The Merry Marauders

by Arthur J. Rees

  In the morning the Merry Marauders were told the glad news—all except Miss Bendalind, who didn’t appear at breakfast—and they went their several ways to enjoy their holiday as happy as school children. Barney and Mr. Baker were going to have a morning’s trout-fishing on Lake Rotorua, under the escort of a Maori whom Mr. Baker declared to be a lineal descendant of Hinemoa of the Sacred Isle. Mr. Baker came up to me before he departed, and whispered in my ear:

  “I’ve hired a horse and buggy for you for the day. Take the little girl out.”

  Having delivered himself of these words with many nods and beaming gestures, he disappeared with surprising speed. I gazed after him stupidly, and turned round to see Miss Laurie standing under the verandah, dressed for walking. She looked timidly up and down the dusty white road, and I asked her where she was going.

  “I’d like to go to Whakarewarewa and see the Geyser Valley,” she replied. “I wonder how far it is?”

  “About two miles,” I hazarded at a guess. “I’ll drive you there, if you like.”

  Waving aside her murmured protests that she didn’t like to put me to so much trouble, I hurried round to the stable-yard, and found the landlord proudly eyeing a horse which was just being harnessed to a buggy.

  “This is your turn-out, Mr. Valentine,” he said, as I came up. “You’ve got a horse there, I can tell you.”

  “So I perceive,” I said, springing up into the seat. “Does he shy, or bolt, or run away, or do anything like that?”

  “He’s as quiet as an old maids’ retreat and as fleet as an express train,” the hotel-keeper said, emphatically.

  I was glad to hear it, for the remembrance of my previous driving expedition with Miss Laurie occurred to me with unpleasant force just at that moment, and when I drove round to the front and helped her up I asked her whether she wasn’t frightened to trust herself with me again.

  “It’s a different horse,” she replied demurely. “I don’t suppose this one has been on the moving-picture round, too.”

  It was soon apparent that it hadn’t, for the animal proved to be a remarkably well-behaved one, and our drive down to Whakarewarewa was marked by no inauspicious incident.

  I cannot say that I honestly recommend the Antipodean Waters of Lethe, as the Government Guide Book so picturesquely terms the Geyser Valley of Whakarewarewa, as the place to spend a happy peaceful day. Indeed, it is an unholy valley, full of strange sights, weird sounds, and for ever on the quiver with the partly-pent forces of nature under your feet finding a vent through the thin crust of earth. There is every kind of thermal activity in this shifting valley. Little geysers spout, boiling streams bubble, volcanoes and fumaroles eject vile-smelling jets with the hiss of a nest of serpents; slow squirming heaps of boiling mud come up from the centre of the earth through dark funnels and subside again with a sullen flop before they reach the surface—infernal porridge pots; hot blasts of steam pour up through the cracked and gashed baked earth crust, and down below nature groans incessantly in hideous travail. Added to all this there is a smell like unto a thousand sulphur-match factories in full blast; a noisome odour, which gets down your throat and makes you wheeze distressingly with a feeling of nausea at the pit of the stomach.

  Still, as Miss Laurie said, it is something to have seen this celebrated valley. She was disappointed that no geysers were playing when we were there, but I informed her that the big geysers only play now when some distinguished traveller is in the town. She expressed incredulity till I explained to her the method of soaping the geysers (which is done by dropping several bars of soap down their cavernous throats) in order to cause them to ‘boil over’ for the edification and gratification of visitors of eminent rank. Miss Laurie murmured her amazement at the audacity of that puny insect man in thus tampering with the forces of nature.

  “Still,” she continued, “I should so like to see a geyser in eruption. How far away is it to that one that blew up the other day, carrying the Englishman and the guide with it?”

  “That’s Weimero. But I understand it’s subsiding again, and besides, they wont let anybody go near it now. Still, if you’re interested in geysers, suppose we drive over to Tikitere. That ought to be worth looking at.”

  “What’s Tikitere?”

  “A boiling lake. I’ve been reading about it in the guidebook, which says it should on no account be missed.”

  “A boiling lake? Oh, let’s go and see it!”

