"The sky is black with clouds above my daughter's head; her people have deserted her—all but Ronga. Would they cut off the race of Hepé? Some miscreant met the young lord in the bush, and tried to push him down a mud-hole; but he sprang up a tree, and so escaped. Take him to school as he wills. When I go down to the bank I shall see him there. It is good that he should learn. The letter has saved my child."
CHAPTER VI.
MIDNIGHT ALARMS.
After his return home, Edwin felt as if mud and rain had taken possession of the outside world. The rivulet in the valley had become a raging torrent. All the glamour of the woods was gone. The fern-covered hills looked gaunt and brown. The clumps of flax and rush bent their flattened heads low in the muddy swamp before the piercing night winds. The old trees in the orchard were shattered, and their broken branches, still cumbering the ground, looked drear and desolate. The overgrowth of leaf and stalk presented a mass of decaying vegetation, dank and sodden.
One chill May morning brought a heavy snow, veiling the calm crests of the majestic hills with dazzling whiteness, becoming more intense and vivid as their drapery of mist and storm-cloud blackened. All movement seemed absorbed by the foaming cascades, tearing down the rifts and gullies in the valley slope. Every sign of life was restricted to a ghostly-looking gull, sated with dead rabbit, winging its heavy flight to the blue-black background of dripping rock.
But in this England of the Southern Seas the winter changes as it changes in the British Isles. Sharp, frosty nights succeeded. The ground grew crisp to the tread. The joyous work in the woods began. Mr. Lee went daily to his allotment with axe on shoulder and his boys by his side. His skill in woodcraft was telling. Many of the smaller trees had already fallen beneath his vigorous stroke, when the rabbiters—who glean their richest harvest in the winter nights—reappeared. They were so used to the reckless ways of the ordinary colonist—who cuts and slashes and burns right hand and left until the coast is clear—that Mr. Lee's methodical proceedings began to interest them. His first step was to clear away the useless undergrowth and half-grown trees, gaining room for charcoal fires, and for stacks of bark which his boys were stripping from the fallen trunks. His roving neighbours promised to leave their traps and snares, and help him to bring down the forest giants which he was marking for destruction.
One June evening, as the Lees were returning from a hard day's work, they passed the rabbiters going out as usual to begin their own. A slight tremor in the ground attracted the attention of both parties. As they exchanged their customary good-night, one of the rabbiters observed there was an ugly look about the sky.
The boys grumbled to each other that there was an ugly look about the ground. Although thousands of little brown heads and flopping ears were bobbing about among the withered thistle-stalks, thousands more were lying dead behind every loose stone or weedy tuft.
The ghoul-like gulls were hovering in increasing numbers, some already pouncing on their prey and crying to their fellows wheeling inland from the distant shore. No other sound disturbed the silence of the bush. The sense of profound repose deepened as they reached their home. To Mr. Lee it seemed an ominous stillness, like the lull before the storm; but in the cheerful light of his blazing fire he shook off the feeling.
The weary boys soon went to bed. For the present they were sleeping in the same room as their father, who slowly followed their example.