CHAPTER XI
AN INTERLUDE
“A man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish of plain mutton with turnips, and have no leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and institution of eating; when he shall confess a perturbation of mind, inconsistent with the purposes of the grace, at the presence of venison or turtle.”—Charles Lamb.
On January the 31st we went down to the hut, photographing on the way. Next day Fyfe had to go over the Ball Pass with a Government official from Wellington, and Hodgkins returned down the Tasman Valley to the Hermitage, leaving my wife and me alone in the hut. Bad weather came on, and one night a howling nor’-wester, accompanied by heavy rain and the crashing of thunder, shook the hut till we feared for its safety. Then it cleared, and one fine day two sun-bonneted young ladies—the Misses Williams, of Wellington—came up from the Hermitage with Fyfe. A relative of the late Lord Randolph Churchill—a geologist and a traveller—also made his appearance, and we showed him round. He was charmed with the surroundings, and intensely interested in the keas, who happened to be in rare form. Then we had more bad weather, and were all cooped up in the hut for two or three days. But these days were among the jolliest we had ever spent in camp. The old tin hut rang with laughter till far into the night.
The Sun-bonnet Brigade.
On The Upper Tasman.
When first we saw those two sun-bonnets looming large above two immaculate blouses invading our domain, we were not at all assured as to how we, with our rough-and-ready camp ways, would get on with them. The owners of the sun-bonnets, however, proved to be real sports, and all went merry as a marriage bell. Camp is just about the best place possible for ascertaining, in a minimum space of time, the character of a man or of a woman, and the Ball hut in those pre-luxurious days was especially a test. We had been mates with some queer characters under that tin roof. There were times when the milk of human kindness had to take the place of tinned milk, and when a man pretended that he was not hungry in order that his mate might get a bigger helping. There were other times—of rare occurrence luckily—when selfishness got the upper hand, and one had to trust one’s indignation in the keeping of a grim silence. But of all the parties with whom we had camped there, never had we seen a jollier nor a more kindly one than that which met around the rickety old deal table in the first days of February 1897.
The hut on the Tasman lies at the foot of a spur of the mighty Aorangi. Above it, far up the hillside, grow masses of mountain-lilies and daisies, and little thickets of the most exquisite ribbon-wood, the very ideal flower for a New Zealand bridal bouquet. In front of the hut towers the great moraine, above whose stony ridge, and far beyond, rise the Liebig and the Malte Brun Ranges. At sunset the delicate colours of these mountains are indescribably lovely, outlined, as they often are, against a primrose sky deepening into amber.
Around the hut lie multitudes of tins—tins once containing all sorts of comestibles, from the humble boiled mutton to Stewart Island oysters—and bottles of all sizes and shapes. These afford great amusement to the keas, who go poking about them incessantly, and hold great corroberees over any new discovery.
The hut was of corrugated iron, lined, in those days, with Willesden roofing-paper, and paved with large flat stones from the moraine. This was done by some members of our party, years before, on a wet day, and we noticed in the visitors’ book a special vote of thanks for the same proposed by Harper, seconded by Fitzgerald, and carried nem. con., Zurbriggen being in the chair. On these stones the table rested somewhat unsteadily, and had to be carefully humoured, unless you wished to empty your pannikin of tea over your neighbour or yourself.
For seats, there were a narrow cross-legged stool, which tipped up on the slightest provocation, and a locker, in which all the provisions were kept. If you ever go to the hut, sit on the stool. It is maddening when you have finally settled down on the locker, and are assuaging the pangs of hunger, for some unfeeling person to ask you to get up and let them open the locker, as the pepper is not on the table. For beds, read bunks, four of them in the larger room, and the same number in the smaller, which was the ladies’ bedroom, boudoir, drawing-room, and anything else necessary. A canvas curtain divided the two rooms. It was weighted with a heavy piece of wood which had a nasty habit of banging against a new chum’s ankles, and causing naughty words to be spoken.
