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

dog gave a low whimper of greeting, sufficient to attract my attention and guide me to where he was keeping his faithful watch and ward. I felt for my flax-stick and moved it ever so gently. A sudden jerk and splash startled me horribly, and warned me that I had disturbed an eel who was in the act of supping off my bait. In the momentary surprise I suppose I let go, for certain it is that the next instant my flax-stick was rapidly towed down the stream.

Instead of feeling provoked or mortified, it was the greatest relief to know that my eel-fishing was over for the night, and that now I had nothing to do except "wait till called for." So I took Nettle on my lap and tried to abide patiently, but I had not been long enough in New Zealand to have any confidence in the climate, and as I felt how damp my clothes were, and recollected with horror my West Indian experiences of the consequences of exposure to night air and heavy dew, my mind _would_ dwell gloomily on the prospect of a fever, at least. It seemed a long and weary while before I perceived a figure coming towards me; and I am afraid I was both cross and cold and sleepy by the time we set our faces homewards. "I have only caught three," said F----. "How many have you got?" "None, I am happy to say," I answered peevishly, "What could Nettle and I have done with the horrible things if we had caught any?"

The walk, or rather the stumble home, proved to be the worst part of the expedition. Not a ray of starlight had we to guide us,--nothing but inky blackness around and over us. We tried to make Nettle go first, intending to follow his lead, and trusting to his keeping the track; but Nettle's place was at my heels, and neither coaxing nor scolding would induce him to forego it. A forlorn hope was nothing to the dangers of each footstep. First one and then the other volunteered to lead the way, declaring they could find the track. All this time we were trying to strike the indistinct road among the tussocks, made by occasional wheels to our house, but the marks, never very distinct in daylight, became perfect will-o'-the-wisps at night. If we crossed a sheep-track we joyfully announced that we had found the way, but only to be undeceived the next moment by discovering that we were returning to the creek.

From time to time we fell into and over Spaniards, and what was left of our clothes and our flesh the wild Irishmen devoured. We must have got home somehow, or I should not be writing an account of it, at this moment, but really I hardly know how we reached the house. I recollect that the next day there was a great demand for gold-beater's skin, and court-plaster, and that whenever F---- and Mr. U---- had a spare moment during the ensuing week, they devoted themselves to performing surgical operations on each other with a needle; and that I felt very subdued and tired for a day or two. But there was no question of fever or cold, and I was stared at when I inquired whether it was not dangerous to be out all night in heavy dew after a broiling day.

We had the eels made into a pie by our shepherd, who assured me that if I entrusted them to my cook she would send me up such an oily dish that I should never be able to endure an eel again. He declared that the Maoris, who seem to have rather a horror of grease, had taught him how to cook both eels and wekas in such a way as to eliminate every particle of fat from both. I had no experience of the latter dish, but he certainly kept his word about the eels, for they were excellent.


Chapter III: Pig-stalking.

It was much too hot in summer to go after wild pigs. That was our winter's amusement, and very good sport it afforded us, besides the pleasure of knowing that we were really doing good service to the pastoral interest, by ridding the hills around us of almost the only enemies which the sheep have. If the squatter goes to look after his mob of ewes and lambs in the sheltered slopes at the back of his run, he is pretty nearly certain to find them attended by an old sow with a dozen babies at her heels. She will follow the sheep patiently from one camping ground to another, watching for a new-born and weakly lamb to linger behind the rest, and then she will seize and devour it. Besides this danger, the presence of pigs on the run keeps the sheep in an excited state. They have an uneasy consciousness that their foes are looking after them, and they move restlessly up and down the hills, not stopping to feed sufficiently to get fat. If a sheep-farmer thinks his sheep are not in good condition, one of the first questions he asks his shepherd is, "Are there any pigs about?" Our run had a good many of these troublesome visitors on it, especially in the winter, when they would travel down from the back country to grub up acres on acres of splendid sheep pasture in search of roots. The only good they do is to dig up the Spaniards for the sake of their delicious white fibres, and the fact of their being able to do this will give a better idea of the toughness of a wild pig's snout than anything else I can say.

