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CHAPTER XX

we must be about there, Ross,” said Barrie Lynne. Both men looked out of the Kaipara train upon a narrow tidal creek that wound a serpentine course about a great waste of mangrove flats. Beyond them a line of shining sandhills suggested beaches and the open sea. From the Kaipara harbour, as yet out of sight, came a pungent salty smell, pleasantly mingling with the freshness of the spring morning.

With spasmodic jerks that rattled the teeth in the jaws, the train slowed down to the Helensville station, where the long-suffering passengers, with an air of extreme thankfulness, gathered up their parcels and scrambled out.

The people who passed through Helensville belonged, with but few exceptions, to the desperate, the disappointed, the sanguine, and the disillusioned. The desperate headed for the northern gum-fields as a last resource; the disappointed were teachers, or members of the Civil Service ordered to such minor positions as third-grade post offices or inspectorships; the sanguine were farmers or fruit growers, confident that the soil only needed their special attention to yield up its share of riches; and the disillusioned were those who had passed that way before.

Nobody ever stayed in Helensville except the people who failed to make connections between the steamers and the trains. They constituted a floating population upon which three hotels and two boarding-houses flourished. Nobody ever lived in Helensville except the people who had failed to make a living anywhere else. Everybody who went through it was told the old gag that its name should have ended with the first syllable, but there was no evidence that in that event it would have rivalled its famous name-page 258sake for interesting company. It might have done better with regard to climate and to smells.

Allen Ross sniffed on the station platform.

“Let's see how soon we can get out of this,” he said.

A chain or two away one of two small steamers, lying against a wharf that was merely an extension of the station grounds, now emitted columns of smoke and whistled ostentatiously.

The two men followed the passengers from the train, who all hurried towards it. On the way Ross singled out a tall, grey-haired man.

“Pardon, can you tell me where these steamers go?” he asked.

Taking his pipe from his mouth, Bruce looked curiously into the stranger's face and at that of his companion.

“Certainly,” he replied; “one to the Wairoa, and one to the Otamatea.”

“Which goes first?”

Bruce smiled, realizing some element of chance. But he had no presentiment of how much.

“The Otamatea boat as soon as she can get away. That's in about a quarter of an hour.”

“Thanks. Any settlements up there?”

“Yes.”

“Could we camp, and get boating and fishing?”

“Yes, anywhere.”

“That sounds as if it might suit.” With an interested nod he turned to Lynne, and Bruce walked on.

“Shall we settle it that way, Barrie?”

“By all means.”

They hurried back to the station to make the necessary arrangements about their luggage, and when the Ethel, delayed on their account, finally got away, the two men, with all their belongings, were on board.

The passengers, with the sense of selection peculiar to travellers by boat, soon arranged themselves according to their social and commercial grades. A government inspec-page 259tor, to whom all northern doors were open, began to talk to a landowner and his two daughters, who, to the envy of their own section, had just made their annual shopping tour to Auckland. Near them the commercial traveller, without whom no boat or train ever got anywhere in New Zealand, listened to their gushing with mingled feelings of boredom and amusement.

Five saddened teachers, who had vainly hoped for moves back to civilization, talked heatedly of the unfairness of the recent examinations, and confirmed each other's idea that the Board of Education needed to be tidied up.

Seated on a coil of rope, dressed in cheap new readymade clothes and soft hats—the hall-mark of the comparatively prosperous searcher after work—sat two men, who had already, with native cunning, picked out Bruce and the landowner as possible employers of casual labour.

Down on the lower deck, by the toy hatchway, sat two seasoned gum-diggers, maudlin and nervous after a giddy week in Auckland, and near them, as if conscious of kinship, sat a curved and shrunken figure, with a brand new gum outfit beside him, who was heading for the gum-fields as a last resource. Those who knew the ropes gave him the benefit of a second glance, for, though drink and general misery had drained the individuality out of him, he might, as far as their previous experience went, have been anything from a bootblack to a university professor or the son of an earl. It was his horrible cough, rather than the pitifulness of his latest profession, that first attracted Bruce.

A pioneer family, munching blackballs and bananas, was huddled together, also on the lower deck. To the shy and awkward children the voyage was an adventure beyond their grasp. To their sanguine parents it was part of the hopefulness of the new beginning, and had in it, for that reason, as much of a pleasant thrill as they would ever know.

Completing the familiar elements of the human cargo, a many-coloured Maori group laughed and chattered in the bow with their native philosophic indifference to the turns page 260 of fortune that is the despair of the envious white man.

Allen Ross and Barrie Lynne both felt, as they leaned against the gunwale, the eyes of most of the Ethel world upon them, that they were the unknown quantity. A splendid isolation was forced upon them, for, apart from Bruce, there was no person of their quality aboard. As a matter of fact, their presence seemed so unusual as almost to demand an explanation.

