For Peregrine (his very bones growing sore under these repeated shocks) peacocks on his green lawns, oaks and sycamores spreading their branches about the mellowing beauty of his house had no more comfort. A shadow lay on that house, cast by his own daughter, by Nick Flower, whose very name brought a rush of blood to the head, by Darien. Darien, most graceless of all ungrateful women, had so constantly stayed John's hand that the pick of his flocks and herds had never gone to Canterbury with Jerry … and now Jerry was marching out with Brian and there was naught of good upon the earth.

“His Omnipotence appears somewhat deflated,” said Jermyn, coming back for the war to find Major Henry saving his soul with his old thumbed copies of Swift and Voltaire while his religions stood dusty on the shelves, missing Tiffany. The wolfhounds were long gone since the Major could no more exercise them. And his moustachios were going too. Stout old cock, always making the best of it, thought Jermyn.

“Missed you infernally, boy. Always do. Peregrine was never any company. Goin' to lead the papers again, eh?” said the Major, who never ceased hoping that some day Jermyn would astonish the world. But Jermyn, sniffing gratefully round the little room so scented of the wild life, said he had come to smell the flax and fern again.

“And to hear the news. Unloose the flood-gates, you old scandal-monger,” said Jermyn, getting out his pipe.

The Major could only talk of the regiments swarming in. New faces, yet the same old glorious regiments; the Die-Hards, the Royal Irish, the Black Cuffs, and many page 340 more, said Major Henry, savouring them on his tongue. Field artillery, too, and cavalry. A naval squadron. England, it appeared, was going to make short work of all this nonsense now…. “Yet how she do seem to hate doin' it, boy. I dunno why.”

“She says she'll soon have all the colonies demanding troops for every storm in a tea-cup. I don't blame her. She can't understand the position,” said Jermyn, wondering if anybody in the world ever would, and presently going up and down Auckland to hear what folk were saying.

Lucilla, riding out with Emily to the farm, had plenty to say about the new regiments. “La! The quizzes. The shocking fops … ogling a girl so she daren't go out,” cried Lucilla, trying all Tiffany's hats and bonnets on her black head. Since Tiffy never came to town now it was wicked to leave them in their boxes. “Aunt Darien always said I would be fascinating in the right clothes,” declared Lucilla, prinking. “I suppose you couldn't lend me this saffron bonnet, Tiffy? It is still quite modish.”

Tiffany could. Lucilla had Caroline's bright colouring and lack of humour, along with all the little tricks taught by Darien. So perhaps she would be popular, thought Tiffany; a little pitying and superior to Lucilla, who set store by such things, and trying to stay herself on the philosophies in Major Henry's books.

But neither philosophers nor saints seemed to have experienced just what Tiffany had … and being men how could they? There should be a philosophy written for women, who needed it so much; who were taught so little and yet expected to keep their house in better order than men ever did. A ramshackle old world, thought Tiffany, trying valiantly to laugh at it, at herself who had built so fine a man out of nothing. Of nothing, she repeated daily, conscious that only incessant scorn would keep Dick Sackville dead.

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Yet he wouldn't be quite dead, for so often she waked in the night to hear his laugh, to see his merry eyes peering with the moon through the window-pane….

“I must work hard. That's the only thing,” thought Tiffany, who certainly never learned that from the philosophers. Sally's beliefs in patience and Eternity were too tender for this fierce Tiffany who had bitten her arms into bruises in her childish tempers, who stung her soul now with contempt of herself and all mankind, who sought so hungrily for immortal reasons since mortal ones did not help.

Sturdy Sir John could not help; he was busy with setting Maoris to plough the brown furrows and murder Tane's trees, he giving himself to his Herefords, his Clydesdales, which Tiffany helped him gentle to the rein. “Lord, I wish I didn't have to sell this chap,” said John, grooming the shining barrel of some upstanding monster with legs as hairy as Esau's hands. But he would sell them all so that Caroline and the girls might be decked, and he'd never wonder why. A good beast of burden was Sir John.

