Doing and Daring

IN THE MOUNTAIN GORGE.

It was a glorious autumn day, when the New Zealand bush was at its loveliest—as enchanting as if it truly were the fairy ground of the Southern Ocean; yet so unlike every European forest that weariness seemed banished by its ceaseless variety. Here the intertwining branches of majestic trees, with leaves of varied hue, shut out the sky, and seemed to roof the summer road which wound its devious track towards the hills; there a rich fern-clad valley, from which the murmuring sound of falling water broke like music on the ear. Onwards still a little farther, and an overgrown creek, gently wandering between steep banks of rich dark fern and graceful palm, came suddenly out of the greenwood into an open space, bounded by a wall of rock, rent by a darkling chasm, where the waters of the creek, tumbling over boulder stone and fallen tree, broadened to a rushing river. Along its verge the road continued, a mere wheel-track cut in the rock, making it a perilous crossing, as the driver of the weekly mail knew full well.

His heavy, lumbering coach was making its way towards it at that moment, floundering through the two feet deep of mud which New Zealanders call a bush road. The five poor horses could only walk, and found that hard work, while the passengers had enough to do to keep their seats.

Fortunately the coach was already lightened of a part of its load, some fares with which it started having reached their destination at the last stopping-place. The seven remaining consisted of a rough, jolly-looking, good-humoured fellow, bound for the surveyors' camp among the hills; an old identity, as New Zealanders call a colonist who has been so long resident in the land of his adoption that he has completely identified himself with it; and a newly-arrived settler with his four children, journeying to take possession of a government allotment in the Waikato district.

With the first two passengers long familiarity with the discomforts of bush travelling had grown to indifference; but to Mr. Lee and his family the experience was a trying one, as the coach swayed heavily to this side and that, backwards and forwards, up and down, like a boat on a rough sea. More than once Mr. Lee's little girls were precipitated into the arms of their
vis-à-vis
, or bumped backwards with such violence a breakage seemed inevitable; but which would suffer the most, the coach or its passengers, was an open question.

Any English-made vehicle with springs must have been smashed to pieces; but the New Zealand mail had been constructed to suit the exigencies of the country. With its frame of iron and sides of leather, it could resist an amount of wear and tear perfectly incredible to Mr. Lee. He sat with an arm round each of his daughters, vainly trying to keep them erect in their places. Their two brothers bobbed recklessly from corner to corner, thinking nothing of the bruises in their ever-increasing merriment when the edge of Erne's broad-brimmed straw hat went dash into the navvy's eyes, or Audrey's gray dust-cloak got entangled in the buckles of the old identity's travelling-bag.

Audrey, with a due regard for the proprieties, began a blushing apology.

"My dear child," exclaimed the portly old gentleman, "you speak as if I did not know you could not help it."

The words were scarcely uttered, when the whole weight of his sixteen stone went crushing on to little Cuthbert, who emerged from the jolly squeeze with a battered hat and an altogether flattened appearance. Then came an unexpected breathing-space. The coachman stopped to leave a parcel at the roadman's hut, nestling beneath the shelter of the rocks by the entrance of the gorge.

New Zealand roads are under the care of the government, who station men at intervals all along their route to keep them in order. The special duty of this individual was to see that no other traffic entered the gorge when the coach was passing through it. Whilst he exchanged greetings with the coachman, the poor passengers with one accord gave a stretch and a yawn as they drew themselves into a more comfortable position.

On again with renewed jolts between the towering walls of rock, with a rush of water by their side drowning the rumble of the wheels. The view was grand beyond description, but no rail or fence protected the edge of the stream.

Mr. Lee was leaning out of the window, watching anxiously the narrow foot of road between them and destruction, when, with a sudden lurch, over went the coach to the other side.

"A wheel off," groaned the old identity, as he knocked heads with the navvy, and became painfully conscious of a struggling heap of arms and legs encumbering his feet.

