Part 6

Effie gave a suppressed scream. Mr. Lee was speaking to her through the wall. "It is over, my dear--it is over; don't be frightened," he was saying.

"It--what it?" asked Cuthbert, drawing his head under the bed-clothes.

"Our first taste of earthquake," returned his father; "and a pretty sharp one, I fancy."

At this announcement Cuthbert made a speedy remove to his father's bed, and cuddled down in the blankets. Mr. Lee walked round the room and looked out of the window. It was intensely dark; he could see nothing.

"Oh my head!" they heard Audrey saying; "it aches so strangely."

Mr. Lee repeated his consolatory assurance that it was over, and returned to bed, giving way to the natural impulse to lie still which the earthquake seemed to produce. The violence of the headache every one was experiencing made them thankful to lie down once more; but rest was out of the question. In a little while all began again; not a violent shock, as at the first, but a continual quaking.

Mr. Lee got up and dressed. He was afraid to light a lamp, for fear it should be upset; so he persuaded his children to keep in bed, thinking they would be rolled down in the darkness by the heaving of the floor. He groped his way into the outer room, treading upon broken earthenware at every step. This was making bad worse. He went back and lit a match. It was just two o'clock.

Audrey, who heard him moving about, got up also, and began to dress, being troubled at the destruction of the plates and dishes. In ten minutes they were startled by a fearful subterranean roar. Edwin could lie still no longer. He sprang up, and was hurrying on his clothes, when the house shook with redoubled violence. Down came shelves, up danced chairs. The bang and crash, followed by a heavy thud just overhead, made Edwin and his father start back to opposite sides of the room as the roof gave way, and a ton weight of thatch descended on the bed Edwin had just vacated.

"The chimney!" exclaimed Mr. Lee. "The chimney is down!"

The dancing walls seemed ready to follow. Cuthbert was grabbing at his shoes. Mr. Lee ran to the door, thinking of his girls in the other room.

"Audrey! Effie!" he shouted, "are you hurt?"

But the weight of the falling thatch kept the door from opening. He saw the window was bulging outwards. He seized a stick standing in the corner, and tried to wrench away the partition boarding between him and his daughters. But the slight shake this gave to the building brought down another fall of thatch, filling the room with dust. Edwin just escaped a blow from a beam; but the darkness was terrific, and the intense feeling of oppression increased the frantic desire to get out.

"In another moment the whole place will be about our ears!" exclaimed Mr. Lee, forcing the window outwards, and pushing the boys before him into the open. He saw--no, he could not see, but rather felt the whole building was tottering to its fall. "Let the horses loose!" he shouted to Edwin, as he ran round to the front of the house to extricate the girls.

The boom as of distant cannon seemed to fill the air.

"O Lord above, what is it?" ejaculated one of the rabbiters, who had heard the chimney go down, and was hurrying to Mr. Lee's assistance.

Again the heavy roll as of cannon seemed to reverberate along the distant shore.

"It is a man-of-war in distress off Manakau Head," cried a comrade.

"That! man, that is but the echo; the noise is from the hills. There is hot work among the Maoris, maybe. They are game enough for anything. The cannon is there," averred old Hal, the leader of the gang.

"Then it is that Nga-Hepe blowing up the Rota Pah by way of revenge," exclaimed the first speaker.

Edwin had opened the stable-door, and was running after his father. He caught the name Nga-Hepe, and heard old Hal's reply,--

"He buy cannon indeed, when the muru took away his all not three months since!"

Edwin passed the speaker, and overtaking his father in the darkness, he whispered, "The man may be right. Nga-Hepe's wife buried his money by the roadside, by the twin pines, father. I saw her do it."

"Ah!" answered Mr. Lee, as he sprang up the veranda steps and rapped on Audrey's window. As she threw it open a gruff voice spoke to Edwin out of the darkness.

"So it was money Marileha buried?"

But Edwin gave no reply. Mr. Lee was holding out his arms to Erne, who had scrambled upon the window-sill, and stood there trembling, afraid to take the leap he recommended.

"Wrap her in a blanket, Audrey, and slide her down," said their father.

