“Taihoa (wait a bit), old chap,” interrupts Dick, with his fingers to his ears to illustrate histrionically the pain such rapid questioning is giving him. “Why, Claude, you’re getting as bad as your sister. Here’s a letter for you, which you needn’t apologise for opening at tea. I myself beg to move that we do now partake of what our black brethren here call ‘kai,’ alias ‘tucker.’”
The little circle now gathered round the white-clothed table consists of an English lady, her son and daughter, and a friend,—a young man from northern Ireland. They had left the old country together, some four years before the time when our story opens, to settle upon a farm in New Zealand.
The youth from the Emerald Isle had, some time before leaving his native land, determined in his own mind that as long as he could settle down close to his friend Claude’s pretty sister, he would remain perfectly contented anywhere. Our friends had not been “out” long enough to feel homesick; the many novelties of life in a new country had not yet lost their charms. The rough life was almost like one long picnic. The lovely climate made up for many hardships; and if it would rain a little less at times, and if a market could be depended upon for fowls when fattened and cheese when made, the life of a New Zealand farmer was one, they all agreed, to be envied.
Claude, to the surprise of his mother, quietly finished his tea before opening the letter. There it lay by his plate in tantalising proximity to her hand, containing, perhaps, news of that poor brother of hers,—long estranged from all his family through no real fault of his or hers, to wander in a barbarous country, and die at last in the wilderness he had braved so long. Tea is cleared away, Dick and Mollie go out into the verandah,—to look at the stars probably,—and in the room the purring of the “harmless necessary cat” upon the hearthrug, and the click click of Mrs. Angland’s knitting needles, are the only sounds. Claude has taken a seat at the lamplit table, and lays the envelope, marked O. H. M. S., and bearing the Queensland postmark, before him upon the red cloth.
He feels instinctively his uncle’s presence in that letter. There is no particular sign by which an ordinary observer could tell it from a letter of ordinary importance. Yet Claude knows, and it puzzles him to think how he knows it, that an answer to his dreams is before him. The truth of the theory of animism never appeared clearer to him than at present. The envelope is addressed to Claude Angland, Care of the Superintendent of Police, Auckland, N.Z. Below this direction is a note to the effect that the writer will be glad if the aforesaid Claude Angland can be found without delay, and handed the enclosed letter and packet. Inside the envelope is a brief note from some official at Cairns, informing Claude that a small packet, enclosed, having been brought to the station of a Mr. Giles by the late explorer’s black boy, that gentleman had forwarded it to the writer, who took the present means of sending it to Mr. Angland, hoping the simple address, as copied from the packet, would find him. A few words expressive of the regret the writer, in common with all colonists, felt at the loss of such an able explorer as Dr. Dyesart closed the letter.
The packet referred to by the unknown correspondent at Cairns, whose hieroglyphic signature looked more like the shadow of a delirious spider than the name of a human being, now attracted Claude’s attention. It was about the size of a large walnut, and its outer covering consisted of a piece of soiled linen rag, tightly bound with fine fishing line. In irregular and almost illegible blue-black characters, the same address as that upon the envelope had been scrawled upon it by aid of an indelible ink pencil. The covering removed,—Claude saw at once it had at one time formed part of the lining of a coat,—an empty revolver cartridge was discovered, tightly plugged at one end with wood, the joints and cap-end being smeared over with a kind of resinous, dark-coloured gum.
Claude’s strong but trembling fingers are not long in removing the wooden stopper, and in his hands is a carefully folded piece of paper, which he recognizes on opening it as a leaf from a sketching block. The same handwriting that had attracted the young man’s attention upon the linen wrapper of the packet has covered one side of the opened paper before him.
With head on hand, Claude sits without moving aught save his eyes, poring over the letters. At last, half turning in his chair, his voice pitched in a slightly higher key than usual, he speaks:—
“Mother, here is my summons. I knew I should get one. Come and see poor uncle’s letter.”
Mrs. Angland rises quickly, and stooping over the table, her right hand on her son’s broad shoulder, gazes with filling eyes at the well-known writing on that crumpled paper lying there. The writing is small and somewhat obliterated, and from the varying character and style of the different sentences the same have evidently been written at intervals. One could easily imagine that a wounded man, who required to rest often from his task, would write such a letter.