  We walked back to where we had left the horse and buggy, and I enquired the way to Tikitere from one of the parasitical Maoris who make a living by selling trumpery souvenirs of the place to complacent tourists, at an exorbitant price. The man I accosted—an aged Maori, who looked as if he would have benefited considerably by a bath in one of the boiling springs to which he ‘guided’ visitors—offered to come with us and show us the way. I declined his offer for more reasons than one, and bought his confused directions for a shilling. They were dear at the price, for I lost my way by his route several times, but by dint of pertinacious inquiry along the road we at last had the satisfaction of seeing a dense cloud of steam rising from a hollow half-a-mile away, which a roadside worker told us was Tikitere.

  This place was worse—infinitely worse—than the Geyser Valley. As we drew near our ears were assailed by horrible noises, and our noses by an intolerable smell of sulphuretted hydrogen and sulphuric acid. By the time we reached the lake itself I had almost come to the conclusion that the Prince of Darkness had acquired some territorial rights in a land which New Zealanders call God’s Own Country, and that in this desolate region we had reached the veritable abode of the lost. Nor was that impression dissipated by the sight of the lake itself. As we watched, the cloud of dense steam hovering over the surface lifted sufficiently to reveal an expanse of churning, bubbling, slimy horrors, in whose unfathomable depths unknown monsters seemed to wallow. The shrieks and gasps that accompanied the vomiting and sucking back of the foul matter into the bottomless pits of this brimstone lake were unholy.

  Miss Laurie clutched my arm tightly. “Oh, what a dreadful place,” she exclaimed. “Let us get away from it.”

  I was not sorry to leave myself, for Tikitere is altogether too realistic for one who, in his tender years, was trained rigorously in that gloomy school of theology of which the late Dr. Watts was such a shining exemplar. So we drove back towards Rotorua.

  . . . . . . . .

  “Look!” I said, as a turn of the road revealed Lake Rotorua—first of a chain of lovely lakes scattered like a handful of glittering, many-coloured jewels through a heaving waste of grey scoria and white silica—with the sun shining on its blue waters and pansy-purpled island centre.

  “Oh!”—Miss Laurie looked with her blue eyes sparkling like the sun-reflected surface of the lake— “How lovely, how wonderful!”

  We drove down to the eastern shore of the lake, and watched a bare-legged Maori boy grounding his light boat on the shelving, pebbly shore. He had been fishing, for after he had made the boat high and dry, he picked up a couple of rainbow trout from the bottom, shouldered his sculls, and started to walk away. I recognised him as the ‘boots’ of the hotel where we were staying, and with a flash of his white teeth he showed that the recognition was mutual. A sudden impulse took possession of me. “Hey, boy,” I called after him. He turned.

  “Do you want to earn a few shillings?”

  “By Gorry, yes!” came the characteristic Maori answer.

  “Then drive that turn-out up to the hotel, bring us back some lunch, and lend us your boat to have a row while you’re gone!”

  He eagerly agreed to hire me the boat for as long as I wanted for five shillings (the more readily, no doubt, as I afterwards ascertained, that it was not his to lend, but the property of a tourist, from whom he had ‘borrowed’ it), helped me launch it, and steadied the little craft while I lifted Miss Laurie in. Then he drove off with a promise to return with the lunch within an hour.

  I handled the sculls vigorously
, and soon we were quite away from the shore.

  “How clever of you to think of this!” exclaimed Miss Laurie, dimpling with pleasure.

  “Yes, I don’t think it was such a bad idea,” I confessed.

  “What is that island over there?” my companion asked, pointing to a pyramid-shaped wooded islet in the distant blue.

  I consulted my guide-book. “That’s Mokoia,” I said, when I had found the place. “Hinemoa, the beautiful daughter of a Maori chief, used to swim across from the mainland to her lover, who lived on the island. The Maoris call her the Maid of Owhata.”

  “How romantic! And did she marry him?”

  “Yes, so the guide-book says. She married her island lover and lived happy ever afterwards.”

