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Chapter VI. Proposed Change of Plan—A Midnight Alarm.

After supper I related our day's adventures, and further that I had noticed several trees that I had no doubt would suit very well for building our boat.

“But there is one thing, lads,” I continued, “that we ought well to consider, and it is this: The winter season is just coming on, and in this part of the island I know it is very severe. If we are caught in our boat anywhere along this coast, we should stand a very poor chance indeed. The gales come on very suddenly, and frequently last for some weeks at a time. Before we can get our boat built, the stormy weather will be fairly set in. Here we have good quarters, and no chance of running short of provisions. I propose we should make up our minds to remain here till the stormy season is over, which won't be, however, for another four or five months. We can be building our boat in the meantime, and start immediately the fine weather returns.”

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Oh, that these words had never been spoken! that I could recall them now, and alter the course of events which they led to! what misery would have been prevented; and lives saved! But it is no use grieving over them now. They were spoken, thinking they would be the saving instead of the destruction of many a warm and honest-hearted comrade.—Enough of this; a truce to unavailing remorse and regrets.

My speech, at least the latter part, took the men quite aback; even Harry I could see was undecided. They had all made up their minds that a month or six weeks was to be the utmost limit of their exile in this spot, and the idea of remaining in it for a so much longer period—comfortable, comparatively speaking, as their sojourn would be—was evidently not at all relished.

“Well, mates,” I said, after a dead silence for some minutes, “I only lay the proposition before you; it rests entirely with yourselves whether you agree to it or not. I tell you these facts because, as you have appointed me your leader, I think it my duty to do so. Supposing, if a gale caught us, and we were not wrecked, but managed to get ashore, should we be likely to hit upon such another place as this? More likely we should be thrown against the precipitous cliffs or on to the reefs; and what chance should we stand of saving our lives then? Don't think, either, that our voyage to some whaling station will be short—it may take us weeks; for I for one do not know the length of this coast. I am just as eager as any one of you to reach some settlement again, but I have well considered the whole matter, and have given you my candid opinion. You had better think over it to-night, and give me your answer in the morning. Of course I abide entirely by your decision.”

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During the remainder of the evening the question was discussed amongst the men; while I retired early into the tent with Harry, for I wished to converse with him privately, and interchange our joint ideas on the subject. From the tent I could hear the men talking, and noticed that Spanish Joe and young Smart were trying to persuade the men into my way of thinking.

The conversation which I overheard between Joe and Moroney amused me greatly. They were sitting a short distance from the rest, and nearer the tent.

“Divil take me if ever I hope to set foot in Ould Oireland agin,” said Moroney. “Shure an' I've bin kickin' about this part of the wurld fur near tin years now, intindin' to go home ivery blissed day; an' here I be now, further off thin iver.”

“Buenos! muchez buenos!” replied Joe; “dat is true; but if we do dis von ting ve be drownded us vill. Diable! but better much vait small few months, den not die.”

“Whose agoin' to die! Nary this boy. Did ye niver hear in Dunadin that thur wur harburiginals or some other craturs hereabouts who roast and bile white people?” And Pat looked anxiously behind him as if he expected every moment to feel a Maori warrior's hatchet buried in his skull.

“Nevare heard of dem,” responded Joe, “but me no mind; de Signor Capitani no afraid; me no afraid either.”

“Aren't ye now! faith, that's quare! you've got more pluck than ye git cradit for if what ye're telling me is thruth. I say, Joe, were ye iver in Oireland?”

“No,” said Joe.

“Thin take my advice and niver sit yer ugly fut inter it; for shure they'll be afther takin' you for a gintleman; and the Holy Mother presarve thim from from that.”

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“I go bunk now, sleep. Buenos nochez,” so saying the Spaniard rose and came towards the tent; but seeing Harry and I sitting up, he was going to turn back again, when I called to him not to mind us.

Entering the tent, he began undressing, and was shortly followed by the rest of the men. Harry and I not feeling inclined for bed went outside and strolled down to the edge of the water.

