The Tale of Timber Town

On a mount, lent him by Chesterman, he was on his way to the Maori pa, before the town was stirring. The road, which he had never traversed before, wound its tortuous way along the shore for some eight miles, and then struck inland across the neck of a wooded peninsula, on the further side of which the rugged and rocky shore was fringed with virgin forest. He had reached the thick and shady “bush” which covered the isthmus, where the dew of the morning still lay cool on leaf and frond, and the great black boles of the forest giants stood sentinel amid the verdant undergrowth, when he overtook a girl who was walking towards the pa.

Her dress was peculiar; she wore a short Maori mat over her shoulders, and a blue petticoat fell from waist to ankle, while her head and feet were bare.

Jack reined in his horse, and asked if he was on the road which led to the pa, when the girl turned her merry, brown face, with its red lips and laughing, brown eyes, and said in English as good as his own, “Good morning. Yes, this is the road to the pa. Why, you were the last person I expected to see.” She held up her hand to him, to greet him in European fashion.

“Amiria!” he exclaimed. “How are you? It’s quite appropriate to meet you here – I’m on my way to the wreck, to see how the old ship looks, if there is anything of her left. How far is it to the pa?”

“About two miles.”

“What brings you so far, at this time of the morning?”

“You passed a settler’s house, half-a-mile back.”

“Yes, a house built of slabs.”

“I have been there to take the woman some fish – our people made a big haul this morning.”

Jack dismounted, and, hooking his arm through the bridle, he walked beside the Maori girl.

“Why didn’t you ride, Amiria?”

“My horse is turned out on the hills at the back of the pa, and it’s too much trouble to bring him in for so short a ride. Besides, the walk won’t hurt me: if I don’t take exercise I shall lose my figure.” She burst into a merry laugh, for she knew that, as she was then dressed, her beauty depended on elasticity of limb and sweetness of face rather than upon shape and fashion.

“I’ll show you the wreck,” she said. “It lies between us and the pa. It looks a very harmless place in calm weather with the sun shining on the smooth sea. The tide is out, so we ought to be able to reach the wreck without swimming.”

They had come now to the edge of the “bush,” and here Scarlett tied his horse to the bough of a tree; and with Amiria he paced the soft and sparkling sands, to which the road ran parallel.

The tide was low, as the girl had said, and the jagged rocks on which the bones of the ship lay stranded, stood black and prominent above the smooth water. The inner reefs were high and dry, and upon the slippery corrugations of the rocks, covered with seaweed and encrusted with shell-fish, the two walked; the Maori girl barefooted and agile, the Englishman heavily shod and clumsy.

Seeing the difficulty of Scarlett’s advance, Amiria held out her hand to him, and so linked they approached the sea. A narrow belt of water separated them from the reef on which the wreck lay, and to cross this meant immersion.

“The tide is not as low as I thought,” said Amiria. “At low spring-tide you can walk, almost dry-shod, to the other side.”

“I’m afraid we can’t reach it without a ducking,” said Scarlett.

“But you can swim?”

Scarlett laughed. “It’s hardly good enough to ride home in wet clothes.” He divined Amiria’s meaning, but pretended otherwise.

Then she laughed, too. “But I have a plan,” she said. Without a word more, she threw off her flax cape and dropped into the water. A few strokes and she had reached the further reef. “It will be all right,” she cried, “I think I can ferry you across on a raft.”

She walked over the sharp rocks as though her feet were impervious, and clambering through a great rent in the vessel’s side, she disappeared.

When next Jack caught sight of her she was perched on the top of the battered poop, whence she called, “I’ll roll a cask over the rocks, and get you across. There’s a big chest in the saloon that belongs to you.”

She disappeared again, and when Jack next saw her, she was rolling a huge barrel with difficulty towards the channel.

“It’s a quarter-full of sand,” she cried, “and when you stand it on its end it is ballasted. You’ll be able to come over quite dry.”

Launching the cask, she pushed it before her as she swam, and soon clambered up beside Scarlett.

“It’s bunged, I see,” said he.

“I did it with a piece of wood,” said she.

Then, booted and spurred, Jack placed himself cross-legged on the cask, and so was ferried across the intervening strip of water.

The main deck of the vessel was washed away, but the forecastle and poop remained more or less intact. The ship, after settling on the rock, had broken her back, and the great timbers, where the copper sheathing and planks had been torn away, stood up like naked ribs supporting nothing.