No help for Tiffany now from a Darien who had taken many-chinned merino rams for her gods and worshipped them exultantly. No passionate seekings for the divine in Darien, down on her knees before the wide fireplace, giving lambs suck from a bottle with a rag. “Monstrous lucky my baby did die in Tasmania,” said Darien. “She couldn't have had the title, and just think how she would have been in the way now.”

This was so exactly Darien that Tiffany could not but laugh, holding another wriggling little body to another bottle. But the laugh had an edge to it that brought Darien's eyes sharply on the intent face in the firelight. She'll never be so handsome again. The next man will have to love her for the other things, she thought, saying: “You're well out of all that business, you know, Tiffy; but I'll probably scratch Flower's eyes out when I see him.”

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“I deserved it,” said Tiffany curtly.

“Well, I think you did. But I didn't. I nearly married him that night, Tiffy.”

“Married Nick Flower!”

Darien winced. That proud Lovel blood of Tiffy's. She said hastily:

“Why not? He's a Lovel too … partly.”

So Tiffany heard that story, and felt a queer understanding of Nick Flower who had been so hurt too. But he had hit back, as a man can. And in hitting papa, as he would so naturally wish to, it wouldn't concern Flower that he had hit women also. Women matter so little, thought Tiffany, going out to this tremendous bush anciently remembering its youth, making all mankind so small even to blessed extinction. Perhaps I'm really a pagan, thought Tiffany, getting so much comfort from the bush.

Jermyn and Sally rode out one day to bring the news; Sally in a blue habit and wide hat with blue feather, looking almost as gay as Jermyn, whose new checked riding-suit made such an elegant macaroni of him. They both look so young, thought Tiffany, feeling taken by experience into an elder world. To them Dick was no more than a troubling name. They had never had laughing eyes come to mock them in the night.

“What did you do to Lucilla, Darien?” asked Jermyn. “She's out to charm the town and her sisters can't abide her.”

“That's my saffron bonnet,” said Tiffany, laughing, making tea while Darien clattered cups and saucers on to the table. Jermyn wrinkled his eyes at Tiffy's laugh. Tragic creatures, women. So seldom may they get comfortably drunk and ease their stuffed bosoms. It would do the nut-brown maid no end of good to go on a real jag.

But since even he could not advise that, he talked of promenades on Wynyard Pier, in the Gardens; of Caro- page 343 line outdoing herself with musicales; of Sophia running out of tracts and hymn-books and coming to Major Henry.

“‘I saw such a nice lieutenant who looked as if a prayer-book might help him if you have a spare one,’ said Sophia. So old Henry said the fellow probably read French and gave her a Rabelais in the original. Sophia took it in all good faith, and her stock has certainly gone up at the barracks now.”

“Poor Sophy,” said Tiffany, somewhat indignant at silly Sophy being made the sport of men. But it was her own fault, as it had been Tiffany's fault. Oh, why don't someone explain to us what life is, she thought.

John came in to read the last letter from Linda. Governor Grey had generously found time to present Canterbury with several pairs of silver-grey rabbits which would, if allowed to breed, make good shooting. So there had been a public holiday with flags and fireworks in Christ-church, with all the big sheep-owners riding in, and so many calling at Durdans on the way home that Linda had to make up six beds on the floor.

“If only I had some Canterbury land for the animals, dang it,” said John.

“They would be safer,” said Jermyn. That was true enough, with the Waikato so near that a fleet of warcanoes might cross the portages and attack Auckland any night now, and Grey demanding of all Auckland Maoris that they should take the oath of allegiance or leave the town. So they had left in a body and, having been so long town-fed and town-degraded, had gone to stealing from the near-by settlers, killing beasts, burning cottages…. Sally feared John's farm was not safe. But neither was Auckland nor any place else. So she rode away with Jermyn, happy that dear Tiffy looked better, that Jermyn was apparently beginning to believe in Eternity at last and seldom hurt her now.

