The Merry Marauders

by Arthur J. Rees

This was not very enlightening, but during the long trip to the fishing grounds I received quite a mass of interesting information about the fish we were in quest of. The hapuku, it appears, is the Maori name for a fish that attains a great size, and is one of the best edible fish in New Zealand waters. In shape it resembles the Scotch salmon, but is very much larger. Fishing for it is a strenuous and exciting sport, requiring skill, strength, and knowledge of its habits. In a properly organised hapuku fishing excursion a ‘commander of the lines’ is appointed to take charge of arrangements and direct operations. It is part of his duty to order the lines aboard—using a speaking trumpet for the purpose—when another fishing ground is to be tried. If these precautions were not taken, they said, a man dallying with a 60-lb. fish might be jerked overboard by the start of the steamer. Such cases had happened. I was introduced to our commander of the lines, a tall, saturnine-looking individual with one eye, who greeted! me with affable condescension, and promised me some rare sport.

  After receiving these interesting details, I naturally looked forward with keen anticipation to our arrival at the chosen spot. Daylight at length dawned on a grey and tumbling sea, with a smoking volcanic island in blue shadow a couple of miles away. This was pointed out to me as White Island. We steamed quite close to it and then the steamer hove to, and rolled lazily in the trough. The Deep Sinkers from below tumbled up looking considerably the worse for wear, and when the steamer had drifted right in under the side of the lonely island, they started to fish. I scanned the island. It seemed given over to sea-birds and goats. I was wondering how the latter animals scrambled up the steep, slippery mountainside without falling into the water below, and whether the giant hapuku lurked in the depths beneath in the anxious hope of a dish of fresh meat from the heavens, so to speak, when I was startled by a roar of ‘A-r-r-r-pook-e-e-r!’ at my elbow. I looked round, and saw a short, fat, redheaded man hauling in his line with furious energy. His friends fishing alongside of him offered advice. The line suddenly ran taut under the ship’s side, and remained there. The fat, red-headed man pulled and cursed, and pulled and cursed.

  “Heave a hand here!” he yelled. “Can’t you see he’s too strong for me?”

  A number of the Deep Sinkers went to his assistance, and gripped him around the expanse of shirt that billowed between his trousers and his vest. They pulled with him, and the line began to come in, hand over hand. They loudly marvelled at the weight of the fish.

  “My word, he’s a boomer! Must be over a hundred pounds, by the way he tugs.”

  “Bring the gaff, you blessed idiots, bring the gaff!” screamed the red-headed man. “Do you want me to lose him?”

  The gaff—a long steel weapon that might have slaughtered Jonah’s whale—was brought. I eagerly craned my head over the side of the ship to witness the capture of this monster of the deep. There was a sudden wild outburst of profanity from the assembled Deep Sinkers.

  “‘Strooth! he’s hooked up all our lines!”

  It took nearly an hour to disentangle the lines, and the red-headed man was so overcome by the potency of the curses heaped on his head during the process that he went below and started drinking in the cabin. When all the tackle was unwoven the commander of the lines blew his whistle and ordered the lines in. He informed me that he was going to try the other side of the island, as the red-headed man had frightened the ’arpookers away by catching the lines. “Either him or me will have to resign at the next meeting of the club,” he said. “He ain’t fit to be trusted with a fishing ’ook in his ’and.”

  On the other side of the island we—or rather, they, for I took no part in the sport—found hapuku in plenty. How they did come aboard! There must have been a large school of them. Big grey fellows, four and five feet long, were hauled up in dozens and flopped heavily about the deck. The commander of the lines performed prodigies of labour; bellowing forth orders through his speaking trumpet, gaffing fish, helping to haul in lines, and making his one eye do the work of half-a-dozen sound pairs by constantly rolling it round and round like a revolving light among the Deep Sinkers to see that everything was going right. The sport was at its height when the red-headed man appeared on deck with unsteady step and glittering eye. He gasped with delight when he saw the hapuku, and darted for his line. But the roving eye of the commander of the lines intercepted him in the act, and the owner of that eye waved him back with a dreadful threat to rip him up with the gaff if he threw the line in.

