It was a fortnight later, when after various stoppages on the way north, we sailed down across Golden Bay towards Wakatu. Mindful of my conclusion that Tiki had unknowingly divulged our plans to Cazotl, I kept it to myself, but argued with Grey that it would be better to land on the western side of Tasman Bay, proceed to Te Makawawa’s pa, and thence to the Table Land. Grey fell in with this proposal, and accordingly we passed down the coast, round Separation Point, and were landed at the mouth of the river above which the pa stood.
It was a clear, quiet morning when the boat took us in from the ship. Dreamer Grey, the brim of his buff bush hat drawn over his eyes to keep off the glare of the early sun, sat in the stern dreaming, not of a forgotten past, but of the possibilities of the near future. He flicked the ash quietly from his cigar; it fell with a hiss into the smooth water and drifted astern.
“There is the pa, look,” said Crystal, touching his arm with one hand, while with the other she pointed to the ridge of the cliff a mile away on the coast.
I followed the direction of her finger and saw, standing against a thin fleecy white cloud with a strip of summer blue beneath it, the palisading of Te Makawawa’s pa.
“It is a good omen,” I said merrily, turning towards them; “there is the pa; there is the fleecy cloud beyond it, and there in the further distance is the clear blue sky.”
Grey turned up the brim of his hat and let the sun shine on his happy face as he gazed up at the pa.
“And what is it you see in the clear blue sky, Miss Grey?” I asked, catching the now well-known look of longing in Crystal’s eyes beneath the shadow of her sun bonnet.
She looked across to me and smiled, while her hand slid down her father’s coat sleeve and pressed his own on the gunwale of the boat. Then her lips moved, and, though she said nothing, the movement could have been only the two words, “My mother!”
“A good omen let it be,” said Grey, and threw his cigar away.
“With all my heart!” I replied, knocking the dottle from my pipe and standing up, for the nose of the boat was running on to the sandy shore in a convenient place to land.