Chapter XVII Edwin in Danger
When Mr. Hirpington came up he found his little English friend in earnest argument with the Maori warrior.
Nga-Hepé’s looks were excited and wild. He was carrying the famous greenstone club, which he brandished every now and then in the heat of the conversation.
“Come with me,” he was saying peremptorily—“come with me and find the man.”
“I cannot,” answered Edwin, toughly. “I cannot leave my father. Take the horse, if you will, and follow the tracks in the mud. I will show you which is Lawford’s footprint.”
“Show me the man, and I will believe you,” retorted Nga-Hepé, swinging himself lightly upon Beauty’s back as he spoke.
Edwin glanced round at Mr. Hirpington. It was a look which said, “Stand by me.” The appeal was mute, and he answered it neither by word nor sign. Edwin thought despairingly he had not understood him, but a hand was laid on his shoulder. He almost fancied he was pushed aside, as Mr. Hirpington spoke to Nga-Hepé in his cheeriest tones:—
“Well met, old neighbour. Both of us above ground once again, thank God in his mercy. As for me and mine, we were fairly buried alive, and should have died under the mud but for this lad’s father. We left everything and fled for our lives, and so it was with most of us. But now the danger is over, I have come back to look after my property, and find a thief has been there before me. According to this boy’s account, I am afraid the same fellow has walked off with something of yours. But I have a plan to catch him, and you are the one to help me.”
“A’ right,” answered the Maori. “You catch your man, I catch my boy. Man and boy go hand in hand.”
“No,” said Edwin stoutly; “I have nothing to do with Lawford.”
Nga-Hepé raised his club. “You, who but you,” he asked, “watched my wife dig hole? Who but you set foot on the spot? Who but you say, ‘Man dig here’? I’ll make you say a little more. Which had the bag?”
“I have never seen or touched the bag since I gave it back to your wife Marileha on the night of the tana’s visit,” answered Edwin.
“A’ right,” repeated Nga-Hepé. “No, you are not a’ right, or you would go with me to find the man; for who but you knows who he is? If you won’t, you are a’ wrong, and I have come here to kill you.”
An exasperated savage on horseback, with a club in his hand, was no mean foe. Edwin thought of old Hal’s words. Was it a bad day’s work which restored Nga-Hepé to life? But he answered himself still with an unwavering “No.”
“You are returning me evil for good,” said Edwin quietly. “Whero would not have dared to follow the kaka over the mud if I had not gone with him; but for me you would have been a dead man. Ask Whero—ask your own son.”
“I take no counsel with boys,” answered the Maori loftily.
“Neither do I think overmuch of boys,” interposed Mr. Hirpington; “but we will keep young Lee with us, and all go together and find the man if possible. Yet with you on his back that horse will go like the wind. How are we to keep up with you?”
“You have ridden behind me before,” said Nga-Hepé, turning to Edwin; “you can do it again.”
“Only I won’t,” thought Edwin; but aloud he said, “So I could, but then there is Mr. Hirpington. What is he to do?”
“Ah!” put in the latter, taking out his pipe and lighting it deliberately, “the question is not how we shall go, but which way. The relief-parties are beginning to disperse. Now, Nga-Hepé, I am as earnestly desiring to help you as I am to defend myself. Only I see plainly if we try to follow the fellow among these wild hills we shall miss him. He belongs to a gang of rabbiters. I know their leader. Let him call his chums together. I’ll provide the lure—a reward and a jolly good dinner for every one of the poor fellows who came so gallantly to our help at the risk of their own lives. We must bear in mind that after Mr. Lee these rabbiters were the first in the field. If there is a black sheep among them, we shall have him. But I must get my own men about me, and then we will confront him with Edwin Lee, in the presence of them all.”
“Your plan is good,” answered the Maori. “Try it and I try mine; then one or other of us will catch him.”
“That will be me,” remarked Mr. Hirpington, in a knock-down tone.
“Jump up!” cried Nga-Hepé, turning to Edwin.
