Chapter XVI Loss and Suspicion
The great hole which Lawford had made in the mud was not yet filled up. He had walled the sides with broken branches, damming up the mud behind him as he dug his way to the roots of the white pines.
Of course the mud was slowly oozing through these defences, and might soon swallow them up. But Whero felt he was just in time. He dipped out a pail or two from the bottom, and felt about for the original hole in which he had hidden the bag. His foot went into the hole unawares. He was not long in satisfying himself that the treasure was gone. It was too heavy to float away. However great the depth of mud might be above, it should still be in the hole where he had hidden it. He had covered it over with bark. The bark was there, but the bag was gone.
He went back to the ford. Dunter was at work dipping out the slime from the farm-house kitchen. The boy did not wait to speak to him, but pushed off his canoe and paddled away down the river to find his mother. Dunter had promised to take care of his kaka during his absence. Well, if that were prolonged, he would take care of it all the same, so Whero reasoned, as he was carried along by the rapid current.
He was watching for the first sign of the Maori encampment, which he knew he should find beyond the vast tract which had been desolated by the rain of mud. The canoe shot onward, until the first leaf became visible on the evergreens, and the fish were once more leaping in the water. The terraced banks of the river were broken here and there with deep gulches and sunken canyons. It was in one of these retreats that he was expecting to find the Maori tents.
The river was rushing deep and swift as before, but its margin was now studded with reeds and ti trees. The crimson heads of the great water-hens were poking out of their midst to stare at him, and flocks of ducks rose noisily from their reedy beds.
Whero began to sing one of the wild and plaintive native melodies. But his voice was almost drowned by the roar of the whirling stones, and his passage was continually impeded by the masses of drift-wood—great arms of trees, and uprooted trunks—striking against the boulders and threatening him with an upset.
Yet he still sang on, until a low, sweet echo answered him from the bank, and he saw his mother gathering fern by the water’s edge.
The canoe was quickly run aground, and he leaped ashore to join her. Then he saw that his grandfather Kakiki Mahane was sitting on a stone not far off. Whero walked up a little ashamed of his behaviour; but for him Marileha had no reproaches, for he was the bitter-sweet which changed her joy to pain and her pain to joy continually.
She hailed his return, for her heart was aching for her baby, which could not survive their terrible entombment. She pointed to the bend in the ravine, where one or two small whares had been hastily built. Two uprights in the ground, with a pole across, had been walled with mats, roughly and quickly woven from flax-leaf and bulrush. Every Maori had been hard at work, and work could get them all they wanted here, except the hot stone and the geyser-bath.
With her own hands Marileha had cooked them what she called a good square dinner.
But the ideal life of the Maori is one of perfect laziness, and as a Maori lady Marileha had enjoyed this from her birth. Her old father was trying to comfort her. She should go back with him to her own people. She should not stay where the fish had to be caught, and the wild duck snared, and the wild pig hunted, and then brought to her to kindle a fire to cook them, when he was a rich man, who could live like his kinsmen at Hawke’s Bay, hire a grand house of the pakeha, and pay white servants to do everything for them.
The prospect was an alluring one, but Marileha did not believe anything would induce Nga-Hepé to abandon his native hills even for a season.
“Have I not sat in the councils of the pakeha?” argued Kakiki. “Do I not see our people giving place to theirs? The very rat they have brought over seas drives away our kiore [the native rat], and we see him no more. Have I not ever said, Let your young lord and first-born go amongst them, that he may learn their secret and hold his own in manhood against them?”
“I have learned it,” put in Whero: “it is ‘work.’ Was it for this, mother, you sent a pakeha to dig up the bag we buried by the white pines?”
Marileha hushed her son as she glanced nervously around, for none of her Maori companions must know of the existence of that bag.
“Foolish boy,” she said softly, “what pakeha had we to send? The bag is safe where we hid it; no one but you or I could find it.”
“Then it is stolen,” exclaimed Whero, “for the bag is gone.”
They questioned him closely. How had he discovered that the bag was gone? As they walked away to find Nga-Hepé, the old patriarch laid his hand on his daughter’s arm, remarking in a low aside. which was not intended for Whero’s ear, as he did not wish to excite his indignation,—
“It is the farmer’s son who has had it; no one else knew of it. Our own people cannot help in this matter; we must go to the pakeha chiefs.”
