The next three months made a great change in the appearance of The Glade. Three or four plots of gay flowers cut in the grass between the house and the river gave a brightness to its appearance. The house was now covered as far as the roof with greenery, and might well have been mistaken for a rustic bungalow standing in pretty grounds on the banks of the Thames. Behind, a large kitchen-garden was in full bearing. It was surrounded by wire network to keep out the chickens, ducks, and geese, which wandered about and picked up a living as they chose, returning at night to the long low shed erected for them at some distance from the house, receiving a plentiful meal on their arrival to prevent them from lapsing into an altogether wild condition.
Forty acres of land had been reploughed and sown, and the crops had already made considerable progress. In the more distant clearings a dozen horses, twenty or thirty cows, and a small flock of a hundred sheep grazed, while some distance up the glade in which the house stood was the pig-sty, whose occupants were fed with refuse from the garden, picking up, however, the larger portion of their living by rooting in the woods.
Long before Mr. and Mrs. Renshaw moved into the house, Wilfrid, whose labours were now less severe, had paid his first visit to Mr. Atherton's hut. He was[Pg 206] at once astonished and delighted with it. It contained indeed but the one room, sixteen feet square, but that room had been made one of the most comfortable dens possible. There was no flooring, but the ground had been beaten until it was as hard as baked clay, and was almost covered with rugs and sheep-skins; a sort of divan ran round three sides of it, and this was also cushioned with skins. The log walls were covered with cow-hides cured with the hair on, and from hooks and brackets hung rifles, fishing-rods, and other articles, while horns and other trophies of the chase were fixed to the walls.
While the Renshaws had contented themselves with stoves, Mr. Atherton had gone to the expense and trouble of having a great open fireplace, with a brick chimney outside the wall. Here, even on the hottest day, two or three logs burnt upon old-fashioned iron dogs. On the wall above was a sort of trophy of oriental weapons. Two very large and comfortable easy chairs stood by the side of the hearth, and in the centre of the room stood an old oak table, richly carved and black with age. A book-case of similar age and make, with its shelves well filled with standard works, stood against the one wall unoccupied by the divan.
Wilfrid stood still with astonishment as he looked in at the door, which Mr. Atherton had himself opened in response to his knock.
"Come in, Wilfrid. As I told you yesterday evening I have just got things a little straight and comfortable."
"I should think you had got them comfortable," Wilfrid said. "I should not have thought that a log[Pg 207] cabin could have been made as pretty as this Why, where did you get all the things? Surely you can never have brought them all with you?"
"No, indeed," Mr. Atherton laughed; "the greatest portion of them are products of the country. There was no difficulty in purchasing the skins, the arms, and those sets of horns and trophies. Books and a few other things I brought with me. I have a theory that people very often make themselves uncomfortable merely to effect the saving of a pound or two. Now, I rather like making myself snug, and the carriage of all those things did not add above five pounds to my expenses."
"But surely that table and book-case were never made in New Zealand?"
"Certainly not, Wilfrid. At the time they were made the natives of this country hunted the Moa in happy ignorance of the existence of a white race. No, I regard my getting possession of those things as a special stroke of good luck. I was wandering in the streets of Wellington on the very day after my arrival, when I saw them in a shop. No doubt they had been brought out by some well-to-do emigrant, who clung to them in remembrance of his home in the old country. Probably at his death his place came into the hands of some Goths, who preferred a clean deal table to what he considered old-fashioned things. Anyhow, there they were in the shop, and I bought them at once; as also those arm-chairs, which are as comfortable as anything of the kind I have ever tried. By the way, are you a good shot with the rifle, Wilfrid?"[Pg 208]
"No, sir; I never fired a rifle in my life before I left England, nor a shot-gun either."
