A boat-load of supplies was sent up from Mr. Mitford's stores. These consisted of flour, sugar, tea, molasses, and bacon, together with half a sheep. It was arranged that while the building was going on Wilfrid and the two Grimstones should occupy the bed-room, and that the natives should sleep in the kitchen. The Grimstones had brought with them the bedding and blankets with which they had provided themselves on board ship, while Wilfrid took possession of the bed formerly occupied by the young settler. Mr. Mitford himself came over next morning and gave general instructions as to the best way of setting about the building of the house. He had already advised that it should be of the class known as log-huts.
"They are much cooler," he said, "in the heat of summer than frame-huts, and have the advantage that in the very improbable event of troubles with the natives they are much more defensible. If you like, afterwards, you can easily face them outside and in with match-board and make them as snug as you like; but, to begin with, I should certainly say build with logs. My boy will tell you which trees you had better cut down for the work. It will take you a week to fell, lop, and roughly square them, and this day week I will send over a team of bullocks with a native to drag them up to the spot."
The work was begun at once. Half a dozen axes, some adzes, and other tools had been brought up with the supplies from the stores, and the work of felling commenced.
Wilfrid would not have any trees touched near the hut.
"There are just enough trees about here," he said, "and it would be an awful pity to cut them down merely to save a little labour in hauling. It will not make any great difference whether we have the team for a week or a fortnight."
Wilfrid and the two young Englishmen found chopping very hard work at first, and were perfectly astounded at the rapidity with which the Maoris brought the trees down, each of them felling some eight or ten before the new hands had managed to bring one to the ground.
"I would not have believed it if I had not seen it," Bob, the elder of the two brothers, exclaimed as he stood breathless with the perspiration streaming from his forehead, "that these black chaps could have beaten Englishmen like that! Half a dozen strokes and down topples the tree, while I goes chop, chop, chop, and don't seem to get any nearer to it."
"It will come in time," Wilfrid said. "I suppose there is a knack in it, like everything else. It looks easy enough, but it is not easy if you don't know how to do it. It is like rowing; it looks the easiest thing in the world until you try, and then you find that it is not easy at all."
When work was done for the day Wilfrid and the Grimstones could scarcely walk back to the hut. Their backs felt as if they were broken, their arms and shoulders ached intolerably, their hands smarted as if on fire; while the Maoris, who had each achieved ten times the result, were as brisk and fresh as they were at starting. One of them had left work an hour before the others, and by the time they reached the hut the flat cakes of flour and water known as dampers had been cooked, and a large piece of mutton was frizzling over the fire. Wilfrid and his companions were almost too tired to eat, but they enjoyed the tea, although they missed the milk to which they were accustomed. They were astonished at the Maoris' appetite, the three natives devouring an amount of meat which would have lasted the others for a week.
"No wonder they work well when they can put away such a lot of food as that," Bob Grimstone said, after watching them for some time in silent astonishment. "Bill and me was always considered as being pretty good feeders, but one of these chaps would eat twice as much as the two of us. I should say, Mr. Wilfrid, that in future your best plan will be to let these chaps board themselves. Why, it would be dear to have them without pay if you had to feed them!"