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III
ABOARD A COASTING SCHOONER
Among the many steamers which line the wharves of any fair-sized port in New Zealand, there will generally be found two or three specimens of another class of vessel, less imposing to the eye, but to the fancy perhaps even more endearing—I mean the coasting schooners. Upon a sea renowned for its storms, and off a coast that bristles with dangers, these adventurous and often beautiful little boats—sea-butterflies in appearance, sea-housewives in utility, sea-heroines in pluck—flit continually back and forth, and succeed in carrying, month after month, and with a degree of punctuality surprising under the circumstances, cargoes of commodities, passengers, and news, to the tiny settlements or single homesteads which they serve as flying bridges between solitude and the world.
Towards the close of a golden summer’s evening, now several years ago, one such schooner, the Tikirau (82, Captain Fletcher), pushed and panted
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