Chapter XIX Met at Last
The boys were recovering their equanimity, when the stiff sea-breeze blowing in their faces scattered the rushes and sent them sailing down the stream.
Whero drew his canoe to the bank as they came to a quiet nook where rushes were growing abundantly, that he might gather more.
Whero was out of his latitude, in a terra incognita, where he knew not how to supply the want of a dinner. How could he stop to discover the haunts of the wild ducks to look for their eggs? How could he reach the cabbage in the top of those tall and graceful ti trees, which shook their waving fronds in the wintry breezes? Ah! if it had been summer, even here he would not have longed in vain. His bundle of rushes was under his arm, when he noticed a hollow willow growing low to the river-side. A swarm of bees in the recent summer had made it their home, and their store of winter honeycomb had filled the trunk. Swarms of bees gone wild had become so frequent near the English settlements, wild honey was often found in large quantities. But to Whero it was a rare treat. He was far too hungry to be able to pass it by. He scrambled up the bank, and finding the bees were dead or torpid with the cold, he began to break off great pieces of the comb, and lay them on his rushes to carry away.
As he was thus engaged a man came through the clustering ti trees and asked him to give him a bit.
Whero was ready enough to share his spoils with the stranger, for there was plenty. As he turned to offer the piece he had just broken off, he saw he was an ill-looking man, with his hat slouched over his eyes, carrying a roll of pelts and a swag at the end of a stick, which had evidently torn a hole through the shoulder of the wretched old coat the man was wearing.
“Much craft on the river here?” asked the man. “Any barges passing that would take a fellow down to the coast?”
“I am a stranger here,” answered Whero; “I do not know.” As he spoke, his quick eye detected the stains of the hateful blue volcanic mud on the man’s dirty clothes.
“I’ll be off,” he thought. “Who are you? You are from the hills, whoever you are.”
He gave him another great piece of the honeycomb, for fear he should follow him to ask for more.
“That is so old,” objected the man; “look how dark it is. Give me a better bit.”
But he took it notwithstanding, and tried to put it in his ragged pocket. The holes were so large it fell through.
“There is plenty more in the tree,” said Whero. “Why do you not go and help yourself?” He took up his rushes and walked quickly to the canoe.
Edwin was making a screen for his face with the few remaining rushes. Whero saw that he was looking eagerly through them, not at the honeycomb he was bringing, but at the man on the bank.
“Do you know him?” asked Whero.
“Yes, yes; it is Lawford,” answered Edwin, under his breath. “Look, he has got his rabbit-skins and his swag. How careful he is over it! He has set his foot on it whilst he gets the honey.”
The canoe was completely hidden by the tall tufts of bulrush growing between it and the willow, so they could watch unseen. The man was enjoying the honeycomb immensely. He was choosing out the best pieces. Whero gave Edwin the kaka, lest it should betray them.
“You are sure it is Lawford?” asked Whero.
“Yes, quite,” replied Edwin, beginning to eat.
The best of the honeycomb was higher up in the hollow trunk, where the rain could not wash out its sweetness. As Lawford was stretching up his arm to get at it, the sweet-brier, now so plentiful in New Zealand, that was growing about its roots caught the ragged old coat. They heard the rent; something fell out of the pocket on the other side.
He picked it up hastily, shaking off the dirt into which it had fallen. “It is my father’s belt!” exclaimed Edwin. Whero was over the side of the canoe in a moment, and crawling through the bed of rushes with the noiseless swiftness of a wild animal watching its prey.
He saw Lawford unpack what New Zealanders call a swag—that is, a piece of oil-cloth provided with straps, which takes the place of knapsack or portmanteau amongst travellers of Lawford’s description. If a man has not even got a swag, he is reckoned a sundowner in colonial eyes. Swags are always to be bought at the smallest stores. No difficulty about that. As Whero drew nearer, he saw the swag was a new one. Everything else about the man looked worn out.
Lawford was unpacking it on the ground, throwing suspicious glances over his shoulder as he did so; but his recent companion seemed to have vanished. He stood up and looked all round him, but there was no one to be seen.
He took out a small bundle packed up in flax-leaves, which he began slowly to unwind.
Did not Whero know the bag which his own mother had woven? Could anything produce those tell-tale stains but the hateful mud from which it had been dug up?
Lawford wrapped the belt round the bag, and bound the flax-leaves over both as before. When he began to strap up the swag, Whero crept back to the canoe. His eyes were ablaze with passion.
“Pull off your coat,” he whispered, “and leave it in the rushes. Take mine, or he will know you.”
Edwin eagerly complied.
“Sleep deep; lie on your face!” whispered Whero, covering him over with the rushes he had brought. Then, before Edwin had the least idea of what he was purposing, Whero pushed out his canoe into the middle of the river, and paddled quickly to a handy landing-place a little farther on. He ran up the bank shouting to Lawford, “If you want a boat to go down river to meet a coaster, I’ll row you in my canoe. But you will have to pay me.”
“You would not work without that if you are a Maori, I know,” retorted the other, taking out a well-worn purse.
“Come along,” shouted Whero; “that’s a’ right.” The unsuspecting Lawford took his seat in the canoe, and gave Edwin an unwary kick.
“Who have you got here?” he asked.
“A chum asleep,” answered Whero, indifferently, as he stroked his kaka.
Edwin was feeling anything but indifferent. He knew not how to lie still. “If we are not dead unlucky,” he thought, “we shall get all back—Nga-Hépé’s bag, and father’s belt too. We must mind we do not betray ourselves. If we can manage to go on board the same steamer, when we are right out to sea I’ll tell the captain all; and we will give Lawford in charge as he lands.” Such was Edwin’s plan; but he could not be sure that Whero’s was the same. He dare not exchange a look or sign; “for,” he said to himself, “if Lawford catches sight of me, it is all over.”
