the papistic mummers in England. Before I had uttered half a dozen
words, the men who were dragging the sheep flew at me, and tried to seize
me, while one of them offered a strange-looking knife at my throat. I
thought my last hour had come, and the old Adam awakening in me, I
delivered such a blow with my right on the eye of the man with the knife,
that he reeled and fell heavily against the altar. Then assuming an
attitude of self-defence (such as was, alas! too familiar to me in my
unregenerate days), I awaited my assailants.

They were coming on in a body when the veil of the large edifice in front
was lifted, and a flash of light streamed out on the dusky square, as an
old man dressed in red hurried to the scene of struggle. He wore a long
white beard, had green leaves twisted in his hair, and carried in his
hand a gilded staff curiously wreathed with wool. When they saw him
approaching, my assailants fell back, each of them kissing his own hand
and bowing slightly in the direction of the temple, as I rightly supposed
it to be. The old man, who was followed by attendants carrying torches
burning, was now close to us, and on beholding me, he exhibited unusual
emotions.

My appearance, no doubt, was at that moment peculiar, and little
creditable, as I have since thought, to a minister, however humble. My
hat was thrust on the back of my head, my coat was torn, my shirt open,
my neck-tie twisted round under my ear, and my whole attitude was not one
generally associated with the peaceful delivery of the message. Still, I
had never conceived that any spectacle, however strange and unbecoming,
could have produced such an effect on the native mind, especially in a
person who was manifestly a chief, or high-priest of some heathen god.
Seeing him pause, and turn pale, I dropped my hands, and rearranged my
dress as best I might. The old Tohunga, as my New Zealand flock used to