Read Ebook: Doing and Daring: A New Zealand Story by Stredder Eleanor

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1560 lines and 78827 words, and 32 pages

"Taking care of the horses; and we cannot get at him," she replied.

Mr. Bowen heard what they were saying, and caught at the good news--not far from Hirpington's, where the Lees were to stop. "How far?" he turned to the Maori.

"Not an hour's ride from the Rota Pah, or lake village, where the Maori lived." The quickest way to reach the ford, he asserted, was to take a short cut through the bush, as he had done.

Mr. Bowen thought he would rather by far trust himself to native guidance than enter the coach again. But there were no more horses to be had, for the coachman's team was out of reach, as the broken-down vehicle still blocked the path.

Nga-Hep? promised, as soon as he got to his home, to row down stream and fetch them all to Mr. Hirpington's in his canoe. Meanwhile, Edwin had rushed off to his father with the letter. It was to tell Mr. Lee the heavy luggage he had sent on by packet had been brought up from the coast all right.

"You could get a ride behind Hirpington's messenger," said the men to Edwin, "and beg him to come to our help." The Maori readily assented.

They were soon ascending the hilly steep and winding through a leafy labyrinth of shadowy arcades, where ferns and creepers trailed their luxuriant foliage over rotting tree trunks. Deeper and deeper they went into the hoary, silent bush, where song of bird or ring of axe is listened for in vain. All was still, as if under a spell. Edwin looked up with something akin to awe at the giant height of mossy pines, or peered into secluded nooks where the sun-shafts darted fitfully over vivid shades of glossy green, revealing exquisite forms of unimagined ferns, "wasting their sweetness on the desert air." Amid his native fastnesses the Maori grew eloquent, pointing out each conical hill, where his forefathers had raised the wall and dug the ditch. Over every trace of these ancient fortifications Maori tradition had its fearsome story to repeat. Here was the awful war-feast of the victor; there an unyielding handful were cut to pieces by the foe.

How Edwin listened, catching something of the eager glow of his excited companion, looking every inch--as he knew himself to be--the lord of the soil, the last surviving son of the mighty Hep?, whose name had struck terror from shore to shore.

As the Maori turned in his saddle, and darted suspicious glances from side to side, it seemed to Edwin some expectation of a lurking danger was rousing the warrior spirit within him.

They had gained the highest ridge of the wall of rock, and before them gloomed a dark descent. Its craggy sides were riven and disrupted, where cone and chasm told the same startling story, that here, in the forgotten long ago, the lava had poured its stream of molten fire through rending rocks and heaving craters. But now a maddened river was hissing and boiling along the channels they had hollowed. It was leaping, with fierce, impatient swoop, over a blackened mass of downfallen rock, scooping for itself a caldron, from which, with redoubled hiss and roar, it darted headlong, rolling over on itself, and then, as if in weariness, spreading and broadening to the kiss of the sun, until it slept like a tranquil lake in the heart of the hills. For the droughts of summer had broadened the muddy reaches, which now seemed to surround the giant boulders until they almost spanned the junction.

Where the stream left the basin a mass of huge logs chained together, forming what New Zealanders call a "boom," was cast across it, waiting for the winter floods to help them to start once more on their downward swim to the broader waters of the Waikato, of which this shrunken stream would then become a tributary.

On the banks of the lake, or rota--to give it the Maori name--Edwin looked down upon the high-peaked roofs of a native village nestling behind its protecting wall.

As the wind drove back the light vapoury cloudlets which hovered over the huts and whares , Edwin saw a wooden bridge spanning the running ditch which guarded the entrance.

His ears were deafened by a strange sound, as if hoarsely echoing fog-horns were answering each other from the limestone cliffs, when a cart-load of burly natives crossed their path. As the wheels rattled over the primitive drawbridge, a noisy greeting was shouted out to the advancing horseman--a greeting which seemed comprised in a single word the English boy instinctively construed "Beware." But the warning, if it were a warning, ended in a hearty laugh, which made itself heard above the shrill whistling from the jets of steam, sputtering and spouting from every fissure in the rocky path Nga-Hep? was descending, until another blast from those mysterious fog-horns drowned every other noise.

