Chapter XV Who Has Been Here?
“Edwin,” said Mr. Lee, when he saw his son shivering beside him in the gray of the wintry morning, “what is the matter with you? Have you had enough to eat?”
“Not quite. Well, you see, father, we have to do as we can,” smiled Edwin, in reply.
“Certainly; but where on earth have we got to?” resumed the sick man, as he glanced upwards at the interlacing boughs.
“We are high up in the hills, father, in one of the old Maori fastnesses, where the mud and the flood cannot reach us,” answered Edwin.
“And the children?” asked Mr. Lee.
“Are all safe by the sea,” was the quick reply.
Mr. Lee’s ejaculations of thankfulness were an unspeakable comfort to Edwin.
“Did not I hear the splash of oars last night?” asked his father.
“You might when Whero came. He guided us here,” said Edwin.
“Then,” resumed his father, “try to persuade this Maori to row you in his canoe down the river until you come to an English farm. The colonists are all so neighbourly and kind, they will sell or lend or give you what we want most. Make the Maori bring you back. You must pay him well; these Maoris will do nothing without good pay. Remember that; but there is plenty in the belt.” Mr. Lee ceased speaking. He was almost lost again, and Edwin dare not remind him that the belt was gone. But Edwin knew if Whero would do it at all, he would not want to be paid.
“With this leg,” sighed Mr. Lee slowly and dreamily, “I—am—a—fixture.”
Sleep was stealing over him, and Edwin did not venture to reply.
A sympathetic drowsiness was visiting him also, but he was roused out of it by seeing Hal busily engaged in trying to capture the kaka.
“It is a good, fat bird,” whispered the old man; “they are first-rate eating in a pie. We can cook him as we did the duck I found; put him in the boiling mud as the natives do!”
Up sprang Edwin to the rescue. “No, Hal, no; you must not touch that bird!”
He caught the old man’s arm, and scared the kaka off. The frightened bird soared upwards, and concealed itself in the overarching boughs.
Whero was awakened by its screams, and got up, shaking the dry moss from his tangled shock of hair, and laughing.
Edwin called off attention from the kaka by detailing his father’s plan.
The breakfastless trio were of one mind. It must be tried, as it offered the surest hope of relief. The river was so much safer than the road. Ottley might never have it in his power to send the promised help. Some danger might have overwhelmed him also. What was the use of waiting for the growing of the grass, if a readier way presented itself? Hal spread out the canvas of the tent to dry, and talked of putting it up in the new location. Legs and arms were wonderfully stiff from keeping on wet clothes. But the most pressing want was water. Dry ground and pure air were essential, but thirst was intolerable. They took the cup by turns and went down to a spring which Whero pointed out. Beauty had found for himself a little pond, which nature had scooped out, and the recent rains had filled with greenish water which he did not despise.
Whilst Hal was away, Edwin intimated to Whero that it was not very safe to leave his kaka with him; for he feared the bird would be killed and eaten as soon as they were gone, although he did not say so to his Maori friend.
Whero’s eyes were ablaze with rage in a moment. “Let him touch it!” he snorted rather than hissed. “I’ll meet him. If it’s here on the hill, I’ll hurl him over that precipice. If—if—” Edwin’s eye was fastened on the boy with a steady gaze. Whero raised his clinched hand, as if to strike. “Tell him,” he went on—“tell him in our country here the mud is ever boiling to destroy the Maori’s foes. I’ll push him down the first jet we pass.” He looked around him proudly, and kicked away the skull beneath his foot, as if to remind his listener how in that very spot the threats in which he had been indulging found plenty of precedent.
Edwin exerted all his self-command. He would not suffer one angry or one fearful word to pass his lips, although both anger and fear were rising in his heart. But the effort to keep himself as cool and quiet as he could was rewarded. Whero saw that he was not afraid; and the uncontrollable passion of the young savage expended itself in vain denunciations.
Edwin knew how the Maoris among themselves despise an outburst of passion, and he tried to shame Whero, saying, “Is that the way your warriors talk at their councils? Ours are grave, and reason with each other, until they find out the wisest course to take. That is what I want to do as soon as we have caught the kaka.”
The catching of the macaw proved a safety-valve; and Whero went down to the lake to get the canoe ready, with the bird on his wrist.
