A cry escaped him. Amazement, incredulity, fear were in the tone. "A whale with white wings![51] What can it mean? It is magic or----"
He broke off, staring at his men. His lips were trembling, his eyes round. Great chief though he was, fear wrapped him as a garment.
None answered. Some looked under their lids at the oncoming Thing; some fastened their gaze upon the chief, and every man there muttered a _karakia_, if so he might avert impending doom.
On came the marvel, growing ever more distinct, and upon the polished decks the astounded Maori could see beings who looked like men, though their outward seeming was strangely different from any men whom the Sons of Maui had ever encountered.
Then a voice was heard, calling something in a strange, harsh tongue. A whistle shrilled; a score or so of the odd forms raced from end to end of what the bewildered Maori now decided must be a canoe of some sort, and with magical swiftness the "white wings" collapsed and lay folded upon the long spars. Another call, a loud, rattling noise, something fell with a mighty splash into the sea, and the mysterious vessel came to rest.
One minute of tense silence. Then a scream went up from the watching Maori.
The strangely garbed forms were human. But their faces! _Their faces were white!_
In the extremity of their terror the Maori fled into their _whare_ and covered their heads. It was now only too plain that the _Patupaiarehe_ were abroad upon that awful night of nights.
On the 14th of August, 1642, the distinguished circumnavigator, Abel Janssen Tasman, left Batavia in his yacht _Heemskirk_ with a fly-boat, _Zeehaen_ (Sea-hen), dancing in his wake, to investigate the polar continent which Schouten and Le Maire, his countrymen, claimed to have found, and which they had named Staaten Land. It was on the 13th of December in the same year that, after discovering Tasmania, the commodore came one radiant evening within long sight of what he calls a "high, mountainous country."
This was the west coast of the Middle Island, then for the first time seen by the eyes of white men, or so it is reasonable to believe; for the claims made by France and Spain to priority of discovery are based upon wholly insufficient grounds.