THE ADVENTURES OF KIMBLE BENT
[CHAPTER I]
THE DESERTER
On the banks of the Tangahoé—The runaway soldier—A Maori scout—Off to the rebel camp.
On the banks of one of the many swift rivers that roll down to the Tasman Sea through the Taranaki Plains a young man in the blue undress uniform of a private soldier sat smoking his pipe. He was dripping with water, and a little pool had collected where he crouched in the fern, a few feet from the bank of the stream. He had plainly just emerged from the river. His clothes were torn, and he was capless. He was a man of about the middle size, spare of build, with sharp dark eyes and a bronzed complexion that told of past life under a tropic sun.
Less than an hour previously he had left his comrades' camp, the tented lines of Her Majesty's 57th Regiment, on the ferny flats of Manawapou. Left unofficially, and without his arms, strolling down towards the Tangahoé River as if for a bathe. A "shut-eye" sentry was on duty that morning; and the deserter's tent-mates, too, were sympathetically blind to his departure. The Tangahoé was the border-line between the country covered by the British rifles and the unconquerable bush of the Maori rebels. Towards this rubicon he made his way through the thick, high fern, which soon concealed him from view. He attempted to ford the rapid, muddy river, but it was up to his waist, and almost swept him off his feet. Struggling ashore again, he took to the fern and travelled slowly and with great toil through it, keeping parallel with the course of the Tangahoé, and heading down stream. He forced his way through the thick fern "like a wild pig," to use his own simile. In this way he travelled something over a mile down the river, and then once more attempted to ford across, but it was too deep and swift. He crawled back up the bank again, and quite exhausted, with scratched hands and face and gaping half-buttonless clothes, he sat down to recover his breath and strength. His heart was thumping fearfully with his frantic exertions in the closely matted, entangling fern, and it was some minutes before he could command his trembling fingers to fill and light his pipe.