In the meantime, whilst Whero was disclosing the loss of the buried treasure, Edwin was marching over the waste by Mr. Hirpington’s side. The heavy load they had to carry when they left the boat made them very slow; but on they toiled to the foot of the hill, when Mr. Hirpington’s ready “coo” brought Hal to their assistance.
He looked very white and trembling—a mere ghost of his former self. Mr. Hirpington could hardly recognize him. He was down in heart as well, for his pipe, his sole remaining solace, had burned out just half-an-hour before he heard the welcome “coo” at the foot of the hill.
For a moment the two men stood regarding each other as men regard the survivals of a dread catastrophe.
“Lord bless you, sir,” said Hal. “I never thought to see you again, looking so hale and hearty.”
“Don’t talk about looks, Hal. Why, you are but a walking skeleton!” exclaimed Mr. Hirpington. “But cheer up,” he added,—“the worst is over; we shall pull ourselves together now. Lend a hand with this basket up the steep.”
The climb before them was something formidable to the genial speaker.
Edwin was already lost to view beneath the overhanging wall of rock which shadowed the cleft. They had trodden down a pathway through the fern; but the ascent was blocked by Beauty, who seemed resolute to upset the load on Edwin’s head, as he had upset the board in the bush. In vain did Edwin apostrophize him, and thunder out a succession of “whoas” and “backs,” and “Stand you still, you stupid, or you will roll me over.” It was all of no use. He was obliged to shunt his burden on to the heap of stones; and Beauty, with a neigh of delight, came a little closer, so that he too might rub his nose against Edwin’s cheek.
“Don’t you mean to let me pass, you silly old fellow? Well, then, I won’t turn baker’s boy any more; and what I want to carry I’ll carry on my back, as you do. There!”
But Edwin at last seized Beauty by the forelock, and forcing him to one side, squeezed by.
“Edwin!” called his father, and a feeble hand was lifted to beckon him nearer, “what are you bringing?”
“Pillows, father, pillows,” he cried, as he stumbled over the twisted roots, half blinded by the sombre gloom beneath those giant trees where his father was lying. Edwin slipped out of his sandwich with exceeding celerity. A pillow was under the poor aching head in another minute, and a second propping the bruised shoulders, and Edwin stood by his father, smiling with the over-brimming joy of a grand success.
Then he denuded himself of the blanket, which he had been wearing like a Highlander’s plaid, and wrapped it over the poor unfortunate, cramping in the bleak mountain air with cold and hunger.
“Father,” he went on cheerily, “the worst is over. Mr. Hirpington is here. He has come to see after you.”
“Too late, too late,” moaned Mr. Lee. “I fear I am done for. The activity of my days is over, Edwin; and what remains to us?”
“We don’t know yet, father,” answered the boy, gravely. “I’m young and ever so strong, and if I’ve only got you to tell me what to do, I can do a lot.”
“But, Edwin, have you seen anything of my belt?” asked Mr. Lee, collecting his wandering thoughts.
Edwin shook his head.
“What has become of it?” repeated the sick man nervously, as Mr. Hirpington appeared above the stones. Edwin went to meet him, and to gather together the remainder of his load, which he had left for Beauty to inspect at will.
“A horse up here!” exclaimed Mr. Hirpington. “He must have the feet and knees of a goat.”
“I think he has,” answered Edwin, backing his favourite to a respectful distance as Mr. Hirpington stepped on to the top of the hill, panting and puffing from the toilsomeness of the long ascent.
He looked around him bewildered, and followed Edwin into the dim recesses beyond the gloomy colonnade of trees, whose hoary age was beyond their reckoning.
“I am the most miserable of men!” he exclaimed, as he stooped over his prostrate friend, and clasped the hand which had saved him at such a cost. “How do I find you?”
“Alive,” answered Mr. Lee, “and likely to live, a burden—”
“No, no, father,” interposed Edwin.
“Don’t say that!” exclaimed Mr. Hirpington, winking hard to get rid of a certain moisture about the eyelids very unusual to him. “To think how I have been living in clover all these days whilst you were lying here, it unmans me. But where on earth are you bivouacking? in a charnel-house?” He ceased abruptly with a shudder, as he discovered it was a human skull he was crushing beneath the heel of his boot.
