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Chapter X. An Amateur Geologist and a Reconciled Amant.

Mr. Edward Stelsan, the whaler that Rawhinia saluted along with Bill the Preacher, on her taking leave of the banquetting party, bore the character, among his comrade whalers, of being what they termed an “odd man.” Ned's odduess lay in his possessing a rather crude, philosophical turn of mind, and at no time joining in the frivolous talk or light foibles of most of the other whalers. He was one of them, but not with them, it may be said, in all matters disconnected with duty. This said Ned Stelsan had a sadly battered old book—a sorry, thumb worn, antiquated tome in short, the only library that he actually possessed, treating on geological distinctive delineation and formations, which served, in spare hours, to engross his utmost attention. The continuous application to the study of this frayed volume may be partly accounted for in this way: that Ned had to contend with very many difficulties are the treatise, could be sufficiently reduced to suit, as it were, his mental chyle. With Ned there was, in the first place, the orthography, bit by bit, to master: the syllables, too, to be joined: then the accent had also to be arbitrarily considered: the sense tediously conveyed in clauses and sentences, without ever taking into any account that which is a stumbling block to those who are considered pretty fair scholars—that is in the surmounting, in a limited way, the perpetually bristling technicalities. Someone is said to have stated that “the one-book individual, if the choice is judicious, surpasses in well-grounded knowledge, even that of the thousandth-book individual, whose reading is perfunctionary, superficial, and likewise, generally frivolously selected.” If such an observation is not wholly true, no one can state positively that it is entirely groundless. Groundless? Why, no: anything but that; but, on the contrary, a considerable modicum of truth in it, that, such obviously becomes whilst reflecting on the galaxy of intellectual first-class writers of the Elizabethan era, when a book was regarded almost in the light of a prodigy.

What in this far away region considerably exercised this whale's philosophical turn of mind was the prolific abundance of bituminous shale and black igneous sand, which linod the neighbourhood, for many miles, page 61 along the beach. In past times, we are told that the Natives all over New Zealand used this shale for chewing, as numbers do tobacco. It certainly has a soperific mollifying tendency. Even now it is not considered a rarity to discover them wagging their jaws with a quid of such material stuck in the mouth. The oil which oozed out of these shale beds at that time had but a nondescript signification. The era of the popularity of naphtha and petroleum had not just yet set in. Ned himself had but a scanty variety of oils on his comprehensive list, and those that he had were soley the productions of vegetation or marine life. Still, though this humble investigator, every time after a mature study of this puzzling production in question, “Just as sure am I as my name's Ned Stelsan, that it's oil of some sort or another.” Then reserve odd Ned, to while an otherwise idle hour away, would set himself to work, as he said, “to put it to a kind o' test,” by joining two and two together. Following up this determination, he laid his hand upon an old dilapidated “go-ashore” iron pot: carefully scooped with a sea-shell from off one or two deposits of this “skinkling” liquid, as much as, maybe, a couple of gallons: out with his flint, steel, and tinder, and struck, in a brief time, a light, which he submitted, by means of a conducting roll of oakum, to what had been collected—when, lo! to the unbounded joy of the experimenter, the liquid readily burned with a curious metallic-like flame, not by any means of a violent, fitful, or alarming nature, but a quiet steady blaze, until every drop of the two gallons became gradually lapped up. Such an unlooked for discovery almost took Ned's breath away, and, quite naturally, set the much-gratified whaler on the lay of mental speculation. “What?” said he, enquiringly, to himself, “if this was in one of the old civilized countries—what should such a disclosure really bring?” The only visible drawback to Ned's jubilancy over the matter, as to turning it speedily into an article commanding pounds, shillings and pence was, Ephesus-like, that such a consummation would, most certainly, seriously militate against the prosperity of his present profession. “If it was known,” he said, “that a substitute for whale oil was detected flowing out of the bowels of the earth, why, then, it would be for ever and a day good-bye to the whaling line of life. It would never do,” Ned continued, “to set one's foot on the head of an upright rake to have the end of the shaft rising up and striking one clean in the face’”

But, without positively knowing it, Mr. Stelsan made, if anything, a much more important disclosure at this remarkable test than that which he was in a difficulty about how best to deal with! which was nothing more than this. The black sand, which had considerably impregnated the oil which he had collected, and now consumed, had, in the process, undergone a startling modification, by forming at the bottom of the old go-ashore castiron pot a constituent of an analagous nature—though infinitely richer—than the pot itself. A small ingot, apparently of steel, and about the size of a farthing, Ned scraped, not without difficulty, with his knife, off the bottom of the rusty vessel. “Marvels page 62 will never cease,” was Ned's emphatic expression on this occasion. “Here is another subject to speculate upon, of truly marketable value! How much more easily could this sand among the feet be made into iron and bars of steel than that that has to be laboriously quarried for, having the outward appearance of refractory white stone! The very best thing, after so many years' palavering, which Old England could set about now doing, would be to quietly, or otherwise if need be, just appropriate this country abounding in such natural physical wealth to herself. Its more, I say, than ten thousand pities that here the like should be running to sheer waste, when so much could be made out of it, to boil the pot at Home. If this country quieted down a bit from this incessant turmoil of a war scare, who knows but what I may do something with what I've fished out just now, for my own special benefit? I'll just have a talk, if ever it should happen to be my luck to go back to Sydney again, with someone that's, may be, got a longer head in connection with such matters than myself. There are two or three directors of our Company there that should not see me dead-licked, that I know, for the want of requisite funds. There's not a rock, clod of earth, nay, nor drop of water hereabouts but is thickly impregnated with iron. No, nor is their, either, a patch of conglomerate or tufa bed but is likewise impregnated with oil. Its a miraculous country, as much as I've seen of it, for precious mineral productions, anyhow!”

