Chapter IX Nothing to Eat
As the shock of the earthquake subsided, and Beauty rallied from his terror, his pace began to slacken. If Edwin had not tied himself and Cuthbert so securely in the cart, they might have been thrown out when Beauty ran away. So the knots which would not be untied proved their protection; and now they found themselves trotting leisurely through verdant stretches, dotted with ti tree and blue-gum, and overgrown with toi and flax and rushes. Before them rose the great gates of the avenue leading to the central station-house. The white front of Feltham’s mansion gleamed through the tall stems of the trees which surrounded it; whilst beyond and around them were the sheds and walls, the pools and bridges, comprising stock-yards and shearing-places, where thousands of wild cattle and tens of thousands of wilder sheep were washed and dipped, and counted and branded, year after year.
The ingenious arrangement of pool and paddock and pen by which this gigantic undertaking is safely accomplished looked to the boys like a wooden village.
Beauty drew up at the friendly gate of his own accord, attracted by the welcome sounds of human life as stockmen and shepherds hurried out to their morning work. Half the hands were off to the hills; the remaining half found in consequence the more to do. The poor terrified cattle had suffered considerably. Sheep were cast in every ditch. Cows had gored each other in their mad terror; and broken fences told of wild leaps and escaped bulls to be sought for in the neighbouring bush.
The boundary rider, whose sole duty is to parade the vast domain and give notice at headquarters of unwary gaps and strays, had been spurring hither and thither, delayed by the gloom of the morning and the herds of wild bulls which had broken in, while the tame had broken out. With demolished fences, and frightened sheep dying around them by hundreds, the little fugitives in Oscott’s hut had been forgotten.
But when the boundary rider saw a cart at his master’s gate, blue with volcanic mud above, and dripping from below with the slime of the sea, he thought of the family from the hills waiting somewhere for the breakfast he was to have carried in his saddle-bag. His circuit was but half completed. “I shall find them yet,” he said to himself, as he galloped up behind the cart. He saw the dangling rope, and the white faces of the two boys huddled together in a state of complete exhaustion. He tied his horse to the gate, and jumping into the cart, rattled Beauty up the avenue to his master’s door, which stood wide open to all comers. For every hour brought fresh rumours, and fresh parties of fugitives who had fled precipitately from their homes when the storm of mud began.
He took his knife from his pocket and cut the rope which tied Edwin and his brother to the cart. Some one ran out with a cup of coffee, which he poured down their throats, and then the boys began to revive. He wanted to take them in-doors and put them to bed. But the relief-party had already sent down so many sufferers from the hills every bed was full of children, women, and even men, who had been dug out of the muddy stream in which they were suffocating.
As soon as Edwin could speak, he added his story to the others, entreating the men who turned their heads to listen, as they hurried in and out, to send some food to his sisters, who were left alone in Oscott’s hut. As for the sailors, the feeling among Feltham’s people was decided: any one not from the hills must be left to take care of himself.
Just then a horseman, covered with mud and foam, came spurring towards the house, shouting to the crowd around the door,—
“I’ve come for every man on the ground, by the master’s orders. Leave everything. Bring your spades, and follow me. The nearer we get to Tarawera the thicker lies the mud. Our government station at Rotorua is buried beneath it, church and all. Te Ariki and Maura are nowhere to be seen. The low whares in the Maori pahs are utterly destroyed. Wherever the roofs have been strong enough to uphold the weight of the falling mud, the inhabitants are alive beneath them now. Come to the rescue—come!”
The last hoarse words were scarcely audible. The boundary rider took the unfinished cup from Edwin’s lips and passed it to the man, and the boy was glad that he did so.
A cry of “Spades! spades!” rang through the increasing group of listeners, which seemed to gather and disperse with equal rapidity. Mrs. Feltham made her way through the midst to the bell-tower, and rang a frantic peal to call all hands together. Horses were saddling; men were mounting; others were hurrying up to learn the meaning of the hasty summons. Edwin drew his cart aside under the trees to watch the departure.
Mrs. Feltham reappeared on her doorstep with knife and loaf, trying to fill every pocket with bread before each one rode off. She could not make her intention understood. The men, in their impatience to be gone, would hardly stop to take it.