It was a beautiful clear moonlight night, with hardly a breath of air stirring. For some time we both stood in silence contemplating the calm surface of the bay below us, in which the stars were reflected as in a mirror.

“Well, Young,” said Harry, breaking the spell which seemed to have hitherto kept us from speaking, “you may be right or wrong in your reasoning; but I'm very much afraid the men will be against remaining here for so long a time as you propose.”

“Which way will you vote,” I said, answering him with a question.

“I will stick by you, Dick, whatever happens,” replied Harry; “we have sailed too long together now for us to go under different flags.”

“Thank you, old fellow,” I exclaimed; “in proposing what I did, I only acted according to my way of thinking, and right or wrong I mean to stick to it; but of course we must fall in with the majority of the men.”

“I wonder,” continued my companion, “if what Moroney said about there being natives round on this coast is true. I never heard of them while in Dunedin, or from the Captain.”

“Nor I,” I replied; “nevertheless I don't see why there should not be. At the same time I don't think any of those in this island are at war with the Europeans now.”

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“I think Smart could tell us something about the natives,” observed Harry; “I know he partly understands their language, and I imagine he must have had a good deal of intercourse with them.”

“We'll make a point of questioning him on the subject in the morning,” I answered; “and now think we had better be turning in.”

So saying, we retraced our steps to the tent, and sought relief from all worldly cares and thoughts in the arms of Morpheus.

It seemed as if I had hardly got fairly asleep when I was woke up by some of the men talking.

“Divil a draming I was,” exclaimed Pat. “May the Holy Mother niver forgive me if it was not a thrue hathen I heard yellin'!”

“What's the matter, Pat?” asked Harry, who had been aroused as well as myself.

“Shure, sir, an' I don't know; but there was some onarthly sounds outside just now.”

“Oh! he's been dreaming, sir,” said one of the men; “I've been awake this last half hour, and have heard nothing extraordinary.”

“Thin ye wur at the whiskey-keg, be gorrah! afore yez came to bed.”

“But what was the noise like that you think you heard, Pat?” I enquired.

“Think, sir! Bedad, may I niver set fut on Ould Oireland agin if I had any thought about it. Be Saint Patrick, it give sich an awful screech, and then a bawl, all of a suddent, that I had no time to think.”

“Well, we had better lie down again,” I suggested, seeing that Pat was evidently under the impression, whether with or without any good reason, that he had heard some- page 34 thing. “And, Pat, if you hear it again, go outside and have a look round.”

“Shure, an' is it meself, sir, ye would loike to see murthered by a lot of unarthly varmints?”

Pat was still muttering away when I once more rolled myself up in my blanket and fell asleep.

However, it seemed as if we were doomed to have no peace that night; for shortly after I had again snoozed off, I was roused out of my sleep by Pat shaking me by the shoulder, and whispering in my ear, “Did you hear that, sir?”

I felt inclined to be angry with the man, but the poor fellow was evidently seriously alarmed at something, so I determined to lie awake for a short time and listen. After a few moments, I thought I heard some kind of cry, but apparently well up the ravine. Pat, whose nerves and senses were evidently painfully on the alert, gave a regular start at the sound, and I could hear him repeating all manner of prayers, and invoking all the saints in the calendar.

“Ha! ha! ha! Screech! screech! screech!” followed by a low, mournful kind of whistling, was the next thing we heard from immediately at the back of the tent.

“Oh! Holy Mother! Saint Patrick have mercy on us! Och be gorrah! What will I do?” yelled poor Pat, springing to his feet, and shivering from head to foot.

And really for some moments after the noises had died away, I felt almost petrified, and I could feel the damp moisture oozing out of my temples, and a cold shiver ran all through my veins. The noises commenced with a loud guffaw; then, as if taken up by some second agent, followed several most unearthly shrieks, concluding with a sound between a whistle and a moan, which, starting at a very page 35 high key, gradually died away.

No wonder poor Pat was badly scared; I only wondered I had not heard it before. All the men had evidently been awakened by the last outcry, and were holding their breath and listening for a repetition of the sounds.