AN AWKWARD PLIGHT.

Audrey clung to the door-handle, and felt herself slowly elevating. Mr. Lee, with one arm resting on the window-frame, contrived to hang on. As the coach lodged against the wall of rock, he scrambled out. Happily the window owned no glass, and the leathern blind was up. The driver was flung from his seat, and the horses were kicking. His first thought was to seize the reins, for fear the frightened five should drag them over the brink. The shaft-horse was down, but as the driver tumbled to his feet, he cut the harness to set the others free; earnestly exhorting the passengers to keep where they were until he could extricate his horses.

But Edwin, the eldest boy, had already followed the example of his father. He had wriggled himself out of the window, and was dropping to the ground down the back of the coach, which completely blocked the narrow road.

His father and the coachman both shouted to him to fetch the roadman to their help. It was not far to the hut at the entrance of the gorge, and the boy, who had been reckoned a first-rate scout on the cricket-field, ran off with the speed of a hare. The navvy's stentorian "coo"—the recognized call for assistance—was echoing along the rocky wall as he went. The roadman had heard it, and had left his dinner to listen. He saw the panting boy, and came to meet him.

"Coach upset," gasped Edwin.

"Here, lad, take my post till I come back; let nobody come this way. I'll be up with poor coachee in no time. Anybody hurt?"

But without waiting for a reply the man set off. Edwin sank into the bed of fern that clustered round the opening of the chasm, feeling as if all the breath had been shaken out of him. There he sat looking queer for an hour or more, hearing nothing, seeing nothing but the dancing leaves, the swaying boughs, the ripple of the waters. Only once a big brown rat came out of the underwood and looked at him. The absence of all animal life in the forest struck him: even the birds sing only in the most retired recesses. An ever-increasing army of sand-flies were doing their utmost to drive him from his position. Unable at last to endure their stings, he sprang up, trying to rid himself of his tormentors by a shake and a dance, when he perceived a solitary horseman coming towards him, not by the coach-road, but straight across the open glade.

The man was standing in his stirrups, and seemed to guide his horse by a gentle shake of the rein. On he rode straight as an arrow, making nothing of the many impediments in his path. Edwin saw him dash across the creek, plunge through the all but impenetrable tangle of a wild flax-bush, whose tough and fibrous leaves were nine feet long at least, leap over a giant boulder some storm had hurled from the rocks above, and rein in his steed with easy grace at the door of the roadman's shanty. Then Edwin noticed that the man, whose perfect command of his horse had already won his boyish admiration, had a big mouth and a dusky skin, that his cheeks were furrowed with wavy lines encircling each other.

IN THE MOUNTAIN GORGE. 15

"A living tattoo," thought Edwin. The sight of those curiously drawn lines was enough to proclaim a native.

Some Maori chief, the boy was inclined to believe by his good English-made saddle. The tall black hat he wore might have been imported from Bond Street at the beginning of the season, barring the sea-bird's feathers stuck upright in the band. His legs were bare. A striped Austrian blanket was thrown over one shoulder and carefully draped about him. A snowy shirt sleeve was rolled back from the dusky arm he had raised to attract Edwin's attention. A striped silk scarf, which might have belonged to some English lady, was loosely knotted round his neck, with the ends flying behind him. A scarlet coat, which had lost its sleeves, completed his grotesque appearance.

"Goo'-mornin'," he shouted. "Coach gone by yet?"

"The coach is upset on that narrow road," answered Edwin, pointing to the ravine, "and no one can pass this way."

"Smashed?" asked the stranger in tolerable English, brushing away the ever-ready tears of the Maori as he sprang to the ground, expecting to find the treasure he had commissioned the coachman to purchase for him was already broken into a thousand pieces. Then Edwin remembered the coachman had left a parcel at the hut as they passed; and they both went inside to look for it. They found it laid on the bed at the back of the hut—a large, flat parcel, two feet square.