“Oh,” thought Edwin, “they forget they will want it all to give away.”
He leaned over his brother. “Cuth, take the reins.” But Cuth’s numbed hands let them drop. Edwin twisted them round his arm, and with a nod and a smile made his way to Mrs. Feltham.
His voice was so weak and faint she could not hear what he said, but the ready hand was offering to pass on the great hunches of bread she was cutting, and she kept him at work, little dreaming how he had to turn his head away again and again to resist the impulse to take a bite by the way. As he took the last crust from her, and saw that it was the last, a sudden faintness overcame him, and he dropped on the stones at her feet.
“I am so very, very hungry,” he said piteously.
“Why did not you tell me that before the basket was empty?” she retorted. “You must remember, my boy, every bit of food for man and beast must be buried under this dreadful mud for miles and miles. I may have a famishing army round me before night, and how am I to feed them all? Not a crumb must be wasted. If you are so hungry, go into the kitchen and clear up the scraps on the men’s plates. I would turn all the flour in the granary into bread, and feed you every one, if I had only hands to make it and bake it. Stop,” she went on; “though you are a boy you could be of some use. You could wash and boil a copperful of potatoes and pumpkins; that would be something to set before the starving cart-loads I hope and trust they will be successful in saving.”
“No, ma’am,” answered Edwin. “I must go back to my sisters. I have left them alone with a lot of rough sailors.”
His “no” was round and resolute.
She took out her purse, saying almost coaxingly, “Here is a week’s wage for a day’s work.”
“I am very sorry, Mrs. Feltham, but I really can’t stay,” he persisted.
She turned away with an impatient gesture and went in-doors.
“She takes me for some unlucky beggar,” thought Edwin, crawling round to the kitchen door, glad to avail himself of the somewhat ungracious permission to look out for the scraps. “It is dog’s fare,” thought Edwin, “but it is more to me than her gold.” He found a piece of newspaper, and walked round and round the long breakfast-table, collecting into it such morsels as he could find. Of most of the dishes the hungry young shepherds had made a clean sweep. Still there were some unfinished crusts of bread, a corner of Melton pie, a rasher of bacon burned in the grilling. On the dresser he discovered a bone of mutton, evidently laid aside for the hounds. He would not touch the sugar in the basin, or take a peep at the contents of the cupboards, feeling himself on his honour. The sounds within convinced him Mrs. Feltham and the rest of her household were hard at work transforming the hospitable mansion into a temporary hospital, for the reception of the poor unfortunates who might be dug out alive but scarcely uninjured.
“O Cuth, we haven’t been the worst off by a long way!” exclaimed Edwin suddenly, as the brothers sat together in their cart, enjoying their bone of mutton, quite in the doggie line, but, as Cuthbert averred, feeling themselves, as they ate, like new-made men.
Then they turned Beauty homewards. Yes, that queer little shanty was a kind of home. It was still dark as in a London fog, but the shocks of earthquake were less, fainter and farther apart.
Half-way down the road they met the party of sailors, walking barefoot on the edge of the grass. They did not recognize the boys, but stopped to ask the way to the central station.
“We have just been there to beg for food,” said Edwin, feeling it quite “infra dig” to acknowledge the condition in which they reached Mrs. Feltham’s gate. “But,” he added drearily, “we could not get it. Not enough for you all.”
Then he hurried on to explain the tidings from the hills and the general stampede to the rescue.
“Turn back,” urged the captain, “and give us a lift.”
“Lend us the cart,” added Arthur Bowen. “If any harm should come to it, grandfather will pay you for it; and as for the horse, he will get a good feed of corn in Feltham’s stable. I will see after him.”
Edwin was not sure he ought to trust the horse and cart with strangers, but the prospect of a good feed of corn for Beauty went a long way; for he had nothing for the horse to eat but the winter grass around the hut. Down he jumped.
“If there are so many men at this station,” the sailors were saying, “maybe they can find us an old pair of shoes; and if strong arms are in request, we are ready to take our turn.”
They shook hands all round.
