there was the black arm in its place. He
went on with his work slowly—and with his
eyes turned to the floor of the cave—and he
was sure that the black arm rose and fell
with his. But he could not catch it. He tried
till he was really sick with vexation and rage
at the evasive nature of this new distress.

Taönui sat himself down among the pumice
dust, in the middle of the cave, to consider
this unpleasant phenomenon. He actually
vented groans at the impossibility of settling
the question, one way or the other.  And as he
thus sat groaning, and plucking out the hairs
from his chin, with a pair of mussel-shell
tweezers, the pumice-crust of the flooring
cracked all round him, and the next instant
he fell through, and found himself in a huge
natural cauldron of boiling water.

A great quantity of the floor having fallen
with him, he had most fortunately landed
upon a sort of protecting seat of pumice and
sandstone, at no great depth from the surface;
and there he sat upon a very novel and
unpleasantly hot throne, with water boiling all
round him in a hissing and bubbling circle.
A great steam rose up through the chasm
over-head, and filled the cave.

Being unable to reach the broken edges of
the great hole through which he had fallen,
even if the steam would have permitted him
to see, Taönui would have been parboiled on
his seat before long, had not the steam issuing
from the mouth of the cavern attracted a
young hunter to the spot. This was no other
than his son, Waipata; a circumstance very
fortunate, though not very remarkable, as
the district to which he had been sent was
only a few miles distant from the cavern,
the fact of his havingfor his companions Teöra
and Kaitemata, was, no doubt, a very curious
accident. Previous to this event, Kaitemata
had been followed for several days by a black
pig who had lost one eye, and would never
leave her, and this having made her restless
in her mind, she had communicated her fears
to Teöra that some evil spirits were besetting
the king, whom she had accordingly watched,
and followed to this place, having persuaded
the amiable slave-girl to bear her company.

To the Maori bush-call of " Koo-i, Koo-i?"
(" Where are you? ") the half-smothered
voice of the king responded from his hot
vapour-bath below; and the three, with the
help of a cord of twisted flax-leaves and
grass, presently enabled Taönui to emerge
into the upper air. They assisted him to a
seat on a ledge of rock outside the cavern,
and here Teöra fanned him with a large fan,
hastily made of leaves. He sat looking at
each of them alternately in mute astonishment,
until his eye became rivetted on the
small black pig, that stood with its snout at
Kaitemata's heels; a grim smile then passed
over the king's features. For a familiar pig
to follow a lady was no uncommon sight—but
a pig with one eye denoted mischief. Directly
he could speak, he bade them all begone!

They immediately obeyed; and Taönui
remained sitting with his back against the rock
for several hours, after the manner of dignified
chiefs in New Zealand, who often sit thus to
meditate and smoke, but are yet more often
in a state of utter apathy. The latter,
however, was by no means the present condition
of Taönui; nor can we say the former, if, by
meditation, is implied a certain degree of
calmness. He sat, the spectacle of a hard
heart humbled, but not softened.

After a long time, he arose, and bent his
course homeward with long strides. If he
had been humbled, this was over now. As
he passed across the swinging flax-leaf bridge
he shook his tomahawk at the water. Onward
he sped, looking neither to the right nor to
the left, his eyes glaring straight before him,
yet scarcely noting any objects. By the time
he approached his pah, not more boiling were
the springs he had left than the blood of the
New Zealand king; and his feelings at his
late defeat, and equally at the humiliating
manner of his deliverance, becoming quite
unbearable, he caught up the fatal flute, and,
with inflated cheeks and dilated nostrils, began
his old tune.

Among some of the tribes, of New Zealand,
there is attached to the outer fence-work of a
fortified pah, a war-bell, or a war-horn, the
latter being known as the putara-putara, or
pah-trumpet. This is only common to the
fortified pahs. It is a huge wooden tube of
seven feet long, carved at the mouth-piece,
and widening out at the sound-end, which
emitted a loud, deep, roaring noise, and was
only used to denote alarm or warning of coming
danger. From the pah-trumpet, then, of his
village, did all manner of sounds proceed, at
every effort made by Taönui to play his flute.
He stopped. The pah-trumpet stopped. He
raised the flute to his mouth, and again
endeavoured to play it. The pah-trumpet
resounded with all he intended to play on the
flute, and in prolonged and terrific tones.

That the king, in his barbaric way, was a
valiant-hearted fellow has been sufficiently
displayed; the utmost bravery is, in fact,
indispensable to every great chief; but among
all his chiefs there was certainly no one
who possessed the same amount of mental
courage as Taönui. In the present instance
he felt wrought up to a pitch that would have
enabled him,—

"'To look on that which might appal the devil."

He, therefore, attempted to bully his own
common sense into the notion that the sounds
last heard had been, not merely of his own
making—for in an indirect way this was so—
but of his own will and intention. " I blew
with all my might," ejaculated he. "I wished
to make the pah-trumpet echo; and I will do
this thing again!"

Instead of the loud roaring noise of the
war-horn, there was this time the grand death-
march of a hero, sounding as if beneath the earth,