In the Opononi Home.

However, that is not my present story. John Webster said no more of the Wanderer that day; there were other more pressing matters for us all; but after all the raruraru was over (excellent Maori word that, it covers ail manner of bobbery, trouble, business, discussion), and Hone Toia and his fellow-leaders of the little rebellion were in the arms of the Law at Rawene, I had another quieter talk about the wonderful days when all the world was young and new. That was in the old adventurer's home in the’ shade of the Opononi groves, behind the sea-wall with its guns poking their iron muzzles through the square embrasures.

It was a delicious nest of warmth and sweetness, Opononi by the sea, winch had been Webster's home since the ‘Sixties. The garden, sheltered by tall and spreading pohutukawa trees, was filled with trees and plants from many lands. Bananas ripened there, under the Hokianga sun, in that garden cf repose within the fort-like beachfront wall. Those old ship's guns in the embrasures, the yellow sands, the murmurous wash of the tide, brought a touch of the sea-warrior's life and a salty suggestion of Kingsley's “Last Buccaneer.” A proper retreat for an old adventurer, and a writer, too— Robert Louis Stevenson would have delighted in such a home, with its parapeted garden plantation bathed in the golden light and the sound of the trampling surf at the Heads borne on the western breeze. As you walked up to the broad verandah, you would have seen tuatara lizards, those spiney relics of a lost world, blinking from great sea-shells of the tropic islands. Those guns gave the proper spirit to the place. If you were a Governor, maybe, or a Naval commander, John Webster himself would load and fire a round or two of blank in your honour.