them all! The naked, newborn radiance full upon her white hull, and broad upon the mainsail under which she was riding, there she swam upon the water like a shining sea-bird, with one gold-white wing uplifted, the quivering water-lights, blue and silver, playing upon her beautiful bows, and the gleaming glassiness below her faultless mirror. The white whaleboat, with her exquisite lines, was the worthy daughter of so beautiful a mother. I never could watch her leave the schooner’s side without appreciating afresh that old imagination of the Maoris when first they saw the pakeha frigate with her pinnace—that the one was the parent-bird and the other the fledgling.
Three loads ashore, and then we were off again; and by noon were rounding a second great cape, East Cape, off which, at a little distance, lay a precipitous and barren islet, a mere, but mighty, rock. A zigzag path toiled up it, and on the top appeared the conspicuous white building of a lighthouse, with some lower roofs huddled beside. In our small vessel, and with the breeze then blowing, we were able easily to pass between the mainland and the rock, and, as we slid close by, “Give ’em a good-day,” somebody suggested; “it’s a lonely life, that!” Every one of us, except the man at the wheel, accordingly seized something—anything that was handy, from one’s neighbour’s cap to the dinnercloth—and waved it with hearty goodwill; and immediately, as if by magic, answering white signals broke from the watchful windows and doors above.
With the glass we could pick out the forms of women and little children; one mother had a baby
