The Tale of Timber Town. Grace Alfred Augustus

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СКАЧАТЬ face broke into a smile, and from her pretty mouth bubbled the sweetest laughter a man could hear.

      “Not my taughter,” replied Tahuna, as his wife approached, “but this my wahine, what you call wife.”

      The Maori woman was smiling the generous smile of her race.

      “You’re a brave crowd,” said the captain. “My crew and I owe you our lives. My prejudice against colour is shaken – I’m not sure that it’ll ever recover the shock you’ve given it. A man may sail round the world a dozen times, an’ there’s still something he’s got to learn. I never would ha’ believed a man, let alone a woman, could ha’ swum in such a sea. An’ you’re Natives of the country? – a fine race, a fine race.” As they stood, talking, rain had commenced to drive in from the sea. The captain surveyed the miserable scene for a moment or two; then he said, “I think, chief, that if you’re ready we’ll get these men under shelter.” And so, some supported by their dusky friends, and some carried in blankets, the crew of The Mersey Witch, drenched and cold, but saved from the sea, were conveyed to the huts of the pa.

      CHAPTER III

The Pilot’s Daughter

      She came out of the creeper-covered house into a garden of roses, and stood with her hand on a green garden-seat; herself a rosebud bursting into perfection.

      Below her were gravelled walks and terraced flower-beds, cut out of the hill-side on which the quaint, gabled house stood; her fragrant, small domain carefully secreted behind a tall, clipped hedge, over the top of which she could see from where she stood the long sweep of the road which led down to the port of Timber Town.

      She was dressed in a plain, blue, cotton blouse and skirt; her not over-tall figure swelling plumply beneath their starched folds. Her hair was of a nondescript brown, beautified by a glint of gold, so that her uncovered head looked bright in the sunlight. Her face was such as may be seen any day in the villages which nestle beneath the Sussex Downs, under whose shadow she was born; her forehead was broad and white; her eyes blue; her cheeks the colour of the blush roses in her garden; her mouth small, with lips coloured pink like a shell on the beach. As she stood, gazing down the road, shading her eyes with her little hand, and displaying the roundness and whiteness of her arm to the inquisitive eyes of nothing more lascivious than the flowers, a girl on horseback drew up at the gate, and called, “Cooee!”

      She was tall and brown, dressed in a blue riding-habit, and in her hand she carried a light, silver-mounted whip. She jumped lightly from the saddle, opened the gate, and led her horse up the drive.

      The fair girl ran down the path, and met her near the tethering-post which stood under a tall bank.

      “Amiria, I am glad to see you!”

      “But think of all I have to tell you.” The brown girl’s intonation was deep, and she pronounced every syllable richly. “We don’t have a wreck every day to talk about.”

      “Come inside, and have some lunch. You must be famishing after your long ride.”

      “Oh, no, I’m not hungry. Taihoa, by-and-by.”

      The horse was tied up securely, and the girls, a contrast of blonde and brunette, walked up the garden-path arm-in-arm.

      “I have heard such things about you,” said the fair girl.

      “But you should see him, my dear,” said the brown. “You would have risked a good deal to save him if you had been there – tall, strong, struggling in the sea, and so helpless.”

      “You are brave, Amiria. It’s nonsense to pretend you don’t know it. All the town is talking about you.” The white face looked at the brown, mischievously. “And now that you have got him, my dear, keep him.”

      Amiria’s laugh rang through the garden. “There is no hope for me, if you are about, Miss Rose Summerhayes,” she said.

      “But wasn’t it perfectly awful? We heard you were drowned yourself.”

      “Nonsense! I got wet, but that was all. Of course, if I was weak or a bad swimmer, then there would have been no hope. But I know every rock, every channel, where the sea breaks its force, and where it is strongest. There was no danger.”

      “How many men?”

      “Twenty-nine; and the one drowned makes thirty.”

      “And which is the particular one, your treasure trove? Of course, he will marry you as soon as the water is out of his ears, and make you happy ever afterwards.”

      Amiria laughed again. “First, he is handsome; next, he is a rangatira, well-born, as my husband ought to be. I really don’t know his name. Can’t you guess that is what I have come to find out?”

      “You goose. You’ve come to unburden yourself. You were just dying to tell me the story.”

      They had paused on the verandah, where they sat on a wooden seat in the shade.

      “Anyway, the wreck is better for the Maori than a sitting of the Land Court – there! The shore is covered with boxes and bales and all manner of things. There are ready-made clothes for everyone in the pa, boots, tea, tobacco, sugar, everything that the people want – all brought ashore from the wreck and strewn along the beach. The Customs’ Officers get some, but the Maori gets most. I’ve brought you a memento.”

      She put her hand into the pocket of her riding-habit, and drew out a little packet. “That is for you – a souvenir of the wreck.”

      “Isn’t it rather like stealing, to take what really belongs to other people?”

      “Rubbish! Open it, and see for yourself,” said Amiria, smiling.

      Rose undid the packet’s covering, and disclosed a black leather-covered case, much the worse for wear.

      “It isn’t injured by the water – it was in a tin-lined box,” said the Maori girl. “It opens like a card-case.”

      Rose opened the little receptacle, which divided in the middle, and there lay exposed a miniature portrait framed in oxidized silver.

      The portrait represented a beautiful woman, yellow-haired, with blue eyes and a bright colour on her cheeks, lips which showed indulgence in every curve, and a snow-white neck around which was clasped a string of red coral beads.

      Rose fixed her eyes on the picture.

      “Why do you give me this?” she asked. “Who is it?”

      Amiria turned the miniature over. On its back was written “Annabel Summerhayes.”

      Rose turned slightly pale as she read the name, and her breath caught in her throat. “This must be my mother,” she said quietly. “When she died, I was too young to remember her.”

      Both girls looked at the portrait; the brown face close to the fair, the black hair touching the brown.

      “She must have been very good,” said Amiria, “ – look how kind she is.”

      Rose was silent.

      “Isn’t that a nice memento of the wreck,” continued the Maori girl. “But anyhow you would have received it, for the Collector СКАЧАТЬ