  “Just one lill’ fish, Bill dear, one lill’ fish,” pleaded the red-headed man. “I promised my wife I’d take her’ome an ’arpooker, and I daren’t go back without it. Just one lill’ ’arpooker, Bill.”

  “Stand back!” roared the commander of the lines. “Don’t you dare to put in again and spoil sport, or I’ll brain you with this sinker. You fish, you idiot? The only place you ought to be allowed to fish is at home in the—”

  The red-headed man fell overboard. He was fished out with the gaff and cursed by everybody. The commander of the lines wanted to know, in the name of Providence, why he hadn’t fallen in the other side where a shark was following the steamer. He ordered the redheaded man to go below under penalty of sudden death if he showed so much as the tip of his nose above the companion ladder during the remainder of the trip.

  Shortly after the commander of the lines went below himself. I was about to follow him, under the impression that he meditated violence to the unfortunate red-headed man, when he removed that fear by reappearing with a block of wood under his arm and an axe on his shoulder, looking not unlike a headsman of old. This sinister resemblance was disagreeably heightened when he suddenly seized a flopping hapuku from the deck, placed it upon the block, and in spite of the pitiful uplook of its pale blue eye, shore off its head with a swift blow of the axe. The sight of the slaughtered innocent seemed to awake a berserker rage in him, and soon he was chopping off heads with an untiring energy terrible to behold, till he and his ghastly implements and the deck were red with blood. Not satisfied with his own butchery, he ordered some of the Deep Sinkers to desist from fishing and start cleaning the fish—which they did. As the spectacle added neither to the beauty nor fragrance of the morning, I went for’rard to study the wonderful island undisturbed. But still from the side of the ship the cry of ‘A-r-r-r-pook-e-e-e-r!’ went up unceasingly, and the slaughter of the commander of the lines and his tribe of myrmidons was borne to me on the breeze.

  I did not see the commander of the lines again until we were within sight of Piatiki, when—his orgy of killing over—he sought me out to tell me with pride that it hadn’t been such a bad run after all. I asked him, as I watched the Deep Sinkers hurling hapuku heads overboard in a feverish effort to get the decks straightened up before we reached port, how many had been caught.

  “Six ’undred and eighty-four ’arpookers and three ’undred and twenty schnapper,” he replied. “Over a thousand ’ead from thirty-two lines.”

  “Bill,” said the red-headed man, appearing suddenly from the cabin; “can’t you spare me an ’arpooker? I promised the missus I’d—”

  “Why, confound you!” yelled the commander of the lines; “we’d ‘a’ had a thousand ’arpooker if it hadn’t been for you, you unmitigated ass! ’Arpooker,——you! Here’s a head for you!”

  It caught him, and he slept where he lay. When we got to Piatiki I saw the red-headed man going off with the disembodied head peeping out of his waistcoat, apparently gazing with filmy eye at the town in the twilight.

  We sought out our host, who had slept soundly through the whole trip, thanked him for a pleasant outing, and bid farewell to him and the Deep Sinkers. When I got back to the hotel I found Barney anxiously awaiting my arrival with a perturbed countenance.

  “Here’s a go!” he exclaimed, as soon as he saw me. ‘There’s been the devil to pay over that play of Tiddle’s—A Bit on Account—which was not so harmless as we thought it. The editor of the local rag here was at the show last night, and he’s furious.” />
  “Why should he get excited?”

  “Because he was guyed in the blessed thing. He’s the most long-winded of all Tiddle’s customers, and has been running a contra account with him for the last fifteen years under the delusion that the weekly sixpenn’orth of the ‘Piatikian News’ was good value for twelve and sixpence worth of butcher’s meat. Tiddle held a different opinion. He got even pretty cleverly, too. Don’t you remember one of the chaps in A Bit on Account telling the other that the editor of the ‘Piatikian News’ put a lot of meat into his leading articles?”

  “And the other chap replied that they would be anæmic for the future, because the butcher is going out of business! By Jove, I see the point now. I thought that was merely a clumsy—very clumsy—attempt at a joke.”

  “It has set the whole town laughing at the editor, who is boiling with rage.”

  “Well, he’ll have to cool down again,” I said.

  “He’s cooled down enough to write a criticism of the show that’ll warm us up, anyway. Read that.”