From his recent researches, Mr. Ned formed the idea that everyone of the rocks forming the Sugar Loaf peaks were of igneous origin, unstratified—eminently fluxable, and principally of the primary series, consisting of trachyte breccia, embedded and surrounded with porus tufa. One day, as this enterprising tar had scrambled rather better than halfway to the summit of Paratutu, on a flat-crowned spur, trending nearly a chain eastward, he discovered, much to his surprise, that he was not alone by himself in the matter of retiring to facilitate the acquirement of knowledge. There—who indeed should ever have thought of it?—reclined Rawhinia, diligently poring over an illuminated “Joseph and his Brethren,” transcribed into the English and also into the Maori tongue!

Calypso could not have evinced more astonishment at the advent of Telemache and Mentor on her island than here, Rawhinia showed at the presence of Ned Stelsan! The young maiden's confusion at being so suddenly and unexpectedly “dropped upon,” could only be equalled but by the extreme sheepishness of the party who had her so surprised. However, it seldom takes very long, when two well-disposed persons meet in such-like remote nooks, to doff all diffidence, and make overtures of an amicable sort. It should not have looked in either Edward or Rawhinia's case, at this particular crisis, anything like well to have shunned one another close company with baker-and-sweep like aversion. No: nor did they!

Afterwards, as they went on talking together, Mr. Stelsan congratulated Rawhinia on her close shave from captivity, expressed his page 63 wonder at the party which went to her rescue ever having left Moturoa, as there were no grounds whatever to go upon that either she was aboard the “Flyingfish,” or that the “Flyingfish” was even in Kawhia harbour. It was all a matter of mere conjecture, “not a whit more.”

“Oh, the Maori knew,” replied Rawhinia succinctly.

“The Maori knew, you say?” the least thing perplexedly reiterated Ned. “How could they do that without somebody bringing them word?”

“A spirit told them of it,” rejoined the maiden, inconsequently.

“A spirit told them of it!” Ned again reiterated. “Can spirits speak?”

“Speak—yes—they must can speak, or how can they tell what they mean?” returned Rawhinia, torpidly.

“Then, by that, spirits must have tongues,” suggested Mr. Stelsan, with a touch of sarcasm.

“That's not for me to say,” answered, rather touchily, the young damsel; “but this I know, and can say, that when four or five of the priests squat down in a ring, and keep touching one another, what they may after divulge is never very far out.”

“Judging from that, then,” said Ned, with ironical intonation, “they will know, should the Waikato come this far, who'll beat and who'll get beaten!”

“I think that that's what they would think improper to reveal,” Rawhinia replied, studiously. “It would make the people careless about what is right and also what is proper to do.”

“It's all downright rubbish and nonsense. Take you my word for it Miss Te Puki,” declared the amateur geologist, authoritatively—appending, parenthetically, “You'll know differently, that, indeed, you will, by and by.”

“Of course, you know better than I do,” acknowledged the maiden, “but that,” she went on, “does not say that you know everything!” Then, as if tired of a subject which did not yield hsr very much gratication, she insidiously asked him, if he knew in Sydney about a dozen of different people of whom she, one after the other, supplied the names of—the last ingeniously she named, was one they both well knew, in common, Richard Barrett! The affirmative was frankly acknowledged by Mr. Stelsan, who perorated by remarking that Mr. Richard Barrett was quite as great a favorite in that big place as he was in this out of the way nook of the world.

“Had lots of nice sweethearts there, no doubt;” quietly suggested the gentle enquirer, with quite an unconcerned, its-all-one-to-me, air, seeming otherwise absorbed in removing off her picture-book an importunate spider.

“Hah! They don't ‘tapu’ the very pick of young ladies there as they do here. They're not so selfish as that,” remarked Ned, with a knowing cock of his one eye and, of course, an equal depression of the page 64 other, adding, with a hitch, “The spirity filly is the least pliant to the curb.”

“Hoh! the tapu is not a very great thing,” quoth Rawhinia, “not a great mountain which cannot be removed.” The young girl all the while kept on carelessly whisking the persistent spider off the illuminated representations of “Joseph and his Brethren.”

“As long as the whaler regards the tapu,” said Ned, “in the light he has been led to believe it is, he'll be apt to give it a wide berth, I should say.”

