Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/23

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Letters from New Zealand
7

stuff to the yacht before breakfast. I had already completed two trips to the yacht, and was leaving the ship's side for a third, when Bishop Selwyn looked over the bulwarks and called down to me: "Stay at the yacht till I send for you." As we pushed off I said to the men, "What does the Bishop mean?" They replied that they could not understand his order, as he needed neither them or the boat, so being certain there was some mistake, when we got to the yacht, I bade the men get their breakfast and then row me back to the ship. Meanwhile, noticing the perfect order of everything on board the yacht, I said to an old man-o'-war's-man, one of the crew, that I thought the vessel looked as trim and neat as a Navy boat. His reply was characteristic: "Do you know our Bishop, sir?" 'Yes," I said, "a little." "Well," said he, "in my opinion he's just thrown away, ought to be a Captain of a fust-rate frigate, he ought. Why, sir, if he come on deck and seen so much as a rope's end out of place, he'd as soon chuck me overboard as look at me; thrown away he is, in my opinion." Feeling certain there was more to come, I put a note of interrogation in my eye: "Why, sir, not long ago, over them hills yonder, we went with the yacht into Akaroa harbour, a fine bit o' water, landlocked, but not much good to the New Settlement, being a how 'tis shut off from the mainland by the hills. There was several whaling vessels there at anchor, two Frenchies. and one Yankee, and an English vessel from Hobarton; we knowed the place, as we had bin there before, and the Bishop, he wanted to visit the wife of a settler, that wasn't well. So we rowed him to the beach, and waited with the boat, while he went up a little way to a house and went in. We was a-