“Good-bye, my lads, good-bye. It was a brave act to back that cart into the sea, and you’ll take a sailor’s blessing with you to your home, wherever it is. If there is anything washed ashore from the little craft, you’ll store it up high and dry until another coaster calls to fetch it away.”
The promise was given on both sides. Edwin would find his Beauty safe at Feltham’s, and the captain his wreckage piled against the back of Oscott’s hut, although they might both be miles away when the two were reclaimed.
Edwin took Cuthbert’s hand in his and walked on in grave silence. One thing was clear—nobody would have time or thought to care for them. They must just look out for themselves.
“It is playing at Robinson Crusoe in earnest, we four in that little hut,” said Cuthbert. “He did lots of things to make himself comfortable, but then he was a man.”
“It won’t be for long,” added Edwin. “I hardly think we shall see father to-night, but he may be back to-morrow. If we could only find something to eat. Whero and his mother lived on nuts and berries after the muru, but then it was autumn.”
They sank again into silence. The barking of the boundary dog warned them they were near the hut, and when it died away to a low growl they distinguished a faint, soft murmur of singing.
“Oh, hush!” they exclaimed. “Oh, listen! It is the girls; that is Audrey.”
It put fresh life into the weary feet as they heard it clearer and clearer—
“Hark, hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings.”
“Heaven’s gate,” repeated the boys: it was the only word they could distinguish.
“Heaven’s gate. It is a word to comfort us, for that is never shut,” added Edwin, as they stumbled against an uprooted ti tree. The long, tapering stem, with its waving plume of feathery leaves, barred their progress. Cuth was about to climb over it, for the hard brown trunk at its base was six feet round; but Edwin ran off to examine its leafy crown, where the cabbage which gave the tree its name should lie hidden.
He parted the yard-long leaflets, and felt a something tall and crisp growing up in their midst.
A shout of glee brought Cuth to his assistance. They pulled the pliant boughs to this side and that, and perceived what looked to them like a coil of white ribbon, as thick and as long as a man’s arm. Was this the cabbage of which they had heard so much, for the sake of which the lordly tree was so often cut down and destroyed?
They tore off one of the ribbon-like flakes and tasted it.
Cuth declared it was like eating almonds, only not so hard.
“But how can we cut it without a knife?” cried Edwin, munching away at the raw flakes in his fingers, and pronouncing them a right good feed for them all, if they could but cut the cabbage out.
There might be a knife in the hut, who could say. Away they rushed to explore, guided through the tangle of flax and rushes by their sisters’ voices.
The girls were sitting on the bed of fern in an abandonment of despair, scarcely daring to believe their own ears when the refrain of their song was caught up and repeated—
“With everything that pretty is,
My ladies sweet, arise.”
“O Edwin, Edwin!” they exclaimed. “We thought you too had vanished.”
“We could not bear ourselves,” said Effie, “so we took to singing. We feared we were left to starve on our bed of leaves, like the ‘Children in the Wood,’ and we were afraid there was not a robin redbreast anywhere here to cover us up.”
“Oh, but there is a robin blackbreast,” retorted Edwin; “a true-born native, all the fitter for the undertaker’s work. Only it is not going to be done to-night, Dame Trot.” He took the wee white face between his hands, and felt so strong, so vigorous, so determined to take care of it somehow. “I am not going away again, Effie.” He pulled the newspaper parcel out of his pocket and tossed it into Audrey’s lap. “Beggars’ crumbs!” he laughed. But her cold, nerveless fingers seemed incapable of untwisting the paper.
“Hands were made before forks!” cried Cuthbert, pushing in between his sisters, “and I’ve often heard that pie-crust is made to be broken, like promises. I can spy a bill-hook in the corner, a little too big for cutting up a pie, but just the thing to chop the cabbage out of a ti tree.”
Edwin spun round and shouldered it in triumph.
“There goes smash to the promise: he is off again as fast as he can go. And now for the second breakage. You must not mind my dirty pads for once, Audrey,” Cuthbert went on, pulling the pie into two pieces and making his sisters eat.
The slender store in the newspaper would be soon exhausted. Cuthbert, like a provident commissariat officer, was anxious to make the most of it. He laid aside the bacon to eat with Edwin’s cabbage, and piled up the mutton-bones for their solitary neighbour, the boundary dog, who, like themselves, had been breakfasting on broken promise.
