The daughter of the dawn

by William Reginald Hodder

Day after day, as we journeyed on, we talked of the object of our quest, and I saw from the Maori’s words that he worshipped the memory of this little maiden as that of a divine thing. What had he seen in her eyes to produce this lasting impression upon him? I conjured before my mind the fresh, fair young face of a girl of seventeen or eighteen, with laughing lips and coal-black eyes, harbouring, perhaps, a look of the sorceress in them—a look made more emphatic by enshrouding masses of raven hair. This face glanced down at me between the fleecy clouds of the far south, but I recall the vision now only to dismiss it, for it possessed not the dawnlike flush of radiant beauty that heaven had cast on Crystal Grey.

On the evening of the fourth day we came to the river along the right bank of which Tiki remembered taking the child. He led the way and I followed, marvelling at his memory of cliffs and dark pools, and outstanding trees which he had not seen for fifteen years.

Twilight fell over the bush and the roaring river. I suggested camping and continuing the journey next morning. But Tiki said we were now not far from the hut, so we held on for another half mile. Tiki was right, as he always was in matters of locality, for there, between some trees a little withdrawn from the bank, we saw a small cottage; but no smoke came from the chimney, nor was there a light in the window.

“Is it the place?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied, looking about him; “it is the place. There is the totara beneath which we waited while our chief carried the little maiden up to the hut.”

As we advanced towards the cottage we soon saw that it was deserted. The little bridge that spanned a stream was lying with one end in the water, the gate opening on the garden path was leaning sideways from one hinge; and, as we passed on up to the door, the overgrown path, the wilderness of tangles in the garden, and, finally, the broken windows of the hut itself showed that it had long since been deserted.

Opening the door on its creaking hinges, we went inside. The place was quite bare, except for a bed of fern in one corner, where some traveller had camped. There was no evidence of its having been regularly occupied for, I thought, at least ten years. However, I resolved to sleep there that night, and in the morning push on to the nearest sheep run, accommodation house, or digging township, as the case might be, and make inquiries. Accordingly we swept the floor, brought in more fern, boiled our billy on the hearth, and slept in more comfortable quarters than those to which we were accustomed.

A strange thing happened in the night—a thing which was the first in an extended series of inexplicable occurrences, in the progress of which I almost began to imagine I was being haunted. I awoke suddenly, and saw the bright moonlight flooding in through one of the empty casements, and there, looking in, was what I accepted as a mean trick of my imagination. It was a face—the most vile and wizard-looking face I have ever seen. The features were those of a negro, wizened, withered, evil-looking to a degree. I started up into a sitting posture, and rubbed my eyes, but when I stared at the open square of moonlight again the face was gone. I sprang to my feet, went over to the casement and looked out, but saw nothing. Yet what I heard chilled my blood. From very far away in the bush came a wild, hideous laugh, like that of a triumphant devil. Bah! was the place haunted, or was I ridden by some nightmare which had grown out of my fearful experiences in the mountain cavern? I could make nothing of it, so I went back to bed, and when I awoke in the morning I laughed it away as a grotesque nightmare.

When day came I had a good look round the place to see if I could find anything that would give me some sort of clue to the whereabouts of Grey, but nothing that I saw afforded me anything to the purpose. There was an overgrown and almost obliterated bullock-dray road, however, which I knew must lead to some run or settlement, and this I proposed to follow, as it led away to the south-west, and would in all probability bring us to the West Coast Goldfields, or, at all events, to the sea; so that, at least, we could find our way to Hokitika.

A last look round the interior of the hut before setting out afforded a peculiar piece of evidence to the effect that some child, six or seven years old, had left that hut in, or shortly after, the year 18—. I arrived at this conclusion in the following way. While I was making a careful survey of ceiling, floor, and walls, my eye fell upon some horizontal scratches on the bare wall near the fireplace. At first glance they appeared like markings made by a carpenter, but a closer scrutiny showed me in a flash what they really were—measurements of the growth of some child. There were eight or nine. The first, dated June, 18—, was about three feet six inches from the floor. The next stood an inch above, and so they ran up, some with dates and others without, to the height of four feet and a little over. There at a certain date the measurements stopped, from which I concluded that the child, whose growth had been registered in this way, may have left at that time. There were no markings anywhere else to give the idea that any other children had lived in the hut, so the only conclusion I could draw was that these referred to the child who had been left there with Grey some fifteen years since.