They passed another little steamer going up the river, with its coal-barge in tow.
Edwin felt as if Audrey’s sedate face would be looking down upon him from its deck, but he was wrong.
“Nothing is certain but the unforeseen,” he sighed; but he remembered his part, and the sigh became a snore, which he carefully repeated at intervals, for Lawford’s benefit.
He little thought how soon his words would be fulfilled. The steamer was some way ahead, and Whero was making towards it steadily. The barge behind them was lessening in the distance, when the Maori boy fixed his fingers like a vice in the strap of Lawford’s swag, and upset his canoe.
Whero knew that Edwin could swim well, and that Lawford was unused to the water. Whero had detected that by the awkward way in which he stepped into the canoe.
The two struggled in the water for the possession of the swag. At last the man relinquished his hold, and Whero swam to shore triumphantly, leaving him to drown.
“He shall not drown!” cried Edwin, hastening towards him with vigorous strokes; but before he could reach the spot, Lawford had sunk. Edwin swam round and round, watching for him to rise.
It was a moment of anguish so intense he thought life, reason, all within him, would give way before the dreadful question, “What have I been? An accomplice in this man’s death—all unknowing, it is true; but that cannot save him. Oh! it does matter,” he groaned, “what kind of fellows a boy is forced to take for his chums.”
The drowning man rose to the surface. Edwin grasped him by the coat. For a little while they floated with the current, until Lawford’s weight began to drag Edwin down.
“Better die with him than live to know I have killed him,” thought Edwin. One hurried upward glance into the azure sky brought back the remembrance of One who is ever present, ever near, and strong to save us to the uttermost. This upheld him. A tree came floating by; he caught at its branches. Lawford had just sense enough to follow his example and cling for dear life to the spreading arms.
A bargee, unloading his freight of coal upon the bank, perceived their danger, and swam out with a rope. He threw it to Lawford, but he missed it. A second was flung from the barge, and the noose at the end of it caught among the branches flapping up and down in the water. Men’s lives were at stake, but as the value of the drift-wood would well repay its capture, they hauled it in with the bold young swimmer clinging to its boughs; for the first of the watermen who came to their help had seized Lawford, who relinquished his hold on the tree to snatch at the rope he brought him.
The two men swam to the barge. Edwin was drawn in to shore. He scrambled up the bank and looked around him for Lawford.
He saw the rabbiter half lying on the deck of the barge, panting with rage and fear, and shouted to him, “Safe! all safe!”
But Lawford answered with a bitter imprecation on the son of the cannibal, who had purposely flung him over, tossed him like a bone to the hungry sharks.
“Ask yourself why,” retorted Edwin. “And what might not I have done to you, if I had never heard such words as, ‘Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more’?”
“Come,” interposed the waterman to Lawford, “shut up. Such language as this is wonderfully unbecoming from the mouths of fellows scarce snatched back from a watery grave, and we don’t care to hear it. Say what you will to the young ’un, he made a bold fight with the tide to save you. Let him alone.”
“Where were you bound for?” said the bargee aside to Edwin, as the boy poured out his gratitude for their timely assistance.
“I wanted to take a passage on board the steamer for Christchurch, and a Maori boy was rowing me down to meet it. This man was in the same canoe, and had robbed the boy who was rowing us. In the struggle between them the canoe was upset.”
“Go on with him, then,” advised the bargee, “and give him in charge when he lands.”
“No,” answered Edwin resolutely, “for the boy recovered his own. But this man is a bad one, and I would rather stay where I am than be in his company another hour.”
“Run off, then,” returned the bargee kindly; “run until you are dry, and you will take no harm. As for this fellow, we will ship him off to the South Island, if that is where he wants to go.”
Edwin wrung the bargee’s horny hand, and followed his counsel with all speed. Lawford’s jeering laugh was ringing in his ears.
“He thinks I am running away from him; if he fancies I am afraid, he makes a mistake, that is all,” reflected Edwin, racing onward.
But where was Whero? A run of half-a-mile brought Edwin back to the river-brink again, but nearer to the spot where the canoe was upset. Whero had recovered it, and was looking about for his friend. Edwin could see his tiny “dug-out” zigzagging round the boulders, and still rushing seawards, as he paused to reconnoitre a leafless bush on the water’s edge, which seemed to bear a fancied resemblance to the figure of a crouching boy. Edwin pulled off his jacket and waved it high in the air. He threw up his arms. He shouted. He did everything he could think of to attract Whero’s attention. But his back was towards him. All his signals seemed in vain, but not quite; for the kaka was swinging high up among the top-most branches of an enormous willow near the scene of the upset. From such an elevation it espied Edwin, and recognizing Whero’s jacket, which he was waving flag-like over his head, it swooped down upon him with an angry scream, and seizing the jacket by the sleeve, tugged at it with all its might. If Whero could not distinguish the shout of his friend from the rush of the water, the doleful “Hoké” of his bird could not be mistaken, and Edwin soon saw him rowing swiftly towards them.
“What for?” demanded Whero; “what for go bother about a thief? What is he good for? Throw him over, and have done with him.”
“Ah!” retorted Edwin, “but we never should have done with him. The life we had let him lose would have lain like a terrible weight on us, growing heavier and heavier as we too drew nearer to the grave. For Christ himself refuses to lift the murderer’s load. But you do not know; you are not to blame, as I should have been.”
The overmastering feelings which prompted Edwin to say this shot from his eyes and quivered in his voice, and Whero, swayed by a force he could not understand, reaching him only by words, yielded to the influence of the light thus vibrating from soul to soul.
“Yes,” he said, reflectively, “there is something greater than killing, and I want the greatest things.”