Part 8

A strange, unnatural kind of twilight, a something weird and ghastly, belonging to neither day nor night, seemed to pervade the land, and shed a sepulchral gleam across the men's pale faces. Audrey pushed open the door of the hut and beckoned to the sailors to enter.

They gathered round her, shaking the salt water from their dripping garments, and uttering broken exclamations of surprise and thankfulness. She saw a boy in the midst of the group limping painfully. As she hurried up to his assistance, she discovered that it was neither Edwin nor Cuthbert; but he grasped her outstretched hand so thankfully she could not withdraw it. There was a wildness in the alarm with which she began to ask them for her brothers the men could not mistake. They gave the forlorn girl an almost unanimous assurance that they knew nothing of her brothers. For the men clinging to the rope had not seen the boys in the cart. "But," added one heartily, "we'll protect you, for there is wild work afoot somewhere to-night. We have heard the cannonading, broadside after broadside, or we should not have gone rock-hunting in the dark. It is fool's work--you can give it no better name--coasting along a dangerous shore, with a sky too black for moon or star to penetrate."

"Yon's the little maid who fed the beacon," said another. "I saw her move across the front of the fire and throw her sticks upon it. God bless her! Every minute I thought we should see her blown over into the sea."

"Not me, not me," interposed poor Audrey.

Getting free in her desperation, and pressing between the sailors, she ran towards Beauty, who was slowly lagging round to the back of the hut.

"If my brothers are missing," she cried, "they must have been washed out of the cart." She clasped her hands before her eyes to shut out the sight of the drowning boys which imagination was picturing, and so failed to perceive the two weary heads leaning against the side of the cart. It was but a moment of agony, one of the unfounded alarms which always cluster round a real danger and follow the shock of dread like its shadow.

"Edwin, Edwin! where are you?" she cried.--"Cuthbert, Cuthbert! come to me!"

The rocks gave back the hollow echo, "Come to me!"

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."

Even Effie answered, "Oh no, we must not."

"Then," continued Audrey, still more earnestly. "what are we going to do?"

"That is a poser," retorted Edwin. "The storm brought down the ti tree, and that gave us the cabbage. The gale is dying. We had better take a walk round and look about us. We may find something else. Heaven's gate is open still, Audrey. We must bear this as patiently as we can, and help will come."

"Yes, dears," she answered, "if you can be patient here a little longer, I think there is something I can do to help us all."

"You, Audrey?" exclaimed her brothers; "you are as white as a sheet. Let us do; we are twice as strong as you are."

"Strength is not everything," she returned quietly. "There are some things which only a girl can do. Now this is my plan. If Edwin will walk with me to the central station, I will ask Mrs. Feltham to let me help her. I will go for so much a day, and then at night when she pays me I may persuade her to sell me some flour and meat and tea, food enough for us all, dears."

"Go out like a charwoman, Audrey!" exclaimed Edwin, in amazement. "Is that what you mean?"

"Well, yes," returned Audrey, in a considering tone, "it certainly would be the same thing, if you like to call it so."

"'Of old men called a spade a spade,'" grumbled Edwin. "I like to give things their plain names, and then we know where we are."