Edwin ran back to beg Hal to return to his father, as he and Whero were hurrying off to the lake. He had saved a dangerous quarrel, but it left him very grave. He was more and more afraid of what Whero might do in a moment of rage. “Oh, I am excessively glad, I am thankful,” he thought, “that I was not forced to leave him alone with Effie and Cuthbert!” It was well that Whero was rowing, for the exertion seemed to calm him. Edwin escaped from the difficulty of renewing their conversation by beginning to sing, and Whero, with all the Maori love of music, was easily lured to listen as “Merry may the keel row” echoed from bank to bank, and the splash of his paddle timed itself to the words of the song.
Edwin assured him he was singing to keep the kaka quiet, which had nestled on his folded arms, and was looking up in his face with evident enjoyment. As they paddled on the old ford-horse stepped out into the water to hear him, so they stopped the canoe and went ashore to pull him out his hay. He followed them for nearly half-a-mile, and they lost sight of him at last as they rounded the bend in the river. He was fording his way across the huge bed of shingle, over which the yellow, rattling, foaming torrent wandered at will. The tiny canoe shot forward, borne along without an effort by the force of the stream. With difficulty they turned its head to zigzag round a mighty boulder, hurled from its mountain home by the recent convulsions.
Even now as the river came tearing down from the heights above, it was bringing with it tons upon tons of silt and shingle and gravel. The roar of these stones, as they rolled over each other and crashed and dashed in the bed of the flood, was louder than the angry surges on the tempestuous shore when Edwin saw the coaster going down. The swift eddies and undertows thus created made rowing doubly dangerous, and called forth Whero’s utmost skill.
But the signs of desolation on the river-banks were growing fainter. Between the blackened tracts where the lightning had fired the fern broken and storm-bent trees still lifted their leafless boughs, and shook the blue dust which weighed them down into the eyes of the travellers.
Here and there a few wild mountain sheep, which had strayed through the broken fences of the run, were feeding up-wind to keep scent of danger. But other sign of life there was none, until they sighted an English-built boat painfully toiling along against the force of the current. They hailed it with a shout, and Edwin’s heart leaped with joy as he distinguished Mr. Hirpington’s well-known tones in the heartiness of the reply. “Well met, boys. Come with us.”
They were soon alongside, comparing notes and answering inquiries. Dunter, who plied the other oar, nodded significantly to Edwin. He had encountered Ottley, and received his warning as to the depredations likely to ensue if the ford-house were left to itself much longer. He had started off to find the governor.
The good old forder was still scraping amongst the shingle, and when he saw his master in the boat, he came plunging through the water to meet him with such vehemence he almost caused an upset. But the stairs were close at hand, and as Mr. Hirpington often declared, he and his old horse had long ago turned amphibious. They came out of the water side by side, shaking themselves like Newfoundland dogs. It was marvellous to Mr. Hirpington to discover that his old favourite had taken no harm.
“He is a knowing old brute,” said Dunter. But when they saw the writing on the shutter, they knew where he had found a friend. The pipe-clay was smeared by the rain, but the little that was legible “gave me a prick,” said Mr. Hirpington, “I cannot well stand.”
A great deal of the mud had been washed on to Ottley’s tarpaulin, which had been pushed aside by the fury of the storm, as Mr. Hirpington was inclined to think. But there were footprints on the bank of mud jamming up doors and windows—recent footprints, impressed upon it since the storm. Dunter could trace them over the broken roof. They were not Edwin’s. Dunter pointed to the impression just left by his boot as the boy climbed up to them. That was conclusive.
“If it were any poor fellow in search of food under circumstances like these, I would not say a word,” remarked Mr. Hirpington.
Dunter found a firmer footing for himself, and getting hold of the edge of the sheet of iron, he forced it up, and with his master’s help dislodged a half-ton weight of mud, which went down into the river with a mighty splash. To escape from the shower-bath, which deluged both them and the roof, the three jumped down into the great farm kitchen. There all was slime, and a sulphurous stench vitiated the atmosphere.
“We can’t breathe here,” said Mr. Hirpington, seizing Edwin’s arm and mounting him on the dining-table.
The muddy slush into which they had plunged was almost level with its top. The door into the bedroom was wrenched off, and lodged against it, forming a kind of bridge over the mud. But there was one thing which the earthquake, the mud, and the storm could never have effected. They could not have filled the sacks lying on the other end of the long tables. That could only have been done by human hands.
