Station Amusements in New Zealand, Lady Mary Anne Barker [fiction novels to read .TXT] 📗

floating near his hole, would be good to eat. I was impatient as a child,--remember it was my first eel-fishing expedition,--and I thought nine o'clock would never come, for I had been told to go and dress at that hour; that is to say, I was to change my usual station-costume, a pretty print gown, for a short linsey skirt, strong boots and kangaroo-skin gaiters. F----, and our cadet, Mr. U----, soon appeared, clad in shooting coats instead of their alpaca costumes, and their trousers stuffed into enormous boots, the upper leathers of which came beyond their knees.

"Are we going into the water?" I timidly inquired.

"Oh, no,--not at all: it is on account of the Spaniards."

No doubt this sounds very unintelligible to an English reader; but every colonist who may chance to see my pages will shiver at the recollection of those vegetable defenders of an unexplored region in New Zealand. Imagine a gigantic artichoke with slender instead of broad leaves, set round in dense compact order. They vary, of course, in size, but in our part of the world four or six feet in circumference and a couple of feet high was the usual growth to which they attained, though at the back of the run they were much larger. Spaniards grow in clusters, or patches, among the tussocks on the plains, and constitute a most unpleasant feature of the vegetation of the country. Their leaves are as firm as bayonets, and taper at the point to the fineness of a needle, but are not nearly so easily broken as a needle would be. No horse will face them, preferring a jump at the cost of any exertion, to the risk of a stab from the cruel points. The least touch of this green bayonet draws blood, and a fall _into_ a Spaniard is a thing to be remembered all one's life. Interspersed with the Spaniards are generally clumps of "wild Irishman," a straggling sturdy bramble, ready to receive and scratch you well if you attempt to avoid the Spaniard's weapons. Especially detrimental to riding habits are wild Irishmen; and there are fragments of mine, of all sorts of materials and colours, fluttering now on their thorny branches in out-of-the-way places on our run. It is not surprising, therefore, that we guarded our legs as well as we could against these foes to flesh and blood.

"We are rather early," said the gentlemen, as I appeared, ready and eager to start; "but perhaps it is all the better to enable you to see the track." They each flung an empty sack over their shoulders, felt in their pockets to ascertain whether the matches, hooks, boxes of bait, etc., were all there, and then we set forth.

At first it appeared as if we had stepped from the brightness of the drawing-room into utter and pitchy blackness; but after we had groped for a few steps down the familiar garden path, our eyes became accustomed to the subdued light of the soft summer night. Although heavy banks of cloud,--the general precursors of wind,--were moving slowly between us and the heavens, the stars shone down through their rifts, and on the western horizon a faint yellowish tinge told us that daylight was in no hurry to leave our quiet valley. The mountain streams or creeks, which water so well the grassy plains among the Malvern Hills, are not affected to any considerable extent by dry summer weather. They are snow-fed from the high ranges, and each nor'-wester restores many a glacier or avalanche to its original form, and sends it flowing down the steep sides of yonder distant beautiful mountains to join the creeks, which, like a tangled skein of silver threads, ensure a good water supply to the New Zealand sheep-farmer. In the holes, under steep overhanging banks, the eels love to lurk, hiding from the sun's rays in cool depths, and coming out at night to feed. There are no fish whatever in the rivers, and I fear that the labours of the Acclimatization Society will be thrown away until they can persuade the streams themselves to remain in their beds like more civilised waters. At present not a month passes that one does not hear of some eccentric proceeding on the part of either rivers or creeks. Unless the fish are prepared to shift their liquid quarters at a moment's notice they will find themselves often left high and dry on the deserted shingle-bed. But eels are proverbially accustomed to adapt themselves to circumstances, and a fisherman may always count on getting some if he be patient.

About a mile down the flat, between very high banks, our principal creek ran, and to a quiet spot among the flax-bushes we directed our steps. By the fast-fading light the gentlemen set their lines in very primitive fashion. On the crumbling, rotten earth the New Zealand flax, the _Phormium tenax_, loves to grow, and to its long, ribbon-like leaves the eel-fishers fastened their lines securely, baiting each alternate hook with mutton and worms. I declared this was too cockney a method of fishing, and selected a tall slender flax-stick, the stalk of last year's spike of red honey-filled blossoms, and to this extempore rod I fastened my line and bait. When one considers that the old whalers were accustomed to use ropes made in the rudest fashion, from the fibre of this very plant, in their deep-sea fishing for very big prey, it is not surprising that we found it sufficiently strong for our purpose. I picked out, therefore, a comfortable spot,--that is to say, well in the centre of a young flax-bush, whose satiny leaves made the most elastic cushions around me; with my flax-stick held out over what was supposed to be a favourite haunt of the eels, and with Nettle asleep at my feet and a warm shawl close to my hand, prepared for my vigil. "Don't speak or move," were the gentlemen's last words: "the eels are all eyes and ears at this hour; they can almost hear you breathe." Each man then took up his position a few hundred yards away from me, so that I felt, to all intents and purposes, absolutely alone. I am "free to confess," as our American cousins say, that it was a very eerie sensation. It was now past ten o'clock; the darkness was intense, and the silence as deep as the darkness.