The address was printed on it in letters half-an-inch high: "Nga-Hepé, Rota Pah."

"That's me!" cried the stranger, the tears of apprehension changing into bursts of joyous laughter as he seized it lovingly, and seemed to consider for a moment how he was to carry it away. A shadow passed over his face; some sudden recollection changed his purpose. He laid his hand persuasively on Edwin's shoulder, saying, "Hepé too rich, Nga-Hepé too rich; the rana will come. Hide it, keep it safe till Nga-Hepé comes again to fetch it."

Edwin explained why he was waiting there. He had only scrambled out of the fallen coach to call the roadman, and would soon be gone.

"You pakeha [white man] fresh from Ingarangi land? you Lee?" exclaimed the Maori, taking a letter from the breast-pocket of his sleeveless coat, as Edwin's surprised "Yes" confirmed his conjecture.

The boy took the letter from him, and recognized at once the bold black hand of a friend of his father's whose house was to be their next halting-place. The letter was addressed to Mr. Lee, to be left in the care of the coachman.

Meanwhile, the roadman had reached the scene of the overturn just as the navvy had succeeded in getting the door of the coach open. Audrey and Effie were hoisted from the arms of one rough man to another, and seated on a ledge of rock a few feet from the ground, where Mr. Lee, who was still busy with the horses, could see the torn gray cloak and waving handkerchief hastening to assure him they were unhurt.

Poor little Cuthbert was crying on the ground. His nose was bleeding from a blow received from one of the numerous packages which had flown out from unseen corners in the suddenness of the shock.

"Mr. Bowen," said the navvy, "now is your turn."

But to extricate the stout old gentleman, who had somehow lamed himself in the general fall, was a far more difficult matter.

The driver, who scarcely expected to get through a journey without some disaster, was a host in himself. He got hold of the despairing traveller by one arm, the roadman grasped the other, assuring him, in contradiction to his many assertions, that his climbing days were not all over; the navvy gave a leg up from within, and in spite of slips and bruises they had him seated on the bank at last, puffing and panting from the exertion. "Now, old chap," added the roadman, with rough hospitality, "take these poor children back to my hut; and have a rest, and make yourself at home with such tucker as you can find, while we get the coach righted."

"We will all come down and help you with the tucker when our work is done," laughed the navvy, as the three set to their task with a will, and began to heave up the coach with cautious care. The many ejaculatory remarks which reached the ears of Audrey and Mr. Bowen filled them with dismay.

"Have a care, or she'll be over into the water," said one.

"No, she won't," retorted another; "but who on earth can fix this wheel on again so that it will keep? Look here, the iron has snapped underneath. What is to be done?"

"We have not far to go," put in the coachman. "I'll make it hold that distance, you'll see."

A wild-flax bush was never far to seek. A few of its tough, fibrous leaves supplied him with excellent rope of nature's own making.

Mr. Bowen watched the trio binding up the splintered axle, and tying back the iron frame-work of the coach, where it had snapped, with a rough and ready skill which seemed to promise success. Still he foresaw some hours would go over the attempt, and even then it might end in failure.

He was too much hurt to offer them any assistance, but he called to Cuthbert to find him a stick from the many bushes and trees springing out of every crack and crevice in the rocky sides of the gorge, that he might take the children to the roadman's hut. They arrived just as Nga-Hepé was shouting a "Goo'-mornin'" to Edwin. In fact, the Maori had jumped on his horse, and was cantering off, when Mr. Bowen stopped him with the question,—

"Any of your people about here with a canoe? I'll pay them well to row me through this gorge," he added.

"The coach is so broken," said Audrey aside to her brother, "we are afraid they cannot mend it safely."

"Never mind," returned Edwin cheerily; "we cannot be far from Mr. Hirpington's. This man has brought a letter from him. Where is father?"

"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-Hepé 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 Hepé, 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 (as the better class of Maori dwellings are styled), 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-Hepé 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.