In due course of time I reached Ohinimutu, where, after a swim in the hot water and a good dinner, I retired to my private abode, a large hut built Maori fashion, but with European door and window, as I knew I should have to give audience to some dozen chiefs of the Arawa tribe, who would call on me to welcome my return and hear the news. It did not take me long to prepare for their reception, and getting the toy out of my kit, I slipped it up my left sleeve, so that it was hidden. I then sat down in a low camp-chair and awaited my victims, who soon arrived, giving me their words of welcome as they entered, and squatting down in a semicircle in front of the fire, all of them as keen as mustard to hear the news. They were a fine-looking lot of old chaps, ten in number, and some of them almost gigantic in size. Old Hori Haupapa must have stood over seven foot high, when in his prime; and the rest were all big men. Anxious as they were to hear the news, still they were far too well-bred to ask any questions, and, as I pretended to be in very low spirits and sat speechless, heaving an occasional deep sigh, they squatted there, conversing in low whispers, with looks full of commiseration for my unhappy state. For a few minutes we sat quiet, then I made signs to the girl who attended on us to hand round the rum and tobacco: which she did. And after each man had been served, letting go a dismal groan, I said: "Friends, I thank you for your words of welcome. My heart is very dark. I have dreamed a dream." Here I paused to let the poison work; for a dream to a Maori audience is always a safe draw, and the muttered grunts and ejaculations, passed round with nudges, showed me they were quite ripe to believe anything. So I continued: "Yes, friends, last night I dreamed a dream, and the interpretation of that dream is hidden from me." Here I paused again, and slipped the toy into my left hand, which rested on my left knee, while I held their eyes with my own, so that, in the firelit whare, none of them noticed my sleight of hand. Then I continued: "I dreamed, O chiefs of the Arawa, that we all sat, as we are doing now, by this fire, when lo! out of my left hand crept a ngaraka" (green lizard). Here again I paused, but so did not my hearers, for old Taupua, glancing nervously at my left hand, at once spotted what he thought to be a dreaded lizard. The grim old warrior let go a howl of consternation and promptly turned a back somersault, thereby drawing the attention of all the others to the noxious reptile; and in one moment these dignified old savages, who would have faced without flinching the fire of a battery of artillery sooner than have committed a gaucherie, were trying to push and struggle through the door, with no more regard to manners or manhood than the ordinary well-dressed Englishman displays who pushes ladies on one side while boarding a tram.