"What a dear old book that is!" exclaimed he; "how I used to delight in it as a boy! Now I think of it, this region has a good deal of the Sindbad the Sailor business about it. I shouldn't wonder if we came to a loadstone mountain, which would draw all our steel and iron articles into it, like the nails in Sindbad's ship! It would be lovely to see everything take flight through the air, from the axes and revolvers to the old mare's shoes."
The girl smiled at this extravagance, but relapsed into her expression of habitual seriousness as she answered, "Who knows but that we may want the revolvers? At any moment war may break out. We are like the Rotorua natives, I am afraid, walking on thin crust."
"I have skated on thin ice before now," he said, "but water and fire are different things. It seems uncanny to be on land where your walking-stick smokes if you poke it more than an inch into the soil. So this is the famous and sacred valley!"
"Here we are," said Warwick, who now joined them, "and I am not sorry. This sandy road takes it out of one ever so much more than the forest country. Our autumn sun, too, is fairly hot at midday. The Wahines felt it, carrying their loads up some of the hills."
"They seem to me to be given the heaviest packs," said Massinger, rather indignantly. "Why doesn't that hulking fellow Ngarara carry part of one at any rate?"
"Well, you see, he is a chief and has 'no back'—that is to say, he is absolved from bearing burdens. His person is sacred to that extent. I don't like him personally, but he is within his rights."
"I should like to kick him," said the Englishman; "he wants some of the nonsense taken out of him."
"I shouldn't advise any hasty act," said Warwick, looking grave. "He is a person of some consequence, and you would bring the whole tribe down upon us, as they would consider themselves insulted in his person; particularly now, as no one knows what may happen within a week or two. As for the women, poor things, they are used to it. They do much of the work of the tribe, and don't object to fighting on occasion."
"It is too true," said Erena. "I am always ashamed to see the tremendous loads they carry in the kumera season; and in the planting, digging, and weeding of those plantations that look so neat near the kaingas, they do far more than their share. I suppose women in Europe don't work in the fields?"
"Well," returned Massinger, rather taken aback, "I am afraid I must own that they do, now I come to think of it. They hoe turnip and potato fields, reap and bind in harvest time; and, yes, the fishermen's wives and the colliers' daughters work—pretty hard, too. In France and Germany I have often thought they worked harder than the men."