“No, no,” interposed Mr. Hirpington; “it is I who must have young Lee. I have left a watchman at the ford ready to pounce on the thief if he should return there for his booty. I may want this boy any minute. Ride fast from camp to camp. Ask for any of my roadmen among them, and give my message to them. Ask if there are any rabbiters, and give the other in Hal’s name. I’ll make it right with the old man. We shall throw our net so wide this Lawford can’t escape our meshes. He must have got your bag about him, and the other money I suspect he has taken. We’ll make him give it all up.”
No one was noticing Edwin. He made a slight sound, which set Beauty off trotting, as he knew it would.
The delight of feeling his own good horse beneath him once again induced Nga-Hepé to quicken the trot to a gallop. He did not turn back to prolong the discussion, but only waved his arm in reply.
Edwin thought to increase the distance between them by running off in the opposite direction.
“No, no,” said Mr. Hirpington; “just stand still by me. If he saw you begin to run, he would be after you in a minute. If the ape and the tiger lie dormant in some of us, the wild animal is rampant in him. Face him to the last.”
Edwin looked up with admiring gratitude at the friend who had so skilfully delivered him.
They watched the vanishing figure as Edwin had watched him on the day of his first acquaintance with the Maori warrior.
“He will never give back my Beauty,” he sighed, as horse and rider were lost to view in the darkling bush.
“Your horse may prove your ransom,” said Mr. Hirpington, as they retraced their steps. He knew that the boy’s life was no longer safe within the reach of the angry savage. What was he to do? Send him off to a friend at a distance until the affair had blown over? Yes; row him down the river and put him on board one of the Union steamers.
He began to question Edwin. “Had they any other friends in New Zealand?”
“None,” answered the boy.
“More’s the pity,” said Mr. Hirpington; “for it will not do for you and your father to remain alone with Hal on that hill any longer. We must separate you from the rabbiters, for the gang will be sure to draw together soon. It is nearly a week since the eruption. I hope and trust some of my men may get my message, and come to us before Nga-Hepé returns.”
“If any of the surveying party are about still, they would help us,” said Edwin. “Mr. Ottley told me how to signal to them, and they answered at once. They said we were to signal again if we wanted them. The captain of the coaster is with them. He would be sure to come.”
Mr. Hirpington knew nothing about the captain, but he assented. “Signal by all means. If we have Englishmen enough about us, we shall carry this through. We must get your father home. One or two men will soon mend the roof. I’ll spare you Dunter; he would keep a sharp look-out. As the relief-parties disperse, we shall see who comes our way. Chance may favour us.”
Then the two started again for the ford, leaving pussy once more in possession of the valley farm. Mr. Hirpington was struck when he saw the difference a single day’s hard work had effected.
“I want to be by your side, Dunter, putting my own shoulder to the wheel, and we should soon fetch the mistress home. But we are in for an awful deal of trouble with these poor Lees, and we can’t fail them. Somehow they do not square it with their Maori neighbours,” he sighed.
“Not quite up to managing ’em yet, I guess,” replied Dunter, as he showed his master a kitchen clear of mud, although a stranger still to the scrubbing-brush. A few loose boards were laid down as pathways to the bedroom doors, which all stood wide, letting in the clear river breeze from the windows beyond. Dunter was washing his hands to have a spell at the bedmaking, as he said.
“We are all relegated to the cellar,” sighed his master, “and we cannot stay to enjoy even that. We shall have a row with Nga-Hepé’s people if we are not on the alert. I want to get this young Lee out of their way. Where will he be safest for to-night?”
“Here with me, abed and asleep,” answered the man unhesitatingly.
Mr. Hirpington glanced into the range of bedrooms, still left as at the moment when their occupants rushed out in the first alarm. “That will do,” he assented. “Trust a boy to go to sleep. He will tumble in just as the beds are. Anything for his supper?”
“Plenty, but it is all poisoned with the horrid sulphurous stench. Something out of the tins is best,” groaned Dunter.