People came and went in an erratic way. One had often either a feast or a famine of company. There have been times when I, a solitary occupant, have fled from the lonely hut to the Hermitage, craving for the company of my fellow-beings. There have been other occasions upon which the housing problem could only be solved by an overflow from the men’s into the ladies’ quarters. Such predicaments, awkward in civilization, are of little moment in the more primitive existence that one leads in the unexplored wilds. One incident I well remember, recalling Stevenson’s experience at the auberge of Bouchet St. Nicolas, where, after uncorking his bottle of Beaujolais and partaking of a frugal meal, he found the sleeping-room furnished with two beds, and, while he got into the one, he was abashed to find a young man and his wife and child in the act of climbing into the other. However, he kept his eyes to himself, and knew nothing of the woman except that she had beautiful arms and seemed no whit embarrassed by his appearance. One can easily imagine that to the sensitive Stevenson the situation was more trying than to the pair; for, as he truly says, “a pair keep each in other countenance; it is the single gentleman who has to blush.” In my own particular experience I knew not even if the woman had beautiful arms. I let the pair get into their bunks before I climbed into mine, and next morning crept out again in the cold grey dawn, before they were yet astir.
In the olden days there were no patent oil-stoves in the Ball Hut; there was not even a chimney to it, and the cooking was done outside over an old nail-can with little squares cunningly cut out of it, to give a sufficient draught and at the same time to conserve the fuel. Firewood, consisting of the green stunted Alpine vegetation, was rather scarce, and it was never wasted. All sorts of dishes used to be produced, from toffee to stewed keas.
We had a capital breakfast one morning in which some of our inquisitive friends formed the pièce de résistance. And to every meal what appetites we brought, born of the keen pure air and free life! Even on the dull days, when there was a clearing in the mist, we were out and about. The girls were “gone” on glissading, and used to toil up the 200 feet odd of moraine in front of the hut for the pleasure of coming down again. And they did the descent in style, ice-axe as rudder and anchor, and wild cries of delight accompanying the performance.
One day especially is a red-letter day in our memories. The aroma of boiled mutton even now rises as I recall the fun we managed to squeeze into those fourteen hours. When we opened our eyes that morning there was a persistent drizzle on the roof that meant a wet day, so we decided to have a late breakfast, and turned over—like the sluggard—to sleep again. Breakfast was laid at half-past ten, and after a light luncheon at three, so as not to interfere with the serious matter of dinner, we sallied out—in a pause between the showers—to do a little climbing.
Rain drove us back to the hut in company with a number of keas, who followed in our wake, hopping over the ice hummocks in a delightfully comical way. On regaining the hut we had afternoon tea at half-past six! Then we all sat in committee on the leg of mutton. The length of time it should be cooked, the manner of cooking, and the utensil to be used, were all eagerly discussed. At last, about half-past seven, the mutton was duly consigned to our largest billy, and in a little while it was boiling merrily outside over the nail-can that formed our stove. Fyfe, who was appointed cook-in-chief, donned his waterproof and went out every now and then to stoke up and report progress to the committee.
To do honour to our feast, the ladies had “dressed” for dinner, and their gay dressing-gowns over their ordinary costumes looked quite festive in the light of all the candles we could muster. Meanwhile we played whist and various other games. We even descended to poker. But, whatever he may be able to do in London or New York, man cannot live by cards alone on the Great Tasman Glacier, and there came a time when we craved for something more satisfying. It was half-past ten, however, before Fyfe, after a momentary dash into the darkness and the driving rain, returned to inform us “it” felt soft. There was only one “it” in our minds at that hour. Many hands made light work, and, very soon, the steaming leg of mutton, in a tin plate much too small for its ample proportions, was being carved with a very blunt knife and handed round.
And how we enjoyed that supper! Had anyone told those girls a week or two before that they would dispose of two helpings of boiled mutton off cold tin plates at half-past ten o’clock at night, he would have been laughed to scorn. But we all agreed that it was the very nicest mutton we had ever tasted, and after our living so long on tinned meats it was good. I am afraid we did not take time—as we should have done—to say a grace before that meal; for, as Charles Lamb has well said, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be preceded by a grace. I once attended one of the old London Companies’ annual dinners, at which we had turtle soups, and fine fishes, and game, and wines old and of rare vintage; and an archbishop said a grace before meat and a singer sang a grace after meat; but the taste of these choice viands has long since been forgotten, while the flavour of our simple mutton supper does not fade, but rather is intensified with the passing years. And the latter was, surely, the more worthy of the graces than the former.
After supper we played poker in the most reckless way for matches, and the ladies, novices in the game, lost and won in the most charmingly irresponsible way.
And then—after midnight—it suddenly occurred to us that we ought to go to bed. Loath to depart, we lingered until there was no excuse to stay longer. I fancy we all felt sorry to write “Finis” to such a happy day. But at last the lights were out, and in spite of the mutton, all slept soundly till morning, when the young bloods of the kea household came home with the milk, as was their wont, and roused us from our peaceful slumbers.