Edwin was on the sill beside her in a moment. The blanket Audrey was dragging forward was seized and flung around the little trembler, enveloping head, arms, and feet. Mr. Lee caught the lower end, and drawing it down, received his "bonnie birdie" in his fatherly arms. Edwin leaped into the darkness within.

"Quick, Audrey, quick, or the house will fall upon us," he urged.

She was snatching at this and that, and tying up a bundle in haste. Edwin pulled out another blanket from the tumbled bed-clothes, and flung it on the window-sill.

"No, no," said Audrey; "I'll jump."

She tossed her bundle before her, and setting herself low on her feet, she gave one hand to her father and the other to the gruff speaker who had startled Edwin in the darkness. They swung her to the ground between them just as the log-built walls began to roll. Edwin was driven back among the ruins, crouching under the bulrush thatch, which lay in heaps by the debris of beam and chimney, snug like a rabbit in its burrow, whilst beam and prop were falling around him. He heard Cuthbert calling desperately, "Look, look! father, father! the world's on fire!"

Edwin tugged furiously at the mass of dry and dusty rushes in which he had become enveloped, working with hands and feet, groping his way to space and air once more. The grand but terrific sight which met his gaze struck him backwards, and he sank confounded on the heap, from which he had scarcely extricated himself.

The sacred Maori hills, which at sunset had reared their snowy crests in majestic calm, were ablaze with fire. The intensity of the glare from the huge pillar of flame, even at so great a distance, was more than eyes could bear. With both hands extended before his face to veil the too terrific light, Edwin lay entranced. That vision of a thousand feet of ascending flame, losing itself in a dome of cloud blacker and denser than the blackness of midnight, might well prelude the day of doom. Unable to bear the sight or yet to shut it out, he watched in dumb amazement. White meteor globes of star-like brilliancy shot from out the pall of cloud in every direction, and shed a blue unearthly light on all around. They came with the roar as of cannon, and the rocks were riven by their fall. Huge fissures, opening in the mountain sides, emitted streams of rolling fire.

Edwin forgot his own peril and the peril of all around, lost in the immensity of the sight. The cries and groans of the rabbiters recalled him. Some had thrown themselves on their faces in a paroxysm of terror. Old Hal had fallen on his knees, believing the end of the world had come.

Edwin heard his father's voice rising calm and clear above the gasping ejaculations and snatches of half-forgotten prayer.

"Would you court blindness? Shut your eyes to the awful sight. It is an eruption of Mount Tarawera. Remember, Hal, we are in the hands of One whom storm and fire obey."

The play of the lightning around the mountain-head became so intense that the glare from the huge column of volcanic fire could scarcely be distinguished. The jagged, forked flashes shot downwards to the shuddering forest, and tree after tree was struck to earth, and fire sprang up in glade and thicket.

"To the open!" shouted Mr. Lee, blindfolding Cuthbert with his handkerchief, and shrouding Effie in the blanket, as he carried her towards the recent clearing.

Cuthbert grasped his father's coat with both hands, and stumbled on by his side. A dull, red spot in the distance marked the place where the charcoal fires were smouldering still, just as Mr. Lee had left them.

He laid his burden down in the midst of the circling heaps, which shed a warmth and offered something of a shelter from the rising blast. It was the safest spot in which he could leave the two; and charging Cuthbert to be a man and take care of his sister, he hurried away to look for Edwin.

With their backs against the sods which covered over the charring wood, the children sat with their arms round each other's necks, huddled together in the blanket, all sense of loneliness and fear of being left by themselves absorbed in the awe of the night.

Inspired by Mr. Lee's example, old Hal had rallied. He had caught Beauty, and was putting him in the cart. Audrey, with her recovered bundle on her arm, with the quiet self-possession which never seemed to desert her, was bringing him the harness from the new-built shed, which was still standing.

