Page:Adventures of Kimble Bent.djvu/245

Rh for a very brief waist-mat of dangling flax, leaps to the side of one of the white men's bodies, just as it is harnessed in so revolting a fashion to be dragged into the pa.

His tomahawk flashes in the air above him as he steps over the fallen soldier—once, twice, thrice!

He thrusts in a hand into a huge gaping wound in the dead man's breast; he is searching for something. He rises with some object, all bloody, in his horrible red hand. He sticks his tomahawk back into his girdle, he comes bounding from the corpse, waving his dripping trophy in his hand, swinging it round his head. His fiendish yells ring echoing over the forest clearing.

What is it he flourishes so exultingly?

It is the white man's heart!

This is the young warrior Tihirua, the priest of the burnt sacrifice. He has torn out the manawa of the soldier, as a mawé—an offering to the God of War!

At his waist, buckled to his flax girdle, is a leather pouch, such as was generally used for carrying percussion-caps. Out of this he takes matches—pakeha matches! Striking match after match, he holds them underneath the bleeding heart until it is singed, and dark smoke goes up from it—incense to Uenuku, the war-god, who appears to his savage worshippers in the arch of the rainbow.