New Zealand was receiving all the hurt that man could page 344 give, and all the long patient labour of twenty years going up in smoke, all the crops trampled where men fought and ravished. It was a racial war now, with the Maoris intent on sweeping their dear land clear of the pakeha, and the English wanting to be done with the horrid business and go home.

II

From the southern snow-ranges Roddy wrote to Sally: “Tell my father I have found a new range and called it Lovel, and there are snowgrass valleys that will feed great herds of cattle some day.”

To Tiffany he wrote out some of that restless heart which echoed in her own.

“What is the meaning of colonization? I think it gives those born in it an outlook that the older generation can never understand. They sit solid on their traditions, but we have to make our own, Tiffy dear, and to know I'm a Lovel don't mean to me what it does to papa. Dunedin nearly got me, for it's roaring wild with miners and their women…. So here I am alone in my little tent with the great mountain-parrots shrieking as they always do at night, and rivers heavy with melting snow roaring past my door, and all that don't seem to break the enormous silence. I think the other world can't be far away in these places, and if I could stay here and be a hermit I might come to the understanding of life some day. I wish you were here to help me.”

Tiffany wished it too. But how could she help anyone, she thought, reading Roddy's letter by the wide colonial fireplace, with the black kettle singing on its hook and Uncle John in slippers dozing over the Times. A breath of the cold pure air of distant heights the letter brought into these humdrum days. But Roddy couldn't stay there. It's people one has to learn to face. No use running away, thought Tiffany, who was just beginning to learn that.

Dogs began a furious barking. “The bull loose again, page 345 damn him,” said Darien, not looking up from her rows of accounts on the table. Someone knocked on the door and John went to open it. A scud of rain blew in, and he shut it behind him, stepping on to the little veranda. Then came Maori yells, loud expostulations from John.

“Drunk as lords,” said Darien, jumping up and catching Tiffany running out to John. “Stop, you fool! They'll make short work of us women if they know we're here.” There was a rattle of shots, yells of horrible laughter, no more sounds from John.

“Killed him!” said Darien. In what seemed like one swift movement she overturned the lamp, flung newspaper and accounts on the river of blazing oil, and thrust the table against the window-curtains.

“Come,” she gasped, and had Tiffany out through the back door as the Maoris burst in at the front and stopped short with howls of anger at the flames.

“That'll blind the devils,” said Darien, running fast with Tiffany across the yard. “Blast the brutes … killing poor old John!”

Tiffany was completely dazed. Uncle John was dead. They would mutilate him. She knew about Maori mutilations. Uncle John was dead…. Beyond the outhouses, on the black edge of the bush, the two women crouched down, Darien rubbing the nose of her favourite dog, loosed at the kennels as they ran by. The reed roof of the house was blazing now, and dark forms moving in the glare.

“Drunk as lords,” whispered Darien. “They'll stay there and swill in the heat. Got your breath, Tiffy? Come on then.”

Tiffany, it seemed, had suddenly gone wild. She struggled with Darien. “No, no. We can't leave him. We must go back.”

“Do as you like,” said Darien, letting go. “You know what will happen. I'm going to get the sheep.”

Tiffany stood panting and trembling, looking back at that hellish pandemonium of leaping naked bodies round page 346 the burning house. No, she could do nothing. She never could. Meekly she crept after Darien, now in the ram-paddock with the dog, bringing them out on the road in the misty rain. “I think I might take the prize lambs too,” muttered Darien, stopping at the next gate.

Well after midnight a puzzled sentry at Quorn's redoubt heard the faint murmur of travelling sheep and turned out the patrol. Afterwards he told how even a wren's feather would have knocked him down as two ladies (handsome pieces as you could wish) yarded a mob of sheep into the enclosure before the red-haired one said, calm as the Queen of Sheba: “The Maoris have murdered Sir John Lovel and burnt the farm.”