It may be strange to English ears to hear a woman of tolerably peaceful disposition, and as the advertisements in the _Times_ so often state, "thoroughly domesticated," aver that she found great pleasure in going after wild pigs; but the circumstances of the ease must be taken into consideration before I am condemned. First of all, it seemed terribly lonely at home if F---- was out with his rifle all day. Next, there was the temptation to spend those delicious hours of a New Zealand winter's day, between ten and four, out of doors, wandering over hills and exploring new gullies. And lastly, I had a firm idea that I was taking care of F----. And so I was in a certain sense, for if his rifle had burst, or any accident had happened to him, and he had been unable to reach the homestead, we should never have known where to find him, and days would probably have passed before every nook and corner of a run extending over many thousand acres could have been thoroughly searched.

I had heard terrible stories of shepherds slipping down and injuring themselves so that they could not move, and of their dead bodies being only found after weeks of careful seeking. F---- himself delighted to terrify me by descriptions of narrow escapes; and, as the pigs had to be killed, I resolved to follow in the hunter's train. The sport is conducted exactly like deer stalking, only it is much harder work, and a huge boar is not so picturesque an object as a stag of many tines, when you do catch sight of him. There is just the same accurate knowledge needed of the animal's habits and customs, and the same untiring patience. It is quite as necessary to be a good shot, for a grey pig standing under the lee of a boulder of exactly his own colour is a much more difficult object to hit from the opposite side of a ravine than a stag; and a wild boar is every whit as keen of scent and sharp of eye and ear as any antlered "Monarch of the Glen."

Imagine then a beautiful winter's morning without wind or rain. There has been perhaps a sharp frost over-night, but after a couple of hours of sunshine the air is as warm and bright as midsummer. We used to be glad enough of a wood fire at breakfast; but after that meal had been eaten we went into the verandah, open to the north-east (our warm quarter), which made a delicious winter parlour, and basked in the blazing sunshine. I used often to bring out a chair and a table, and work and read there all the morning, without either hat or jacket. But it sometimes happened that once or twice a week, on just such a lovely morning, F---- would proclaim his intention of going out to look for pigs, and, sooner than be left behind, I nearly always begged to be allowed to come too. There was no fear of my getting tired or lagging behind; and as I was willing to make myself generally useful, by carrying the telescope, a revolver for close quarters, and eke a few sandwiches, the offer of my company used to be graciously accepted. We could seldom procure the loan of a good pig-dog, and after one excursion with a certain dog of the name of "Pincher," I preferred going out by ourselves.

On that occasion F---- did not take his rifle, as there was no chance of getting a long shot at our game; for the dog would surely bring the pig to bay, and then the hunter must trust to a revolver or the colonial boar-spear, half a pair of shears (I suppose it should be called _a shear_) bound firmly on a flax stick by green flax-leaves. We had heard of pigs having been seen by our out-station shepherd at the back of the run, and as we were not encumbered by the heavy rifle, we mounted our horses and rode as far as we could towards the range where the pigs had been grubbing up the hill sides in unmolested security for some time past. Five miles from home the ground became so rough that our horses could go no further; we therefore jumped off, tied them to a flax-bush, taking off the saddles in case they broke loose, and proceeded on foot over the jungly, over-grown saddle. On the other side we came upon a beautiful gully, with a creek running through it, whose banks were so densely fringed with scrub that we could not get through to the stream, which we heard rippling amid the tangled shrubs. If we could only have reached the water our best plan would have been to get into it and follow its windings up the ravine; but even Pincher could hardly squeeze and burrow through the impenetrable fence of matapo and goi, which were woven together by fibres of a thorny creeper called "a lawyer" by the shepherds.

It was very tantalising, for in less than five minutes we heard trusty Pincher "speaking" to a boar, and knew that he had baled it up against a tree, and was calling to us to come and help him. F----ran about like a lunatic, calling out; "Coming Pincher: round him up, good dog!" and so forth; but they were all vain promises, for he could not get in. I did my best in searching for an opening, and gave many false hopes of having found one. At last I said, "If I run up the mountain side, and look down on that mass of scrub, perhaps I may see some way into it from above." "No: do you stay here, and see, if the pig breaks cover, which way he goes." Up the steep hill, therefore, F---- rushed, as swiftly and lightly as one of his own mountain sheep; and in a minute or two I saw him standing, revolver in hand, on an overhanging rock, peering anxiously down on the leafy mass below.

Pincher and the