“But, botheration, with all this talk you haven't yet told me if Mr. Barrett has a sweetheart in Sydney,” carelessly reminded Te Puki's dearly beloved and only begotten—quickly checking herself by the thought having struck her that she had let out rather more than she wished to, and for a loop hole, created a figment, by a peculiar sort of raticionation, by saying, if it was true that he had, she would never let on that it was so, no—not to so much as a single word, she wouldn't—to Narri, the daughter of the Ngateruanui chief, as it might cause her, quite unnecessary, a little sorrow. Then, she further added the hackneyed maxim of “What one don't know, does one no harm you know,” does it?

“If Mr. Barrett,” the gruff seaman immediately responded, “has a lady-love in Sydney, you bet your eye-balls Miss, that he has none at all here; and if the same gentleman happens to have such an article as you name anywhere hereabout, you may bet, equally as much, I assure you, that he has nothing of the like left in Sydney. He may laugh, of course, and have his little joke—we all do that, with scores—but to one, that's to say, if he has one, I would take my oath to it, he's as true as steel!”

It is not known exactly, for a certainty, how far, if any, of this eulogium on Dickey Barrett moved Rawhinia, at this instant, all at once, to accelerated exertion. With a mantling countenance, betokening inner satisfaction, she hastily arose, excused herself for abruptness, and bade the philosophical seaman a “good morning.” When a few paces down the steep declivity, she turned round, casting her eyes upwards for a second, and with a sweet smile, rapidly uttered, “What ever will my people be thinking about me, all this time away from home?”

“She can't hoodwink I: that, indeed, she can't,” said Mr. Stelsan, to himself, as soon as his recent interlocutor had descended out of his hearing. “My certes! though! wouldn't just a casting of her in plaster o' Paris make a stunning fine model for a tidy ship's figure-head? She is, certainlee, without a ghost of a doubt about it, a fine—aye, a very fine girl: ay, and just as good as buxom too, as far as I hear, which puts a hundred per cent, on her real solid stock value. I don't think that our Gaff, by what the lassie let drop, has any occasion to scare himself about this customary and trumpery tapu. ‘Gad, never a word I'll let on though, good, bad, or indifferent of all that's passed ‘twixt she and myself this most eventful forenoon: no, not I.” ‘A shut mouth catches page 65 no flies.’ They would only be putting me down for, may be, something worse than I should care about owning to. It's a saying o' Bill the Preachers that reposing confidence in giddy mortals is like ‘putting jewels in the snouts of hogs.’ In spite o' the girl's rather singular manner to the Gaff these few days back, she's all right as far as he's concerned. I've seen to:day as much as that, for all her cunning manœuvering. ‘Gad! I must make up for all this lost time, I must, by a few tests here and there on this stupendous peak.”

Had anyone cast eyes on Rawhinia that bright early afternoon tripping lightsomely back to the Ngamotu Pah, they would not have been other than amusedly impressed with the illuminated glow of susceptibility and pleasedness diffused o'er every feature of her winning face. Ah! proud girl! she carried then an unguent yielding great peace in her breast, more precious to her than gold—more dear to her at that moment than any other consideration in the universe. The only fly in her ointment now, she cogitated, which might not, after all, be very difficult to extract, lay in her own late coquettish behaviour. But that, on her part acknowledged she, was entirely from a defect somehow in her way of thinking—from the want of proper understanding—and, no doubt, would be soon condoned, when everything was truthfully explained. All the punishment that there would be would be just a little self-abasement and—afterwards, untroubled joy. Rawhinia wound up her soliloquy on this occasion, by lilting “I love my Maori Maid,” being an extract from the following song.

My Maori Maid.
Adown the stream, away some distance lower,
Where fronds of punga throw their cooling shade,
Where channel widens, and current runneth slower—
On bank near by, there lives my Maori Maid!

The home she dwells in is not much to look at:
‘Tis but a whare of the meanest grade:
It mightn't be appraised beyond a silver ducat,
Yet shelter yields it to my Maoir Maid!

The reeds which o'er you gannet flock is hovering,
Where rests the kingfisher on bow of toppled blade,
Are what supplies in toto all the covering
That e'er habilitates my Maori Maid!

That tiny patch of land till'd near those bare fields
Around where pig and fowl now promenade—
Save fish—'tis what alone the every fare yields
Which keeps in sturdy form my Maori Maid!

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Despite this straitened contribution
Towards what to existence lends an aid,
Nature hath develop'd, with wond'rous execution,
Bewitching graces on my Maori Maid!

But, when to charms of mien, are supplemented
Inherent ones, which outer have outweighed—
Needs marvel be if ardour's still augmented
The longer's recognis'd my Maori Maid!

I know this passion damns all early aspirations—
All that dear kinsfolk out for me have laid:
'Tis bad, I know, to frustrate expectations—
What can I do?—I love my Maori Maid!

To say one's lot on earth's unswayed by Destiny
Shall any mode of sophistry persuade?
Do as we list, abstractions ne'er could guess'd any
Will circumvent, as hath my Maori Maid!