Try as Edwin would he was not strong enough to lift the board from the ground. The old man saw it too, and pushed him aside impatiently.
"See what you have brought on us all," he said, or rather muttered.
"I could not help it," repeated Edwin bitterly; "but I don't mind anything you say to me, Hal, for you have stuck by father and cared for him, when he would have died but for you. Don't despair; I'll go and look for Lawford."
"You!" returned Hal contemptuously; "you'll lose yourself."
But Edwin, who thought he could guess where Lawford was to be found, could not be turned from his purpose.
"Can't I cross the bush once more, for father's sake," he asked, "whilst I have got my horse?" He called up Beauty and told him to go home. Edwin found the whare by the lake deserted. After his abrupt departure with Ottley, Nga-Hepé had roused himself to assist his father-in-law in making an equal distribution of the food; and then they gathered the men around the fire and held a council.
With two such leaders as Nga-Hepé and Kakiki, they reached the wise decision to seek a safer place beyond the anger of the gods, and build a temporary kainga, or unwalled village, where food was to be obtained, where the fern still curled above the ground, and the water gushed pure from the spring. The men of the pah yielded as they listened to the eloquent words of the aged chief; and though they passed the night in speechifying until the malcontents were overawed, the morning found them hard at work digging out their canoes.
As Edwin approached the lake he saw the little fleet cautiously steering its way through the mud-shoals and boulders towards the river.
The wind was moaning through the trees, and the unroofed whare was filling with the rains.
While Edwin surveyed the desolate scene, he perceived a small canoe coming swiftly towards his side of the lake. He watched it run aground amongst the bent and broken reeds, swaying hither and thither in the stormy wind. Suddenly he observed a small, slight figure wading knee-deep through the sticky slime. It was coming towards him.