Hot as the day had been, the night air felt chill, and a heavy dew began to fall, showing me the wisdom of substituting woollen for cotton garments. I could see the dim outlines of the high hills, which shut in our happy valley on all sides, and the smell of the freshly-turned earth of a paddock near the house, which was in process of being broken up for English grass, came stealing towards me on the silent air. The melancholy cry of a bittern, or the shrill wail of the weka, startled me from time to time, but there was no other sound to break the eternal silence.

As I waited and watched, I thought, as every one must surely think, with strange paradoxical feelings, of one's own utter insignificance in creation, mingled with the delightful consciousness of our individual importance in the eyes of the Maker and Father of all. An atom among worlds, as one feels, sitting there at such an hour and in such a spot, still we remember with love and pride, that not a hair of our head falls to the ground unnoticed by an Infinite Love and an Eternal Providence. The soul tries to fly into the boundless regions of space and eternity, and to gaze upon other worlds, and other beings equally the object of the Great Creator's care; but her mortal wing soon droops and tires, and she is fain to nestle home again to her Saviour's arms, with the thought, "I am my Beloved's, and He is mine." That is the only safe beginning and end of all speculation. It was very solemn and beautiful, that long dark night,--a pause amid the bustle of every day cares and duties,--hours in which one takes counsel with one's own heart, and is still.

Midnight had come and gone, when the sputter and snap of striking a match, which sounded almost like a pistol shot amid the profound silence, told me that one of the sportsmen had been successful. I got up as softly as possible, wrapped my damp shawl round my still damper shoulders, and, fastening the flax-stick securely in the ground, stole along the bank of the creek towards the place where a blazing tussock, serving as a torch, showed the successful eel-fisher struggling with his prize. Through the gloom I saw another weird-looking figure running silently in the same direction; for the fact was, we were all so cramped and cold, and, weary of sitting waiting for bites which never came, that we hailed with delight a break in the monotony of our watch. It did not matter now how much noise we made (within moderate limits), for the peace of that portion of the creek was destroyed for the night. Half-a-dozen eels must have banded themselves together, and made a sudden and furious dash at the worsted ball, which Mr. U---- had been dangling in front of their mud hall-door for the last two hours. Just as he had intended, their long sharp teeth became entangled in the worsted loops, and although he declared some had broken away and escaped, three or four good-sized ones remained, struggling frantically.

It would have been almost impossible for one man to lift such a weight straight out of the water by a string; and as we came up and saw Mr. U----'s agitated face in the fantastic flickering light of the blazing tussock, which he had set on fire as a signal of distress, I involuntarily thought of the old Joe Miller about the Tartar: "Why don't you let him go?" "Because he has caught _me._" It looked just like that. The furious splashing in the water below, and Mr. U---- grasping his line with desperate valour, but being gradually drawn nearer to the edge of the steep bank each instant. "Keep up a good light, but not too much," cried F---- to me, in a regular stage-whisper, as he rushed to the rescue. So I pulled up one tussock after another by its roots,--an exertion which resulted in upsetting me each time,--and lighted one as fast as its predecessor burned out. They were all rather damp, so they did not flare away too quickly. By the blaze of my grassy torches I saw F----first seize Mr. U---- round the waist and drag him further from the bank; but the latter called out, "It's my hands,--they have no skin left: do catch hold, there's a good fellow." So the "good fellow" did catch hold, but he was too experienced an eel-fisher to try to lift a couple of dozen pounds weight of eels out of the water by a perpendicular string; so he tied it to a flax-bush near, and, stooping down in order to get some leverage over the bank, very soon drew the ball, with its slimy, wriggling captives, out of the water. Just as he jerked it far on shore, one or two of the creatures broke loose and escaped, leaving quite enough to afford a most disgusting and horrible sight as they were shuffled and poked into the empty flour-sack.

The sportsmen were delighted however, and departed to a fresh bend of the creek, leaving me to find my way back to my original post. This would have been difficult indeed, had not Nettle remained behind to guard my gloves, which I had left in his custody. As I passed, not knowing I was so near the spot, the little