That kind of thing was all in the day's work now; but one certainly didn't expect to have Lady Calthorpe perched on a great troop-horse, riding out with them at daybreak to the farm. And as for her language over the wholesale slaughter, the sergeant spoke of it appreciatively for months. Every animal the Maoris had not cared to take lay in blood. Even the dogs were dead upon the chains. In the heap of smoking ruins a few charred bones were gathered up and reverently conveyed to Auckland.

III

So that was war in one of its shapes; and in Sally's arms Tiffany wept for poor Sir John who had never done anyone harm, while in the study Peregrine (having become Sir Peregrine in such tragic haste that only an extra pomposity could cloak his agitation) encountered a Darien ready to knock his stiff legs from under him at any minute. Darien, he felt glumly, was in combative mood; lively as ever if somewhat coarser, her ruddy curls truculent, her straight little nose as sharp after a bargain.

“Those stud rams and young ewes will start a fine flock,” said Darien, stretched at ease in a big leather chair with uncrinolined legs showing shamelessly. “If you'll page 347 lend me one of your boats, Peregrine, I'll take 'em straight down to Canterbury. They can run on your land till I see what better to do.”

Peregrine inserted a finger in his collar, which seemed to be tightening already. Darien, he suggested suavely, would remember that he had advanced money to buy the rams, and though he and Caroline took it very kind of her to have saved them….

“Bah,” said Darien, snapping her fingers. “That for Caroline … and you too. They're mine now, every head of 'em. You'd have had only dead ones if they'd been left to you, and you can't get away from that.”

Peregrine couldn't. All Darien's ideas seemed a liaison between common sense and an acquisitive constitution. He said acidly:

“Do I understand that you wish to pirate my sheep as well as my land?”

“I don't know what you understand. Of course anyone so selfish as you will want to get something out of it. Come now, make your terms and I'll make mine,” said Darien generously.

Peregrine walked about nervously. To take him on the hop like this, with poor old John … but that would be what she was aiming at. With poverty on his doorstep and worse ahead, he would never be able to improve his Canterbury flocks, and to get those carefully-culled ewes and rams down there would be a beginning. He might arrange with the manager…. Pulling his side-whiskers, he said that possibly he might consider it since his interest in the rams….

“Oh, come through the horses,” said Darien, sitting up. “You haven't any interest. Don't flatter yourself. Look here. You know Andrew says your manager's a fool and your wool-production third-class. Make me manager and I'll give you a share in my next lambing. Of course I'll need a good salary, and money for fencing, for I won't have my stud rams mixing with your runts.”

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“H'm,” said Peregrine cautiously. Darien's notion of shares was likely to prove troublesome, and a female manager outraged all accepted canons. But such a passionate and able lover of animal perfection would never keep her hands off his flocks. She'd improve them in spite of herself, and when the war was over he would send Jerry down to turn her out. Jerry had John's eye for a sheep and none of his softness.

For an hour they wrangled over details, and Darien discovered that Peregrine was not soft old John. He had everything in writing before they emerged at last with appropriate expressions; Peregrine trying to hide his content since John was yet unburied, and Darien going disconsolately to the women.

“I never met anyone so selfish in my life. I'd poison him if he was mine, Sally. Well, one comfort is he'll have to look after Caroline and her bunch now. They'll never make anything out of the farm,” said Darien, getting into an old blue frock of Tiffany's and thinking how nice she looked. If it wasn't for the sheep one might be a lady again for a little while…. “I shall want you too, Tiffy,” she said.

“Oh. Will you really?” Tiffany brightened. All mamma's wanting of her would make no impression on papa, and there seemed so little ahead but suicide.

“Can't do without you,” said Darien. Tiffy could look after the house. She was a good cook—would need no wages. I wonder if Peregrine would pay for her board, she thought, and sighed. It wasn't very likely.

