Together they climbed the rocky summit of the island, and viewed the strangely compounded landscape, heard the dire sounds as of groans and murmurings of imprisoned fire-spirits, while from time to time an impatient geyser in the haunted valley of Whakarewarewa would fling itself in cloud and steam heavenwards with wildest fury. Together they stood before the curious stone image, sacred under penalty of awful doom in the minds of the simple people, as having been brought in an ancestral canoe from the half-mythical Hawaiki in the dim traditionary exodus of the race. Together they forced their canoes up the glittering channel of Hamurama, and held their hands in the ice-cold fountain at its source, where it flows bubbling out of the breast of the fern-clad hill. The moon was slowly rising over the dark range of Matawhaura as they left the further shore to return to Ohinemutu. The air was delicious, the lake a mirrored water-plain, across which the moonbeams showed silver-gleaming pathways, as if leading to other happy isles. The paddles of the Maori girls dipped softly into the placid water as the canoe stole silently across the lake's broad bosom. "On such a night as this," said Massinger, "it would be most appropriate for you to tell, and for me to listen to, the legend of Hinemoa." "It is a silly tale at best," answered Erena, with a tone half of sadness, half of playfulness, in her voice--"a tale of woman's love and man's fidelity. They had better fortune in those old days." "And, of course, nowadays," said Massinger, "there can be almost no love and less fidelity." "The pakeha is wrong," said one of the girls, as they rested on their paddles, evidently anxious not to miss Erena's version of the legend (like that of Antar among the Arabs), ever new and deepening in interest with every generation--"the pakeha is wrong; girls' love is just the same as ever it was. It is always fresh, like the foliage of the _pohutu kawa_, with its beautiful red flowers. It does not fade and fall off, like the leaves of the trees the pakeha brought to the land." "Hush, Torea!" said Erena; "you must not talk so to this pakeha. He is a great rangatira. And besides, you cannot know." "Do I not?" answered the forest maiden. "If he is a rangatira, he will know too. But are you going to tell us the _Taihia_?"