With these words he hailed a tall man sauntering past, who, dressed in the height of the reigning race-course fashion, in no respect diverging from the canon of ‘good form’ in raiment or otherwise, bore yet an exceptional and striking personality.
‘Tena koe, Captain, haere mai.’
A Maori response immediately followed, as the person addressed, drawing himself up, bent a pair of stern blue eyes upon his interlocutor, while Arnold Banneret, whose expression was compounded in almost equal parts of welcome and wonder, fear and amazement, gazed anxiously upon the stranger’s countenance. The new-comer was tall, considerably indeed above the height of men ordinarily thus described, though his broad chest and athletic frame caused his unusual height to be less apparent. His bronzed cheek was traversed by a scar, ‘a token true of Bosworth Field,’ or other engagement, where shrewd blows had been exchanged.
‘Glad to see you again,’ said the host. ‘Waiter, bring Captain—Captain——’
‘Bucklaw,’ interposed the stranger guest—‘been back to the old place.’
‘Of course, of course, quite natural!’ continued [293] ]his entertainer; ‘bring Captain Bucklaw champagne.’
The glasses were not small, having been specially ordered, and as the gallant Captain drained his, he clinked glasses with his host, and, with a glance which combined an air of reckless daring with a savour of almost schoolboy mischief, he said: ‘It’s not necessary to say, Judge, that I’m here incog.—Captain Bucklaw, of the steamer Haitchi Maru, with British-owned cargo, and passenger steamer now at anchor below Gravesend, cleared from San Francisco, is not to be mistaken for the captain of the Leonora beneath the blue wave of Chabrat Harbour. I brought over a cargo of rice, and take back one of flour with, of course, sundries, not particularly named in the manifest. She’s faster than most “tramps,” and carries five guns—two of them No. 7 quick-firers.’
‘And so you came to England to see a steeplechase?’
‘That is so—or rather, being in England again, I thought I would have a look at the great race that everybody was talking about. Heard, too, that there was a New Zealand horse in it. You know that we Southerners are death on horse-racing. That time you and I met at Opononi
, Captain John Webster’s place on the Hokianga (I bought a cargo of Kauri timber from him), I went to the race meeting at Auckland, where we were filling up with frozen lamb. I was struck then with the make and shape of horses bred at Mount Eden—saw Carbine, too. What a horse [294] ]that was! Now in England, I hear. So I backed Moifaa, like the other flax and manuka men, and made money enough almost to buy a new ship.’