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Chapter I.
IN THE WAITEMATA HARBOUR.
“And did He, from the cloud and wind, prepare
A resting place for thee, fair ocean dove,
And did He, thro’ the gates thrown wide above,
Shower thee with sunny benedictions, where
Thou liest in the ocean’s arms, like Love,
Blinding her Lover with her amorous hair?”
It was the early morning of a summer day, and our ship, the New Zealand S.S. Company’s “Ruapehu” was lying at ease off Auckland, having anchored in the dim hours of dawn.
A faint haze, like a bridal gossamer, lightly veiled the city and its environs, built round three sides of the harbour; the smaller hills, all extinct volcanoes, rose from among the clustering red and white houses like green jade bosses in a wondrous bowl of Indian jewelled pottery, and Rangitoto, the lonely sentinel, grim even though wearing the same gentle colour as his more gregarious fellows, stood apart from the land like an emerald in a setting of turquoise sea.
We had come to the end of our six weeks’ voyage, and I had felt delighted on rising that morning to find that we were not yet alongside the wharf, though I did not try to explain to myself the reason for my reluctance to land. But as we leaned over the side, gazing at the lovely picture before us, my friend, Colonel Deane, softly quoted the lines so evidently inspired by it, and suddenly I knew that saying good-bye to him would spoil all the pleasure of novelty to which I had been so gaily looking forward.
I regarded Colonel Deane as an instance of the Goddess Fortune’s rare justice, believing that She had sent him upon this voyage as a direct reward for my self-sacrifice in undertaking it. For I had not wanted to come.
When my guardian’s old friend, Captain Greendays, R.N., had told him that he was taking his wife out to New Zealand for a few months the idea at