Peregrine, trying to withdraw the old Neptune from the general confiscation of everything in order to transport John's livestock, found it even more difficult than he had feared, since the military (whose only notion appeared to be destruction) took no interest in reconstruction at all. But at last it was done, with sheep-pens all over the deck and Captain Tolley turned out of his tiny cabin for the page 349 ladies, and Tiffany breaking down into farewell tears in Sally's arms.

“Oh, darling, if only you could come too….”

But Sally's duty was with papa.

Peregrine saw Darien and Tiffany go with misgivings, but it couldn't be helped now, and Caroline would not see them go at all. To be fleeced like this with poor dear Sir John barely in his grave (what there was of him, and she would put up as fine a tombstone as though there were the usual quantity) was quite too much.

“Well,” she said to Peregrine, later coming reluctantly on some necessary business, “since you've taken all I had I'd like to know what you mean to do for me in return. Though with only Heaven to protect us I really can't see how we'll get along,” sobbed Caroline, so rich in crape and widow's weepers that Peregrine wondered who was going to pay for all that.

Tiffany stood in the stern watching Auckland and old shaggy Rangitoto pass. So much gone now, and never would she sing “Red plumes of the kaka” again. A new and terrible meaning to that childhood song now….

“You can stop calling me ‘Aunt,’ Tiffy,” said Darien, bustling up. “Just say ‘Darien,’ that's quicker, and we shall always be in a hurry in Canterbury.”

IV

Waikato, Taranaki, Wanganui … everywhere the wind of battle blew the fire in the fern and rushed on, leaving destruction and the dead behind. Wellington, seeing the flames approaching, built redoubts frantically and screamed to Auckland in what might be considered parliamentary language.

“Get something done, can't you, you perishing idiots,” cried Wellington. “You have the Government and the military H.Q. and the church, and you claim you've got the brains. What the devil are you doing with it all?”

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Auckland (very shabby and anxious) was doing what it could, bringing flour from Valparaiso, bacon and butter from Ireland, hay and oats from Scotland, beef from Queensland, and regiments from everywhere. So balls, routs, and card-parties redoubled in energy, and Caroline's Lucilla quite refused to be out of the game. “This is no time to think of our own sorrows, and I can wear white with black ribbons,” she said, wearing it to such purpose that a sandy-whiskered Wellington business man named Piper, up to negotiate loans, presently carried her off.

Poor John's farm remained desolate, although Captain Harry Atkinson and his Volunteers cleared the bush round the town of marauders, and Brian and Jerry were seeing life spectacularly with the Colonial Rangers. “We are under Von Tempsky now,” wrote Brian; adding that, beside bringing an American war repuation and a fine scarlet sash with him, Von Tempsky had a cunning notion of bowie-knives instead of bayonets for scrub-cutting, and knew all the American camp-fire songs.

Brian, coming home with a shoulder wound, sang “Dixie” and “Dolly Gray,” and told how the Maoris were like fleas. “Just as staccato and hard to catch,” said dark little dandy Brian, lounging in bright gown and embroidered slippers on a cushioned chair, recounting his adventures to sympathetic young ladies.

Von Tempsky, he said, was the man, though campaigning with him was no child's play, by Jove. Kept his men so close on Maori heels that a fire would betray them, and usually their only food was the leavings of the Maoris.

“So we had to trot to fill our bellies.” But for the nightly rum-ration they'd have lain down in their boots and died. For all their wonderful bravery and stamina, the Maoris knew nothing of strategy or unity of command, so we were gradually driving them off the ranges, said Brian, and out of the deep gullies and nearer the big guns. page 351 But it couldn't have been done without the rum-ration, and even with that Brian felt that if he came safe out of this he would love a girl and settle down.

“Oh, wouldn't it be safer not to wait for that?” urged Sophia. But Brian was watching Alice Whitman's admiring eyes, letting himself go in deeds of derring-do: talking of the new paddle-wheel steamers towing barges of troops up the shallow rivers, of the great bastioned pas which only Britain's Imperial soldiers were crazy enough to attack, of the Maori flag….