Hal was busy with the basket, and Edwin ran off to his assistance.
“Sit down, Hal, and begin to eat,” urged Edwin. “Now I have come back let me see after father.”
But the sight of the longed-for food was too much for the old man. He began to cry like a child.
If the first glance into the full basket had been more than poor Hal could bear, the first taste was a sight from which Mr. Hirpington had to turn away. The one great object before him and Edwin was to get the two to eat, for the starving men seemed at first to refuse the food they were craving for; in fact they could hardly bear it. Mr. Lee put back the cold meat and bread, unable to swallow more; so Edwin at once turned stoker, and lit up a jolly fire of sticks and drying roots.
“We must get them something hot,” said Mr. Hirpington, opening one of the many tins of soup which he had brought with him. Soon the savoury contents of the steaming kettle brought back a shadow of English comfort.
Mr. Hirpington had passed many a night of camping out before he settled down at the ford, and he set to work like an old hand. The canvas of the tent was stretched from tree to tree and well pegged down, so as to form a screen on the windward side. The dry moss and still drier fern that could be collected about the brow of the hill where Beauty was ranging, were brought in and strewed over the gnarled and twisted roots, until they gained a warm and comparatively level floor, with an excrescence here and there which served them for a seat. The basket was hung up to preserve its remaining contents from the inspection of centipedes and crawling things, for which Edwin as yet had no nomenclature.
Then the men pulled up their collars to their ears, set their backs against the wind, lit a well-filled pipe, and laid their plans. The transfer of Mr. Hirpington’s tobacco-pouch to Hal’s pocket had brought back a gleam of sunshine—wintry sunshine, it must be confessed; but who could look for more? Mr. Lee, too, was undeniably better. The shake his brains had received was going over. He was once more able to listen and understand.
“I have telegraphed to Auckland,” explained Mr. Hirpington. “I shall have my store of corrugated iron by the next coaster, and Middleton’s barge will bring it up to the ford. Thank God for our waterways, there is no stoppage there! I have always kept to the river. But, old friend, before we mend up my own house we must get a roof over your head. There is not a man under me who will not be eager to help us at that; and we cannot do much to the road until the mud hardens thoroughly, so for once there will be help to be had. We are booked for the night up here; but to-morrow I propose to take your boy with me, and go over to your place and see the state it is in. A wooden house stands a deal of earthquaking. Edwin thinks it was the chimney came down. We must put you up an iron one. You have plenty of timber ready felled to mend the roof, and rushes are growing to hand. It is only the work that has to be done, and we all know how to work in New Zealand.”
“Oh ay,” chimed in old Hal; “most on us sartinly do, and this little chap ain’t no foreigner there.”
He was already nodding. The comforting influences of the soup and the pipe were inviting the return of “tired nature’s sweet restorer.” By-and-by he slipped from his seat upon the soft moss, and was lost to every trouble in balmy sleep. Edwin covered him up, feeling rich in the possession of a blanket for every one of the party.
The wintry twilight was gathering round them, cold and chill. The skeleton of the bird monster rattled and shook, and gleamed in spectral whiteness between the blackness of the shadows flung by the interlacing boughs. A kiore working amongst the dry bones seemed to impart a semblance of life to them which effectually banished sleep from Mr. Hirpington, who persuaded Edwin to come closer to him, declaring the boy looked frightened; and well he might, for who but a clod could lay his head on such a floor?
Assured at last that Hal was lost to all outward perception, Mr. Lee whispered the story of his loss. The belt was gone—taken from him whilst he was unconscious. No doubt about that. Mr. Hirpington described the state in which he found his house—the three sackfuls ready to be carried off. Edwin thought he had better tell his father now of the digging up of Whero’s treasure.
“There is a thief amongst us,” said Mr. Hirpington, “and suspicion points to the gang of rabbiters.”
“No, not to Hal,” interposed Mr. Lee; “not to all. We may yet find the belt.”
He was growing excited and restless. He had talked too much.
“I must have this matter over with Dunter,” was Mr. Hirpington’s conclusion, when he saw how unable poor Mr. Lee was to bear any lengthened conversation. Before they settled to sleep he charged Edwin to be very careful, and not let any alteration in his manner put the old man on his guard.