  Barney handed me a copy of the evening edition of the ‘Piatikian News,’ folded down at the editor’s criticism. The notice read:

  MERRY MARAUDERS DRAMATIC CO.

  ‘CURRANT CASH’ AT THE TOWN HALL.

  The Merry Marauders Dramatic Co. opened what bids fair to be a very successful dramatic season at the Town Hall last night, when a crowded house assembled to witness the production of that stirring drama, ‘Currant Cash.’ The capable members of the talented organisation all acquitted themselves well in their parts, and the piece went with eclat from start to finish. Mr. Irving Morrissey played the hero with great dash and verve, and he was adequately supported by Miss Audrey Bendalind as the heroine—a rôle which suited this brilliant actress to perfection, and gave her ample opportunities for the display of that feminine charm and vivacity which have won her fame all over New Zealand, and which, to come nearer home, subjugated many male Piatikian hearts last night. Mr. Reginald Bunne, as the villain, received the proper meed of all stage villains in the execration of the audience. Mr. B. King, the comedian, fairly convulsed the house, and nothing funnier than his humour has ever been seen on the Piatikian stage. The rest of the company were suitably cast, and the play was admirably staged. ‘Currant Cash’ will be staged again to-morrow night, when it will give way to a new and stirring drama called ‘Ten Nights in a Bar Room,’ which is said to be replete with sufficient dramatic sensations to satisfy the most hardened playgoer.

  “Come, come,” I said, “take out the ‘currants’, and it’s favourable enough.”

  “Read on!” continued Barney, with a grim smile.

  I took up the paper again, and saw beneath this stock notice of provincial journalese the following headlines:

  WHAT OUR CRITIC REALLY SAW.

  AN INSULT TO PIATIKIAN INTELLIGENCE.

  The foregoing is the usual sort of theatrical notice that the editorial courtesy of the ‘Piatikian News’ accords the dramatic companies visiting this town, provided they take sufficient advertising space to warrant our going to the expense of sending our dramatic critic to the performance. But the entertainment staged by the Merry Marauders Dramatic Co. at the Town Hall last night was so hopelessly bad that we are reluctantly compelled to dip our pen in gall instead of honey, and substitute the following criticism:

  The Merry Marauders Dramatic Co., which opened a short season in the Piatikian Town Hall last night with so much preliminary bill-posting that the public rolled up in expectation of witnessing something in the nature of a theatrical coup-d’état, proved to be instead a parturiunt montes, nascetur ridicnlus mus (which, for the benefit of those of our readers who are not proficient in Latin, we may interpret as meaning, in language fit for Piatikian ears, ‘a mountain that turned out a mouse’). The piece first tried on—the ‘News’ can use no other expression—a Piatikian audience was ‘Currant Cash,’ one of the old stock dramas of our great grandfathers, which was staged with the scenery probably used in the original production, and acted in an equally grey-whiskered style. In addition, all those taking part in the production were suffering from what we charitably ascribe to be very bad colds, as none of their voices were audible beyond the two front rows. As a compensating balance, however, the voice of the prompter was audible to the back of the hall—doubtless purposely raised for the benefit of the audience—if there were any such who wanted to follow the tedious action of the play. We wish these were all the strictures necessary for us to pass on the Merry Marauders, but though bad begins, worse remains behind, as the bard has it. ‘Currant Cash’ was followed by an afterpiece called ‘A Bit on Account,’ and grandiloquently styled ‘a sparkling comedietta’ on the programme. This effusion was from the pen of our hitherto highly respected local butcher, Mr. A. Tiddle, who has apparently been seized by a belated determination to write for the stage, for at the conclusion of the performance he mounted the platform and told the audience that he intended to give them another product of his pen before very long. We sincerely hope that Mr. Tiddle will reconsider this unhappy decision, for anything more pointless, absurd, vulgar, and worse written than ‘A Bit on Account,’ it has never been our misfortune to sit out. Being in a position to speak with some authority on literary matters, we tender Mr. Tiddle a bit of advice, which he would do well to lay to heart before he takes his pen in hand again—i.e., ne sutor ultra crepidam, a free translation of which might be rendered: ‘let the butcher stick to his cleaver.’ The only pen Mr. Tiddle is at home in is the pig pen—let him continue to carve succulent porcine joints instead of attempting to carve out dramas! We have said all we set out to say about last night’s fiasco, except to add that a further insult of the same nature to the highly intelligent people of this district will draw down upon the offenders a much more severe castigation than this. We have spoken.