A pitiful thing the Maori flag sounded in Brian's contemptuous voice. Of scarlet cloth, with a star, a cross and “Aotearoa” stitched on it in white stuff so very crookedly. Such big stitches they would be, thought Sally, since Maori women, though clever at weaving, could not manage the English needle. Such a little pitiful thing to send two races of splendid men to war.

“I hope Roddy will come back before all the fun's over,” said Brian, establishing himself a hero in Alice Whitman's eyes.

VI

So Roddy joined his brothers under Von Tempsky, and swore at the stark conditions, as they did, and thought a good deal about home and Auckland.

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What will become of the John Lovels? always revived a flagging conversation in Auckland; and Peregrine, finding them turn as naturally as sun-flowers towards his aid, was at last moved to write an almost pleading letter to Darien.

“I consider it Belinda's duty to take Emily, who might marry if separated from her surroundings,” he wrote. “If she prove adamant could you not have her yourself? I find the problem of providing for them all peculiarly severe at present, and I see no end to it. No lady can earn a livelihood save by governessing, and none of these is fit even to instruct infants.”

A pretty pass for the great Peregrine Lovel to go begging to Darien, but there was no other way, he thought, quite beside himself and going to collect them at Mrs Pinshon's carpet dance. What malicious fate had made him, once so invulnerable, the squire of such unenviable dames? War was indeed responsible for a great deal.

At the buffet some of his old cronies were very cheerful, with Major Henry beaming and snuffing heartily. “Just in time, my boy. Thatcher is goin' to sing an impromptu about the Kawau Island business,” he cried.

Peregrine wished to hear no more of Kawau Island, where Grey, with his damned soft spot for Maoris, had sent the prisoners languishing on the hulks. So they had escaped, as Grey probably meant them to do, and now would kill all Peregrine's sons. Thatcher, Auckland's popular entertainer, bowed in every direction, and began singing to the tune of “Nelly Gray.”

Oh, ka kino, Hori Grey. For you let us get away,
And you'll never see your Maoris any more.
Much obliged to you we are, and you'll find us in a pa
Rifle-pitted on the Taranaki shore….

Shrieks of laughter, heavy hand-clapping proved the bad odour Grey was in, and Peregrine took his nieces home in a bitter silence unmoved by their chatter.

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“La, I vow I must send Thatcher a watch-chain, the odious quiz,” cried Sophia. “He winked at me,” declared Emily, giggling.

Feeling battered all over, Peregrine received a suggestion from Sally grimly. Sally thought Caroline might be persuaded to take boarders … gentlemen only.

“It is the gentlemen who would not be persuaded,” said Peregrine. But he looked grateful as she brought him cakes and wine. Something it undoubtedly was to have the refreshment of this sweet gentle Sally between the buffets of Fate, he thought, going down to Parliament for further buffeting.

Members of both its branches were chiefly scions of aristocrat stock, yet they appeared to have brains, although ill-directed. Feverishly they were moving divisions, passing laws for the confiscation of millions of acres of Maori land (when they could get it). Since England, enraged and denunciatory from end to end, was refusing to pay more than half the costs, selling land to settlers would put a few drops in the bucket of the colony's empty treasury. And Grey was always clamouring for money.

“Do you realize that I am responsible to England although you hold the purse?” he cried.

“Take the damn purse. There's nothing in it,” replied the members.

Papers talked of near 20,000 men under arms, what with Regulars, Constabulary, Militia, Volunteers, and Artillery. “The Maori fighting force is estimated as well under 3000. Truly we have reason to be proud of ourselves,” remarked the Chronicle, driving Peregrine into such a rage that he cut Jermyn dead, promenading with Sally in the Gardens. Twenty, thirty, forty years, went Sally's reluctant feet, taking her away from Jermyn standing so lonely under a tree. Never never would she run on the hills and dance in the sun with Jermyn….