Walking upon an accumulation of sand and debris, the Maori girl and Jack passed from the hold to what was left of the main deck, and entered the saloon. All the gilding and glory had departed. Here a cabin door lay on the floor, there the remains of the mahogany table lay broken in a corner. A great sea-chest, bearing Scarlett’s name upon its side, stood in the doorway that led to the captain’s cabin. Full of sand, the box looked devoid of worth and uninviting, but Scarlett, quickly taking a piece of board, began to scoop out the sodden contents. As he stooped, a ray of sunlight pierced the shattered poop-deck and illumined his yellow hair. Attracted by the glitter, Amiria put out her hand and stroked his head.

Jack looked up.

“Isn’t that a bit familiar?” he asked.

Amiria laughed. “Not from the girl who saved you. If I hadn’t pulled you out of the water, it might seem a great thing to touch you, but I know you so well that really it doesn’t matter.”

Jack buried his head in the chest. This relationship between preserver and preserved was new to him: he hardly knew what to make of it. But the humour of the situation dawned on him, and he laughed.

“By George, I’m at your mercy,” he said, and, standing up, with his back still towards her, he laughed again. “You’ve appropriated me, just as your people appropriated the contents of this box and the rest of the wreckage. You’ll have to be put in charge of the police for a little thief.” And again his laugh rang through the ruined saloon.

Remarking that the girl made no reply to this sally, he glanced towards her, to find that she had turned her back upon him and was sobbing in a corner. Leaving his task of clearing out the sea-chest, he went towards her, and said, “I’m awfully sorry, Amiria, if I’ve said anything that hurt your feelings. I really didn’t mean to.” He had yet to learn that a Maori can bear anything more easily than laughter which seems to be derisive.

As the girl continued to cry, he placed his hand upon her shoulder. “Really, Amiria, I meant nothing. I would be the last person on earth to hurt your feelings. I don’t forget what I owe you. I can never repay you. If I have been clumsy, I ask your pardon.” He held up her head, and looked into her tear-stained face. “You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”

The girl, her still untutored nature half-hidden beneath a deceptive covering of Pakeha culture, broke into a torrent of Maori quite unintelligible to the white man, but as it ended in a bright smile bursting out from behind her tears, he knew that peace was made.

“Thank you,” he said; “we’re friends again.”

In a moment, she had thrown her arms about him and had burst into a rhapsody in her native tongue, and, though he understood not one word of it, he knew intuitively that it was an expression of passionate affection.

The situation was now more awkward than before. To rebuff her a second time would be to break his word and wound her more deeply than ever. So he let this new burst of feeling spend itself, and waited for her to return to her more civilised self.

When she did, she spoke in English. “You mustn’t judge me by the Pakeha girls you know. My people aren’t like yours – we have different ways. White girls are cold and silent when they feel most – I know them: I went to school with them – but we show our feelings. Besides, I have a claim on you which no white girl has. No white girl would have pulled you out of the surf, as I did. And if I showed I cared for you then, why shouldn’t I show it now? Perhaps the Pakeha would blame me, but I can’t always be thinking of your ritenga. In the town I do as the white woman does; out here I follow the Maori ritenga. But whichever ritenga it is, I love you; and if you love me in return, I am the happiest girl in the kainga.”

Scarlett gave a gasp. “Ah – really, I wasn’t thinking of marrying – yet.”

Amiria smiled. “You don’t understand,” she said. “But never mind; if you love me, that’s all right. We will talk of marrying by and by.”

Scarlett stood astonished. His mind, trained in the strict code of a sternly-proper British parish, failed to grasp the fact that a Maori girl regards matters of the heart from the standpoint of a child of Nature; having her code of honour, it is true, but one which is hardly comprehended by the civilised Pakeha.

Jack felt he was standing upon the dizzy abyss that leads to loss of caste. There was no doubt of Amiria’s beauty, there was no doubt of her passionate affection, but there was a feeling at the back of his mind that his regard for her was merely a physical attraction. He admired every curve of her supple shape, he felt his undying gratitude go out to the preserver of his life, but that was all. Yet a weakness was stealing over him, that weakness which is proportionate usually to the large-heartedness of the individual.

Suddenly relinquishing Amiria’s clasp, he went to the broken port-hole of a dilapidated cabin and looked out upon the incoming sea.

“We must be quick,” he cried, “or we shall be caught by the tide.”

“What matter?” said the girl, lazily. “I have stayed here a whole night when the sea was not as calm as it is now.”