XIII
On the Road

In our rough country, as I have before explained, riding was often an extremely boring job, especially in a wet season and on a grassfed horse. I even endeavoured at times to lighten the passage of the slow, plodding miles by reading, but the effort was too trying to be long persisted in, though small volumes of Shakespeare were handy, and the Spectator was good print. The latter, which we received regularly, was sometimes very good fun. In one leading article, for instance, we were solemnly besought to remember that there were people so circumstanced in life that they were actually unable to wear a clean white shirt every day. But what pleased us most was this bit of wisdom: "When you wake up In the morning without a bright, happy craving for work, a day's rest is Indicated." That phrase became a nuisance. When, stretching yourself, half-awake, at cold dull dawn, you were asked, "How's your bright, happy craving now, my page 86boy?" it was only the anticipated bother of subsequent retrieval that stayed the ready boot.

Even in the matter-of-fact Weekly Times we sometimes found amusement. There was a case of fierce indigestion in Brazil, a man having been brought to the coast suffering from a violent explosion in the interior, believed to be dynamite, and there was an account of Mr. Asquith's second marriage, the hymn specially chosen by the bridegroom having been, we were told, "O God, our help in ages past," The Sydney Bulletin, too, in its wicked way, was often a source of joy. When in reply to an address of welcome, on his arrival at Sydney, as governor of New South Wales, the young 'Lord Beauchamp was so extraordinarily ill-advised as to quote Kipling on the birth-stain of the colony, this paper came out with a full page of amusing cartoons headed "Beauchamps Pills for Birth Marks." And one day, chancing on a torn sheet of the Idler, I came across Mr. Hoop-driver's interview with the park-keeper on Putney Heath, and was unhappy till, years after, I got the rest of the story.

Perhaps, however, the keenest joy I had from books in those days, alone in the back bush, came from some numbers of the Nineteenth Century Magazine, in which I revelled in page break

Plate XIII
The Spanish Windlass

Plate XIII
On the Waikato River

page 87the devastating fun that Huxley made of Gladstone, on that matter of the Gadarene swine.

But I was about to say, when I so easily slipped off that muddy bush track, that, riding being dull, as soon as we had anything that could be called a road I bought a buggy in its most rudimentary form, an American blackboard (Plate Xb), the body of which consists of a few boards merely, the seat alone being on springs. Then the new-made road was carried away, in two or three places, by a "cloud-burst," and various good neighbours, including my brother and the road engineer, all assured me that to get my trap down to the flat country, where I wanted to use it, was quite impossible. Thus encouraged, it was only human nature to have a try, so I stepped a twelve-foot mast on the above-mentioned floor boards, stayed it to the four axles, induced a hefty young cadet to come along with me, and started off. Here and there the road was only about two feet wide, having been undermined by the creek, and at these places I drove the buggy "from behind, I found it less exciting," while Barnes, with a rope to the top of the mast, climbed along the hillside above. Of course, only the horse and two wheels kept the track, the other wheels being out in space, but the trick worked all right, and page 88I had, later, the pleasure of chaffing our so cocksure friends, who were puzzled to know how the thing had been so easily managed. But as three-quarters of an Inch of rain fell during those six miles we got sponge-wet, and our good neighbour below, an old Charleston blockade-runner, who had seen many funny things in his time, was quite at a loss to place the extraordinary turnout of wheels, mast, ropes, and nearly drowned men, that came spashing toward him across his paddock. But once reassured, he dried and fed us and put us up for the night as a matter of course.

The fun to be got out of driving single proved, however, to be rather limited in amount, although I do remember once standing on the seat, alone and knee-deep In a waste of salt water, the horse as well as the buggy having entirely disappeared. I was crossing a river mouth, and had struck an unexpected deep hole, but my big chestnut did not hold with drowning and got me out again somehow.

Barring two river mouths, one occasional quicksand, half a mile of bad rock, dangerous at high tide, and this coast was fine going (Plate XI). Horses would of themselves start a gay canter when you reached the hard sand beach, and even sheep-dogs, when working anywhere near, would sometimes page 89leave the shepherd for the sheer delight of a wild scamper on it. Miles and miles of good beach, curving in from headland to headland with rarely a house or a human being in sight. Here and there a pair of red and black oyster-catchers running about, and now and then a flight of rather tame small gulls resting on the sand. In company with these there would often be a dozen or so of terns, the most graceful of all sea-birds. These lovely creatures were a little more timid, and as one came near, would rise repeatedly a few feet on their swallow-like wings, hover a moment, and then sink down again, before they could persuade the placid little gulls to come off with them.

Sometimes, right out at the edge of low tide, would be a happy fishing party of almost naked Maoris, silhouetted with their spears or nets against the still ultramarine of the quiet sea. Whether seen thus, or emerging from the black waters of a lake, against the deep greenery of Its surrounding trees, or in fact anywhere among its natural setting, the rich red of the Maori skin always seems to me vastly more beautiful than does the bleached tint of our own bodies.

