Page:Adventures of Kimble Bent.djvu/93

Rh The scene in the camp by the Tangahoé waters when the war-party returned from Otapawa was one that "Ringiringi" never forgot. It was the first great tangihanga, or wailing over the dead, that he had witnessed. The people gathered in the middle of the little clearing, and for hours the sound of lamentation rang through the forest, often rising into a wild, heart-breaking shriek as some blanket-draped or mat-kilted woman, her long hair unbound, and her cheeks streaming with tears, cried her keening song for her slain. The chiefs taki'd up and down, weapon in hand, and told of the deeds of those who had fallen; each ended his mournful speech with a chanted dirge. When the song was a well-known one, the whole tribe would join in and sing the lament with an intensity of feeling that made their very bodies quiver. It was the full and unrestrained outpouring of the soul of the savage.