Produced by Al Haines.
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THE OLD CHIEF. Page 81.]
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DOING AND DARING
A New Zealand Story
BY
ELEANOR STREDDER
_Author of "Lost in the Wilds," "The Merchant's Children," "Jack and his Ostrich," etc._
"Who counts his brother's welfare As sacred as his own, And loves, forgives, and pities, He serveth Me alone. I note each gracious purpose, Each kindly word and deed; Are ye not all my children! Shall not the Father heed?" WHITTIER.
T. NELSON AND SONS _London, Edinburgh, and New York_ 1899
*Contents*
I. IN THE MOUNTAIN GORGE II. THE WHARE BY THE LAKE III. A RIDE THROUGH THE BUSH IV. THE NEW HOME V. POSTING A LETTER VI. MIDNIGHT ALARMS VII. THE RAIN OF MUD VIII. A RAGING SEA IX. NOTHING TO EAT X. THE MAORI BOY XI. WIDESPREAD DESOLATION XII. EDWIN'S DISCOVERY XIII. FEEDING THE HUNGRY XIV. RAIN AND FLOOD XV. WHO HAS BEEN HERE? XVI. LOSS AND SUSPICION XVII. EDWIN IN DANGER XVIII. WHERO TO THE RESCUE XIX. MET AT LAST XX. JUST IN TIME XXI. THE VALLEY FARM
*DOING AND DARING.*
*CHAPTER I.*
*IN THE MOUNTAIN GORGE.*
It was a glorious autumn day, when the New Zealand bush was at itsloveliest--as enchanting as if it truly were the fairy ground of theSouthern Ocean; yet so unlike every European forest that wearinessseemed banished by its ceaseless variety. Here the intertwining branchesof majestic trees, with leaves of varied hue, shut out the sky, andseemed to roof the summer road which wound its devious track towards thehills; there a rich fern-clad valley, from which the murmuring sound offalling water broke like music on the ear. Onwards still a littlefarther, and an overgrown creek, gently wandering between steep banks ofrich dark fern and graceful palm, came suddenly out of the greenwoodinto an open space, bounded by a wall of rock, rent by a darkling chasm,where the waters of the creek, tumbling over boulder stone and fallentree, broadened to a rushing river. Along its verge the road continued,a mere wheel-track cut in the rock, making it a perilous crossing, asthe driver of the weekly mail knew full well.
His heavy, lumbering coach was making its way towards it at that moment,floundering through the two feet deep of mud which New Zealanders call abush road. The five poor horses could only walk, and found that hardwork, while the passengers had enough to do to keep their seats.
Fortunately the coach was already lightened of a part of its load, somefares with which it started having reached their destination at the laststopping-place. The seven remaining consisted of a rough,jolly-looking, good-humoured fellow, bound for the surveyors' camp amongthe hills; an old identity, as New Zealanders call a colonist who hasbeen so long resident in the land of his adoption that he has completelyidentified himself with it; and a newly-arrived settler with his fourchildren, journeying to take possession of a government allotment in theWaikato district.
With the first two passengers long familiarity with the discomforts ofbush travelling had grown to indifference; but to Mr. Lee and his familythe experience was a trying one, as the coach swayed heavily to thisside and that, backwards and forwards, up and down, like a boat on arough sea. More than once Mr. Lee's little girls were precipitated intothe arms of their _vis-a-vis_, or bumped backwards with such violence abreakage seemed inevitable; but which would suffer the most, the coachor its passengers, was an open question.
Any English-made vehicle with springs must have been smashed to pieces;but the New Zealand mail had been constructed to suit the exigencies ofthe country. With its frame of iron and sides of leather, it couldresist an amount of wear and tear perfectly incredible to Mr. Lee. Hesat with an arm round each of his daughters, vainly trying to keep themerect in their places. Their two brothers bobbed recklessly from cornerto corner, thinking nothing of the bruises in their ever-increasingmerriment when the edge of Erne's broad-brimmed straw hat went dash intothe navvy's eyes, or Audrey's gray dust-cloak got entangled in thebuckles of the old identity's travelling-bag.
Audrey, with a due regard for the proprieties, began a blushing apology.
"My dear child," exclaimed the portly old gentleman, "you speak as if Idid not know you could not help it."
The words were scarcely uttered, when the whole weight of his sixteenstone went crushing on to little Cuthbert, who emerged from the jollysqueeze with a battered hat and an altogether flattened appearance. Thencame an unexpected breathing-space. The coachman stopped to leave aparcel at the roadman's hut, nestling beneath the shelter of the rocksby the entrance of the gorge.