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“Pray keep step, my dear,” said Mr Lovel, staidly pacing.

To Sally waiting for the rare letters from her children, they all seemed so far away that they were often near, as the dead may be. She could near Tiffy singing down the stair, catch a gleam of Roddy's fair head among the laburnum-trees, feel Jerry's hearty kiss dropped on her forehead as she sat sewing of evenings while the clock ticked Du-ty, Du-ty so loudly in the silence. If only Jermyn would come, she thought, afraid to look at the clock, which never forgot that it was a wedding present.

Down at the Institute Corny Fleete was translating the Maori “Marseillaise,” lately inspired by their distresses and destined to be the heart-song of their race for generations.

“Ka ngapu te whenua,” began Corny, interpreting: “The earthquake shakes our land. Where shall we find an abiding place? Hold fast our land, nor let it from our grasp be torn….”

There was a deal more, embarrassing to gentlemen disliking to be compared with earthquakes … which New Zealand certainly knew something about, although not very seriously; and young Charles Macrae, meeting rows of beetling brows, declared that we were taking quite the wrong way with the Maoris, gentlemen.

“They are as fine a race as ourselves, and even the regular soldiers know it now,” said young Macrae, who had lately married the daughter of a friendly chief in church.

And he was not the only one. Something mysteriously attractive to young men in the texture of these high-born Maori maidens, whom they were now meeting for the first time; in their quiet soft wistfulness, as though unconscious flesh and bone remembered the glories of their ages past. The eternal quest for the unknown, it may have been, such as raped the Sabine women while fairer mates stood by.

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Thumping his eternal umbrella Sir Winston proclaimed his predilection for English blood. “‘Rule, Britannia,’” he cried.

“Good Lord, we're so sick of this war,” protested a captain, who had strayed in. “Half of us feel it's unjust, and we all loathe killing Maoris.”

“I've killed a Maori,” said Corny, who had been partly drunk ever since he did it. “Killed my own son Hori six weeks ago. Swore I'd kill 'em all … gone Maori … renegades to my blood…. God save the Queen,” quavered Corny, trying to stand, and failing.

“There, there,” said Major Henry, patting the bowed shoulder. “Forget it, old man. Forget it.” Corny had lived with Maoris too long. Utu to that extent was quite unnecessary, since everywhere half-caste sons were fighting against their relations, and more than a few white men fighting with the Maoris.

The real renegades, thought Major Henry, were the white men who were smuggling in cannon and teaching the Maori how to load them with the lengths of heavy bullock-chain that did such unpleasant damage, buying quantities of tea-chest lead from traders in order to run bullets, helping make the stinking black gun-powder to eke out the Maori supply.

Hemi, now in the bush with his men, sometimes bought flax-kits filled with bullets out of Nick Flower's long canoe on the slow-moving rivers. Once he sat with him over a camp-fire. Flower had just cut his way through an old track overgrown with the tough supple-jack loops, the springy kia-kia that reaches from tree to tree and bursts into little palms in the fork of every branch, and the lawyer-vine with its little hooks set at such a spiteful angle, and he rubbed the blood from his arms, saying in his sneering way:

“With all the bush fighting for you, why aren't you doing better? Where are your mantles and mats now, Hemi Fleete?”

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The kingite faction among the Maoris had crowned their king with the prayer that “the religion of Christ shall be the mantle of your protection; the Law shall be the mat for your feet for evermore.” But of what use were prayers now, thought Hemi, blazing out: “Why are you here? Why do you not go to your kind?”

“I do when I want them. I've no more cause to love them than you have.”

Hemi blinked at a lace-fungus bluely phosphorescent in the high fork of a tree. His long love for Tihane was as far-off and unearthly as the fungus, and he had killed many white men. But there had never been another woman like Tihane, although he had taken wives as a young chief must. Sons of his own in the pa now, binding him closer in the bonds that he so hated.