They were all three on the table now. Mr. Hirpington untied the nearest sack, and pushed his arm inside.
“Some of our good Christchurch blankets and my best coat,” he muttered. “I have no need to make them in a worse state with my muddy hands. Leave them where they are for the present,” he continued, turning to Dunter, who began to empty out the contents of the other sacks.
Mr. Hirpington looked about for his gun. It was in its old place, lying across the boar’s tusks, fixed like pegs against the opposite wall. It was double-barrelled, and he knew he had left it loaded for the night as usual.
“You must get that down, Dunter,” he said, “and mount guard here, whilst I take young Lee back to his father. That must be the first concern. When I return we must set to work in earnest—bail out this slush, mend the roof over the bedroom to the river, where it is least damaged, and live in it whilst we clear the rest. Light and air are to be had there still, for the windows on that side are clear. More’s the pity we did not stay there. But when that awful explosion came, my wife and I rushed into the kitchen, and so did most of the men. I was tugging at the outer door, which would not open, and ‘cooing’ with all my might, when the crash came, and I knew no more until I found myself in the boat.”
“I was a prisoner in my little den,” put in Dunter; “and I kept up the ’coo’ till Mr. Lee came, for I could not open door or window though I heard your groans.”
“Yes, Lee must be our first care. We owe our lives to him alone; understand that, all of you. He had us out before anybody else arrived,” Mr. Hirpington went on, as he heaved up the fallen door and made a bridge with it from the table to the back of the substantial sofa, over which his gun was lying. From such a mount he could reach it easily. Was there anything else they required? He looked around him. Dunter had got possession of a boat-hook, and was fishing among the kettles and saucepans under the dresser. The bacon, which had been drying on the rack laid across the beams of the unceiled roof, had all gone down into the mud; but the solid beams themselves had not given way, only the ties were dislodged and broken, with the iron covering. All the crockery on the shelves of course was smashed. A flying dish had struck Mrs. Hirpington on the head and laid her senseless before the rain of mud began. But her husband had more to do now than to recount the how and the why of their disaster.
He was hastily gathering together such things within reach as might be most needed by the sufferer on the hills. A kettle and a pan and a big cooking-spoon, which Dunter had fished out, were tied up in the Christchurch blanket dislodged from the sack, and slung across Mr. Hirpington’s shoulder. Dunter made his way into the bedroom, and pulled out a couple of pillows. Here, he asserted, some one must have been before him; for muddy footsteps had left their mark on the top of the chest of drawers and across the bed-quilt, and no mud had entered there ere the Hirpingtons fled. Yet muddy fingers had left their impress high up on wardrobe-doors and on window-curtains, which had been drawn back to admit the light. Over this room the roof had not given way. The inference was clear—some one had entered it.
Mr. Hirpington glanced up from the bundle he was tying, and spoke aside to Edwin: “You knew the man Ottley surprised in the house?”
“Yes,” answered Edwin; “he was one of the rabbiters. I thought he was looking for food, as we were. Mr. Ottley did not say anything to me about his suspicions. Somebody else may have got in since then, Mr. Hirpington.”
“Certainly, certainly,” was the answer, and the three emerged again into daylight.
As they stood upon the roof shaking and scraping the mud from each other, Edwin looked round for Whero.
“Whoever filled these sacks,” observed Mr. Hirpington, when he was alone with Dunter, “means to come back and fetch them. Be on the watch, for I must leave you here alone.”
Dunter was no stranger to the Maori boy, and invited him to share in the good things he was unloading from the boat, thinking to secure himself a companion. Whilst he was talking of pork-pies and cheese, Edwin suggested the loan of a spade and a pail.
“A’ right!” exclaimed Whero, with a nod of intelligence; “I’ll have both.”
“Ay, take all,” laughed Edwin, as he ran down the boating-stairs after Mr. Hirpington, who was impatient to be off. Whero followed his friend to the water’s edge to rub noses ere they parted. The grimaces with which Edwin received this final token of affection left Dunter shaking with laughter.
“I go to dig by the white pines,” said Whero.
“But you will come back to the hill of Hepé. We shall have food enough for us all,” returned Edwin, pointing to the boat in which Mr. Hirpington was already seated.