'Now is our chance,' whispered Terence, and under cover of the tumult they dragged themselves up the bank and lay flat among the fern at the top. What a sight met their astonished eyes! CHAPTER XII VANISHED From where the friends lay they looked across a rude plateau, dotted with ti-tree, koromiko, and other bushes, and upon this, at intervals of a dozen yards, three huge fires blazed and roared and crackled under frequent additions of fuel. The ground swarmed with Maoris, many of whom Te Karearea had recruited on his march, and most of them were naked, save for their _katikas_, or short kilts of flax. As their bodies were splashed and streaked with red and white paint, it required but little imagination to conceive them an array of petticoated skeletons, gouted with blood, dancing round the wild fires of a witches' sabbath. Between two of the fires there had been set up a long pole, upon whose spiked summit, pitiful to see, was a human head, wonderfully preserved after the Maori fashion. It was the head of a white man, too, as was plainly shown by the fair hair and whiskers which still covered the dried, stretched skin of scalp and cheeks. 'All that is left of poor Lloyd,' whispered Terence. 'Te Karearea must have sent for it. Look, here he comes with Winata Pakaro and another. Where is the old wizard?' With stately tread the three chiefs approached, the Maoris forming in two long lines on opposite sides of the great fires, while every eye was bent upon the dignified figure of their commander. For some moments Te Karearea stood still, gazing up at the impaled head. Then suddenly he began to dance. Slowly he moved at first; but with each succeeding minute his steps grew quicker, his gestures more frantic, his gyrations more wild. Round and round, up and down, from side to side he sprang and whirled and bounded, until it seemed a marvel how he kept his balance. All at once, after a figure of extraordinary swiftness and duration, he stopped. With arms outstretched and head thrown back, so that his eyes stared up at that poor head upon the pole, he stood an instant, and then from his open mouth there issued a piercing voice, which screamed and gabbled the most appalling mixture of frenzied prayer and blasphemous incantation. And the voice which possessed Te Karearea was so unlike his own, so compact of yell and howl and bark and screech and frenzied raving, that George, shuddering where he lay, muttered to Terence: 'This man hath a devil.' The awful voice ceased, and Te Karearea, falling headlong, writhed in a convulsion. As if at a signal, the whole crowd, men and women, broke ranks and rushed to form a circle round the _niu_, or sacred pole.