and all advancing very slowly towards the church; and then the captain told us how he had heard ashore of the sudden death of a girl lately come out from England to keep house for her brothers away back there in the mountain Bush, and this was her funeral. We had finished our business at the place; and, as we bounded out again upon the brilliant sea, brightness, speed, and strength everywhere about us, light in our eyes, and full life racing through our veins, there was not one of us, I think, that was untouched. “Travelling half the world over, eh?” as Tim put it, “for this. Come all the way here, to find a grave.”
We’re-entered Hicks Bay that same evening. No friendly riding-lights were this time to be seen; but, instead, there was a wonderful sunset. Great wafts and washes of pure fire suffused the sky, here and there narrowly separated by rifts of a clear blue-green, almost icily cold; and over all this bright delirium of colour, dark wisps and featherings of cloud seemed to have been wildly flung, and now to be lying in wait, as it were, with a sort of sinister stillness. “A nice sunset, yes," said the skipper; “but, all I have against it, a windy one.” He was right, of course; and in Hicks Bay we lay, windbound, for the next five days.
What did we do all that time? Well, luckily for us, it was “a dry blow,” and one from which the bay itself was well protected; so we went ashore and visited the natives, explored the rocks and beaches, and hunted about in the Bush for peacocks’ feathers and late cherries. A shipwrecked crew had once “dossed” for days in the Bush, the men said, and we discovered their camp, and appro-
