第26章 CHAPTER VI(4)

We all wanted to get back,for home,though home be only a V hut,is worth pushing for;a little thing will induce a man to leave it,but if he is near his journey's end he will go through most places to reach it again.So we determined on going on,and after great difficulty and many turnings up one stream and down another we succeeded in getting safely over.We were wet well over the knee,but just avoided swimming.

I got into one quicksand,of which the river is full,and had to jump off my mare,but this was quite near the bank.

I had a cat on the pommel of my saddle,for the rats used to come and take the meat from off our very plates by our side.She got a sousing when the mare was in the quicksand,but I heard her purring not very long after,and was comforted.Of course she was in a bag.I do not know how it is,but men here are much fonder of cats than they are at home.

After we had crossed the river,there were many troublesome creeks yet to go through--sluggish and swampy,with bad places for getting in and out at;these,however,were as nothing in comparison with the river itself,which we all had feared more than we cared to say,and which,in good truth,was not altogether unworthy of fear.

By and by we turned up the shingly river-bed which leads to the spot on which my hut is built.The river is called Forest Creek,and,though usually nothing but a large brook,it was now high,and unpleasant from its rapidity and the large boulders over which it flows.Little by little,night and heavy rain came on,and right glad were we when we saw the twinkling light on the terrace where the hut was,and were thus assured that the Irishman,who had been left alone and without meat for the last ten days,was still in the land of the living.Two or three coo-eys soon made him aware that we were coming,and I believe he was almost as pleased to see us as Robinson Crusoe was to see the Spaniard who was brought over by the cannibals to be killed and eaten.What the old Irishman had been about during our absence I cannot say.He could not have spent much time in eating,for there was wonderfully little besides flour,tea,and sugar for him to eat.There was no grog upon the establishment,so he could not have been drinking.He had distinctly seen my ghost two nights before.I had been coherently drowned in the Rangitata;and when he heard us coo-eying he was almost certain that it was the ghost again.

I had left the V hut warm and comfortable,and on my return found it very different.I fear we had not put enough thatch upon it,and the ten days'rain had proved too much for it.It was now neither air-tight nor water-tight;the floor,or rather the ground,was soaked and soppy with mud;the nice warm snow-grass on which I had lain so comfortably the night before I left,was muddy and wet;altogether,there being no fire inside,the place was as revolting-looking an affair as one would wish to see:coming wet and cold off a journey,we had hoped for better things.There was nothing for it but to make the best of it,so we had tea,and fried some of the beef--the smell of which was anything but agreeable,for it had been lying ten days on the ground on the other side the Rangitata,and was,to say the least,somewhat high--and then we sat in our great-coats on four stones round the fire,and smoked;then I baked,and one of the cadets washed up;and then we arranged our blankets as best we could,and were soon asleep,alike unconscious of the dripping rain,which came through the roof of the hut,and of the cold,raw atmosphere which was insinuating itself through the numerous crevices of the thatch.

I had brought up a tin kettle with me.This was a great comfort and acquisition,for before we had nothing larger than pint pannikins to fetch up water in from the creek;this was all very well by daylight,but in the dark the hundred yards from the hut to the creek were no easy travelling with a pannikin in each hand.The ground was very stony,and covered with burnt Irishman scrub,against which (the Irishman being black and charred,and consequently invisible in the dark)I was continually stumbling and spilling half the water.There was a terrace,too,so that we seldom arrived with much more than half a pannikin,and the kettle was an immense step in advance.The Irishman called it very "beneficial,"as he called everything that pleased him.He was a great character:he used to "destroy"his food,not eat it.If I asked him to have any more bread or meat,he would say,with perfect seriousness,that he had "destroyed enough this time."He had many other quaint expressions of this sort,but they did not serve to make the hut water-tight,and I was half regretfully obliged to send him away a short time afterwards.

The winter's experience satisfied me that the country that H--and I had found would not do for sheep,unless worked in connection with more that was clear of snow throughout the year.As soon,therefore,as I was convinced that the adjacent country was safe,I bought it,and settled upon it in good earnest,abandoning the V hut.I did so with some regret,for we had good fare enough in it,and I rather liked it;we had only stones for seats,but we made splendid fires,and got fresh and clean snow-grass to lie on,and dried the floor with wood-ashes.Then we confined the snow-grass within certain limits by means of a couple of poles laid upon the ground and fixed into their places with pegs;then we put up several slings to hang our saddle-bags,tea,sugar,salt,bundles,etc.;then we made a horse for the saddles--four riding-saddles and a pack-saddle--and underneath this went our tools at one end and our culinary utensils,limited but very effective,at the other.Having made it neat we kept it so,and of a night it wore an aspect of comfort quite domestic,even to the cat,which would come in through a hole left in the thatched door for her especial benefit,and purr a regular hurricane.We blessed her both by day and by night,for we saw no rats after she came;and great excitement prevailed when,three weeks after her arrival,she added a litter of kittens to our establishment.