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When they encountered a stream, which came foaming and plunging down from the mountain, after carefully trying its depth, Ngati still led the way. Hour after hour they tramped wearily on through the darkness, Ngati rarely speaking, but pausing now and then to help them over some rugged place.
A peculiar hissing sound came at that moment from the outside of the pah, and Don felt his arm jerked. "My pakeha! My pakeha!" "Why, it's Ngati!" whispered Don joyfully; and he laid his disengaged hand on the massive fist which held him. The grasp relaxed on the instant, and Don's hand was seized, and held firmly. "It's Ngati, Jem," whispered Don, "come to help us."
"Yes, yes!" cried Jem, eagerly. "Yes, yes," said Ngati; and then he stood, looking puzzled, as he tried to remember. At last, shaking his head sadly, he said, "No, no," in a helpless, dissatisfied tone. "Want Tomati. Tomati "
This here's what I once heard a clown say, `It's dangerous to be safe. I say, figgerhead, arn't there no other way?" "Ship! Men! Catchee, catchee," said Ngati, in a whisper. "Hear that, Mas' Don? Any one'd think we was babbies. Ketchy, ketchy, indeed! You ask him if there arn't no other way. I don't like walking in a place that's like so much hot soup." "Be quiet, and follow. Hist! Hark!"
We must both drop together, and then be off. Oh, if we could only make him understand. What a fool of a language his is." Don could not even then help thinking that Ngati might have said the same, but he did not lose a moment. Loosening his hold of the chiefs hand, he whispered, "Pakeha. Come."
"Ngati," said the owner of the name quickly, for he had been listening intently, and trying to grasp what was said. "Ngati! My pakeha." "Oh, I say: do leave off," cried Jem testily. "Pakeha again. Say, Mas' Don, him and I's going to have a row before we've done." The chief said something quickly to the Englishman, who nodded and then turned to the fugitives.
The breakfast was eaten with an admiring circle of spectators at hand, while Ngati kept on going from Don to his tribesmen and back again, patting the lad's shoulder, and seeming to play the part of showman with no little satisfaction to himself, but with the effect of making Jem wroth.
"Sleep," said Ngati, suddenly; and he signed to Don to lie down and to Jem to keep watch, while he lay down at once in the mossy nook close to the river, and hidden by overhanging canopies of ferns. "Oh, all right, Mas' Don, I don't mind," said Jem; "only I was just as tired as him." "Let me take the first watch, Jem." "No, no; it's all right, Mas' Don.
As they lay in the roughly-made stone slab baths, into which the volcanic water effervesced and gurgled, the followers of Ngati came and went busily, and a curious transformation came over the scene the darkness seemed to undergo a change and become grey.
"Pakeha," he said; "Ngati pakeha. Maori pakeha. My pakeha!" Then to Don "You my pakeha. Give me powder gun." "Don't you wish you may get it, old chap?" said Jem. "Wants you to give him powder and gun." The savage nodded approval. "Yes," he said; "powder-gun you give."
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