A tall rata branched above the fire. Is there anywhere, thought Hemi, treachery like the rata vine nosing along the ground to some proud tree, climbing with soft ten-drils that grow strangling-strong on the life-blood of its host so that after years the enclosing arms drop off, letting the poor squeezed skeleton of a tree fall, and the rata stands alone, a haughty murderer tossing scarlet plumes against the sky.

“That is what the pakeha will do to the Maori,” said Nick Flower, following Hemi's thought. Then he went away and sat like a king above his Maori rowers in the long canoe. So he came in a night or two on a camp of fighting Rangers, bringing welcome information, finding Brian Lovel there.

In the red flicker of the camp-fires great branches looked like tents, polished leaves made continual dance and flicker. Squatting round the fires, men were singing “My Old Kentucky Home” and “We are tenting to-night on the old camp-ground.” No need for caution now that Cameron would have his whole force here to-morrow or next day. “Nice to be out of this,” said Brian.

“Some Auckland girl will probably agree,” said Flower. page 359 And then Brian remembered Tiffany and asked for the name of the priest who had married her to Captain Sackville. Flower lit his pipe slowly.

“I don't know it,” he said at last.

“But … this is most extraordinary, sir,” cried Brian, turning red.

“Why?” Flower was guarded now. So there had been trouble?

“It is believed that the man was not licensed to perform the ceremony.”

“Like enough.” Flower's nerves, always so steady, did not betray him now. The wheel had swung full circle, had it? Peregrine Lovel's daughter was no better than Flower's mother had been. The deep warp of a lifetime began to supple, to straighten out. “Has Sackville married her again?”

“No. He … he's returned with his regiment to England.”

“Then she's well rid of a hound.” Thinking of Darien he began to laugh. How furious she would be, her red curls on end.

“This is no jest, sir,” cried Brian, jumping up, looking so like Peregrine. “Do you not realize that you have laid yourself open to a criminal prosecution?”

“Your father is likely to prosecute, ain't he?”

Brian was silent. Flower had gone straight to the weak spot, for all Lovels were engaged in trying to cushion this scandal. He felt there was more to be said, but he did not know how to say it. He hesitated. “Cowardly skulking dog!” he cried ineffectually, and walked away.

Nick Flower laughed gustily, going down to his canoe on the river. He was not minded to explain anything to Peregrine Lovel's pup. But sliding over the quiet water to the dip-dip of the paddles he began to grow concerned about Darien, who would demand many explanations. To say he hadn't been sure would not help him with Darien, who (conscienceless little pirate though she was) page 360 had always been straight. She probably forgave, even enjoyed as a tribute, his madness that night. But she wouldn't forgive what she must take as a deliberate insult. Hell, what made me such a fool, he thought. And he had felt himself so clever…. Yet Darien, receding into the distance, was dearer than she had been. “Get along, can't you?” he cried to his men, feeling himself chasing Darien.

VII

Valiantly the young Maoris were singing: “Oh, when will your manhood rage? Oh, when will your courage blaze? When the ocean tides roar….”

Then, with a very good imitation of the ocean, they would come hurling their nakedness against the cannon, which mowed them down. But the women were singing less of the warlike “Riria” and more of the sad waiatas of death.

Now Cameron brought his forces into the Waikato up the great military road. They came sweeping like a sea; endless miles of pack-horses, bullock-wagons, marching soldiers, floating flags, rumbling Armstrong guns dragged by the mighty horses, bands with bugles and drums. The wildest Maori courage could not face that avalanche. But from pas and camps they withdrew in dignity; men, women, and children raising their voices in farewell to their dear land.

“Tena to-tai o kawhia … oh, that I could burst these captive bonds. Aue! Life is drifting fast away…. Now, now the mighty Io calls. Oh, that I could burst these captive bonds….”

Like the dying chords of an organ, the chant faded over the hills, into the vast dark bush ranges.

For the first time we have put fear into their brave souls, thought the officers, looking round on the smiling valleys won, feeling how little honour was won along with them.