An old Maori war-track wound through the high fern above the Okehu Gorge. Along this the scouts marched to take up their night's vigil. Two were posted at the end of the gorge nearest the camp, two more about two hundred yards away, and the third couple about the same distance farther on, above the middle of the gorge. The men made themselves nests in the fern alongside the track, and close to the edge of the slope that fell to the impenetrable blackness of the bush below. The leader, as he posted the men, told them to keep a sharp watch and listen for any sounds, and to give a signal if any of them heard Maoris in the gorge. The signal was to be the thrice-repeated sharp cry of the _weka_, the night-roving wingless bird that haunted these forests and gulches. After posting his comrades in their several positions, young Lingard rejoined his companion Maling in a little nook in the thick fern just on the gorge side of the narrow foot-track, and stayed a while with him conversing in whispers. In half an hour's time he cautiously patrolled the track again to visit the others. When he came to Mackenzie, the old soldier was sitting up reading a pocket Bible by the bright moonlight. "What are you reading?" asked Lingard, as he squatted down quietly in the fern by Mackenzie's side. "Look and see," said the soldier, and Lingard saw, and wondered, for not many a rough old soldier like Mackenzie was seen with such a book. And he wondered still more when Mackenzie, closing the book, asked him to look at it again. There was a clean-cut hole in it, right through one of the covers and penetrating many of the leaves. "That book saved my life," said the veteran. And he told the story. It was the comrade who had bowled over the Indian who was about to scalp him that gave Mackenzie the little Bible. "'You say you will always be grateful to me for saving your life,' he said. 'Well, I want you to do just one thing for me; it's a little thing. I won't ask much.' "He was so insistent," said Mackenzie, "that I gave him the promise he asked. 'Well,' said my friend, 'just take this little book of mine and read something in it every night; or, if you won't read it, take it out and look at it and open it. And always carry it with you. It will save your life.'