“In the interval,” said Dikon, wrenching the car out of a pothole, and changing down, “I have seen the place. I implore you to remember, sir, that you have been warned.”
“You overdid it. You painted it in macabre colours. My curiosity was stimulated. For pity’s sake, my dear Dikon, drive a little further away from the edge of the abyss. Can this mountain goat-track possibly be a main road?”
“It’s the only road from Harpoon to Wai-ata-tapu, sir. You wanted somewhere quiet, you know. And these are not mountains. There are no mountains in the Northland. The big stuff is in the South.”
“I’m afraid you’re a scenic snob. To me this is a mountain. When I fall over the edge of this precipice, I shall not be found with a sneer on my lips because the drop was merely five hundred feet instead of a thousand. There’s a most unpleasant smell about this place.”
“It’s the thermal smell. People are said to get to like it.”
“Nonsense. How are you travelling, Colly?”
Fenced in by luggage in the back seat, Colly replied that he kept his eyes closed at the curves. “I didn’t seem to notice it so much this morning in them forests,” he added. “It’s dynamite in the open.”
The road corkscrewed its way in and out of a gully and along a barren stretch of downland. On its left the coast ran freely northwards in a chain of scrolls, last interruptions in its firm line before it tightened into the Ninety Mile Beach. The thunder of the Tasman Sea hung like a vast rumour on the freshening air, and above the margin of the downs Rangi’s Peak was slowly erected.
“That’s an ominous-looking affair,” said Gaunt. “What is it about these hills that gives them an air of the fabulous? They are not so very odd in shape, not incredible like the Dolomites or imposing like the Rockies — not, as you point out in your superior way, Dikon, really mountains at all. Yet they seem to be pregnant with some tiresome secret. What is it?”
“Perhaps it’s something to do with the volcanic silhouette. If there’s a secret the answer’s in the Maori language. I’m afraid you’ll get very tired of that cone, sir. It looks over the hills round the Springs.” Dikon waited for a moment. Gaunt had a trick of showing a fugitive interest in places, of asking for expositions, and of growing restless when they were given to him.
“Why is the answer in Maori?” he said.
“It was a native burial-ground in the old days. They tipped the bodies into the crater. It’s extinct you know. Supposed to be full of them.”
“Good Lord!” said Gaunt softly.
The car climbed higher, and the base of Rangi’s Peak, a series of broad platforms and slopes, came into sight. “You can see quite clearly,” Dikon said, “the route they must have followed. Miss Claire tells me the tribes used to camp at the foot for three days holding a tangi, the Maori equivalent of a wake. Then the body was carried up the Peak by relays of bearers. They said that if it was a chief who had died, and if the air was still, you could hear the singing as far away as Wai-ata-tapu.”
“Gawd!” said Colly.
“Can you look into the crater and see…?”
“I don’t know. It’s a native reserve, the Claires told me. Very tapu of course.”
“What’s that?”
“Tapu? Taboo. Sacred. Forbidden. Untouchable. I don’t suppose the Maori people ever climb up the Peak nowadays. No admittance to the Pakeha, of course; it would be much too tempting a hunting-ground. They used to bury the chiefs’ weapons with them. There is a certain adze inherited by the chief Rewi who died about a hundred years ago and was buried on the Peak. This adze, his favourite weapon, was hidden up there. It had featured prominently and bloodily in the Maori wars, and had been spoken of in their oral schools of learning for generations before that. Rewi’s toki-poutangata. It has a secret mark on it, and was said to be invested with supernatural power by the god Tane. There it is, they say, a collector’s plum if ever there was one, somewhere on the Peak. The whole place belongs to the Maori people. It’s forbidden territory to the white hunter.”
“How far away is it?”
“About eight miles.”
“It looks less than three in this uncanny atmosphere.”
“Kind of black, sir, isn’t it?” said Colly.
“Black and clear,” said Gaunt. “A marvellous back drop.”
They drove on in silence for some time. The flowing hills moved slowly about as if in a contrapuntal measure determined, by the progress of the car. Dikon began to recognize landmarks, He felt extremely apprehensive.
“Hullo,” said Gaunt. “What’s that affair down on the right? A sort of doss-house, one would think.”
Dikon said nothing, but turned in at a ramshackle gate.
“You don’t dare to tell me that we have arrived,” Gaunt demanded in a loud voice.
“Yes, sir.”
“My God, Dikon, you’ll writhe for this. Look at it. Smell it. Colly, we are betrayed.”
“Mr. Bell warned you, sir,” Colly said. “I daresay it’s very comfortable.”
“If anything,” said, Dikon, “it’s less comfortable than it looks. Those are the Springs.”
“Those reeking puddles?”
“Yes. And there, on the verandah, I see the Claires assembled. You are expected, sir,” said Dikon. Out of the tail of his eyes he saw Gaunt’s gloved fingers go first to his tie and then to his hat. He thought suddenly: “He looks terribly like a famous actor.”
The car rocked down the last stretch of the drive and shot across the pumice sweep. Dikon pulled up at the verandah steps. He got out, and taking off his hat approached the expectant Claires. He felt nervous and absurd. The Claires were grouped after the manner of an Edwardian family portrait that had taken an eccentric turn. Mrs. Claire and the Colonel were in deck-chairs, Barbara sat on the steps grasping a reluctant dog. Dikon guessed that they wore their best clothes. Simon, obviously under duress, stood behind his mother’s chair looking murderous. All that was lacking, one felt, was the native equivalent of a gillie holding a couple of staghounds in leash. As Dikon approached, Dr. Ackrington came out of his room.
“Here we are, you see,” Dikon called out with an effort at gaiety. The Claires had risen. Impelled by confusion, doubt, and apology, Dikon shook hands blindly all round. Barbara looked nervously over his shoulder and he saw with a dismay which he afterwards recognized as prophetic that she had gone white to her unpainted lips.
He felt Gaunt’s hand on his arm and hurriedly introduced him.
Mrs. Claire brought poise to the situation, Dikon realized, but it was the kind of poise with which Gaunt was quite unfamiliar. She might have been welcoming a bishop-suffragan to a slum parish, a bishop-suffragan in poor health.
“Such a long journey,” she said anxiously. “You must be so tired.”
“Not a bit of it,” said Gaunt, who had arrived at an age when actors affect a certain air of youthful hardihood.
“But it’s such a dreadful road. And you look very tired,” she persisted gently. Dikon saw Gaunt’s smile grow formal. He turned to Barbara. For some reason which he had not attempted to analyze, Dikon wanted Gaunt to like Barbara. It was with apprehension that he watched her give a galvanic jerk, open her eyes very wide, and put her head on one side like a chidden puppy. “Oh hell,” he thought, “she’s going to be funny.”
“Welcome,” Barbara said in her sepulchral voice, “to the humble abode.” Gaunt dropped her hand rather quickly.
“Find us very quiet, I’m afraid,” Colonel Claire said, looking quickly at Gaunt and away again. “Not much in your line, this country, what?”