The three arose in the gray of the morning with renewed energy. To take Beauty to water, to light a fire and prepare a breakfast in the solitary fastness, left scant time for any further discussion. But second thoughts told Mr. Lee that in such strange circumstances loss was almost inevitable. If his belt had been taken off when his leg was set, it might have been dropped in the all-surrounding mud and never missed.
“True, true,” answered Mr. Hirpington, and leaving Mr. Lee to his son’s care, he strolled across to the fire, where Hal was brewing the morning coffee, and began to question him about the accident—how and where the tree fell. But no new light was thrown upon the loss. It was hopeless to dig about in the mud, supposing Mr. Lee’s last surmise to be correct. He determined to ride Beauty to the ford and look round the scene of the disaster with Edwin.
The day was well up when he stepped across the sunken fence which used to guard his own domain, and found Dunter fixing a pail at the end of the boat-hook to facilitate the bailing out of the mud.
The Maori boy had deserted him, he said, and a fellow single-handed could do little good at work like his. No one else had been near the place. He had kept his watch-fire blazing all night as the best scare to depredators. In Dunter’s opinion prevention was the only cure. With so many men wandering homeless about the hills, and with so many relief-parties marching up in every direction, there was sure to be plenty of pilfering, but who could track it home?
The hope of discovering the belt appeared to grow less and less.
“What shall we do without the money?” lamented Edwin, as he continued his journey with his father’s friend. “Trouble seems to follow trouble.”
“It does,” said Mr. Hirpington; “for one grows out of another. But you have not got it all, my boy; for my land, which would have sold for a pound an acre last Saturday week, is not worth a penny with all this depth of volcanic mud upon it. Nothing can grow. But when we get to your father’s, where the deposit is only a few inches deep, we shall find the land immensely improved. It will have doubled its value.”
As they drew nearer to the little valley the road grew better. The mud had dried, and the fern beneath it was already forcing its way through the crust. The once sparkling rivulet was reduced to a muddy ditch, choked with fallen trees and stones, which the constant earthquaking had shaken down from the sides of the valley.
Beauty took his way to the familiar gate, and neighed. Edwin jumped down and opened it. All was hopeful here, as Mr. Hirpington had predicted. The ground might have been raised a foot, but the house had not been changed into a cellar. The daylight shone through the windows, broken as they were. The place was deluged, not entombed.
“You might return to-morrow,” said Mr. Hirpington. “This end of the house is uninjured.”
The chimney was down, it was true, the sleeping-rooms were demolished, but the workshop and storeroom were habitable. Whilst Mr. Hirpington considered the roof, Edwin ran round and peeped in at the broken windows. Dirt and confusion reigned everywhere, but no trace as yet of unwelcome visitors. A feeble mew attracted his attention, and Effie’s kitten popped up its little head from the fallen cupboard in which it had evidently been exploring. It was fat and well. An unroofed pantry had been its hunting-ground; not the little room at the other end of the veranda, but a small latticed place which Mr. Lee had made to keep the uncooked meat in. The leg of a wild pig and a brace of kukas or wild pigeons, about twice the size of their English namesake, were still hanging on the hooks where Audrey had left them.
The leg of pork had been nibbled all round, and the heads were torn from the pigeons.
“Lucky Miss Kitty,” said Edwin. “We thought you had got the freedom of the bush, and here you’ve been living in luxury whilst the rest of the world was starving. Come; you must go shares, you darling!”
It clawed up the wall, and almost leaped into his arms, to be covered with kisses and deafened with promises which were shouted out in the joy of his heart, until Mr. Hirpington began to wonder what had happened.
“My boy, have you gone quite crazy?” he exclaimed. “Why don’t you look after your horse? you will lose him!”
Edwin looked round, and saw Beauty careering up the side of the valley. He shut the kitten carefully into the workshop. Mr. Hirpington had just got the other door open, and came out to assist in recalling Beauty to his duty.
Edwin started off after his horse; but he had not gone far when he was aware of another call, to which his Beauty paid more heed than he seemed disposed to show to Edwin’s reiterated commands to come back.
The call was in Maori, and in a few minutes Nga-Hepé himself emerged from the bush and seized the horse by the forelock.