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Chapter VIII.

But they were not out of hearing of mankind, as Jack found almost immediately the shout had escaped his lips, when a tall, dark figure stood in the middle of the road, dressed in a very dirtylooking blanket.

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Stanley, seizing his gun.

“Pray don't, Jack! pray be quiet!” said Bernard. “Really you will make enemies of the people if you behave like that. I dare say this fellow will be civil enough if you speak to him.”

“I? I don't understand their lingo.”

“But I dare say they do yours. I say,” continued he, addressing the Maori, “can you tell us how far we are from the river?”

“Ruamahanga?” said the man. “Not far, very. Which way is Pakea going?”

“What does he mean by Pakea?” asked Jack, aloud.

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“There Pakea,” said the man, laughing, and suddenly giving Jack a poke in the side.

Jack could not help laughing also, and the Indian held out his hand, saying,

“Tena-koe?”

“I suppose that means ‘how d’ ye do,' my good fellow,” said Jack, shaking the man's hand.

“Yes, yes; how d'ye do?” said the man, turning to Bernard, that he might go through the same ceremony with him; then all at once he glanced slyly towards the strangers, saying,

“Tumack.”

“That's beyond me,” said Jack Stanley. “What do you mean?”

The Maori took from somewhere under his blanket a short clay pipe, and turning it upside down to show that it was empty, he shook his head at it slowly and sadly.

“Clever rascal!” murmured Jack, “he knows how to beg.” Then taking from his pocket some tobacco, he gave it to the Maori, who was profuse in unintelligible thanks.

“But, now, you have not told us how far it is to Ruamahanga river,” said Bernard.

The man began an explanation, half in his own language and half in very bad English, made up with a great number of signs, so that the travellers were not much wiser for his explanation, and thanking him, and after further handshaking, they rode on.

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“I wish I had taken the trouble to learn something of the language,” said Bernard, “before we came out. I had an opportunity once. A fellow who had been out here a good deal offered to teach me; but, like a fool, I would not take the trouble to learn. I don't believe we ever miss an opportunity of learning anything, but we regret it afterwards.”

“Very true, Mentor,” answered Jack. “I wonder if the Maoris generally are as dirty-looking as that fellow. He wasn't my idea of a noble New Zealander.”

“I think travellers are very apt to wash their natives clean before they send them into print. I fancy most uncivilized people are dirty.”

“I rather liked the fellow, though,” said Jack, “he was so much at his ease. I say, I am awfully hungry, and I see nothing that we can shoot and eat; and now I think of it, we have not seen anything shootable since we left Wellington.”

“I hardly expected we should,” said Bernard. “But wait a little: we cannot be far from the river, so we will stop upon its banks and have something to eat.”

“Where's the something? I wish now we had brought some provisions: we may go on all day at this rate, you know, and meet with nothing.”

“No, we won't: everybody is not so enthusiastic as you are, Master Jack. Living on one's guns is all very well, but when it becomes literal, as in this instance, it is hard lines.”

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“And would be hard of digestion,” returned Jack. “But what are we to do?”

“Be less romantic, and enjoy ourselves more by eating some dinner I have here.”

“Hurrah! that's first-rate. You are not half a bad fellow, you know, Bernard. And, by Jove! there's the river. Oh, does it not look beautiful? Oh, Bernard, look at those green slopes, look at those trees. Oh, those trees! what magnificent fellows!” exclaimed Jack, urging on his horse.

“There, now; you'll not want any dinner,” said Bernard, laughing. “You'll be living on the look of the country for the next half-hour.”

“No; I am dreadfully hungry. But, Hope, I cannot tell you the effect such scenes as that have upon me.”

“I can imagine it,” said Bernard. “You are wonderfully fond of nature.”

By this time Jack and he had reached the border of the silver river, and throwing themselves off their horses, they took the bridles off the beasts and allowed them to feed. Bernard took a valise from the place where it had been strapped to his saddle, and commenced unpacking it. It was filled with provisions, tea, and sugar.

“Tea!” said Jack; “that was a good thought. It will be jolly to make a cup of tea of an evening.”

Several loaves of bread, some cheese, and a piece of cold salt beef, and a couple of tin mugs for drinking.

It was the pleasantest picnic at which Jack Stanley or page 85 Bernard had ever taken part, and they prolonged it purposely in order to give their horses a good rest.

Then re-mounting, after having carefully, and with much respect, packed up the remains of the provisions, they proceeded on their way. As they went farther into the bush forest, Jack answerered his companion's remarks more and more shortly, until he became totally silent; and once, as a scene of more than usual beauty appeared before them, he all at once burst into tears. He felt ashamed the next moment of his emotion: as foolish boys will be ashamed where there is no room for shame; but there was every excuse for his being overcome. The prospect was one of imposing beauty. We who have seen nothing beyond the woods and coverts of home; pretty as they are with their graceful tall fir-trees and noble oaks and lovely undergrowth of ferns and brambles, and sweet carpet of many-coloured flowers, lovely and pretty and sweet as they are; yet they do not enable us to form any conception of the magnificence of a New Zealand forest, where the ferns are trees, and the trees are giants, and the creeping plants run up to the lower branches and hang from them in luxuriant festoons of verdure, covered with blossoms of scarlet and purple and gold.