The gruff rabbiter, who had been the first to come to Mr. Lee's assistance, followed her for a fork to move the heaps of thatch which hemmed Edwin in. He was crossing to the ruined house with it poised upon his shoulder as Mr. Lee came up. He saw the lightning flash across the steel, and dashed the fork from the man's insensate grasp. The fellow staggered backwards and fell a senseless heap. Star-like rays were shooting from each pointing tine as the fork touched the ground, and lines of fire ran from them in every direction. Edwin saw it also, and seizing a loosened tie-beam, he gave the great heap of thatch before him a tremendous heave, and sent it over. The sodden mass of rush, heavy with frozen snow, broke to pieces as it fell, and changed the running fire to a dense cloud of smoke.

A deep-voiced "Bravo, young un!" broke from the horror-stricken rabbiters, who had gathered round their comrade. But Mr. Lee was before them. He had loosened the man's collar and torn open his shirt. In the play of the cold night air his chest gave a great heave. A sigh of thankfulness ran round the group. The lightning he had so unthinkingly drawn down upon himself had not struck a vital part.

Audrey had dropped her bundle, and was filling her lap with the frozen flags by the edge of the stream.

They dragged him away from the smoke, and Audrey's icy gleanings were heaped upon his burning head. A twitch of the nostrils was followed by a deep groan.

"He'll do," said Hal. "He's a coming round, thank God!"

With a low-breathed Amen, Mr. Lee turned away, for the cloud of smoke his boy had raised completely concealed him. The cheery "All right" which answered his shout for his son put new life into the whole party.

Audrey and her father ran quickly to the end of the house. The great beam of the roof was cleared, and Edwin was cautiously making his way across it on his hands and knees.

"Stand back!" he cried, as he neared the end, and, with a flying leap and hands outspread he cleared the broken wall, and alighted uninjured on the ground.

Mr. Lee caught hold of him, and Audrey grasped both hands.

"I'm all right," he retorted; "don't you bother about me."

A terrible convulsion shook the ground; the men flung themselves on their faces. A splendid kauri tree one hundred and seventy feet high, which shaded the entrance of the valley, was torn up by the roots, as an awful blast swept down the forest glades with annihilating force. The crash, the shock reverberating far and wide, brought with it such a sense of paralyzing helplessness even Mr. Lee gave up all for lost.

They lifted up their heads, and saw red-hot stones flying into the air and rolling down the riven slopes.

"O my little lambs!" groaned Mr. Lee, thinking of the two he had left by the charcoal fires, "what am I doing lying here, and you by yourselves in the open?"

"Get 'em away," said Hal; "the cart is still there. Put 'em all in, and gallop off towards the shore; it's our only safety."

There was too much weight in the old man's words to disregard them. Mr. Lee looked round for his other horse, which had rushed over him at a mad bound when the last tree fell. He saw it now, its coat staring with the fright, stealing back to its companion.

*CHAPTER VII.*

*THE RAIN OF MUD.*

It was about four o'clock in the morning. A new thing happened--a strange new thing, almost unparalleled in the world's history. The eruption had been hitherto confined to the central peak of Tarawera, known among the Maori tribes as Ruawahia; but now with a mighty explosion the south-west peak burst open, and flames came belching forth, with torrents of liquid fire. The force of the earthquake which accompanied it cracked the bed of the fairy lake. The water rushed through the hole upon the subterranean fires, and returned in columns of steam, forcing upwards the immense accumulation of soft warm mud at the bottom of the lake. The whole of this was blown into the air, and for fifteen miles around the mountain fell like rain. The enormous amount of steam thus generated could not find half vent enough through the single hole by which the water had poured in, and blew off the crust of the earth above it.

Showers of rock, cinders, and dust succeeded the mud, lashing the lake to fury--a fury which baffled all imagination. The roar of the falling water through unseen depths beneath the lake, the screech of the escaping steam, the hissing cannonade of stones, created a volley of sound for which no one could account, whilst the mud fell thick and fast, as the snow falls in a blizzard.

The geysers, catching the subterranean rage, shot their scalding spray above the trees. Mud-holes were boiling over and over, and new ones opening in unexpected places. Every ditch was steaming, every hill was reeling. For the space of sixty miles the earth quivered and shook, and a horrid sulphurous smell uprose from the very ground; while around Tarawera, mountain, lake, and forest were enveloped in one immense cloud of steam, infolding a throbbing heart of flame, and ascending to the almost incredible height of twenty-two thousand feet. Beneath its awful shadow the country lay in darkness--a darkness made still more appalling when the huge rock masses of fire clove their way upwards, to fall back into the crater from which they had been hurled.

