on our own, an’ keep her for ourselves?’ Well, she was under fore an’ main torps’ls (’twas that what done it), an’ first thing was, to get that main torps’l down. God! that was a business—aye, that was a bit of work! There she was, bangin’ about, an’ there was we, bein’ banged—flesh and blood gettin’ knocked clean out of us in lumps, though we knew nothin’ about it till next day. Every minute, thinks I, ‘We’ll never live to see another’; but hows’ever, down comes the blessed sail at last, an’ then, what with the lift o’ the sea, an’ a lick o’ wind that shifted her round, she started to right herself. An’ now here comes in the cream o’ the thing. We was beginnin’ to move a bit smart about her, and heart’n’ each other up, tellin’ what a good deal we’d made of it, when, all of a sudden, blessed if a man’s head don’t pop up from below, with the rest of him followin’! an’ then another, and another, an’ another, with all the rest o’ them—until there was both our watches out on deck, and both full, mind you, not a hand missin’! Bit of a sell, eh?—How’s the wind? Southerly draw, ain’t it?”
It must have been on the following night that we anchored opposite a great gully, or river-gorge, with a little native settlement at the mouth of it, and a small church, that, beside that great gash in the hills, and by the widespread sea, had somehow an air of facing all alone tremendous odds. The early mists were still upon the mountains, and the dew upon the seaside turf, when we landed our cargo next morning, and returned to the Tikirau. But we had barely got aboard before we noticed, streaming from the mouth of the gully, a long procession of people, some riding, others walking,
