Under Surveillance.

He was just dropping off to sleep when he heard someone asking Hami who the white man was. He threw off his flax covering and saw that there was a canoe alongside, with a man and two girls in it. The man, a big tattooed truculent-looking fellow, one Te Waka, was very inquisitive about Bates and his excursion. When he heard that the pakeha was bound to Tupekerunga village, he instantly turned his canoe about—he was going downstream with a cargo of dressed flax packed in baskets—and set off up the river, alongside Bates' waka.

His sleepy fit gone, and feeling annoyed and a trifle anxious about this meddlesome flax-trader on his trail, the pakeha took up his paddle again. Te Waka steadily kept pace with the scout's canoe. Bates landed his lad Hami at Opuatia, where a dark slow creek came out from the secret places of the forest on the west. Dipping his blade steadily, he paddled on, presently passing the wooded island of Tarahanga, on which he saw the remains of the palisading of an abandoned pa. The island was a tapu burying place.

The blazing sun went down at last; cool breaths came from the broad riverway and the fragrant bush. A large village lay straggling along the west bank; beyond the thatched houses were potato-gardens and fruit trees. This was Tupeke-runga, a kainga where one of Bates' trusted secret agents lived.