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.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.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.
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.
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.
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.