A friend of mine was once so fishing with some Maoris, and as he stood In a big rock pool at low tide the long arm of an octopus page 90shot up, and seizing his leg to the thigh, held him fast. He yelled to the nearest Maori, and was earnestly counselled not to move. "Keep still as a post," said the old native, "till I say go. Then give a quick shake and come out." My friend obeyed exactly, and when, after a full minute of most uncomfortable waiting, the word was given and he shook his leg, the horrid suckers dropped off and he bounded free. He left in that pool his taste for low-tide fishing.

But so smooth was the going on the long, hard sandy beaches, and so drowsy the strong salt air that after a few miles of this pleasant travel it became very difficult to keep awake, and indeed, always excepting the question of the tide, the struggle was hardly necessary. And it is to be noted with regard to this one exception that there were on this route no clock hours, all traffic, the inn meal-times, and the morning réveille, going strictly by the tides. For when the tide was up, there were places you could not pass, and where you might get miserably stuck for hours, and very possibly drenched.

Our mail came up this way (Plate XII A and b), and our leather postbag, having been carelessly chucked anyhow on the coach, was, one stormy day, washed out to sea by a chance wave. The Gisborne post-master was page 91a very serious person, so, when calling him to account in the presence of his grinning clerks, I affected great indignation. "Supposing there is a letter from her in that drowned bag," I said, "a letter at last accepting me after all these years. Think of our two young lives ruined by your gross and inexcusable carelessness!"

These remarks must, I think, have rankled, for not long after, I, having endorsed a misdelivered letter, "Cannot the fellow read?" this person solemnly held forth to me on my highly reprehensible conduct, heavily explaining that it was his duty to protect his young men from insults of that sort. "Very well," I said, when he had done, "where is this young man whose feelings I have so outraged? Fetch him out and I will publicly apologise, here and now." But the young gentleman, as I had indeed foreseen, was not "having any." Not likely. So I evaporated.

Later on I changed my shafts for a pole. That was a bit better, especially when one put saddle-horses into harness for the first time, and wondered what would happen.

One hot Christmas time I had to do a long day's journey on a more than doubtful mountain road. I said to Barnes, "I am taking a spade and axe and ropes for this picnic, will you come?" Barnes, always a page 92game bird, was unhesitatingly "on." All went well for many miles till we came to a long piece of hillside cutting, where no wheels had been for over a year, and thistles were doing remarkably well. Here driving needed all one's attention, but we managed all right until we came to one extra sturdy and prickly "Scotchman" growing six foot high in the middle of the narrow earth road. The pole-straps were long, and there was thus plenty of room for one of the pair to pass either side, but the inside horse suddenly funked it, and shying into the pole, shoved the other horse over the edge and fell after him down the slope, taking buggy and all in a general crash. Barnes and I, being always on the qui vive, came out in time on each side of the trap as if something had exploded under us, and standing on the forsaken road looked first at each other and then anxiously at the mix-up among the logs some twenty feet below. Strange to say, the horses were unhurt, and not even a strap broken, but we were for a moment puzzled how to put the buggy back again on the road. However, we soon got to work. We dug a very small hole in the road about four feet deep; cut a stout straight, six-foot log and stood it in the hole, and took a few turns round it with the rope. Then we so tied page 93to it one end of a short horizontal pole, that, as one of us walked round with the other end, the upright log turned in its hole, and winding up the rope hauled the buckboard right up on to the track. This makeshift is, I believe, called a Spanish windlass, but neither of us had ever seen one before, and we were much delighted when we found that one man could do the winding while the other took snapshots of him.

A few miles further we came to an almost impossible place, and here Barnes got out, and I stood ready to jump. I had to. The whole caboodle went over again, and as this time the pole was smashed, we had to ride bare-back to our destination.

Another time I smashed a pole, when by myself, some twenty miles from home, though luckily I was near the little wharé of a friend of mine, the only habitation on that mountain road. He was away and the place locked up, but necessity knows no law, and I was short of tools. Having at last hunted out his old fire-wood axe, and having noted the exact position of certain oddments on his shelf inside, I managed to lever out the nails of his window frame, and climbing in obtained what I was after. Roughly trimming up a fence rail and bolting it to the broken pole-stump, I soon had everything more or less shipshape. Then, after leaving a letter of page 94thanks to my friend and carefully replacing everything on the shelf as I found it, I climbed out, renailed the window frame, rehid the wood-axe and again took the road. My friend, the settler, on his return was very much perplexed as to how the burglary had been effected, but took the matter in excellent part.

Talking of burglary reminds me of a neighbour who lived in a clay wharé. When he left it he fastened his door, which was of calico stretched on the lightest of frames, with a huge iron padlock, trusting in the fear of the law to protect his goods.

An old coach-driver was taking me out of town one night to an inn he kept on the coast. It was soon obvious that both his wife and himself had had quite as much as was good for them, and we covered the ground at a good round pace regardless of holes or stones. The last half-mile was a rough, steep, and narrow descent with a drop on one side almost sheer to the sea rocks below. As with gay yells, and the whip making pistol shots round his head, the old coach-driver crashed down this evil place at a hand gallop, to me, shivering with fright on the back seat, turned round the beaming red face of the good wife beside him, with these words: "Ah, Mishta Kenway, itsh poor 'art sh'never rejoishes, ain't it?"

Plate XIV
H— Takes The Reins