"It was the one thing we could not do; it was beyond us all," added Edwin. "It is true, the poles lay ready on the ground and the nails were rusting on the workshop floor, but the skill that could splice a beam or shore up a rafter was not ours. There was nobody about us who could do it."
"I saw what was wanting when I helped to bring your father home, and it set my compass, so I came back to do it. A Jack-of-all-trades like me I knew could make the old place ship-shape in a couple of days, and when the old gentleman and his grandson saw what I was after, their coats were off in a moment, and they have worked beside me with a will all day," replied the captain.
Finding Mr. Lee awake, Mr. Bowen had taken the opportunity to join the quiet council over ways and means which he was holding with his friend.
"Now just look on me as a neighbour, for what is fifty miles in New Zealand? and remember I do not want anybody to tell me this disaster leaves you both in an awkward strait. If there is one thing we have learned in our far-off corner in the Southern Ocean, it is to practise our duty to our neighbour. Dr. Hector bears me out in thinking that after such an eruption as this there will probably be peace in the hills again, perhaps for hundreds of years. No one remembers such an outbreak of subterranean force, no one ever heard of such an one before, and all we can do is to help each other. If a loan will be of use to you to tide over it, just tell me the figure, and I'll write it down. No counting, Mr. Lee, if you please; I tell you the debtor account is all on my side. Those little lads—"
The thud of the captain's hammer drowned his voice.
"The same feeling," he added, "which lends its ring to that hammer points my pen, and you must just remember, while you are lying here, how we all envy you your quartette."
They could hear the merry laughter from the group in the veranda, where Audrey was singing,—
"What lads ere did our lads will do;
Were I a lad, I would follow him too."
Effie gravely expostulated with her sister. "I really do think, Audrey, we ought to say now what our lads have done."
"Ah! but I fear they have something more to do," cried Edwin, suddenly catching his little sister round the waist, not in play but in panic fear, as he heard the trampling as of many horses crossing the bush. He whirled her into the house and pushed Audrey after her, as the captain ceased nailing to listen.