"Then I think you would do well to practise, lad; and those two men of yours should practise too. You never can say what may come of these native disturbances; the rumours of the progress of this new religion among them are not encouraging. It is quite true that the natives on this side of the island have hitherto been perfectly peaceable, but if they get inoculated with this new religious frenzy there is no saying what may happen. I will speak to your father about it. Not in a way to alarm him; but I will point out that it is of no use your having brought out firearms if none of you know how to use them, and suggest that it will be a good thing if you and the men were to make a point of firing a dozen shots every morning at a mark. I shall add that he himself might just as well do so, and that even the ladies might find it an amusement, using, of course, a light rifle, or firing from a rest with an ordinary rifle with light charges, or that they might practice with revolvers. Anyhow, it is certainly desirable that you and your father and the men should learn to be good shots with these weapons. I will gladly come over at first and act as musketry instructor."
Wilfrid embraced the idea eagerly, and Mr. Atherton on the occasion of his first visit to The Glade in a casual sort of way remarked to Mr. Renshaw that he thought every white man and woman in the outlying colonies ought to be able to use firearms, as, although they might never be called upon to use them in earnest, the knowledge that they could do so with effect would[Pg 209] greatly add to their feeling of security and comfort. Mr. Renshaw at once took up the idea and accepted the other's offer to act as instructor. Accordingly, as soon as the Renshaws were established upon their farm, it became one of the standing rules of the place that Wilfrid and the two men should fire twelve shots at a mark every morning before starting for their regular work at the farm.
The target was a figure roughly cut out of wood, representing the size and to some extent the outline of a man's figure.
"It is much better to accustom yourself to fire at a mark of this kind than to practise always at a target," Mr. Atherton said. "A man may shoot wonderfully well at a black mark in the centre of a white square, and yet make very poor practice at a human figure with its dull shades of colour and irregular outline."
"But we shall not be able to tell where our bullets hit," Wilfrid said; "especially after the dummy has been hit a good many times."
"It is not very material where you hit a man, Wilfrid, so that you do hit him. If a man gets a heavy bullet, whether in an arm, a leg, or the body, there is no more fight in him. You can tell by the sound of the bullet if you hit the figure, and if you hit him you have done what you want to. You do not need to practise at distances over three hundred yards; that is quite the outside range at which you would ever want to do any shooting, indeed from fifty to two hundred I consider the useful distance to practise at. If you get to shoot so well that you can with certainty hit a man between those ranges, you may feel pretty comfortable[Pg 210] in your mind that you can beat off any attack that might be made on a house you are defending.
"When you have learnt to do this at the full-size figure you can put it in a bush so that only the head and shoulders are visible, as would be those of a native standing up to fire. All this white target-work is very well for shooting for prizes, but if troops were trained to fire at dummy figures at from fifty to two hundred yards distance, and allowed plenty of ammunition for practice and kept steadily at it, you would see that a single company would be more than a match for a whole regiment trained as our soldiers are."
With steady practice every morning, Wilfrid and the two young men made very rapid progress, and at the end of three months it was very seldom that a bullet was thrown away. Sometimes Mr. Renshaw joined them in their practice, but he more often fired a few shots some time during the day with Marion, who became quite an enthusiast in the exercise. Mrs. Renshaw declined to practise, and said that she was content to remain a non-combatant, and would undertake the work of binding up wounds and loading muskets. On Saturday afternoons, when the men left off work somewhat earlier than usual, there was always shooting for small prizes. Twelve shots were fired by each at a figure placed in the bushes a hundred yards away, with only the head and shoulders visible. After each had fired, the shot-holes were counted and then filled up with mud, so that the next marks made were easily distinguishable.
Mr. Renshaw was uniformly last. The Grimstones and Marion generally ran each other very close, each[Pg 211] putting eight or nine of their bullets into the figure. Wilfrid was always handicapped two shots, but as he generally put the whole of his ten bullets into the mark, he was in the majority of cases the victor. The shooting party was sometimes swelled by the presence of Mr. Atherton and the two Allens, who had arrived a fortnight after the Renshaws, and had taken up the section of land next below them. Mr. Atherton was incomparably the best shot of the party. Wilfrid, indeed, seldom missed, but he took careful and steady aim at the object, while Mr. Atherton fired apparently without waiting to take aim at all. Sometimes he would not even lift his gun to his shoulder, but would fire from his side, or standing with his back to the mark would turn round and fire instantaneously.
