2
There was a flat space among the trees to the right of the rock staircase that led up to the torere, and here a group of dusky figures were gathered about a fire. The men were gravely leaning on their spears, the women a little withdrawn from them in a group together. The tohunga stood in the full light of the fire. He was still and silent, his eyes hooded, but his tall figure was full of a majestic, brooding power that was echoed by the great rock towering up out of sight behind him. The broken blue lights overhead were dimmed now, and outside the circle of the firelight there was darkness, for moonrise was still an hour away. There was no sound except the wind in the trees and the sobbing of the young girl who had been betrothed to Taketu. Awe, not contempt, took hold of Samuel, and it was almost with reverence that he moved forward and joined the group of silent men leaning on their spears. They saw him but made no movement. The women saw him but gave no sign; except that the weeping girl gave one sharp cry of anguish. The tohunga lifted his heavy eyelids and his dark eyes rested on the white man’s face, but his rigid body did not move.
“Have you come to mock at us, O murderer of Taketu?” he asked him in a low, yet clear voice, articulating carefully so that Samuel should understand him.
Samuel lifted his head and spoke out clearly in the Maori language the words that he had carefully prepared. “I have come, but not to mock at you, O tohunga. I come in friendship. I grieve for the death of your tuas and I am not the murderer of Taketu. I loved Taketu and served him to the best of my power, as I have served you all. I have come not to mock but to tell you that this which you are about to do is sin. It is forbidden by the one true God, whose Gospel I have preached to you, that men should attempt to call back the spirits of the dead. The spirits of the dead are in the keeping of God, infinitely cared for by his love, and can commune with us only as and when He wills, not as and when we will.”
He had expected an outcry, but there was none. All the people remained still, and the tohunga continued to speak quietly.
“We will put that to the proof, O murderer of Taketu,” he said. “If I fail to call up the spirits of the dead to speak with us, then am I and my gods discredited; if I succeed then you and your God will be cast out from among us. Shall we put it to the proof, all you here who loved Taketu and Te Turi?”
There was a low murmur of assent from the people.
“I declare to you all,” cried out Samuel, “that if voices are heard speaking, they will not be the voices of the young tuas.”
“Be silent!” cried the tohunga. “Be silent now, all of you, while in silence I call upon the spirits of Taketu and Te Turi.”
He drew back from the circle of firelight into the shadow of the great rock, so that they could no longer see him, and there was at once a silence so heavily laden with emotion, with grief and awe, terror and expectancy, that the weight of it was hardly to be borne. Moving a little to ease the burden of it, Samuel suddenly became aware of Tiki standing among the men and regarding him intently and sorrowfully. He and Tiki had been good friends during and after the boy’s illness, but since the death of Taketu, who had been Tiki’s greatest friend, the boy had avoided him. He realized that Tiki did not know what to believe about the white tohunga. Tonight would decide that question for him.
“Salutation! Salutation to my family and my friends. I, Te Turi, killed by the wild boar in the forest, salute you. Salutation!”
Samuel felt his knees folding up beneath him again, and the palms of his hands were wet. For the voice crying out in the darkness was Te Turi’s voice, a boy’s treble cracking suddenly into a man’s bass, as Te Turi’s had done, not beautiful but infinitely moving. Sighing and movement broke the unnatural stillness and silence of the listeners. They lamented and rocked themselves in their sorrow like reeds with the wind blowing over them, and one woman, Te Turi’s mother, held out her arms toward the voice. “Is it well with you, my son?” she asked. “Is it well with you in that far country?”
“It is well with me,” cried the boy’s voice, a little fainter now as though he were leaving them. “I fought bravely with the boar, and for the brave there is honor in Reinga. Yet it is lonely there. I sigh for my mother’s arms and the laughter of my friends. It is lonely in Reinga. Farewell. Farewell. It is lonely in Reinga. Farewell.”