  “What can be done to this lying scoundrel?” I demanded in hot anger, as I came to the end of this farrago of inflated nonsense.

  “We cannot do anything—except grin and bear it.”

  “Are we to suffer this outrage in silence, then?”

  Barney shrugged his shoulders and said: “I remember being present once at a Shakespearian contest between two cranks, They were to recite Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy before a jury of other Shakespearian cranks, who were to decide which reciter had the bard’s real meaning. The first crank started:

  ‘To be or not to be,—that is the question:

  Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

  The slings—’

  when the other crank sprang from his seat and vociferated, ‘Wrong, wrong! Put the accent on suffer.’ ‘I’m suffering enough already without putting any accent on the word,’ replied the reciter, ‘at the thought of you coming after me and having the last word.’”

  “An editor always has the last word,” concluded Barney, “so I think we had better suffer in silence.”

  And after thinking the matter over, I came to the same conclusion, too.

  Yours as ever,

  VAL.

  X

  MATETANEI,

  BAY OF PLENTY,

  NORTH ISLAND, N.Z.

  24th March, 1913.

  MY DEAR DICK:

  This is a remote spot. It is considered isolated even in the unsettled district of the Bay of Plenty. The town consists of a straggling street with shops on one side and the white beach and the blue waters of the Bay of Plenty on the other. The shops provide the hundred or so pastoral and fishermen settlers with manufactured goods in return for mutton, fish, and grain, and here they pass their lives in dreamy content, the world forgetting, by the world forgot The only variation in their primitive existence is springing out of bed in the middle of the night to avoid earthquake shocks—an occupation at which they have become so expert, owing to the perennial and periodic recurrence of the shocks, that most of the older settlers can easily beat an earthquake up to the hills, at the back of the township, half a mile away—and in ta
lking about a celebrated Maori chief named Ruatapu, who inhabits the quite unexplored back country in the mountains that can be seen from here. From what I can gather, this Ruatapu, called Rua for short, is a Maori witch-doctor, a dusky Dowie, a barbaric Solomon, and prophet and reformer rolled into one. It is said that he rules his numerous followers with a rod of iron in his mountain capital, Maungapohatu, and has built a temple there carved with decorations resembling aces of clubs and diamonds, where he compels the benighted natives to worship him—the ‘joker’ of the pack. He must be a clever fellow, according to all accounts. He came down to Matetanei recently to prove to his sceptical followers his power to work miracles by walking on the water, as he had frequently claimed to be able to do. He advanced to the water’s edge, and then, turning to his open-mouthed followers, who were squatting in a circle on the sand, said: “Do you truly believe I can walk on the water?” “Yes, yes!” they cried, with one voice. “Then there is no need for me to do it!” he replied. The City Fathers here had some idea of presenting the freedom of the town to Rua on the occasion of his visit, but he lost that signal honour through bringing six members of his harem with him—an unfortunate circumstance which, if it added to the piquancy of the flavour, lessened his usefulness in mixed assemblages as a standing dish of conversation. But fancy finding the founder of a freak religion in these primeval mountain solitudes!

  Our Mr. Baker greeted us with a queer story on our arrival here—which was by the medium of the little steamer that is the only connecting link between Matetanei and Piatiki and a civilisation in the dim distance. As the steamer cautiously felt its way up the shallow harbour to the little pier, I was very much surprised to see Mr. Baker awaiting us on a tall horse. I had never known our advance agent evince any predeliction for man’s noblest friend, except it were cast in some monstrous mould suitable for showing purposes; then, suddenly, there flashed back to my mind a remembrance of Mr. Baker’s first conversation with me, when he actually boasted of having once plucked a horse in order to exhibit it as a hairless phenomenon. The possibility that he had again called in art to assist nature in another similar creation was suggested when we got close enough to the pier to see the horse he was bestriding, for the animal was distressingly bare of hair in large patches. Nor did Mr. Baker’s first words after we landed reassure me.