"That sort of thing is only attained by long practice," he would say in answer to Wilfrid's exclamations of astonishment. "You see, I have been shooting in different parts of the world and at different sorts of game for some fifteen years, and in many cases quick shooting is of just as much importance as straight shooting."
But it was with the revolver that Mr. Atherton most surprised his friends. He could put six bullets into half a sheet of note-paper at a distance of fifty yards, firing with such rapidity that the weapon was emptied in two or three seconds.
"I learned that," he said, "among the cow-boys in the West. Some of them are perfectly marvellous shots. It is their sole amusement, and they spend no inconsiderable portion of their pay on cartridges. It seems to become an instinct with them, however small the[Pg 212] object at which they fire they are almost certain to hit it. It is a common thing with them for one man to throw an empty meat-tin into the air and for another to put six bullets in before it touches the ground. So certain are they of their own and each others' aim, that one will hold a halfpenny between his finger and thumb for another to fire at from a distance of twenty yards, and it is a common joke for one to knock another's pipe out of his mouth when he is quietly smoking.
"As you see, though my shooting seems to you wonderful, I should be considered quite a poor shot among the cow-boys. Of course, with incessant practice such as they have I should shoot a good deal better than I do; but I could never approach their perfection, for the simple reason that I have not the strength of wrist. They pass their lives in riding half-broken horses, and incessant exercise and hard work harden them until their muscles are like steel, and they scarcely feel what to an ordinary man is a sharp wrench from the recoil of a heavily-loaded Colt."
Life was in every way pleasant at The Glade. The work of breaking up the land went on steadily, but the labour, though hard, was not excessive. In the evening the Allens or Mr. Atherton frequently dropped in, and occasionally Mr. Mitford and his daughters rode over, or the party came up in the boat. The expense of living was small. They had an ample supply of potatoes and other vegetables from their garden, of eggs from their poultry, and of milk, butter, and cheese from their cows. While salt meat was the staple of[Pg 213] their food, it was varied occasionally by chicken, ducks, or a goose, while a sheep now and then afforded a week's supply of fresh meat.
Mr. Renshaw had not altogether abandoned his original idea. He had already learnt something of the Maori language from his studies on the voyage, and he rapidly acquired a facility of speaking it from his conversations with the two natives permanently employed on the farm. One of these was a man of some forty years old named Wetini, the other was a lad of sixteen, his son, whose name was Whakapanakai, but as this name was voted altogether too long for conversational purposes he was re-christened Jack.
Wetini spoke but a few words of English, but Jack, who had been educated at one of the mission schools, spoke it fluently. They, with Wetini's wife, inhabited a small hut situated at the edge of the wood, at a distance of about two hundred yards from the house. It was Mr. Renshaw's custom to stroll over there of an evening, and seating himself by the fire, which however hot the weather the natives always kept burning, he would converse with Wetini upon the manners and customs, the religious beliefs and ceremonies, of his people.
In these conversations Jack at first acted as interpreter, but it was not many weeks before Mr. Renshaw gained such proficiency in the tongue that such assistance was no longer needed.
But the period of peace and tranquillity at The Glade was but a short one. Wilfrid learnt from Jack, who had attached himself specially to him, that there were reports among the natives that the prophet Te[Pg 214] Ua was sending out missionaries all over the island. This statement was true. Te Ua had sent out four sub-prophets with orders to travel among the tribes and inform them that Te Ua had been appointed by an angel as a prophet, that he was to found a new religion to be called Pai Marire, and that legions of angels waited the time when, all the tribes having been converted, a general rising would take place, and the Pakeha be annihilated by the assistance of these angels, after which a knowledge of all languages and of all the arts and sciences would be bestowed upon the Pai Marire.
Had Te Ua's instructions been carried out, and his agents travelled quietly among the tribes, carefully abstaining from all open hostility to the whites until the whole of the native population had been converted, the rising when it came would have been a terrible one, and might have ended in the whole of the white population being either destroyed or forced for a time to abandon the island. Fortunately the sub-prophets were men of ferocious character. Too impatient to await the appointed time, they attacked the settlers as soon as they collected sufficient converts to do so, and so they brought about the destruction of their leaders' plans.<............