Bruce himself had not been able to resist another scrutiny of them as he took a privileged stand beside the captain at the wheel. He wondered idly what had turned them northwards. It was not the shooting season, and there were no trout streams worth while north of Auckland, he reflected, but as the dark man looked cruelly used up he guessed that a desire merely for rest and an outdoor life explained their trip in that direction.

The little boat was now well under way, twisting and turning with the creek. Allen Ross looked over the mangrove flats at the western sandhills with the exhausted, but thankful air of one who knows he has finally outrun an enemy. His head, always carried high, was covered with thick black hair that slightly waved. His keen face, which was curiously eager for a man who even at thirty knew most of the crooked ways of men, was long and thin and lined. It was unusually tanned for a city dweller, as his whole bearing obviously proclaimed him to be. It was not easy to tell at first wherein his compelling attraction lay. But, tired though he was, his singular vitality travelled like an electric current round that little boat. Before they reached the open harbour every woman and many of the men could have given the details of his physiognomy and dress.

His friend Barrie Lynne was built on weaker lines. He was just as tall, and just as straight, and just as easy. He was more conventionally handsome. But when the two men were together the eyes of most people passed over him to Ross and stayed there. It was true that a larger number of women had passed their hands through Lynne's soft brown page 261 hair, but that was a matter of their opportunity rather than their desire. Lynne made a habit of succumbing to temptation. Ross made a luxury of it. Lynne could never ignore a hint. Many an eye had vainly flashed at Ross. Almost any attractive woman who signified her willingness was good enough to climb with Lynne to the Venus Mount. But Ross required special qualifications in the woman who should listen with him to the birds twittering in the dawn. To Lynne a feeling for the dawn was not important. To Ross it was.

This was not obvious to the unsophisticated passengers on the little boat. All they saw was two handsome men who, they instinctively knew, had got the better of the world, and to those more or less helpless people who see in the world only a series of enemy powers to fight, instead of a series of friendly powers to use, there is nothing more wonderful than the besting of them.

Lynne was interested in watching the passengers in return. He got the tragedies and comedies of the collection without much speculation. Ross was not so interested. He knew that there were few people on that boat who from his point of view had ever done anything worth while. And so for him the passengers, with one exception, did not exist.

The exception was David Bruce. When at dinner-time he appeared at the saloon table with the derelict, who had hitherto sat ignored and apart, Ross found his eyes wandering again and again back to that story-telling face.

“That man is stunning, Lynne,” he said. “Look at the way he's handling that wreck. He has the manner of a doctor.”

And many times during the rest of the voyage Bruce found the dark eyes of the tired stranger fixed upon his face.

When they came up from dinner they found the whole expanse of the Kaipara harbour spread out before them. As they neared the heads they saw billowing up into the sky page 262 the lines of the “comber, wind hounded,” that heaved and thundered and broke upon the dangerous bar. The Ethel began her dreaded somersaults, and though the agony was brief it temporarily changed for many their views of life.

After skirting the mouth of the Wairoa, the Ethel turned into the wide mouth of the Otamatea. They passed several fish-canning factories, and an old missionary station, with its rows of poplars along the beach, a clump or two of pines, and the wooden fences buried between rows of huge geranium bushes running wild. Deserted many years previously, it wore an old-world air of unpruned maturity and uninterrupted peace.

At intervals along the banks, from small Maori settlements clustering by little sandy beaches, there came calls that were vigorously answered by the natives aboard. Three times the Ethel stopped at toy wharves from which roads led off into the wilds. After unloading cases and barrels whether there was any one to meet them or not, she snorted off as if she despised these menial tasks. Now and then some one pointed out a collection of buildings with its familiar pine clumps as the home of some big sheep man or orchard grower.

About four o'clock Lynne called attention to a small sailing-boat that came zigzagging down the river. Both men saw that Bruce was interested in it, and that he left his conversation with the captain to watch it, as, with reckless daring, it tacked across the steamer's bows, cut through the water on the left, and came round on the wind at her stern with a flourish, and so alongside.

“It's a girl!” exclaimed Lynne, in amazement.

Then the figure at the stern stood up, one hand on the tiller, and the other gripping the mainsail rope.

Asia was not unaware of the fact that she was the episode of the voyage. But she was so accustomed to striding her little world like a colossus that she knew it merely as a detached matter of fact, and not as a matter for selfcongratulation.

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“Hullo, Uncle David,” she called, “where's Mother?”

“She is going to stay another fortnight.”

They went on talking for a minute or two, while all the passengers flocked to the side to admire the way she handled her little boat. Many who knew her kept their eyes glued upon her, anticipating the coveted smile of recognition. The landowner's daughters were sure that if she would only look at them she would approve their new clothes and hats, and they felt a smile from her would now add to their standing for the rest of the trip. But Asia did not see them.

