If you look at the map of the middle island of New Zealand you will see the north coast of it, washed by Cook’s Straits, is deeply indented by fiords running inland, and that Tory Channel and Queen Charlotte’s Sound are two of the principal ones.
These run in separately for some miles, and then join together and form one sound, which continues for a considerable distance, having on one side, some miles farther south, the important seaport of Picton.
The island, surrounded by the water of the aforementioned fiords, is known as Alapawa or Arapawa Island, and in the year 1872 was divided into two sheep runs and occupied by two firms of squatters who had already acquired a large number of sheep.
The scenery up these fiords is magnificent, the densely bushed mountains coming down to the water, which is deep to the very shore, so much so that the largest ship can sail close in and, if her skipper wants to, can make fast to the big trees growing down to the water’s edge. The tide runs up and down these fiords at a tremendous rate, and this must be remembered when you read the yarn I am now going to spin you.
Arapawa Island is a range of high mountains, and on the side facing Queen Charlotte’s Sound I was staying at one of the sheep stations for the purpose of recuperating my health after a rather long spell in hospital.
The year before I had foolishly got in the way of a small piece of lead that, being in a hurry, was travelling very fast. I had stopped it, and had been punished for my imprudence by having to lay up while doctors sunk shafts and drove drives in my corpus and generally prospected me for a lead mine.
True, they had not struck the reef; but then they had not succeeded in killing me, and when I got out of their hands I called it a drawn game, and started to get well in my own way.
The shafts and the drives had filled up, and I had finished the cure by staying two months in the glorious climate of the sounds, first knocking about in a sailing-boat in the management of which I was a dab, and then assisting my friends by running over the hills after sheep. This exercise, with plenty of good mutton and damper, turning-in just after dark, and turning-out just before sunrise, had perfected my cure, and I was as strong as ever, and in good training. At that time I neither used spirits nor tobacco; I was as hard as iron and as tough as whipcord, and had, moreover, practised swimming, boxing, fencing and other gymnastics from early childhood. The awful hardships of the past wars had done me no harm, but rather good, as they had squeezed the last soft drop out of me, and I was fit for anything.
I should have rejoined my troop on the frontier of the North Island a fortnight before, but waited to help my friends through with their yearly mustering and sheep-shearing. Hands were scarce, and I had never before seen a muster or sheep-shearing, so, my traps having been sent on to Picton, I waited for it. Well, the shearing was over and the men temporarily taken on for it were paid off.
In those days, on the last night before the extra hands were dismissed it was considered the right thing to do for everyone to go on a big burst, and men who had worked hard for weeks, and not touched a drop of spirits, would get blind drunk. So it was at this station, with the exception of myself, who did not touch grog; all hands, masters and men, had a tremendous burst, drinking up every drop of strong rum laid in for the occasion.