Contents

  1. [IN THE MOUNTAIN GORGE]
  2. [THE WHARE BY THE LAKE]
  3. [A RIDE THROUGH THE BUSH]
  4. [THE NEW HOME]
  5. [POSTING A LETTER]
  6. [MIDNIGHT ALARMS]
  7. [THE RAIN OF MUD]
  8. [A RAGING SEA]
  9. [NOTHING TO EAT]
  10. [THE MAORI BOY]
  11. [WIDESPREAD DESOLATION]
  12. [EDWIN'S DISCOVERY]
  13. [FEEDING THE HUNGRY]
  14. [RAIN AND FLOOD]
  15. [WHO HAS BEEN HERE?]
  16. [LOSS AND SUSPICION]
  17. [EDWIN IN DANGER]
  18. [WHERO TO THE RESCUE]
  19. [MET AT LAST]
  20. [JUST IN TIME]
  21. [THE VALLEY FARM]

DOING AND DARING.

CHAPTER I.

IN THE MOUNTAIN GORGE.

It was a glorious autumn day, when the New Zealand bush was at its loveliest—as enchanting as if it truly were the fairy ground of the Southern Ocean; yet so unlike every European forest that weariness seemed banished by its ceaseless variety. Here the intertwining branches of majestic trees, with leaves of varied hue, shut out the sky, and seemed to roof the summer road which wound its devious track towards the hills; there a rich fern-clad valley, from which the murmuring sound of falling water broke like music on the ear. Onwards still a little farther, and an overgrown creek, gently wandering between steep banks of rich dark fern and graceful palm, came suddenly out of the greenwood into an open space, bounded by a wall of rock, rent by a darkling chasm, where the waters of the creek, tumbling over boulder stone and fallen tree, broadened to a rushing river. Along its verge the road continued, a mere wheel-track cut in the rock, making it a perilous crossing, as the driver of the weekly mail knew full well.

His heavy, lumbering coach was making its way towards it at that moment, floundering through the two feet deep of mud which New Zealanders call a bush road. The five poor horses could only walk, and found that hard work, while the passengers had enough to do to keep their seats.

Fortunately the coach was already lightened of a part of its load, some fares with which it started having reached their destination at the last stopping-place. The seven remaining consisted of a rough, jolly-looking, good-humoured fellow, bound for the surveyors' camp among the hills; an old identity, as New Zealanders call a colonist who has been so long resident in the land of his adoption that he has completely identified himself with it; and a newly-arrived settler with his four children, journeying to take possession of a government allotment in the Waikato district.

With the first two passengers long familiarity with the discomforts of bush travelling had grown to indifference; but to Mr. Lee and his family the experience was a trying one, as the coach swayed heavily to this side and that, backwards and forwards, up and down, like a boat on a rough sea. More than once Mr. Lee's little girls were precipitated into the arms of their vis-à-vis, or bumped backwards with such violence a breakage seemed inevitable; but which would suffer the most, the coach or its passengers, was an open question.

Any English-made vehicle with springs must have been smashed to pieces; but the New Zealand mail had been constructed to suit the exigencies of the country. With its frame of iron and sides of leather, it could resist an amount of wear and tear perfectly incredible to Mr. Lee. He sat with an arm round each of his daughters, vainly trying to keep them erect in their places. Their two brothers bobbed recklessly from corner to corner, thinking nothing of the bruises in their ever-increasing merriment when the edge of Erne's broad-brimmed straw hat went dash into the navvy's eyes, or Audrey's gray dust-cloak got entangled in the buckles of the old identity's travelling-bag.