She was wearing a blue serge dress, short skirted and open at the throat. A fascinating sky-blue woolly cap perched jauntily upon her tangled golden hair. The breeze flapped her skirt about her bare legs. Her clear skin, painted by the swish of the wind, told of the simple life, strong nerves and beauty sleep, and in her eyes there glowed the joyous spirit of the wood nymph and the water sprite.

Neither Ross nor Lynne attempted to disguise his interest.

“I say, she's stunning,” whispered the latter.

“Why not?” smiled Ross.

“Well, here,” and Lynne included the whole landscape in a glance.

“Why not, if he is?” with a nod at Bruce. “She called him ‘Uncle.’”

“She looks like city to me.”

“Well, she sails that boat like one who belongs to the river.”

“That's true. I wonder who they are.” Lynne looked from her to Bruce again.

Ross followed his glance, and he was still looking at Bruce when Asia first caught sight of him. So he did not see the sudden blaze that leapt to her eyes, nor the swift stiffening of her loosely poised body. As it happened, only Bruce noticed.

After a short amazed stare at the two strangers Asia avoided looking squarely at them again, and soon, with a page 264 parting nod at the captain, and without a glance at the many who were waiting to be recognized, she close-hauled the sail, and shot away.

All the way up the river she sat still, once or twice forgetting to manage the wind and narrowly missing an accident. In her eyes there now gleamed the vision of new adventures, a premonition of great things to come.

As she shot away from the Ethel, Ross and Lynne smiled at each other. Both wondered where, when, and how they would meet the presiding goddess of the place again.

Round the next bend there came into view the Point Curtis wharf, with its goods shed and trucks, its two-storied hotel and store.

When Lynne saw the little sailing-boat run in and tie up to the wharf, he walked over to the captain.

“What place is this, captain?” he asked.

“Point Curtis, Mister.”

“Is there any more of it than that?” Lynne pointed to the hotel.

“There are farms, and the gum-fields, and then there's the bay.”

“The bay?”

“Timber settlement up the river. Owned by Mr. Roland.”

Lynne had heard Asia's name whispered several times among the passengers.

“How far is that?” he asked.

“Matter of three miles or so up the river,” jerking his head to the right.

“Could we put up tents there, do you think?”

“Oh, yes, anywhere about.”

“Thanks.”

Lynne walked back to Ross under fire of a volley from many a wildly interested eye.

“Let's get off here, Ross. Captain says we can camp—what the devil are you grinning at?”

“We land here then,” smiled back his friend.

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As the Ethel drew near the wharf, an amazing number of human beings rose mushroomlike in the doorways of the buildings, and from boxes, sacks, and trucks upon the wharf itself, and all, as if worked by the same spring, moved for the same spot with the same object in view—that of being next the gangway when it was run ashore. If it had been possible to tell with precision exactly where the gangway would be run out, an ambitious few would have been found outlining that place to quiz the strangers from an unobstructed point of view, and to claim greetings from neighbours and acquaintances. There was in that little crowd one maiden lady of uncertain age and uncertain everything else, whose chief claim to local fame lay in the fact that ever since the Ethel began to make her regular trips she had been of those who had pressed the gangway railing to their bosoms, and who could have touched every passenger as he came ashore. She was there now, feverishly watching to see where the casting ropes would land, and who would pick them up, and where they would be tied.

Near waiting traps and sledges, thin patient horses stood tethered to stumps, where they had for hours hung their heads in mute unfed dejection. Sporting dogs of mongrel breeds fought and gambolled, and came near to causing accidents upon the narrow wharf. A number of children wheeled an empty truck along the primitive railroad, their harsh screams of excitement drawing upon them the wrath of their elders.

The women in the little group looked as if they had been stretched out and dried on crosses in the sun, and then dropped suddenly and left to curl up and contract. Their skins were like wizened russet apples at the end of a winter storing. Most of the men had grown permanently tired and warped fighting unexpected eccentricities in the seasons, unexpected diseases in the crops, and unexpected cussedness in the soil.

Both Ross and Lynne looked curiously at this unfamiliar crowd, seeking the face of the girl from the boat; and they page 266 finally saw her near the back, at the head of the steps. She met their eyes once with a look that neither of them could call even mildly interested, and then she waved her hand to Bruce.

As he had no luggage save a small handbag, Bruce was one of the first to step ashore. The men noticed that everybody seemed to know him, and that his hat was permanently raised as he made his way through the group to the steps.

Ross and Lynne stood still till all the passengers were embarked, watching the sailing-boat leave and continue its way up the Otamatea, then, having made arrangements for their things to be taken to the hotel, they got off leisurely, and with the eyes of most of the women about upon them they walked up the clay path to the hotel to engage rooms.