As Mr. Lee caught his horse by the forelock, the first heavy drops of mud hissed on the frozen ground. In another moment they came pelting thick and fast, burning, blinding, burying everything in their path. The horse broke loose from his master's hand, and tore away to the shelter of the trees. The heavy cart lumbering at his heels alone kept Beauty from following his mate. Hal caught his rein, Edwin seized his head, as the thick cloud of ashes and mud grew denser and blacker, until Edwin could scarcely see his hand before him.

"Get in! get in!" gasped the old rabbiter.

Edwin swung himself upon the horse's back, and rode postilion, holding him in with all his might.

"The sick man first," said Mr. Lee, almost choking with the suffocating smell which rose from the earth. He lifted the poor fellow in his arms, a comrade took him by the feet, and between them they got him into the cart. Hal had resigned the reins to Edwin, and taken his place, ready to pillow the unconscious head upon his knees.

"The Lord have mercy on us!" he groaned.

Mr. Lee groped round for Audrey. Her feet were blistering through her thin boots, as she sank ankle-deep in the steaming slime, which came pouring down without intermission. Her father caught her by the waist and swung her into the back of the cart. Another of the rabbiters got up on the front and took the reins from Edwin, who did not know the way. The other two, with Mr. Lee, caught hold of the back of the cart and ran until they came to their own camp. The tents lay flat; the howling dogs had fled; but their horse, which they had tethered for the night, had not yet broken loose.

Here they drew up, sorely against Mr. Lee's desire, for he could no longer distinguish the glimmer of his charcoal fires, and his heart was aching for his children--his innocents, his babies, as he fondly called them--in that moment of dread. As the rabbiters halted, he stooped to measure the depth of mud on the ground, alarmed lest the children should be suffocated in their sleep; for they might have fallen asleep, they had been left so long.

"Not they," persisted Edwin. "They are not such duffers as to lie down in mud like this; and as for sleep in this unearthly storm--" he stopped abruptly.

"Hark!" exclaimed his father, bending closer to the ground. "Surely that was a 'coo,' in the distance."

Every ear was strained. Again it came, that recognized call for help no colonist who reckons himself a man ever refuses to answer.

Faint as was the echo which reached them, it quivered with a passionate entreaty.

"They are cooing from the ford," cried one. But another contradicted. It was only when bending over the upturned roots of a fallen tree that the feeble sound could be detected, amidst all the fearsome noises raging in the upper air.

The rabbiters felt about for their spades, and throwing out the mud from the cavity, knelt low in the loosened earth. They could hear it now more plainly.

Mr. Lee pressed his ear to the freshly-disturbed mould, and listened attentively. The cry was a cry of distress, and the voice was the voice of his friend.

The rabbiters looked at each other, aghast at the thought of returning to the thick of the storm. It was bad enough to flee before it; but to face the muddy rain which was beating them to the earth, to breathe in the burning dust which came whirling through it, could any one do that and reach the ford alive? Not one dare venture; yet they would not leave the spot.

At break of day they said, "We will go." They were glad of such shelter as the upheaved roots afforded. It was a moment's respite from the blistering, blinding rain. But whilst they argued thus, Mr. Lee was striding onwards to the seven black heaps, in the midst of which he had left his children.

The fires had long gone out; the blackness of darkness was around him. He called their names. He shouted. His voice was thick and hoarse from the choking atmosphere. He stumbled against a hillock. He sank in the drift of mud by its side. A faint, low sob seemed near him; something warm eluded his touch. His arms sought it in the darkness, sweeping before him into empty space. Two resolute small hands fought back his own, and Cuthbert growled out fiercely, "Whoever you are, you shan't touch my Effie. Get along!"

"Not touch your Effie, my game chick!" retorted Mr. Lee, with the ghost of a smile in spite of his despair.

"Oh, it is father! it is father!" they exclaimed, springing into his arms. "We thought you would never come back any more."

