Every now and then he poised his spear, as if about to throw it; and at length, just as the lovers were about to step into the canoe, he threw it with such deadly aim and force that it completely transfixed the youth, then springing from his hiding-place, he laid hold of the girl, and with a peal of savage laughter, pointed to the bleeding corpse, and with one blow of his tomahawk cleft her head; and the flowers which at sunset had bound her hair, the first beams of the rising morn beheld steeped in her life's blood.
Pursued by the vengeance of the tribes, who were exasperated by the violation of the sacred tapu in the murder of their gallant chieftain and the loveliest maiden in the pa, the murderer was hunted from place to place, ultimately taking refuge in a hollow tree on the spur leading to that cliff on the river side. Discovered in this his last retreat, he was pursued to the top of yonder precipice. His enemies were close behind him; there were no means of escape. He knew that if he were taken, the most horrid tortures awaited him; he preferred risking the leap and trusting to the river. With a wild unearthly shriek, he sprang from the top, but striking the rock in his descent, he fell into the water a mangled corpse. From that circumstance the cliff derives its name of the Maori Leap.
This is the tradition handed down from generation to generation of the dusky race, and communicated, in the first years of the settlement, to one of the earliest settlers, who faithfully transcribed it, and so it has been handed down, probably with emendations, to our own times.
"Time and tide for no man bide," so having breathlessly listened, the engine gives a shriek and a puff, and we are away from these memories of the past, hurrying on to the hotel at Henley to obtain some refreshment, and wait for the Invercargill Express, by which in due time Dunedin is reached.
