spread their bush-couches of fresh-pulled tree-fern fronds, between the buttressed ratas and the creek-side.
"Ringiringi" had a little cold food in his pikau kit, potatoes and kopaki corn; that is, maize in the sheath. He was about to grill some of the fat eels on the fire when his Maori companion stopped him.
"E tama!" he said. "Don't you know it is unlucky to cook the tuna in the night-time? Do not touch those eels until the morning; should you disobey, it will surely bring heavy rain."
The superstitious old warrior was so insistent that "Ringiringi," to please him, agreed to his wishes; he contented himself with the little he had in his kit, and then, filling his pipe with torori tobacco, lit it, and smoked as he lay beside the camp-fire. His Maori mate squatted smoking on the other side.
The warmth of the fire, and the low, murmurous singing of the little river—the wawara-wai, the babble of the waters, in the musical Maori tongue—pleasantly lulled the tired pakeha. He lay there, with his scanty bush-ranging garments wrapped about him, listening, half-asleep, to the lazy run of the creek, and to the songs that his savage old companion recited to himself in a monotonous chant. War-songs of Waikato, songs that he and his Kingite comrades had shouted in many an armed camp before the white man drove them out beyond the Aukati line, the frontier of the Waikato. In one
