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Chapter XXXVI.

It was with a very different feeling from any which he had ever experienced before that Jack Stanley woke upon the following morning. The bright warm sun, the blue sky, the glittering river spoke to him as they had never spoken before. The magnificent trees and ferns—which once had made him burst into tears, he scarcely knew why—simply because they were so beautiful—filled his eyes once more with tears—tears of happiness and gratitude, because he had learnt the great lesson of life, that God was his Father in Christ Jesus.

He walked many miles that day, sometimes stopping and sketching—sometimes almost running in the exhilaration of his spirits; and he did not pitch his tent—or, in other words, roll himself up in his blanket—until the sky was studded with stars. He was not afraid of losing his way, as he might have been in the middle of the bush, page 326 for he had determined not to lose sight of the river for long.

It was upon the third day since Jack Stanley had left the settlement that he halted about four o'clock in the afternoon, to rest himself. He had put off dining from hour to hour, being too much interested and engrossed in his drawing to care about eating. Now he laid his knapsack on the ground, and took from it a cold pigeon which remained from some he had killed and roasted the day before. What bread he had left was rather dry, and there was very little of that; and Jack thought to himself that he would employ the evening in shooting some provisions, as he was certainly now upon short commons.

He had hardly sat down and begun eating the little he had to eat, when he perceived a thin white smoke rising through the air at a little distance towards the river.

“Why,” thought he, “I must be near some pah!”—and hastily putting up his things, he sprang to his feet, and walked in the direction of the smoke. He did not, however, come upon any village, neither at first did he think there was any habitation from which the smoke could have proceeded; but after some search, he discovered a kind of shed—it could scarcely be called even a hut—made of green boughs of fern and trees tied together with bands of the flax, which grew abundantly in the neighbourhood. It was very small, and so carelessly put together, that it was not even calculated to keep out rain. The latter idea occurred to Jack in consequence of page 327 the heavens being at that moment black with a coming storm, and already the thunder was growling in the distance.

People do not in New Zealand stand upon so much ceremony as they would in England; and the next thought which passed through Jack's mind was, that if the little arbour or hut, or whatever it might most fitly be called, belonged to any one, he would ask the owner to give him shelter. There must be some one belonging to it; for, as he drew nearer, Jack saw that the smoke which had first attracted his attention came from a pile of sticks, burning dully in the clear space in front of the hut.

“Is there any one at home?” asked Jack, in a cheerful tone; but there came no answer. He went close up to the hut: there was no door, but an opening which served as an entrance. “May I come in? Does any one live here?” asked Jack again.

At the same moment a tremendous clap of thunder broke over his head, and down came the rain in a deluge. The next minute, casting ceremony aside, he stooped his head, and entered the little hut. Inside it was not above four feet square, and only high enough for a man to stand upright in the middle. The skies had so suddenly become dark, and so little light could at any time be admitted through the low doorway, which was the only aperture, that, at first entering, Jack saw nothing. He was conscious, though, that there was something within the hut, and he waited until his eyes should grow accustomed page 328 to the darkness before he moved beyond his first step into it. Before he could see, he heard a sound. It was a groan following upon the burst of thunder. Then, after a few minutes, he dimly saw, crouched in one corner of the little space, the figure of a man. The man saw him, and saw that he was perceived; for he raised his head, and said,

“Go away! Leave me!”

“What, in such a storm as this?” asked Jack. “Surely you will let me sit here for a little while until this drenching rain is over?”

“I wish to be alone, I tell you,” returned the man, sulkily. “What does the storm matter? Go away!”

Again he gave a shivering groan as the lightning and thunder came once more.

“You don't seem to like the storm yourself,” thought Jack: “it is rather cool to try and turn me out into it.” And he sat down as far as he could from his companion, and that was not far.

“Are you going?” asked the man, presently.

“No,” said Jack. “I am sorry to make myself so disagreeable; but I cannot think of going till it clears up a little.”

The man gave no answer, and did not speak again for the whole time the storm continued.

After a couple of hours, which seemed very long hours to Jack, the rain cleared off, and the thunder ceased, and it promised to be a beautiful evening. The birds began page 329 twittering, for, as they had been deprived of two hours of daylight, they did not think fit to go to bed so early as usual. Jack rose, and left the hut to look at the sky.

“Are you going?” asked the man again.

For the first time Stanley was able to see his companion. His hair was as white as snow, and his figure was bent, and he was dressed in old shabby clothes. That was the impression made at the first glance.

“Why, yes, I suppose I am,” answered Jack, slowly, and wondering at the discourtesy of the speaker.

“Go, then; and don't come back again,” returned the old man.

Jack paused and looked back at the hut. The fire was, of course, quite out. From the boughs of one of the trees against which the little hut was made hung several sacks, which looked as if they held potatoes, or provisions of some sort.