The voice was dying away all the time, as though carried by the wind. The last farewell was no more than an echo in the woods.
Then, the tohunga’s broken, exhausted voice: “I could hold him no longer. His spirit is not chained to this world by the bands of sin, his own or another’s. He is free, laying upon us no duty to perform for him, either of restitution or revenge.”
Samuel had not been able to follow these sentences of the tohunga, spoken so brokenly, but he realized that the last word had fallen upon the overcharged hearts about him like a spark upon stubble. The whole atmosphere was abruptly changed. A man laughed loudly and harshly, in rather horrible reaction from past emotion. The tenderness was lost in a sense of excitement, that mounting excitement that cannot be checked but must spend itself in violent action.
“Taketu! Taketu! Taketu!”
It was the girl who had been betrothed to him who was screaming out his name in that horrible fashion. Looking at her, Samuel saw that she was beside herself and that two men were holding her arms to restrain her.
“Be silent!” cried the tohunga. “Be silent while I call upon the spirit of Taketu.”
And the heavy, nightmare silence came again, but this time Samuel was conscious of a stirring of evil in its depths. It did not so much press upon him this time as pluck at his nerves so that his limbs jerked as though he were a marionette upon strings. This, too, was fear, but not the same kind of fear as had assailed him down in the valley. He was not panicky this time, but most acutely aware.
“Salutation! Are you there my friends? Salutation!”
Taketu had been older than Te Turi, and the voice was the full, clear bass of a young man in the prime of life. It spoke with passion, and a violence that awoke answering violence in the lamentations of the listeners. It seemed a long time to Samuel until the hubbub subsided and the terrible young voice took up the tale in the darkness.
“Are you there, my family and tribe? Are you there, my white blossom, the beloved of my heart? Are you there, Tiki, my friend?”
“We are here,” cried out the girl who had been betrothed to Taketu, straining against the hands that held her. “We are here, Taketu. Is it well with you, Taketu?”
“No, it is not well with me in Reinga, my friends, it is not well. I am bereft of my beloved, and Tiki, my friend, has not revenged my blood.”
The hubbub rose and fell once again.
“Who killed you, Taketu?” asked Tiki.
“The white tohunga killed me. The white tohunga. Kill the white tohunga, Tiki, and then shall my soul have rest. My tribe, my family, my beloved, kill the white tohunga!” The voice rose passionately then quite suddenly broke, becoming the voice of a ventriloquist. “Revenge me and set me free, Tiki. Kill the white tohunga.” Then the voice was Takelu’s once more, dying away through the trees. “Farewell! It is lonely in Reinga. There is weeping in Reinga for the unavenged. Farewell. Farewell.”
The tohunga’s failure had been only momentary. He had recovered himself so quickly that only Samuel had noticed it. He gave thanks that the latest onslaught of fear had not deadened but increased perception. For now he knew. The whole thing had been a most brilliant imposture. A cold contempt took hold of him and his body was quiet again. . . . He at least took his stand upon the truth.
The séance ended, and bedlam broke loose. The tohunga came forward again into the circle of light, no longer an awe-inspiring figure but a weary man drained of strength by the effort he had made, incapable, even had he wished it, of controlling the uproar he had aroused. The whole scene became to Samuel simply devilish. The genuine faith and devotio
n that had made the beginning of the ceremony so moving was submerged now beneath a primitive savagery. These séances almost always ended, he had been told, with the shedding of blood, usually the suicide of near relatives of the dead, but though he could not understand what they said, the demeanor of the yelling mob about him made him quite sure that this time the necessity for revenge was providing them with all that was needed in the way of human sacrifice. Well, if his presence here had saved Te Turi’s mother and Taketu’s betrothed, that was two more lives salvaged by himself and Tai Haruru. He wished they were not making so much noise. Though he had so often spoken to them of the love of God, he felt now that he had spoken always with hopeless inadequacy; he would have liked a last chance to speak again, but the uproar was too great. All he could do was to hold out his hands with courtesy to the men who came to bind them, and when they struck him, he prayed for them and tried not to flinch.
