"Then, if we feel injured, cruel as the grave, merciless, remorseless. So beware of us! We make bad enemies, I confess; but, then, we are always ready to die for our friends." "I am numbered, I trust, among that favoured class, am I not?" he continued, as he gazed at the girl's face, wearing as it did a sudden look of high-souled resolve. So might have looked, so posed, the daughter of Jephthah; so, scorning fate and the dark death, stood Iphigenia as she awaited the blow of doom. The expression of her face changed; a wistful, half-pleading look came into her eyes. "Why ask?" she said softly. "You know that you are; that you always will be." * * * * * And now, after a passage across the pumice-strewn levels, lo! Taupo the sacred, Taupo-Moana, the moaning sea. There was no thought of unsatisfied expectation as Massinger gazed upon the glorious sheet of water, over which the eye wandered until the darksome shadows of Kaimanawa and Tankaru dimmed its azure surface--the vast mountain range, from which, on Tongariro, a mathematically correct cinder-cone sprang upwards, like the spire of a gigantic minster. On the other side, the peak of Tauhara, 3600 feet in height, stood out in lone majesty. The twin Titan, Ruapehu, bared his enormous shoulder to the unclouded sky. The day was wonderfully fine, having the softened atmospheric tone peculiar to the later summer months of the northern island. Then gradually a delicate haze crept over the horizon, shading the stern outlines of the dark-browed Alp. The foot-hills seemed to have approached through the clear yet tinted lights of the fading day. "When have I seen such a panorama before?" thought Massinger. "What vastness, what sublimity, in all its component parts! Then, as columns of steam rose in the far distance, completing the weird and abnormal effects of the unfamiliar vision, speech, even exclamation, appeared to fail him. "Yonder stands the _pah_ of his Majesty, King Te Heu Heu, the head chief of all this district," interposed Warwick. "We must send forward a herald and pay our respects, or our visit may not be so successful. He has a queer temper, and is as proud as if he had been sent from heaven. There is his castle." "Warwick is right," said Erena, coming up at this juncture and arousing herself from the reverie into which she, too, appeared to have fallen. "This is his kingdom, and we must do _tika_. We can rest for to-night, however, and give Te Heu Heu the second proper warning, so that he can receive us in state. I wish you could have seen the _real_ Te Heu Heu, however." "Why so? and what was his special distinction?"