"He thinks I am running away from him; if he fancies I am afraid, he makes a mistake, that is all," reflected Edwin, racing onward.
But where was Whero? A run of half-a-mile brought Edwin back to the river-brink again, but nearer to the spot where the canoe was upset. Whero had recovered it, and was looking about for his friend. Edwin could see his tiny "dug-out" zigzagging round the boulders, and still rushing seawards, as he paused to reconnoitre a leafless bush on the water's edge, which seemed to bear a fancied resemblance to the figure of a crouching boy. Edwin pulled off his jacket and waved it high in the air. He threw up his arms. He shouted. He did everything he could think of to attract Whero's attention. But his back was towards him. All his signals seemed in vain, but not quite; for the kaka was swinging high up among the top-most branches of an enormous willow near the scene of the upset. From such an elevation it espied Edwin, and recognizing Whero's jacket, which he was waving flag-like over his head, it swooped down upon him with an angry scream, and seizing the jacket by the sleeve, tugged at it with all its might. If Whero could not distinguish the shout of his friend from the rush of the water, the doleful "Hoké" of his bird could not be mistaken, and Edwin soon saw him rowing swiftly towards them.
"What for?" demanded Whero; "what for go bother about a thief? What is he good for? Throw him over, and have done with him."
"Ah!" retorted Edwin, "but we never should have done with him. The life we had let him lose would have lain like a terrible weight on us, growing heavier and heavier as we too drew nearer to the grave. For Christ himself refuses to lift the murderer's load. But you do not know; you are not to blame, as I should have been."
The overmastering feelings which prompted Edwin to say this shot from his eyes and quivered in his voice, and Whero, swayed by a force he could not understand, reaching him only by words, yielded to the influence of the light thus vibrating from soul to soul.
"Yes," he said, reflectively, "there is something greater than killing, and I want the greatest things."
CHAPTER XX.
JUST IN TIME.
"What an ass Lawford must have been not to put on father's belt! If he had, we could not have got it away from him," said Edwin, as the two seated themselves on the sunny bank and unpacked the swag. Whero took out the precious bag, slung it round his own neck, and concealed it under his shirt. Edwin claimed his father's belt, and as he shook off the mud and dirt which had accumulated upon it during its sojourn in Lawford's pocket, he saw why the man had been unable to wear it. In his haste to get it off Mr. Lee whilst he lay unconscious, he had not waited to unbuckle it, for fear Hal should see him. He had taken out his pocket-knife and ripped it open. This helped to get it into his possession, and helped him to lose it too. The apparent gain was nothing but the earnest-money of the self-sought calamity which drove him a beggar from the gangway of the San Francisco mail before many months were over.
As the boys weighed the weight of coin in their hands, they nodded significantly at each other. No wonder it wore Lawford's old pockets into holes before the end of his journey. Reluctant as he must have been, he was forced to buy his swag at one or other of the would-be townships, with their fine names, which dot the lower reaches of the bush road. They turned the poor unlucky bit of oil-cloth over and over with contempt and loathing, and finally kicked it into the river. Edwin folded his father's belt together, and once more resuming his own jacket—to the great satisfaction of the kaka—he changed the belt into a breastplate, and buttoned his jacket tightly over it.