was Maggie who told us, and in her sweet musical voice the romantic tale of the Princess who swam some three and a half miles across the lake under cover of the darkness, gained if possible additional charm.
So we landed on Mokoia, and went to see the hot pool wherein Hinemoa revived her cramped and wearied body after her cold swim. I wanted to go on and see some of the old fortifications, and the pas, as they call their fortified villages. But we had not procured the necessary permission, and could not explore the island without it, so we continued our voyage across the lake, passing ever so many islands, some of them “tapu” or sacred, because they are the burial places of chiefs.
We went through the channel to Rotoiti, crossed to its far side, and landed there for luncheon on a pretty strip of open with dense and lovely fern-adorned bush behind it. As everyone immediately became very busy over the preparations for luncheon I thought my presence quite unnecessary and went off to explore and take photographs of cabbage-palms, giant tree-ferns, and a tiny old Maori kainga, or village, with its mission-school and church.
While we were preparing tea that afternoon in a tiny cove where we had landed for the sake of the trees, for it was very hot on the lake, Captain Greendays suddenly disappeared for about half an hour.
His wife was greatly put out, and though the only Maoris we had seen since we left Rotorua had been an old woman canoeing on the lake (who was hugely disgusted when I tried to snap-shot her), and an old man in the little kainga close to where we had lunched, she affected to be nervous. And I was really apprehensive of an attack of those dreadful nerves that had been decently quiescent for some time now, when to my great relief we heard the launch returning.
Mrs Greendays’s “Where have you been Tom?” greeted him long before he sprang ashore.
“Why, you don’t mean to say that I am late?” he returned concernedly. “Well, dear, I thought I would have a swim before tea, and then Roberts told me of a hot sulphur spring just round the corner that he declared was not four feet from the lake. I could not credit it, so I went to see, and when I found that he was quite correct I thought I’d try it, as I never have time to try those at the Pavilion, and have my swim afterwards. And that is where I have been, my dear, only just round the corner, and well within hail. Did you think the ghosts of some of the chiefs would attack you? Poor chaps, I understand that they are not permitted to rest in peace for very long, but are brought out to have the flesh scraped off their bones before they are finally laid to rest!”
Mrs Greendays shivered, and glanced nervously behind her. “What a tale to tell us here! she exclaimed. “I think you were extremely silly to go into the lake out of this heat, Tom, and you had better have some tea at once, to counteract any chill.”
