My own hand was tracing the whorls and little diamond patterns. The current tugged harder at our feet, and I lurched slightly. Upstream, the Waimoana rumbled louder. Time we got out of here, before someone saw us and we got in deep trouble. Hell, we were going to get in trouble anyway; we’d have to explain how we got hold of this. Yet trouble didn’t seem to matter just now.

Tipene drew in a deep breath, grinned at me. ‘Incredible, eh? It’s just—’

Paaarrp! Paaarrp! From across the other side of the valley, a horn blared twice, loud and harsh. The two of us burst out laughing.

‘Yeah,’ Tipene agreed. ‘It’s just paarrp.’ As he spoke, the horn blew again, longer. Then once more. A traffic jam? Not in our valley: two trucks and a tractor going past is our idea of heavy traffic.

Tipene sighed. ‘We better get going.’ He turned to the bank we’d climbed down; nodded at a crack beside where the clay had come away in my grasp. ‘We can get up there, if you don’t wreck that handhold, too.’

‘Me?’ I pretended to be annoyed. ‘It was you swinging down like a mad gorilla that made it come loose.’

My friend grinned. He began to tuck the carving inside his shirt. ‘Typical Pakeha; making excuses.’ Now we both grinned. Yeah, I’d never forget this.

Paaarrp! Paaarrp! The car or whatever it was sounded closer now. ‘Aw, shut up!’ I called. What were they making so much fuss about?

Paaaaarrrrrp! ‘Stick a sock in it!’ yelled Tipene. I pushed my feet through the water and reached for the bank. ‘Yeah, I can fit my hand in—’

Then we went still.

My head swung to listen. A noise was growing upstream. A murmuring and sighing, like voices breathing out together. No, like an engine swelling louder. A train? Couldn’t be.

Paaarrp! Paaaaarrrrrpp! The horn blasted again. It was closer still, nearly at our place. Actually, it sounded like our truck.

The noise upriver changed. It became a roaring whoosh, a rumbling. It rose to a booming. The bank I leaned against began to shudder. We stood, staring; Tipene had one hand inside his shirt, where he’d tucked the carving. And we saw it.

It was the whole width of the Waimoana, charging towards us faster than a person could run. A foaming crest of brown and white, six feet high, smashing forward between the banks, flinging itself upwards in spouts as it came.

Those slips upstream. The dams they’d formed across the other rivers feeding into ours. One of them had broken, its water tearing into the Waimoana, a tidal wave just a few seconds away from us.

A tree flew into the air, flung by the rampaging crest, then crashed back down and vanished. The force of it! It would snatch us away; we couldn’t stand against it.