Of course there are drawbacks to all this loveliness, for Eden is no longer to be met with in this world; but there are no pests of venomous reptiles or of savage beasts, which would in an Indian or West Indian scene give us a page 86 feeling of insecurity. There are prickly thorn-bushes to tear the clothes off the traveller's back, and there are impertinent things called “supple-jacks,” which will bar your passage; and after you have, as you think, forced them aside, that you may pass, will turn and slap you in the face—slaps which are not to be laughed at as mere playful spats; but on the whole it is so beautiful as easily to make an ardent impassioned young fellow like Jack Stanley, who had for all the best years of his life had his love of natural beauty latent in his bosom, and at times ignored or forgotten, through being compelled to live in a dull lodging in London, where for days and days he hardly saw a green tree or the blue sky—it was enough to make such an one as Jack Stanley burst into tears.

Bernard said nothing, and the two rode on for a time, until Jack Stanley exclaimed,

“Hullo! there's a pigeon, and there's another: let us tie up our horses and see if we can shoot some.”

“All right,” said Bernard; “but we must be careful that we do not lose our way. I have heard it is no joke in the bush.”

“Why, I could find my way out again easy enough if we did,” said Jack. “But there is small chance of that now, for the pigeons have settled quite near. Come on.”

They now walked up to where the pigeons were. There was a number of them flying backwards and forwards, and Bernard and Jack soon brought down half a dozen.

“There,” said Jack, as he to his astonishment killed page 87 his bird the first time he fired. “That's the first time I have ever fired a gun in my life.”

“Well, you must take to it by nature, as some of us do to swimming, I suppose. I have occasionally had a little shooting; but it is a very different thing at home, where the birds are so shy, while here the poor things do not seem to know the meaning of a gun.”

“Won't we have a supper?” said Jack, picking up the birds.

They were not pigeons after all, but a sort of parrot, which lives about there in large flocks. Thereupon Bernard laughed at Jack, and called him “cockney sportsman” and “Mr. Winkle,” but I do not think that one knew much more than the other about shooting. So, with a great deal of laughter and fun, they turned to go back to the river-side, where they had left their horses.;

“This way,” exclaimed Jack, after they had walked a short distance. “This is the big fern we passed before: I know it by its stem.”

“I don't remember that fern,” said Bernard, “and I fancy that is not the path we came by.”

But Jack was positive, and Bernard gave in. Shortly afterwards they stopped again.

“I am sure,” said Jack, “we did not walk so far from the river before we saw the birds.”

“We paid no attention to the direction in our excitement,” answered Bernard; “but here's the little open space we found before. We are all right.”

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But they were all wrong. When they had made their way beyond the little open space, by dint of separating the thick vegetation and forcing themselves through it, they came to a huge tree, clustered over with scarlet convolvulus.

“Oh, how lovely!” exclaimed Jack; “I say, Hope, is not that lovely?”

“Yes, very lovely, but certainly not our way back to the river,” said Hope, ruefully.

They both stopped, and looked blankly one at the other.

“Do you think we have lost our way?” asked Jack Stanley.

“It seems very like it,” answered Bernard; “I don't see what else we can have done.”

“Let us sit down and think about it,” observed Jack.

They both sat down. After a pause Bernard said,

“I don't know that we are doing much good by thinking, and I am inclined to try again.”

“We shall probably go farther astray if we do,” said Jack. “Let us consider. What have other distinguished people done under similar circumstances? Many people have lost their way before.”

“Yes, and never found it again,” answered Bernard.

“Hope, it is no good taking a gloomy view of things,” said Jack. “Here have I been pretending throughout that our present position is all a joke. It will be time enough to give in when we cannot do anything else.”

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“Well, then, with regard to your distinguished people,” said Bernard, endeavouring to rouse himself: “what did they do?”

“I can think of no one but Tom Thumb: he climbed into a tree,” said Stanley.

“So did Charles the Second,” observed Hope.

“Nonsense. Bernard, your knowledge of history is defective: Charles the Second did not climb because he had lost his way, but because he was afraid of losing his head. I prefer my historical illustration,” added Jack, “and I shall follow the example of Tom Thumb, and climb a tree.”

“Which?” asked Bernard, looking from one enormous stem to another; “which of these giants will you climb?”

“In proportion, these are nothing to what Tom Thumb's giant was to him,” answered Jack, at the same time attempting to embrace with his arms the trunk of one of the trees. But it would not do, and some time was spent in ineffectual attempts to climb. At length, with the aid of his companion, he succeeded in getting up one of the smaller trees, and from thence he clambered into the boughs of a neighbouring one, until he could see over the heads of those in front of him.

Bernard shouted from below, inquiring of his success, and Jack shouted in answer that he could see the gleam of the river in one direction. “But,” he added, “it is such a way off, I fancy it cannot be the same.”

“Come down, at any rate, and we will make our way towards it,” said Bernard.

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Jack complied; but it was very slow way that they made, and, almost every few yards, one or the other of them had to search for a tree to climb, that they might be sure they were keeping in the right way.

It was so long drawn out, this progress of theirs, that night came on, and they did not know how far they might be still from the spot whence they had started, and they were too tired to continue any longer fighting their way through the supple-jacks and the undergrowth of the forest. Even Jack's spirits had subsided, and both he and Bernard had for some time continued their way in silence. At length, by mutual consent, they gave up their search for the night, and threw themselves upon the ground.

“We may as well determine to sleep here,” said Bernard; “we shall do no good by wandering any farther.”

So there they rested until daybreak. Of course they were very hungry; but there was no help for it. They were, in reality, reduced to practise literally what Jack had thought so delightful in prospect—live upon their guns. However, being tired and sleepy as well as hungry, before long they forgot it all, excepting in their dreams.