That afternoon five men from the Kawau, including Kimble Bent, were paddling their canoe down the river to a settlement a few miles distant, when they caught sight of the old man's empty canoe drifting down with the swift current. As they approached it it sped away rapidly before them, and at last stranded on a shingle-bank in a bend of the river. In it they found Te Maire's gun and a young pig, which the vanished man had evidently caught in the bush while on his torch-making expedition. Bent's Maori companions immediately explained in their own way the mystery of their tribesman's disappearance. "There is a _taniwha_ there," they said, "a fearful water-monster that dwells in a deep, still pool under Te Kopua's banks. He has stretched forth his long claws and dragged the old fellow down to his den." The Maori canoeists made haste to quit the dead man's craft, and plied their paddles with unusual energy until they reached their destination on the shore below. They told their story, and that evening a meeting of the village people was held in the _wharepuni_ to discuss the mystery. For hours the wiseacres of the bush-hamlet solemnly debated the circumstances, and each canoeist in turn had to give his account of the affair and advance his theory. At last it was decided that there was no possible doubt that the _taniwha_ of the river had seized Te Maire and drowned him. There must, of course, be a reason, for no _taniwha_ of any repute would take such an extreme step without some good cause. The verdict was that Te Maire had violated the _tapu_ of the deserted village; he had in all probability taken some dry _rimu_ from an old house that stood there, and which was sacred because a chief had died in it--goodness knows how long ago. The river-god had very properly punished him with death--it was the penalty of infringing the law of _tapu_. The next day and for some days thereafter canoe crews hunted the river for the old man's body, but found it not. At last a woman at the lower settlement, on going down to the river one morning to get a calabash of water, spied the body of the missing man hanging in the branches of a prostrate _kahikatea_-tree on the opposite side of the river, about four feet above the water. The question was, how did the body get there, entangled in the branches that height above the river, for there had been no flood, no noticeable rise or fall in the level of the river. The answer was plain to the mind of the Maori. He summed it all up in two words: "_Te taniwha!_" The river-monster, after grabbing Te Maire from his canoe and detaining him a while in his watery grave, had dragged the body away down-stream and hung it up in the tree-branches opposite the village, so that the dead man's people should have no difficulty in recovering it, and in giving it decent burial. A truly thoughtful and considerate _taniwha_! CHAPTER XXVI BUSH LIFE ON THE PATEA