He thought they would never stop kissing him, but he got them at last, big children as they were, one under each arm, lifting, dragging, carrying by turns, till he made his way to the cart. Then he discovered why poor Effie hung so helplessly upon him. Both hands had tightly clinched in the shock of the explosion, and her feet dragged uselessly along the ground.

"She turned as cold as ice," said Cuthbert, "and I've cuddled her ever since. Then the mud came on us hot; wasn't that a queer thing?"

They snugged poor Effie in the blanket, and Audrey took her on her lap.

"I'm not afraid now," she whispered, "now we are all together. But I've lost the kitten."

"No," said Audrey; "I saw it after you were gone, scampering up a tree."

Mr. Lee was leaning against the side of the cart, speaking to old Hal.

They did not hear what he was saying, only the rabbiter's reply: "Trust 'em to me. I'll find some place of shelter right away, down by the sea. Here, take my hand on it, and go. God helping, you may save 'em at the ford. Maybe they are half buried alive. It is on my mind it will be a dig-out when you get there. The nearer the mischief the worse it will be. When our fellows see you have the pluck to venture, there'll be some of 'em will follow, sure and sartin."

"We are all chums here," said Mr. Lee, turning to the men. "Lend me that spade and I'm off to the ford. We must answer that coo somehow, my lads."

"We'll do what we can in the daylight," they answered.

"I am going to do what I can in the darkness," he returned, as he shouldered the spade and crossed over for a last look at his children.

Audrey laid her hand in his without speaking.

"You are not going alone, father, when I'm here," urged Edwin, springing off the horse. "Take me with you."

"No, Edwin; your post is here, to guard the others in my absence.--Remember, my darlings, we are all in God's hands, and there I leave you," said Mr. Lee.

He seized a broken branch, torn off by the wind, and using it as an alpenstock, leaped from boulder to boulder across the stream, and was up the other side of the valley without another word.

Cuthbert was crying; the dogs were whining; Audrey bent over Effie and rocked her backwards and forwards.

The cart set off. The mud was up to the axle-tree. It was slow work getting through it.

The rest of the party were busy dragging their tents out of the mire, and loading their own cart with their traps as fast as they could, fumbling in the dark, knee-deep in slush and mud.

As Beauty pulled his way through for an hour or more, the muddy rain diminished, the earth grew hard and dry. The children breathed more freely as the fresh sea-breeze encountered the clouds of burning dust, which seemed now to predominate over the mud.

They could hear the second cart rumbling behind them. The poor fellow who had been struck by the lightning began to speak, entreating his comrades to lay him somewhere quiet. "My head, my head!" he moaned. "Stop this shaking."

By-and-by they reached a hut. They were entering one of the great sheep-runs, where the rabbiters had been recently at work. Here the carts drew up, and roused its solitary inmate. One of the rabbiters came round and told Hal they had best part company.

"There are plenty of bold young fellows among Feltham's shepherds. We are off to the great house to tell him, and we'll give the alarm as we go. He'll send a party off to the hills as soon as ever he hears of this awful business. A lot of us may force a way. We'll take this side of the run: you go the other till you find somewhere safe to leave these children. Wake up the shepherds in every hut you pass, and send them on to meet us at Feltham's. If we are back by daylight we shall do," they argued.

"Agreed," said the old man. "We can't better that. Dilworth and the traps had best wait here. He will sleep this off," he added, looking compassionately at his stricken comrade.

Out came the shepherd, a tall, gentlemanly young fellow, who had passed his "little-go" at Trinity, got himself "ploughed" like Ottley, and so went in for the southern hemisphere and the shepherd's crook.

Pale and livid with the horror of the lone night-watch in his solitary hermitage, he caught the full import of the direful tidings at a word. His bed and his rations were alike at their service. He whistled up his horse and dog, and rode off at a breakneck gallop, to volunteer for the relief-party, and send the ill news a little faster to his master's door, for his fresh horse soon outstripped the rabbiters' cart. Meanwhile old Hal drove onward towards the sea. A shepherd met him and joined company, breathless for his explanation of all the terrors which had driven him from his bed. He blamed Mr. Lee for his foolhardiness in venturing on alone into such danger.