“Give him one or two to open for himself, and shut him in. Drive that meal-barrel against the door, and don’t you let him out till I come back,” was Mr. Hirpington’s parting charge, as he pushed off in his boat for the lake, to light the beacon-fires on the hills around it, to summon the help he so much needed.
Edwin, who had been hunting up the kaka, was disappointed to find himself left behind.
“All the better for you,” retorted Dunter. “Take the bird in with you, and get a sound sleep, now you have the chance.”
“Oh, you are good!” exclaimed Edwin, when he saw a jug of river-water, a tin of sardines, and another of brawn, backed by a hunch of mouldy bread, provided for his supper.
The door was shut, and he lay down without a suspicion of the kindly-meant imprisonment on which he was entering. Both men were sure he would never have consented to it had he known of their intentions beforehand. They did not want to make the boy too much afraid of his dusky neighbours; “for he has got to live in the midst of them,” they said. “He will let them alone after this,” thought Dunter. “He has had his scare for the present; let him sleep and forget it.”
The deep and regular breathing of a sleeper soon told Dunter his wish was realized.
It was a weary vigil for Mr. Hirpington. He kept his watch-fire blazing from dusk till dawn.
It was a wakeful, anxious night for Hal and Mr. Lee, who saw the beacon-lights afar, and wondered more and more over the unlooked-for sight.
“It is some one signalling for help,” groaned Mr. Lee, feeling most painfully his inability to give it. It might be Edwin, it might be some stranger. He wanted his companion to leave him and go to see. But the old man only shook his head, and muttered, “There is no go left in me, I’m so nearly done.”
Mr. Hirpington had given up hope. He had coiled himself in his blanket, laid his head on the hard ground, and yielded to the overwhelming desire for sleep.
The returning party of surveyors, who started on their march with the first peep of the dawn, caught the red glow through the misty gray. They turned their steps aside, and found, as they supposed, a sleeping traveller. It was the only face they had seen on the hills which was not haggard and pale. In the eyes of those toilworn men, fresh from the perils of the rescue, it seemed scarcely possible that any one there could look so ruddy and well unless he had been selfishly shirking his duty to his neighbour, and the greeting they gave him was biting with its caustic.
“There is no help for me out of such a set of churls,” thought Mr. Hirpington bitterly, as he tried to tell his story, without making much impression, until he mentioned the name of Edwin Lee, and then they turned again to listen, for the captain was amongst them.
But as for this stranger, had he not food and friends of his own? what did he want of them? they asked.
“Help for a neighbour who has saved more lives than can be counted, and is now lying on the hills with a broken leg; help to convey him to his home,” Mr. Hirpington returned, with increasing warmth, as he showed them there was but one way of doing that. They must carry the poor fellow through the bush on a stretcher. “When did colonists turn their back on a chum in distress?” he asked reproachfully.
“Shut up,” said the captain, “and show us where he lies.”
They would have set to work on the broken boughs and twisted them into a stretcher; but there was nothing small enough for the purpose left above ground. They must turn the tent into a palanquin once again, and manage as Hal had done before them.
One and all agreed if the Maoris had been using threatening language to the suffering man’s boy, they could not go their ways and leave him behind in the Maoris’ country. “No, no,” was passed from lip to lip, and they took their way to the hill.
Mr. Hirpington was himself again, and his geniality soon melted the frost amongst his new friends.
“So you have carried him blankets and food?” they said; and the heartiness of the “yes” with which he responded made them think a little better of him.
The steep was climbed. Mr. Lee heard the steady tramp approaching, and waked up Hal.
“Humph!” remarked the foremost man, as he caught sight of Hal. “I thought you said you brought them food.”
“Are you sure you did not eat it all by the way?” asked another of Mr. Hirpington.
“Look at that poor scarecrow!” cried a third, as they scaled the hill and drew together as if loath to enter the gloom of the shadow flung by those tremendous trees. They gazed upwards at the giant branches, and closed ranks. More than one hand was pointing to the whitened skeleton.
