale shadow had been seen on that patch of light below. My cleverness now oozed out at the back of my head and ran down into my heels. In a very short space of time I knew I should have those phantom footsteps about me again.

My first idea was to stand in the dark and shoot them down as they came past the window in the moonlight, but on second thoughts I saw that I could only dispose of five in this way at the very most, and there were certainly more than a dozen of them, besides Ngaraki himself. Everything considered, I thought it the best plan to make for the lake and try the opening.

Another ten minutes, then, found me nearing the buttress. My eyes were continually on the moonlit window, for my pursuers must pass there, and I was anxious to count them as they passed. But it was not until I reached the rocks of the buttress that I saw the first rush quickly across the light. Another followed and another, until I counted ten. It was an uncomfortable number, especially as they knew every inch of the place and I did not. So well, indeed, did they know their way that I had scarcely reached the ledge beneath the spar when I heard them coming round the corner of the buttress. I had my hand on the wooden sprit above my head when they were almost upon me. That they would search every nook and corner I knew well, and if I could not reach the other side of the lake first I should have to fire my remaining shots, and, plunging in, run the risk of being swept down by the overflow into the abyss. Why should I not cross by the spar? They would never think of that.

No sooner had I conceived this plan, which was as good as any other, than I bore my weight on the sprit, and found that, although there was a trembling motion, the balance of the spar was maintained. In another second I had raised myself by the “one-legged-doctor” trick everybody learns at school, and was lying along it.

Scarcely had I accomplished this when I heard the sound of footsteps below, and someone touched the end of the sprit, for I felt it tremble beneath me. At this I grasped the points of the granite to which it was lashed, and drawing myself along, sat up astride of the thing. I was now well over the brink of the abyss, and began to feel clever again as the pattering of footsteps went by behind me. By their movements to and fro I could hear that they were searching for me, and I did not dare move further lest I should attract attention. To make up for the absence of their tongues their ears were preternaturally acute, and the slightest movement might have betrayed me. Even when the sound of footsteps ceased I remained motionless for a long time, fearing that there was someone listening near by in the darkness. If the cascade had still been pouring down from above I should have stood a better chance under cover of the sound. Everybody knows the peculiar effect that listening in the darkness has upon one. The muscles become rigid, the throat grows dry, an irresistible desire to swallow produces in the act a peculiar noise, and a strange kind of hypnotism suggests to the limbs that they cannot move. To this add a cold perspiration, born of the idea that there is a vast yawning pit beneath one, and a score of ears listening for the slightest sound near by, and you have my sensations within a little.

How long I sat there astride of that sprit I do not know, but at length my feelings became unbearable. I determined to move, but it cost me all it costs one in a nightmare to make a start. With a harsh, inward laugh, that sounded almost hysterical in my mental ears, I at last succeeded in throwing off this strange self-hypnotism, and, stretching my hands forward, grasped a point of rock on the spar itself. Once having pulled myself on to the granite I felt more confidence, and, though the long lever quivered beneath me, I sat astride and worked my way along. I tried to shut out the terrible abyss beneath me, but the knowledge that it was there in the darkness was perhaps worse than if it had been visible to physical eyes. It was like dangling between life and death. But, as the Maori mystic saying runs,

“Cling to Life in the light—cling to Life in the darkness!” And I clung.

After what seemed several hours, although most probably it was something like fifteen minutes as clocks go, I reached the constricted part of the spar, and felt that it was not much thicker than a man’s body. As I rested on it for awhile I felt the drip of water from the roof of the cavern, falling now on my bush hat and now on my shoulders. I wondered how many thousand years it had taken that dripping water to wear the granite down to its present shape, and how many more would elapse before the spar gave way at this point, and the two fragments, with the great round stone, go hurtling down through space on to the heads of the Vile Tohungas far below. I feared that I would get there first.

A glance along the gulf towards the giants’ window showed me that it must be now midnight, if not more, for the moon was no longer shining in between the bars, and I could see her light reflected from the face of the wall beyond the fissure without. I found fresh courage in the thought that if I could reach the further lip of the basin and take the plunge, the rays of the moon shining down into the pool on the western side of the mountain would serve to guide me towards the opening.

But my fresh courage soon gave out, for no sooner had I climbed from the narrow part on to a broader surface of the spar, than the horror of my situation reacted upon me. Faint with what I had gone through since my last meal in the early morning, I felt the darkness beginning to move around me. Concentric rings of light were converging to a point in my brain. I had just sufficient sense to spread myself face downwards on the rock before I swooned away.