New Zealand roads are under the care of the government, who station menat intervals all along their route to keep them in order. The specialduty of this individual was to see that no other traffic entered thegorge when the coach was passing through it. Whilst he exchangedgreetings with the coachman, the poor passengers with one accord gave astretch and a yawn as they drew themselves into a more comfortableposition.
On again with renewed jolts between the towering walls of rock, with arush of water by their side drowning the rumble of the wheels. The viewwas grand beyond description, but no rail or fence protected the edge ofthe stream.
Mr. Lee was leaning out of the window, watching anxiously the narrowfoot of road between them and destruction, when, with a sudden lurch,over went the coach to the other side.
"A wheel off," groaned the old identity, as he knocked heads with thenavvy, and became painfully conscious of a struggling heap of arms andlegs encumbering his feet.
AN AWKWARD PLIGHT.]
Audrey clung to the door-handle, and felt herself slowly elevating. Mr.Lee, with one arm resting on the window-frame, contrived to hang on. Asthe coach lodged against the wall of rock, he scrambled out. Happilythe window owned no glass, and the leathern blind was up. The driverwas flung from his seat, and the horses were kicking. His first thoughtwas to seize the reins, for fear the frightened five should drag themover the brink. The shaft-horse was down, but as the driver tumbled tohis feet, he cut the harness to set the others free; earnestly exhortingthe passengers to keep where they were until he could extricate hishorses.
But Edwin, the eldest boy, had already followed the example of hisfather. He had wriggled himself out of the window, and was dropping tothe ground down the back of the coach, which completely blocked thenarrow road.
His father and the coachman both shouted to him to fetch the roadman totheir help. It was not far to the hut at the entrance of the gorge, andthe boy, who had been reckoned a first-rate scout on the cricket-field,ran off with the speed of a hare. The navvy's stentorian "coo"--therecognized call for assistance--was echoing along the rocky wall as hewent. The roadman had heard it, and had left his dinner to listen. Hesaw the panting boy, and came to meet him.
"Coach upset," gasped Edwin.
"Here, lad, take my post till I come back; let nobody come this way.I'll be up with poor coachee in no time. Anybody hurt?"
But without waiting for a reply the man set off. Edwin sank into the bedof fern that clustered round the opening of the chasm, feeling as if allthe breath had been
shaken out of him. There he sat looking queer foran hour or more, hearing nothing, seeing nothing but the dancing leaves,the swaying boughs, the ripple of the waters. Only once a big brown ratcame out of the underwood and looked at him. The absence of all animallife in the forest struck him: even the birds sing only in the mostretired recesses. An ever-increasing army of sand-flies were doing theirutmost to drive him from his position. Unable at last to endure theirstings, he sprang up, trying to rid himself of his tormentors by a shakeand a dance, when he perceived a solitary horseman coming towards him,not by the coach-road, but straight across the open glade.
The man was standing in his stirrups, and seemed to guide his horse by agentle shake of the rein. On he rode straight as an arrow, makingnothing of the many impediments in his path. Edwin saw him dash acrossthe creek, plunge through the all but impenetrable tangle of a wildflax-bush, whose tough and fibrous leaves were nine feet long at least,leap over a giant boulder some storm had hurled from the rocks above,and rein in his steed with easy grace at the door of the roadman'sshanty. Then Edwin noticed that the man, whose perfect command of hishorse had already won his boyish admiration, had a big mouth and a duskyskin, that his cheeks were furrowed with wavy lines encircling eachother.
IN THE MOUNTAIN GORGE. 15
"A living tattoo," thought Edwin. The sight of those curiously drawnlines was enough to proclaim a native.
Some Maori chief, the boy was inclined to believe by his goodEnglish-made saddle. The tall black hat he wore might have beenimported from Bond Street at the beginning of the season, barring thesea-bird's feathers stuck upright in the band. His legs were bare. Astriped Austrian blanket was thrown over one shoulder and carefullydraped about him. A snowy shirt sleeve was rolled back from the duskyarm he had raised to attract Edwin's attention. A striped silk scarf,which might have belonged to some English lady, was loosely knottedround his neck, with the ends flying behind him. A scarlet coat, whichhad lost its sleeves, completed his grotesque appearance.
"Goo'-mornin'," he shouted. "Coach gone by yet?"