“He eats occasionally, at any rate,” said Jack to himself. The thoughts of the old man's larder recalled to him his own hunger, and he began to think of procuring some supper.

Water-birds are so plentiful near the river that it did not take him long to meet with water-hens and to shoot a brace; but cooking them was a more difficult matter. The wood lying about was so soaked with the rain that it seemed impossible to light it; and after a great many unsuccessful attempts, Jack Stanley gave it up. He might have smoked his birds, perhaps, but he could not have page 330 roasted them. He was surrounded by tall white and red pine-trees and great cabbage-palms; and he knew that the heart of the latter was good to eat; but he could not climb trees of forty feet high to obtain it. He saw several sorts of things which looked like eatable berries or fruit; but he did not know whether they might not be poisonous, so he had to content himself with boiling his little tin kettle with some tea, and soon forgot in sleep that he was hungry.

The bright sun woke him on the following morning; all vestige of the storm was passed away; and the wood which Jack had tried to burn overnight was so far dried that he made a fire without much trouble.

He had bathed himself, and said his prayers—depend upon it, Jack Stanley will never omit praying again—and was seated watching his birds slowly roasting before the fire, each of them impaled upon a stick, the other end of which was in the ground, and his kettle getting up the steam ready for making his tea, when he saw a figure a little way off making his way towards the river. It was his friend of the night before.

The old man appeared very feeble as, after filling a pot he carried with water, he raised it to carry it back to the spot where he lived.

Jack sprang to his feet. “Perhaps he may be in a better humour this morning,” thought he, running up to the stranger.

“Let me carry it for you, sir; it is too heavy for you,” page 331 he said, offering to take the water-pot from the hands of the other.

The white head was raised, and for a moment the stranger looked in the face of Jack Stanley, showing him, to his surprise, in contrast with the stooped figure and the white hair, a face of remarkable beauty, of little more than middle age apparently, though lined with care, and with an expression of intense misery.

“Did I not tell you yesterday to go, and leave me alone?” said the man; and turning away, he pursued his walk, leaving Jack standing in mute amazement. There was nothing to be done but to return to his fire and eat his breakfast.

Jack Stanley had not any fixed intention of remaining in that immediate neighbourhood; but somehow, although he wandered here and there as his fancy prompted him, he usually found himself at night not far from the same spot. Once or twice he almost made up his mind to return to the Maori settlement: he wanted to know if there was there any news of Bernard; but each time the sight of some new opening in the forest, or some especially beautiful group of trees, would cause him to defer his return for another day; so it came to pass, that three or four days after Jack's meeting with the surly stranger found him preparing to bivouac almost upon the same spot as he had done on that same evening.

“I wonder what my discourteous friend is doing?” he thought, as he recognized the place where he had before page 332 lighted his fire, and where still the ashes remained, and glanced at the little opening amongst the trees from whence the white-haired man had come to draw up the water from the river. “I should think he must be tired of his Diogenes sort of life by this time.”

As he thus thought, he heard a sound like a groan. Jack started; then recovering himself, he said,

“That was just the way he groaned during the thunder-storm. That shows the force of imagination. I could quite fancy I heard him then.”

But it was no fancy: there was distinctly another groan, and it came from somewhere not far off. Jack Stanley did not require any further inducement to hasten to the spot. Parting the bushes, and regardless of the supplejacks which twisted thickly about the stems of the trees, and rebounded upon him with sharp blows as he made his way through them, he took the shortest road to the place whence the sounds proceeded. Before he reached it, another groan as of some one in great pain smote on his ear. He was not surprised at finding his acquaintance of the little hut lying upon the ground, and to find that the groans came from him.

Jack expected to be met with surly incivility. He was prepared for that kind of treatment; but that did not prevent him from stooping down over the fallen figure, and inquiring in a kind tone of voice what had occurred.

“My leg, my leg! It is broken,” murmured the man. It was a difficult thing to carry a man with a broken page 333 leg for a couple of hundred yards, for they were that distance from the hut, and Jack Stanley debated in his own mind what to do.

“Do you think you can help yourself at all?” he asked. “If you put one arm round my neck, can you bear to be supported on one leg?”

“I must bear it,” answered the stranger. “I have no choice.”

At the same time he complied with Jack Stanley's request, and placed one arm round his neck, so as to allow himself to be raised gradually from the ground, and, with Jack's arm about his waist, he slowly found his way to the hut. It must have been agony to the man to have been half carried, half dragged in this way to his little place of abode; but although he could not occasionally stifle a groan, yet he made no complaint, but bore the pain of that broken limb hanging unsupported with the courage of a martyr, or like some gallant wounded animal, who will die in tortures uncomplaining, setting an example of fortitude to us who think ourselves so much above them, as indeed we ought to be. I think Jack Stanley also suffered with the pain he was obliged to inflict, as every generous-hearted young fellow would do, but he could do nothing more than he was doing. It would have been impossible for him to carry his companion, who was as tall as himself.