Safe on Shore Again.

“We got through and drew in to the side again and it was with tremendous relief that the two of us stepped on to the shore.

“Out of nearly two hundred people—to be exact one hundred and ninety—who gathered on the slopes of Waimangu that afternoon, only about forty actually saw me rowing on the boiling water. I asked some of the people afterwards why they did not see me. They said that when they saw me and my mate preparing for the boat it was too much for them. They turned away and retired into the ravines between the hills until they were told by the watchers that it was all over and that we were safe on shore again. The boat was taken out of the boiling water and carried up the slopes.

“Soon after we had returned from our little excursion the geyser burst into active eruption and threw its waters and mud waters hundreds of feet high.”

To this first-hand story of an intrepid deed must be added the tale of the vengeance of Waimangu.

At this period the geyser was in eruption forty or fifty times a day and hundreds of people used to drive out from Rotorua to watch the truly terrific spectacle, when the geyser hurled its two acres of grey-black muddy water and steam to heights greater than the hills surrounding it.

Three weeks after Alfred Warbrick rowed across the pool, his brother Joseph Warbrick, a farmer at Matata, and one-time great athlete and footballer, was overwhelmed and killed by an eruption of the geyser. This was on August 30, 1903. Besides Joe Warbrick three visitors met their deaths in that awful outburst—two girls named Nicholls, and David McNaughton, the four were standing, despite Alfred Warbrick's repeated warnings, on the lower slopes immediately above the crater, and when Waimangu suddenly threw itself into furious life they were unable to escape from the showers of boiling water and mud.

Then again in 1915, after a long period of quiescence, Wajmangu once more suddenly upheaved itself, blew a huge crater in the furious level of steaming sizzle known as Frying-Pan Flat, and partly destroyed the Government accommodation house on the hill, and fatally injured the wife and child of the reserve guide, McCormick.

Since those days of fearful convulsion in Waimangu's steam-tormented valley, there has been little violent activity in the famous gulch in the heart of the volcanic ridges. But anything may happen at any time in this queer region. And the ruined building which has been preserved as a memorial on the hill where the motors pull up, alongside the modern tea-house for travellers, is a constant reminder of the irresistible powers that lie dormant in Black-Water Gully below.