With a creepy sense of fear he would have been loath to own, Edwin looked ahead for some sign of the ford which was his destination; for he knew that his father's friend, Mr. Hirpington, held the onerous post of ford-master under the English Government in that weird, wild land of wonder, the hill-country of the north New Zealand isle.

A deep fellow-feeling for his wild, high-spirited guide was growing in Edwin's mind as they rode onward. Nga-Hep? glanced over his shoulder more than once to satisfy himself as to the effect the Maori's warning had had upon his young companion.

Edwin returned the hasty inspection with a look of careless coolness, as he said to himself, "Whatever this means, I have nothing to do with it." Not a word was spoken, but the flash of indignant scorn in Nga-Hep?'s brilliant eyes told Edwin that he was setting it at defiance.

On he spurred towards the weather-beaten walls, which had braved so many a mountain gale.

A faint, curling column of steamy vapour was rising from the hot waters which fed the moat, and wafted towards them a most unpleasant smell of sulphur, which Edwin was ready to denounce as odious. To the Maori it was dear as native air: better than the breath of sweet-brier and roses.

Beyond the bridge Edwin could see a pathway made of shells, as white and glistening as if it were a road of porcelain. It led to the central whare, the council-hall of the tribe and the home of its chief. Through the light haze of steam which veiled everything Edwin could distinguish its carved front, and the tall post beside it, ending in a kind of figure-head with gaping mouth, and a blood-red tongue hanging out of it like a weary dog's. This was the flagstaff. The cart had stopped beside it, and its recent occupants were now seated on the steps of the whare, laughing over the big letters of a printed poster which they were exhibiting to their companions.

"Nothing very alarming in that," thought Edwin, as Nga-Hep? gave his bridle-rein a haughty shake and entered the village. He threaded his way between the huts of mat and reeds, and the wood-built whares, each in its little garden. Here and there great bunches of home-grown tobacco were drying under a little roof of thatch; behind another hut a dead pig was hanging; a little further on, a group of naked children were tumbling about and bathing in a steaming pool; beside another tent-shaped hut there was a huge pile of potatoes, while a rush basket of fish lay by many a whare door.

In this grotesque and novel scene Edwin almost forgot his errand, and half believed he had misunderstood the hint of danger, as he watched the native women cooking white-bait over a hole in the ground, and saw the hot springs shooting up into the air, hissing and boiling in so strange a fashion the English boy was fairly dazed.

Almost all the women were smoking, and many of them managed to keep a baby riding on their backs as they turned their fish or gossiped with their neighbours. Edwin could not take his eyes off the sputtering mud-holes doing duty as kitchen fires until they drew near to the tattooed groups of burly men waiting for their supper on the steps of the central whare. Then many a dusky brow was lifted, and more than one cautionary glance was bestowed upon his companion, whilst others saw him pass them with a scowl.

Nga-Hep? met it with a laugh. A Maori scorns to lose his temper, come what may. As he leaped the steaming ditch and left the village by a gap in the decaying wall, he turned to Edwin, observing, with a pride which bordered on satisfaction: "The son of Hep? is known by all men to be rich and powerful, therefore the chief has spoken against him."

"Much you care for the chief," retorted Edwin.

"I am not of his tribe," answered Nga-Hep?. "I come of the Ureweras, the noblest and purest of our race. Our dead men rest upon the sacred hills where the Maori chiefs lie buried. When a child of Hep? dies," he went on, pointing to the mountain range, "the thunder rolls and the lightning flashes along those giant hills, that all men may know his hour has come. No matter where the Hep? lay concealed, men always knew when danger threatened him. They always said such and such a chief is dying, because the thunder and lightning are in such a place. Look up! the sky is calm and still. The hills are silent; Mount Tarawera rears its threefold crest above them all in its own majestic grandeur. Well, I know no real danger menaces me to-night."

"I trust you are right, Nga-Hep?, but--" began Edwin quickly. The Maori turned his head away; he could admit no "buts," and the English boy made vain endeavours to argue the question.

A noisy, boisterous jabbering arose from the village as the crowd outside the grand whare hailed the decision of the elders holding council within. Dogs, pigs, and boys added their voices to the general acclamation, and drowned Edwin's so completely he gave up in despair; and after all he thought, "Can any one wonder at Nga-Hep? clinging to the old superstitions of his race? In the wild grandeur of a spot like this it seems in keeping."