Tiki stood apart with the tohunga and a few of the leading tuas, and it seemed to Samuel that they were arguing as to the way of his death. Tiki’s young face was resolved but deeply troubled. His friend Taketu had appointed him the avenger of his death, and he would not shrink from the sacred duty, but the white tohunga had cared for him in his sickness, and so his duty was not much to his taste. Just once their eyes met, and Samuel smiled. After that Tiki took very good care that their eyes should not meet again.
It was clear that Tiki was not in agreement with the other Maoris as to the most desirable method of revenge. Samuel tried not to let himself think what the alternatives might be. He tried not to think at all beyond the right response to the pain of each moment as it came.
Then Tiki seemed to lose his temper. He jumped on a rock, shouting and gesticulating furiously, the word Taketu coming again and again in his speech, together with an angry questioning note. Samuel guessed what he was saying. If Taketu had appointed him his avenger, had he not, the right of choice? Quite suddenly he seemed to win his point. He jumped down from his rock, pushed his way through the Maoris, came to Samuel and with averted face took hold of the end of the thong that bound his hands. Immense relief flooded Samuel. Tiki would give him a clean death. He would not be put to a test beyond his power to sustain.
3
He had expected to be put against a tree trunk and shot, and it was a surprise to find himself being dragged up a steep, rocky path that wound up the cliff face. To the cat-footed Maoris the climb was easy, but the lame Samuel found it arduous. “Free my hands,” he said to Tiki. “I can climb more easily then. I shall not try to escape.”
There was a howl of protest from the other Maoris when Tiki did so, but he shot venomous words at them over his shoulder and they did not protest again.
In halting, breathless sentences Samuel tried to talk to Tiki as they climbed. “I did not kill Taketu, Tiki,” he said.
“Then whom do you accuse?” asked Tiki savagely.
“I accuse no one,” said Samuel gently. “But I tell you again it was not I who killed Taketu. The God whom I serve is not a destroyer of life, like your Tu, but the preserver of it, and his servants do not kill. My God is Creator, Saviour, Comforter, and Strengthener. He made men, He loves them, He died for them, He saves those who believe on him from the power of evil, from the devils, from sin and disease. He comforts them in sorrow and makes them so strong in death that they cannot be held by its bands, and pass with gladness into the world beyond.” He stopped, breathless, doubtful if Tiki had listened to a word, yet driven to go on by the fact that what he had wanted, that last chance to speak again, had been given to him, even if his audience was only this one inattentive boy. “Our heaven is not as your Reinga,” he went on, “a land of exile and loneliness where your gods give you no comfort. We go there not weeping but rejoicing, because we shall there be in the presence of a God so glorious that the torture and death of the body are a small price to pay that we may see His face and serve Him for ever in the spirit land.”
“Mighty words,” said Tiki contemptuously. “Mighty like the wind. And I know that only tuas show no fear when they die. Men of peace show fear. For all your wind of words, you will be afraid.”
“Because I die for the God who died for me, I shall not be afraid,” said Samuel. “Because of my death you will ask yourself, ‘Who is this God that men should die thus for Him?’ And you will remember what I have taught you about my God, and you will seek out other men who will teach you more. You Maoris do not die for the honor of your gods, Tiki, because your gods have never died for you. Death tests love, and the love that stands the test is the greatest treasure in the world. With such a love does my God love me, and I possess His love, and with such a love do I love Him.”
Tiki grunted, and Samuel’s halting sentences failed him altogether, for they had entered the steep gully in the rock that led directly up to the torere, and he had no breath. Tiki moved behind him, for they could climb now only in single file. The moon had risen, and it was almost as bright as daylight. Some half dozen of the Maoris were climbing in front of Samuel, and the rest were behind Tiki. His world narrowed to the chimney of rock where he was, and all his energy and thought were concentrated on the effort to get up it.