“Do you see that?” and a general movement showed the inclination to draw back, one man slowly edging his way behind another. It left the captain in the forefront. Mr. Lee lifted a feeble hand.
“Oh, it is all right; there he is!” exclaimed the man of the sea, less easily daunted by the eerie qualms which seemed to rob his comrades of their manhood.
“We’ve come to fetch you home, old boy,” he added, bending over Mr. Lee and asking for his sons. “Have you not two?”
“Yes, I’ve a brace of them,” said the injured man, “Edwin, where is Edwin?”
“Edwin and Cuthbert,” repeated the captain. “I have something to tell you about them. They are just two of the boldest and bravest little chaps I ever met with. If my mates were here they would tell you the same. But they have followed the fall of mud, and gone across the hills by Taupo. I was too footsore for the march, and so kept company with these surveying fellows.”
The said fellows had rallied, and were grouped round Mr. Hirpington, who was pointing out the route they must take to reach the valley farm.
Two of the men started to carry their baggage to Mr. Hirpington’s boat, intending to row to the ford and wait there for their companions. The canvas was taken down from the trees. Mr. Lee was bound to his board once more and laid within the ample folds, and slid rather than carried gently down the steep descent. The puzzle remained how one old man and two boys ever got him to the top alive. The party was large enough to divide and take turns at the carrying, and the walk was long enough and slow enough to give the captain plenty of opportunity to learn from Mr. Hirpington all he wanted to know about Mr. Lee and his boys. He gave him in return a picture of the deserted coast. “Every man,” he said, “was off to the hills when my little craft went down beneath the earthquake wave. It was these young lads’ forethought kept the beacon alight when the night overran the day. They saw us battling with the waves, and backed their cart into the sea to pick us up. Mere boys, they had to tie themselves to the cart, sir. Think of that.”
Mr. Hirpington was thinking, and it made him look very grave. What had he been doing in the midst of the widespread calamity? Not once had he asked himself poor Audrey’s question, but he asked it now as the captain went on: “A shipwrecked sailor, begging his way to the nearest port, has not much in his power to help another. But I will find out a man who both can and will. I mean old Bowen. He is one of our wealthiest sheep-owners, and he stands indebted to these two lads on the same count as I do, for his grandson was with me.”
“His run is miles away from here,” said Mr. Hirpington. “You cannot walk so far. Look out for some of Feltham’s shepherds riding home; they would give you a lift behind them.”
The party halted at the ford, where Mr. Hirpington found several of his own roadmen waiting for him. Nga-Hepé had faithfully delivered his message.
“Ah!” said Mr. Hirpington, “I knew he would, and I am going to keep my part of the bargain too. We are always friendly.” He turned to Hal, and explained how he had sent to his mates to meet him at the ford. “Until they come,” he added, “rest and eat, and recover yourself.”
Since the arrival of the boat, Dunter had been getting ready, for he foresaw an increasing demand for breakfast, and his resources were very restricted. But he got out the portable oven, lit his fires, not so much in the yard, correctly speaking, as over it. “Breakfasting the coach” had given every one at the ford good practice in the art of providing. When the walking-party arrived they found hot rolls and steaming coffee awaiting them without stint. It brought the sunshine into many a rugged face as they voted him the best fellow in the world.
They circled round the fire to enjoy them. Nobody went down into the house but Hal, who resigned the care of Mr. Lee somewhat loathly. “I should have liked to have seen you in your own house before we parted,” he muttered.
“No, no,” said Mr. Lee; “you have done too much already. You will never be the man again that you have been, I fear.”
The hearty hand-clasp, the look into each other’s faces, was not quickly forgotten by the bystanders.
The air was full of meetings and partings. Mr. Hirpington was in the midst of his men. He was bound by his post under government to make the state of the roads his first care.
“When will the coach be able to run again?” was the question they were all debating, as a government inspector was on his way to report on the state of the hills; for few as yet could understand the nature of the unparalleled and unprecedented disaster which had overwhelmed them.