"The coach is upset on that narrow road," answered Edwin, pointing tothe ravine, "and no one can pass this way."
"Smashed?" asked the stranger in tolerable English, brushing away theever-ready tears of the Maori as he sprang to the ground, expecting tofind the treasure he had commissioned the coachman to purchase for himwas already broken into a thousand pieces. Then Edwin remembered thecoachman had left a parcel at the hut as they passed; and they both wentinside to look for it. They found it laid on the bed at the back of thehut--a large, flat parcel, two feet square.
The address was printed on it in letters half-an-inch high: "Nga-Hepe,Rota Pah."
"That's me!" cried the stranger, the tears of apprehension changing intobursts of joyous laughter as he seized it lovingly, and seemed toconsider for a moment how he was to carry it away. A shadow passed overhis face; some sudden recollection changed his purpose. He laid hishand persuasively on Edwin's shoulder, saying, "Hepe too rich, Nga-Hepetoo rich; the rana will come. Hide it, keep it safe till Nga-Hepe comesagain to fetch it."
Edwin explained why he was waiting there. He had only scrambled out ofthe fallen coach to call the roadman, and would soon be gone.
"You pakeha [white man] fresh from Ingarangi land? you Lee?" exclaimedthe Maori, taking a letter from the breast-pocket of his sleevelesscoat, as Edwin's surprised "Yes" confirmed his conjecture.
The boy took the letter from him, and recognized at once the bold blackhand of a friend of his father's whose house was to be their nexthalting-place. The letter was addressed to Mr. Lee, to be left in thecare of the coachman.
Meanwhile, the roadman had reached the scene of the overturn just as thenavvy had succeeded in getting the door of the coach open. Audrey andEffie were hoisted from the arms of one rough man to another, and seatedon a ledge of rock a few feet from the ground, where Mr. Lee, who wasstill busy with the horses, could see the torn gray cloak and wavinghandkerchief hastening to assure him they were unhurt.
Poor little Cuthbert was crying on the ground. His nose was bleedingfrom a blow received from one of the numerous packages which had flownout from unseen corners in the suddenness of the shock.
"Mr. Bowen," said the navvy, "now is your turn."
But to extricate the stout old gentleman, who had somehow lamed himselfin the general fall, was a far more difficult matter.
The driver, who scarcely expected to get through a journey without somedisaster, was a host in himself. He got hold of the despairingtraveller by one arm, the roadman grasped the other, assuring him, incontradiction to his many assertions, that his climbing days were notall over; the navvy gave a leg up from within, and in spite of slips andbruises they had him seated on the bank at last, puffing and pantingfrom the exertion. "Now, old chap," added the roadman, with roughhospitality, "take these poor children back to my hut; and have a rest,and make yourself at home with such tucker as you can find, while we getthe coach righted."
"We will all come down and help you with the tucker when our work isdone," laughed the navvy, as the three set to their task with a will,and began to heave up the coach with cautious care. The manyejaculatory remarks which reached the ears of Audrey and Mr. Bowenfilled them with dismay.
"Have a care, or she'll be over into the water," said one.
"No, she won't," retorted another; "but who on earth can fix this wheelon again so that it will keep? Look here, the iron has snappedunderneath. What is to be done?"
"We have not far to go," put in the coachman. "I'll make it hold thatdistance, you'll see."
A wild-flax bush was never far to seek. A few of its tough, fibrousleaves supplied him with excellent rope of nature's own making.
Mr. Bowen watched the trio binding up the splintered axle, and tyingback the iron frame-work of the coach, where it had snapped, with arough and ready skill which seemed to promise success. Still he foresawsome hours would go over the attempt, and even then it might end infailure.
He was too much hurt to offer them any assistance, but he called toCuthbert to find him a stick from the many bushes and trees springingout of every crack and crevice in the rocky sides of the gorge, that hemight take the children to the roadman's hut. They arrived just asNga-Hepe was shouting a "Goo'-mornin'" to Edwin. In fact, the Maori hadjumped on his horse, and was cantering off, when Mr. Bowen stopped himwith the question,--
"Any of your people about here with a canoe? I'll pay them well to rowme through this gorge," he added.
"The coach is so broken," said Audrey aside to her brother, "we areafraid they cannot mend it safely."
"Never mind," returned Edwin cheerily; "we cannot be far from Mr.Hirpington's. This man has brought a letter from him. Where isfather?"