“I say, Young,” said Harry at last, “very rum noises those.”

“Imps of Purgatory,” muttered Pat.

“Well, I answered at last, when I pretty well recovered from my start, “imps or no imps, I'm going to find out who they are,” and seizing my gun I lifted the curtain of the tent and stepped out. The moon was just sinking behind the headland below the bay, but it was still light enough for me to see any objects on the open space about the tent.

Harry followed me out, and together we proceeded to reconnoitre the vicinity of the tent. We walked round it without observing anything there, and the bush behind was too thick for us to be able to see anything in that direction; so, as it was freezing hard, we came to the conclusion it was useless our fossicking round any longer.

We re-entered the tent and lay down, but there was no more sleep for us that night.

“Ye'll not be afther wantin' to remain in this unarthly spot any longer, sir, will yez?” said Pat, addressing me. “Shure I belave we've got into purgatory itself, though the priests (bless their reverences) must have made a mistake when they tould us thim parts were moighty hot.”

“Well, Pat,” I answered, “we'll wait till the morning, when, perhaps, we may be able to arrive at some solution of the mystery.”

As none of the men seemed inclined to go to sleep, I questioned the lad Smart as to his knowledge of there being any natives on this coast.

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“Natives,” exclaimed Pat, “They're bigger fools than I take 'em for if they come within a hundred moiles of this hathenish place.”

“Well, sir,” said Smart, who had been interrupted by Pat, “I've seen and heard a good deal of the natives during the few years I've been in New Zealand, and as regards this part of the coast I remember some Maoris at Port Cooper once telling me there were some ‘wild men,’ as they called them, round on this side of the island; and, furthermore, explained that they were not Maories, but the remnants of some former inhabitants who were driven away from the east side of the country, and forced to live on this part.”

“Are they hostile to Europeans, do you know?” I further asked.

“That I can't say, sir; for I never heard of any Europeans having come across these ‘wild men’ yet.”

This was about all the information Smart could give us that could be of any use or interest to us.

In thus talking, however, the night gradually passed away, and with the first streak of dawn everybody was up and outside the tent. Of course the great subject of interest was the mysterious noises of the preceding night. With the dispersion of darkness all Pat's fears and alarm disappeared, and he now challenged all the unknown visitors of last night to show themselves, and not hide away from honest people's sight during the day.

Numerous were the conjectures hazarded as to what sort of creatures had caused such excitement in our camp.

“I believe it was nothing more or less than savages,” said one.

“Nothing human in that infernal cry, said a second. “I always believed in ghosts, and no doubt its in this here out-of-the-way place they send 'em to live.”

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“Ghosts!” said a third; “whoever heard of ghosts with tongues?” to fear. There were a powerful pair of wind-bags employed to drive that barrel-organ.”

“Perhaps, after all, it was only some bird or other,” suggested Smith. “I remember once when in Sydney seeing a bird they called a laughing jackass, which used to burst his sides with laughing and screaming.”

“Well, whatever our disagreeable neighbor is,” I said, “we must not stand talking here all day; and as I see Swabs has got our breakfast ready we had better be eating it.”

During the meal I brought up the question of the previous day, as to whether we were to stay here till after the winter season, or begin building our boat at once, and start immediately that work was completed, trusting to Providence to guide us safely through any storms or other dangers we might encounter on the way.

The men were evidently unwilling to give an answer one way or the other, or perhaps had not given the subject as much consideration as they could have wished. Seeing this, I proposed my original motion to remain until after the winter, and called upon the men to hold up their hands if in favor of my proposition.

“Give us till to-night, sir,” said Hunter. “A day cannot make any difference one way or the other.”

“Time is precious, my lads,” I answered. If we are to start as soon as the boat is built, the sooner we set about that work the better, as every day brings the stormy weather nearer; and indeed, I don't think I am far wrong in saying that it is almost upon us now. However, let us wait till tonight if you wish; but let us decide then, and put it off no longer.”