“Then if I may rush up and change—?”

“If you want to. Not a dinner-jacket, please. We shall be alone.”

“Right. I shan’t be five minutes.”

He was as good as his word. They had a cocktail together and then took the road in Te Pokiha’s car.

“We take the north-east road towards Mount Ruapehu,” said Te Pokiha. “I expect you are tired of hearing about our mountains and thermal districts. I am afraid New Zealanders are too eager to thrust these wonders at visitors, and to demand admiration.”

“I should like very much indeed to hear a Maori speak of them.”

“Really? You mean a real Maori—not a pakeha-Maori?”

“Yes.”

“We, too, are strangers in New Zealand, you know. We have only been here for about thirty generations. We brought our culture with us and applied it to the things we found here. Our religion too, and our science, if we may be allowed to call it science.”

Alleyn looked at the magnificent head. Te Pokiha was a pale Maori, straight-nosed, not very full-lipped. He might have been a Greek or an Egyptian. There was an aristocratic flavour about him—a complete absence of anything vulgar or tentative in his voice or his movements. His speech, gravely formal, carefully phrased, suited him and did not seem at all pedantic or affected.

“Where did you come from?” asked Alleyn.

“From Polynesia, and before that perhaps from Easter Island. Perhaps from South East Asia. The tohunga and rangitira say that in the beginning it was from Assyria, but I think the pakeha anthropologists do not follow us there. Our teaching was not given to everybody. Only the learned and noble classes were permitted to know the history of their race. It was learnt orally and through the medium of the carvings and hieroglyphics. My grandfather was a deeply-instructed rangitira and I learned much from him. He was a survival of the old order and his kind will not be seen much longer.”

“Do you regret the passing of the old order?”

“In some ways. I have a kind of pride of race—shall we say a savage pride? The pakeha has altered everything, of course. We have been unable to survive intact the fierce white light of his civilisation. In trying to follow his example we have forgotten many of our own customs and have been unable wisely to assimilate all of his. Hygiene and eugenics for example. We have become spiritually and physically obese. That is only my own view. Most of my people are well content, but I see the passing of the old things with a kind of nostalgia. The pakeha give their children Maori Christian names because they sound pretty. They call their ships and their houses by Maori names. It is perhaps a charming compliment, but to me it seems a little strange. We have become a side-show in the tourist bureau—our dances—our art—everything.”