"Taking care of the horses; and we cannot get at him," she replied.
Mr. Bowen heard what they were saying, and caught at the good news--notfar from Hirpington's, where the Lees were to stop. "How far?" heturned to the Maori.
"Not an hour's ride from the Rota Pah, or lake village, where the Maorilived." The quickest way to reach the ford, he asserted, was to take ashort cut through the bush, as he had done.
Mr. Bowen thought he would rather by far trust himself to nativeguidance than enter the coach again. But there were no more horses tobe had, for the coachman's team was out of reach, as the broken-downvehicle still blocked the path.
Nga-Hepe promised, as soon as he got to his home, to row down stream andfetch them all to Mr. Hirpington's in his canoe. Meanwhile, Edwin hadrushed off to his father with the letter. It was to tell Mr. Lee theheavy luggage he had sent on by packet had been brought up from thecoast all right.
"You could get a ride behind Hirpington's messenger," said the men toEdwin, "and beg him to come to our help." The Maori readily assented.
They were soon ascending the hilly steep and winding through a leafylabyrinth of shadowy arcades, where ferns and creepers trailed theirluxuriant foliage over rotting tree t
runks. Deeper and deeper they wentinto the hoary, silent bush, where song of bird or ring of axe islistened for in vain. All was still, as if under a spell. Edwin lookedup with something akin to awe at the giant height of mossy pines, orpeered into secluded nooks where the sun-shafts darted fitfully overvivid shades of glossy green, revealing exquisite forms of unimaginedferns, "wasting their sweetness on the desert air." Amid his nativefastnesses the Maori grew eloquent, pointing out each conical hill,where his forefathers had raised the wall and dug the ditch. Over everytrace of these ancient fortifications Maori tradition had its fearsomestory to repeat. Here was the awful war-feast of the victor; there anunyielding handful were cut to pieces by the foe.
How Edwin listened, catching something of the eager glow of his excitedcompanion, looking every inch--as he knew himself to be--the lord of thesoil, the last surviving son of the mighty Hepe, whose name had struckterror from shore to shore.
As the Maori turned in his saddle, and darted suspicious glances fromside to side, it seemed to Edwin some expectation of a lurking dangerwas rousing the warrior spirit within him.
They had gained the highest ridge of the wall of rock, and before themgloomed a dark descent. Its craggy sides were riven and disrupted,where cone and chasm told the same startling story, that here, in theforgotten long ago, the lava had poured its stream of molten firethrough rending rocks and heaving craters. But now a maddened river washissing and boiling along the channels they had hollowed. It wasleaping, with fierce, impatient swoop, over a blackened mass ofdownfallen rock, scooping for itself a caldron, from which, withredoubled hiss and roar, it darted headlong, rolling over on itself, andthen, as if in weariness, spreading and broadening to the kiss of thesun, until it slept like a tranquil lake in the heart of the hills. Forthe droughts of summer had broadened the muddy reaches, which now seemedto surround the giant boulders until they almost spanned the junction.
Where the stream left the basin a mass of huge logs chained together,forming what New Zealanders call a "boom," was cast across it, waitingfor the winter floods to help them to start once more on their downwardswim to the broader waters of the Waikato, of which this shrunken streamwould then become a tributary.
On the banks of the lake, or rota--to give it the Maori name--Edwinlooked down upon the high-peaked roofs of a native village nestlingbehind its protecting wall.
As the wind drove back the light vapoury cloudlets which hovered overthe huts and whares (as the better class of Maori dwellings are styled),Edwin saw a wooden bridge spanning the running ditch which guarded theentrance.
His ears were deafened by a strange sound, as if hoarsely echoingfog-horns were answering each other from the limestone cliffs, when acart-load of burly natives crossed their path. As the wheels rattledover the primitive drawbridge, a noisy greeting was shouted out to theadvancing horseman--a greeting which seemed comprised in a single wordthe English boy instinctively construed "Beware." But the warning, ifit were a warning, ended in a hearty laugh, which made itself heardabove the shrill whistling from the jets of steam, sputtering andspouting from every fissure in the rocky path Nga-Hepe was descending,until another blast from those mysterious fog-horns drowned every othernoise.
With a creepy sense of fear he would have been loath to own, Edwinlooked ahead for some sign of the ford which was his destination; for heknew that his father's friend, Mr. Hirpington, held the onerous post offord-master under the English Government in that weird, wild land ofwonder, the hill-country of the north New Zealand isle.