So he said no more. They crossed the broken ground. Before them gleamed the waters of the lake, upon whose bank Nga-Hep?'s house was standing--the old ancestral whare, the dwelling-place of the Hep?s generation after generation. Its well-thatched roof was higher than any of the roofs in the pah, and more pointed. The wood of which this whare was built was carved into idol figures and grinning monsters, now black and shining with excessive age.

The garden around it was better cultivated, and the ample store of roots and grain in the smaller whare behind it told of the wealth of its owner. Horses and pigs were snorting and squealing beneath the hoary trees, overshadowing the mud-hole and the geyser spring, by which the Maori loves to make his home. The canoe was riding on the lake, the lovely lake, as clear and blue as the sky it mirrored.

The sight of it recalled Edwin to his purpose, and he once more questioned Nga-Hep? as to the whereabouts of the ford.

"Enter and eat," said the Maori, alighting at his low-browed door.

The gable end of the roof projected over it like a porch, and Edwin paused under its shadow to take in the unfamiliar surroundings. Beneath the broad eaves huge bundles of native flax and tobacco were drying. In the centre of the long room within there was a blazing fire of crackling wood. But its cheerful welcome seemed to contend with a sense of desertion which pervaded the place.

Nga-Hep? called in vain for his accustomed attendant to take his horse. No one answered his summons. He shouted; no answer. The wooden walls of the neighbouring pah faintly echoed back his words. All his men were gone. He muttered something in his own tongue, which Edwin could not understand, as he led the way into the long room. In so grand a whare this room was divided into separate stalls, like a well-built stable. An abundance of native mats strewed the floor.

Nga-Hep?'s wife, wearing a cloak of flowered silk, with a baby slung in a shawl at her back, and a short pipe in her mouth, met him with soft words of pleading remonstrance which Edwin could not understand.

Her husband patted her fondly on the arm, touched the baby's laughing lips, and seated himself on the floor by the fire, inviting Edwin to join him.

The sleeping boy gave a great yawn, and starting to his feet, seemed to add his entreaties to his mother's. He held a book in his hand--a geography, with coloured maps--which he had evidently been studying; but he dropped it in despair, as his father only called for his supper.

"Help us to persuade him," he whispered to Edwin in English; "he may listen to a pakeha. Tell him it is better to go away."

"Why?" asked Edwin.

"Why!" repeated the boy excitedly; "because the chief is threatening him with a muru. He will send a band of men to eat up all the food, and carry off everything we have that can be carried away; but they will only come when father is at home."

"A bag of talk!" interrupted Nga-Hep?. "Shall it be said the son of the warrior sneaks off and hides himself at the first threat?"

"But," urged Edwin, "you promised to row back for Mr. Bowen."

"Yes, and I will. I will eat, and then I go," persisted Nga-Hep?, as his wife stamped impatiently.

Two or three women ran in with the supper which they had been cooking in a smaller whare in the background. They placed the large dishes on the floor: native potatoes--more resembling yams in their sweetness than their English namesakes--boiled thistles, and the ancient Maori delicacy, salted shark.

They all began to eat, taking the potatoes in their hands, when a wild cry rang through the air--a cry to strike terror to any heart. It was the first note of the Maori war-song, caught up and repeated by a dozen powerful voices, until it became a deafening yell. Hep?'s wife tore frantically at her long dark hair.

The Maori rose to his feet with an inborn dignity, and grasped the greenstone club, taking pride in the prestige of such a punishment. Turning to Edwin he said: "When the ferns are on fire the sparks fall far and wide. Take the horse--it is yours; I give it to you. It is the last gift I shall have it in my power to make for many a day to come. There lies your path through the bush; once on the open road again the ford-house will be in sight, and Whero shall be your guide. Tell the old pakeha the canoe is mine no more."

The woman snatched up the children and rushed away with them, uttering a wailing cry.

Edwin knew he had no alternative, but he did not like the feeling of running away in the moment of peril.

"Can't I help you, though I am only a boy?" he asked.

"Yes," answered Hep?'s wife, as she almost pushed him out of the door in her desperation; "take this."

She lifted up a heavy bag from the corner of the whare, and put it into his hands. Whero had untied the horse, and was pointing to the distant pah, from which the yells proceeded.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet