But she did not hear two faint voices feebly expostulating, "We tied
ourselves to the cart, and we can't undo the knots. We are here, like
two galley-slaves chained to the oars, and we can't get out."
A shock of earthquake sent Beauty with a shiver of terror straight to
the open. The men threw themselves on their faces, knowing how easily
they might lose their footing on the reeling ground; whilst Audrey,
neglecting this precaution, went over like a nine-pin.
The hut shook as if its carefully-piled walls were about to give way,
and Audrey, who had seen their house go down in the beginning of this
fearful night, shrieked out for Effie.
As the tremor subsided, and the sailors gathered from poor Audrey's
broken sentences some idea of the awful catastrophe on land, they turned
from the hut, judging it safer to remain in the open.
Mates were looking out for mates. Were they all there? Captain,
boatswain, cook--not one of the little coaster's crew was missing.
Passengers all right: a gold-digger from Otago, the schoolboy from
Christchurch. Are all saved? Only the hand which threw the rope was
missing.
Who backed the cart into the sea? they asked; and where was Oscott?
When they learned from Audrey's frantic replies that every man had gone
to the rescue, and the little fugitives had been left in the hut alone,
the sailors' desire to find the missing boys was as earnest as her own.
They pointed to the cart jogging steadily across the grassy plain,
dotted with sheep, and shaded here and there by groups of stately trees.
"God bless the young heroes!" they exclaimed. "Why, there they are--off
to the mansion to beg for tucker for us all."
Audrey, set at rest from this last great fear, escaped from her
questioners, and retreated to Effie and the empty hut, saying
reproachfully,--
"How just like Edwin! But they might have told me what they were going
to do."
It seemed a moment's reprieve. There was nothing more to be done.
Audrey sank upon the bed of fern leaves, weary and wet and worn, unable
any longer to resist the craving for a little sleep.
The sailors lit a fire on the open grass beyond the hut, and grouped
themselves round it to talk and rest. The poor fellows who had been
dragged to shore, clinging to the rope, found their shoeless feet cut
and bleeding from the sharp edges of the oyster-shells with which the
sands were studded. But when an hour or more passed by, the sunless
noon brought with it sharper pangs of hunger to them all.
No cart had returned, no boundary rider had put in an appearance, and
the men began to talk of a walk over the grass to find the mansion.
They were all agreed as to the best course for them to pursue. They must
turn "sundowners"--the up-country name for beggars--tramp across to the
nearest port, begging their way from farm to farm. They knew very well
no lonely settler dare refuse supper and a night's lodging to a party of
men strong enough to take by force what they wanted.
The embankment with its swinging fence, the shepherd's hut where the
girls were sleeping, told them where they were--on the confines of a
great sheep-run. Their route must begin with the owner's mansion, which
could not be very far off, as there was no food in the hut, and no
apparent means for cooking any, so Audrey had told them. But now the
storm was dying, the captain rose to look round the hut for himself. He
was wondering what to do with the Christchurch boy he had undertaken to
land at another great sheep-run about twenty-five miles farther along
the coast It was of no use to take him back with them, a hundred miles
the other way. He hoped to leave him at the mansion. The owner must be
a wealthy man, and would most likely undertake to put the boy on board
the next steamer, which would pass that way in a week or ten days.
So he called to the boy to go with him, and explained his purpose as
they went. They waked up Audrey, to ask the owner's name.
"Feltham," she answered, putting her hand to her head to recall her
scattered senses; between rabbiters and sailors she was almost dazed.
To be left alone again in that empty hut, without food, without her
brothers, was enough to dismay a stouter heart than hers. The captain
spoke kindly.
"I want to see you all safe in this sheep-owner's care before I leave
you," he said. "It was stupid in those brothers of yours to go off with
the cart, for you are too exhausted to walk."
"Did you ever hear the name of Bowen in these parts?" asked the
Christchurch boy eagerly, nursing a bleeding foot the while.
Audrey thought of the kind old gentleman in Ottley's coach, and
answered, brightening.
"I am his grandson," the boy replied. "I am Arthur Bowen."
*CHAPTER IX.*
*NOTHING TO EAT.*
As the shock of the earthquake subsided, and Beauty rallied from his
terror, his pace began to slacken. If Edwin had not tied himself and
Cuthbert so securely in the cart, they might have been thrown out when
Beauty ran away. So the knots which would not be untied proved their
protection; and now they found themselves trotting leisurely through
verdant stretches, dotted with ti tree and blue-gum, and overgrown with
toi and flax and rushes. Before them rose the great gates of the avenue
leading to the central station-house. The white front of Feltham's
mansion gleamed through the tall stems of the trees which surrounded it;
whilst beyond and around them were the sheds and walls, the pools and
bridges, comprising stock-yards and shearing-places, where thousands of
wild cattle and tens of thousands of wilder sheep were washed and
dipped, and counted and branded, year after year.
The ingenious arrangement of pool and paddock and pen by which this
gigantic undertaking is safely accomplished looked to the boys like a
wooden village.
Beauty drew up at the friendly gate of his own accord, attracted by the
welcome sounds of human life as stockmen and shepherds hurried out to
their morning work. Half the hands were off to the hills; the remaining
half found in consequence the more to do. The poor terrified cattle had
suffered considerably. Sheep were cast in every ditch. Cows had gored
each other in their mad terror; and broken fences told of wild leaps and
escaped bulls to be sought for in the neighbouring bush.
The boundary rider, whose sole duty is to parade the vast domain and
give notice at headquarters of unwary gaps and strays, had been spurring
hither and thither, delayed by the gloom of the morning and the herds of
wild bulls which had broken in, while the tame had broken out. With
demolished fences, and frightened sheep dying around them by hundreds,
the little fugitives in Oscott's hut had been forgotten.
But when the boundary rider saw a cart at his master's gate, blue with
volcanic mud above, and dripping from below with the slime of the sea,
he thought of the family from the hills waiting somewhere for the
breakfast he was to have carried in his saddle-bag. His circuit was but
half completed. "I shall find them yet," he said to himself, as he
galloped up behind the cart. He saw the dangling rope, and the white
faces of the two boys huddled together in a state of complete
exhaustion. He tied his horse to the gate, and jumping into the cart,
rattled Beauty up the avenue to his master's door, which stood wide open
to all comers. For every hour brought fresh rumours, and fresh parties
of fugitives who had fled precipitately from their homes when the storm
of mud began.
He took his knife from his pocket and cut the rope which tied Edwin and
his brother to the cart. Some one ran out with a cup of coffee, which he
poured down their throats, and then the boys began to revive. He wanted
to take them in-doors and put them to bed. But the relief-party had
already sent down so many sufferers from the hills every bed was full of
children, women, and even men, who had been dug out of the muddy stream
in which they were suffocating.
As soon as Edwin could speak, he added his story to the others,
entreating the men who turned their heads to listen, as they hurried in
and out, to send some food to his sisters, who were left alone in
Oscott's hut. As for the sailors, the feeling among Feltham's people
was decided: any one not from the hills must be left to take care of
himself.
Just then a horseman, covered with mud and foam, came spurring towards
the house, shouting to the crowd around the door,--
"I've come for every man on the ground, by the master's orders. Leave
everything. Bring your spades, and follow me. The nearer we get to
Tarawera the thicker lies the mud. Our government station at Rotorua is
buried beneath it, church and all. Te Ariki and Maura are nowhere to be
seen. The low whares in the Maori pahs are utterly destroyed. Wherever
the roofs have been strong enough to uphold the weight of the falling
mud, the inhabitants are alive beneath them now. Come to the
rescue--come!"
The last hoarse words were scarcely audible. The boundary rider took
the unfinished cup from Edwin's lips and passed it to the man, and the
boy was glad that he did so.
A cry of "Spades! spades!" rang through the increasing group of
listeners, which seemed to gather and disperse with equal rapidity.
Mrs. Feltham made her way through the midst to the bell-tower, and rang
a frantic peal to call all hands together. Horses were saddling; men
were mounting; others were hurrying up to learn the meaning of the hasty
summons. Edwin drew his cart aside under the trees to watch the
departure.
Mrs. Feltham reappeared on her doorstep with knife and loaf, trying to
fill every pocket with bread before each one rode off. She could not
make her intention understood. The men, in their impatience to be gone,
would hardly stop to take it.
"Oh," thought Edwin, "they forget they will want it all to give away."
He leaned over his brother. "Cuth, take the reins." But Cuth's numbed
hands let them drop. Edwin twisted them round his arm, and with a nod
and a smile made his way to Mrs. Feltham.
His voice was so weak and faint she could not hear what he said, but the
ready hand was offering to pass on the great hunches of bread she was
cutting, and she kept him at work, little dreaming how he had to turn
his head away again and again to resist the impulse to take a bite by
the way. As he took the last crust from her, and saw that it was the
last, a sudden faintness overcame him, and he dropped on the stones at
her feet.
"I am so very, very hungry," he said piteously.
"Why did not you tell me that before the basket was empty?" she
retorted. "You must remember, my boy, every bit of food for man and
beast must be buried under this dreadful mud for miles and miles. I may
have a famishing army round me before night, and how am I to feed them
all? Not a crumb must be wasted. If you are so hungry, go into the
kitchen and clear up the scraps on the men's plates. I would turn all
the flour in the granary into bread, and feed you every one, if I had
only hands to make it and bake it. Stop," she went on; "though you are
a boy you could be of some use. You could wash and boil a copperful of
potatoes and pumpkins; that would be something to set before the
starving cart-loads I hope and trust they will be successful in saving."
"No, ma'am," answered Edwin. "I must go back to my sisters. I have
left them alone with a lot of rough sailors."
His "no" was round and resolute.
She took out her purse, saying almost coaxingly, "Here is a week's wage
for a day's work."
"I am very sorry, Mrs. Feltham, but I really can't stay," he persisted.
She turned away with an impatient gesture and went in-doors.
"She takes me for some unlucky beggar," thought Edwin, crawling round to
the kitchen door, glad to avail himself of the somewhat ungracious
permission to look out for the scraps. "It is dog's fare," thought
Edwin, "but it is more to me than her gold." He found a piece of
newspaper, and walked round and round the long breakfast-table,
collecting into it such morsels as he could find. Of most of the dishes
the hungry young shepherds had made a clean sweep. Still there were some
unfinished crusts of bread, a corner of Melton pie, a rasher of bacon
burned in the grilling. On the dresser he discovered a bone of mutton,
evidently laid aside for the hounds. He would not touch the sugar in
the basin, or take a peep at the contents of the cupboards, feeling
himself on his honour. The sounds within convinced him Mrs. Feltham and
the rest of her household were hard at work transforming the hospitable
mansion into a temporary hospital, for the reception of the poor
unfortunates who might be dug out alive but scarcely uninjured.
"O Cuth, we haven't been the worst off by a long way!" exclaimed Edwin
suddenly, as the brothers sat together in their cart, enjoying their
bone of mutton, quite in the doggie line, but, as Cuthbert averred,
feeling themselves, as they ate, like new-made men.
Then they turned Beauty homewards. Yes, that queer little shanty was a
kind of home. It was still dark as in a London fog, but the shocks of
earthquake were less, fainter and farther apart.
Half-way down the road they met the party of sailors, walking barefoot
on the edge of the grass. They did not recognize the boys, but stopped
to ask the way to the central station.
"We have just been there to beg for food," said Edwin, feeling it quite
"infra dig" to acknowledge the condition in which they reached Mrs.
Feltham's gate. "But," he added drearily, "we could not get it. Not
enough for you all."
Then he hurried on to explain the tidings from the hills and the general
stampede to the rescue.
"Turn back," urged the captain, "and give us a lift."
"Lend us the cart," added Arthur Bowen. "If any harm should come to it,
grandfather will pay you for it; and as for the horse, he will get a
good feed of corn in Feltham's stable. I will see after him."
Edwin was not sure he ought to trust the horse and cart with strangers,
but the prospect of a good feed of corn for Beauty went a long way; for
he had nothing for the horse to eat but the winter grass around the hut.
Down he jumped.
"If there are so many men at this station," the sailors were saying,
"maybe they can find us an old pair of shoes; and if strong arms are in
request, we are ready to take our turn."
They shook hands all round.
"Good-bye, my lads, good-bye. It was a brave act to back that cart into
the sea, and you'll take a sailor's blessing with you to your home,
wherever it is. If there is anything washed ashore from the little
craft, you'll store it up high and dry until another coaster calls to
fetch it away."
The promise was given on both sides. Edwin would find his Beauty safe
at Feltham's, and the captain his wreckage piled against the back of
Oscott's hut, although they might both be miles away when the two were
reclaimed.
Edwin took Cuthbert's hand in his and walked on in grave silence. One
thing was clear--nobody would have time or thought to care for them.
They must just look out for themselves.
"It is playing at Robinson Crusoe in earnest, we four in that little
hut," said Cuthbert. "He did lots of things to make himself
comfortable, but then he was a man."
"It won't be for long," added Edwin. "I hardly think we shall see
father to-night, but he may be back to-morrow. If we could only find
something to eat. Whero and his mother lived on nuts and berries after
the muru, but then it was autumn."
They sank again into silence. The barking of the boundary dog warned
them they were near the hut, and when it died away to a low growl they
distinguished a faint, soft murmur of singing.
"Oh, hush!" they exclaimed. "Oh, listen! It is the girls; that is
Audrey."
It put fresh life into the weary feet as they heard it clearer and
clearer--
"Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings."
"Heaven's gate," repeated the boys: it was the only word they could
distinguish.
"Heaven's gate. It is a word to comfort us, for that is never shut,"
added Edwin, as they stumbled against an uprooted ti tree. The long,
tapering stem, with its waving plume of feathery leaves, barred their
progress. Cuth was about to climb over it, for the hard brown trunk at
its base was six feet round; but Edwin ran off to examine its leafy
crown, where the cabbage which gave the tree its name should lie hidden.
He parted the yard-long leaflets, and felt a something tall and crisp
growing up in their midst.
A shout of glee brought Cuth to his assistance. They pulled the pliant
boughs to this side and that, and perceived what looked to them like a
coil of white ribbon, as thick and as long as a man's arm. Was this the
cabbage of which they had heard so much, for the sake of which the
lordly tree was so often cut down and destroyed?
They tore off one of the ribbon-like flakes and tasted it.
Cuth declared it was like eating almonds, only not so hard.
"But how can we cut it without a knife?" cried Edwin, munching away at
the raw flakes in his fingers, and pronouncing them a right good feed
for them all, if they could but cut the cabbage out.
There might be a knife in the hut, who could say. Away they rushed to
explore, guided through the tangle of flax and rushes by their sisters'
voices.
The girls were sitting on the bed of fern in an abandonment of despair,
scarcely daring to believe their own ears when the refrain of their song
was caught up and repeated--
"With everything that pretty is,
My ladies sweet, arise."
"O Edwin, Edwin!" they exclaimed. "We thought you too had vanished."
"We could not bear ourselves," said Effie, "so we took to singing. We
feared we were left to starve on our bed of leaves, like the 'Children
in the Wood,' and we were afraid there was not a robin redbreast
anywhere here to cover us up."
"Oh, but there is a robin blackbreast," retorted Edwin; "a true-born
native, all the fitter for the undertaker's work. Only it is not going
to be done to-night, Dame Trot." He took the wee white face between his
hands, and felt so strong, so vigorous, so determined to take care of it
somehow. "I am not going away again, Effie." He pulled the newspaper
parcel out of his pocket and tossed it into Audrey's lap. "Beggars'
crumbs!" he laughed. But her cold, nerveless fingers seemed incapable
of untwisting the paper.
"Hands were made before forks!" cried Cuthbert, pushing in between his
sisters, "and I've often heard that pie-crust is made to be broken, like
promises. I can spy a bill-hook in the corner, a little too big for
cutting up a pie, but just the thing to chop the cabbage out of a ti
tree."
Edwin spun round and shouldered it in triumph.
"There goes smash to the promise: he is off again as fast as he can go.
And now for the second breakage. You must not mind my dirty pads for
once, Audrey," Cuthbert went on, pulling the pie into two pieces and
making his sisters eat.
The slender store in the newspaper would be soon exhausted. Cuthbert,
like a provident commissariat officer, was anxious to make the most of
it. He laid aside the bacon to eat with Edwin's cabbage, and piled up
the mutton-bones for their solitary neighbour, the boundary dog, who,
like themselves, had been breakfasting on broken promise.
Audrey had recovered herself in some measure by the time Edwin returned
with his spoils.
"Who'll buy? who'll buy?" he shouted; "yards upon yards of vegetable
ribbon, white and delicate enough to make the wedding favours for the
queen of cooks."
"Oh, don't talk about cooking," put in Cuthbert; "it is so nice, let us
eat it as it is."
So down they sat, breaking off flake after flake until they were
satisfied. As hunger diminished speech returned, and Audrey, who had
scarcely uttered a word whilst Edwin went over all they had heard and
seen at Mrs. Feltham's, became suddenly animated. A thought had struck
her, but she hesitated to propose her plan too abruptly.
"Dears," she said earnestly, looking round at the other three, "father
will not come back to us perhaps for a day or two; it may even be a
week. Think of our own escape. Think if one of us had been buried in
that awful mud. How should we be feeling now? Whilst there is another
life to be saved father will not come away--no, not for our sakes, and
we must not wish that he should."