Audrey had recovered herself in some measure by the time Edwin returned with his spoils.
“Who’ll buy? who’ll buy?” he shouted; “yards upon yards of vegetable ribbon, white and delicate enough to make the wedding favours for the queen of cooks.”
“Oh, don’t talk about cooking,” put in Cuthbert; “it is so nice, let us eat it as it is.”
So down they sat, breaking off flake after flake until they were satisfied. As hunger diminished speech returned, and Audrey, who had scarcely uttered a word whilst Edwin went over all they had heard and seen at Mrs. Feltham’s, became suddenly animated. A thought had struck her, but she hesitated to propose her plan too abruptly.
“Dears,” she said earnestly, looking round at the other three, “father will not come back to us perhaps for a day or two; it may even be a week. Think of our own escape. Think if one of us had been buried in that awful mud. How should we be feeling now? Whilst there is another life to be saved father will not come away—no, not for our sakes, and we must not wish that he should.”
Even Effie answered, “Oh no, we must not.”
“Then,” continued Audrey, still more earnestly. “what are we going to do?”
“That is a poser,” retorted Edwin. “The storm brought down the ti tree, and that gave us the cabbage. The gale is dying. We had better take a walk round and look about us. We may find something else. Heaven’s gate is open still, Audrey. We must bear this as patiently as we can, and help will come.”
“Yes, dears,” she answered, “if you can be patient here a little longer, I think there is something I can do to help us all.”
“You, Audrey?” exclaimed her brothers; “you are as white as a sheet. Let us do; we are twice as strong as you are.”
“Strength is not everything,” she returned quietly. “There are some things which only a girl can do. Now this is my plan. If Edwin will walk with me to the central station, I will ask Mrs. Feltham to let me help her. I will go for so much a day, and then at night when she pays me I may persuade her to sell me some flour and meat and tea, food enough for us all, dears.”
“Go out like a charwoman, Audrey!” exclaimed Edwin, in amazement. “Is that what you mean?”
“Well, yes,” returned Audrey, in a considering tone, “it certainly would be the same thing, if you like to call it so.”
“‘Of old men called a spade a spade,’” grumbled Edwin. “I like to give things their plain names, and then we know where we are.”
“If little Mother Audrey goes out charing, Cuth will poison himself, and then there will be no more food wanting for him. That Mrs. Feltham looked as cross as two sticks,” declared Cuthbert.
“Just listen to these proud young gentlemen,” retorted Audrey. “Erne, my dear, I turn to you to support me.”
“I’ll do as you do,” returned her little sister, laying her head on her shoulder.
“Not quite so fast, Dame Trot,” interposed Edwin. “But if Audrey marches home at night with a bag of flour on her back, you must make it into Norfolk dumplings. Cuthbert and I, it seems, are good for nothing but to eat them.”
“You ridiculous boys, why can’t you be serious?” said Audrey, adding, in an aside to Edwin, “Erne is too ill to exist on your vegetable ribbon, even if we boil it. Well, is not my plan better—”
“Than robin blackbreast and the burying business? Of course, you have shut me up,” he answered.
So the decision was reached. Audrey untied her bundle. Combs and brushes, soap and towels, a well-worn text-book, a little box of her own personal treasures, all knotted up in one of Effie’s pinafores. What a hoard of comfort it represented!
“That is a notice to quit for you and me, Cuth,” remarked Edwin. “We’ll take the boundary dog his bones, and accommodate our honest charwoman with a pailful of sea-water to assist the toilet operations.”
The storm had died away as suddenly as it rose, and the receding waves had left the shelving sands strewn with its debris—uprooted trees, old hats, and broken boards, fringed with seaweed. A coat was bobbing up and down, half in the water and half out, while floating spars told of the recent wreck. A keg sticking in the sand some feet below high-water mark attracted the boys’ attention, for Edwin was mindful of his promise to the sailors. As they set to work to roll it up, they came upon the oysters sticking edgeways out of the sand, and clinging in clusters to the rocks. With a hurrah of delight they collected a goodly heap. Here was a supper fit for a king.