They reached the ledge of rock before the entrance to the cave, and instantly the Maoris began to wail and lament. Samuel guessed that this was the torere and that the bodies of Te Turi and Taketu were now within it. The Maoris shunned the toreres, he knew, and he was not surprised when a gust of superstitious fear carried them all past it as though they were a handful of bronzed autumn leaves before the wind. Then they were climbing again, up the sheer rock face this time, and Samuel was terrified lest he should not be able to get up it, and his physical failure be mistaken by Tiki for the terror shown in the face of death by men of peace. Tiki’s eyes scarcely ever left him now, he knew. He could feel the boy’s whole consciousness focused upon him as though he were some midge of a creature pinned down beneath the microscope. And not only Tiki’s consciousness. The boy’s eyes were like a focal point of vision that widened out into a blaze of light that enveloped the whole of existence. All that ever was, that ever would be, watched through Tiki’s eyes. He knew then, if he had not known before, the ultimate importance of one human soul.
Just when he thought that he was beaten, that he could drag himself up the rock for not one inch further, his physical ordeal ended and he stumbled out into what seemed to him, in his dazed condition, the anteroom of heaven. Had he died already? Had he died climbing the rock? No. The pain of wrenched limbs and panting breath told him that he was still in this world, but that mother earth, whose beauty he had delayed to acknowledge and worship almost until his last breath, was being merciful to him. She was too greathearted to withhold the full reward even from those who came only to the vineyard in the cool of the day.
He was standing in the full moonlight in the center of that small and beautiful amphitheater in the rocky hillside where Hine-Moa had made a resting place for her white folk. Now, as then, it was carpeted with grass and flowers, and wind-tossed mountain larches bent over from the forest of them that climbed the hillside above; but now the brightest of bright moons gave to its beauty an unearthliness that hushed even the Maoris to a motionless silence. Each flower petal was like a sea shell of mother-of-pearl, each veined leaf a tiny sword of silver. The larch trunks were polished ivory beneath the weightless, cloudlike canopies of shimmering leaves that they lifted up and up, higher and higher on the hillside, until at last the brightness of them was lost in the brightness of moonlit snow. That mountain that Samuel loved seemed very close now, towering up into the sky with the stars motionless about its head. He looked his last at it, then turned and looked out over the forest far down at the foot of the precipice that they had lately climbed, so far away that it was like a silvery shroud spread upon the floor of the world. Down there beneath it birds nested and animals had their lairs, men hunted, women built hearthfires, and little children played. But for h
im these familiar things were past and over, muffled away beneath a shroud. The stillness was like ice, benumbing him, and there came to him suddenly the feeling that everything was slipping away. Nothing moved, and yet everything was leaving him. He was on the brink of an awful darkness, the kind that children dread, that unknown darkness that is on the other side of a drawn curtain in a lighted room. He would be in it soon, with everything familiar left behind on the wrong side of the curtain. All in a moment his adoration of earth’s beauty was lost in sickening fear, the last fear of all, and the worst.
Then that, too, passed, and he knew that between the moment when he had staggered out into this lovely place, and the moment that the icy fear let go of him, had ticked away not an hour but only a minute of clock time. It had seemed a lifetime, but it had only been sixty seconds. He straightened himself and looked round at the Maoris, smiling. They were closing in upon him, very watchful. He was vaguely aware of the tohunga, not quite satisfied with the turn that things were taking, and vividly aware of Tiki, whose eyes were never off him for a moment. He knew why the tohunga was not satisfied. . . . He had not failed yet. . . . He had shown no fear when things went against him at the séance; he had managed to climb up the precipice without assistance, though it had been a hard test of endurance for a man weakened by the long strain of the night’s uncertainty; he could smile as they closed in upon him. But the thoughts of the tohunga were nothing to him. It was Tiki who mattered.