  The girl was silent. I pulled in the sculls and let the boat drift through the still blue water and the golden sunlight. I love the New Zealand sunlight. It glitters like hope undimmed in a sky that is never grey. As the small shell floated placidly I murmured half to myself:

  “All day long in a pictured boat,

  Drifting and drifting I dream and float—

  Dreaming and drifting till I seem,

  Part of the picture and the dream.”

  “How pretty that is,” said Miss Laurie. “Who wrote it?”

  “An Australian poet named Daley—I picked up a book of his in the hotel last night, and came across it. I’m not sure I’ve got it right, though.”

  “It’s pretty as you say it. How pleasant it would be if we could only drift through life like this!”

  “I’m afraid we’d come on the rocks.”

  “Oh, what a prosaic thing to say!”

  “True, but unfortunately life’s not poetry. It’s a battle, mostly, and when we drift and let things go we do come on the rocks. We owe our drifting to-day to the slight circumstance of Mr. Baker’s little windfall. Last night, before that came to hand, we were thinking of drifting in different directions, to take up the battle of life elsewhere—or I was, at any rate. I was going to disband the company.”

  Miss Laurie looked at me with startled eyes. “Disband the company?” she said, breathlessly. “Whatever were you going to do that for?”

  “Because I didn’t see any future or hope for the Merry Marauders. I had enough left to get us all back to Auckland.”

  “And then?”

  “Well then,” I replied, with an uneasy laugh, “I suppose it would have been ’Adieu for evermore.’”

  “And where would—would—y—you have gone?”

  “Oh, back to England, I suppose, having made a failure of things here.” Then I added, with a lightness I was far from feeling; “that is, if I could have raised the passage money.”

  She was silent again. Our little boat was drifting towards the shore, into the lengthening shadows that were beginning to stretch like giants’ fingers across the dazzling blue. It seemed colder.

  Then, of a sudden it dawned on me—fool that I was—what it meant to me to go away from her, now, or at any time. At the risk of upsetting the little boat I made a hasty movement towards her. Her head was averted, and I could not see her face.

  “I could not—would not—have gone away if you had wanted me to stay. Would you have cared?”

  She faced me bravely with a tremulous smile, but there was a tear in her eye. “Would I have cared?” she said. “I—”

  “Coo—ee!”

  We came back to earth in an instant, and looked to the shore. I must confess that my gratitude to Mr. Baker was swallowed up in momentary violent anger at the spectacle of him wildly shouting on the shore and frantically beckoning to us. There was nothing for it but to obey the summons, so I picked up the sculls and grounded the boat in a few strokes. Mr. Baker was so anxious to greet us that he rushed into the water and dragged the boat high and dry by main force.

  “Here’s news; here’s news!” he excitedly exclaimed. “News both good and bad—which will you have first?”

  “Oh, let’s have the bad news first,” I said.

  “Well, Miss Bendalind’s eloped! Cleared back to Wanaunga to marry that solemn idiot young Baggpott! It was all a put-up job about her complaining to me. She wanted to throw me off the scent! She’s sent a wire to Morrissey. Poor fellow! He’s badly cut up!”

  I was relieved to find the bad news was no worse, but I forbore to say so. Instead, I asked Mr. Baker what the good news was.

  “It’s more than good. It’s glorious! It’s come in the shape of a wire from the Merry Marauders’ good angel and my old friend, Charlie Goverson. Here, read it! My eyes can’t see it now.”

  I took the telegram from his trembling hand and read aloud:

  Company hung up in Sydney owing to coal strike. Will Merry Marauders open new theatres for us? Six months engagement certain. Wire at once.

  GOVERSON.

  “I’ve wired—I wired right away—saying ‘yes,’ and I thought I’d come down here and tell you the good news,” gasped Mr. Baker. “That black fool wanted me to bring you some lunch, but I said, ‘Damn the lunch!’ Fancy thinking of eating at such a time!”

  I could scarcely take it all in—what this meant to me. It ran in glorious riot through my head and set my pulses bounding. I grasped my old friend by the hands. “What—great—news!” I said at length.

  “Great news—grand news! Please God, the future holds great days for the Merry Marauders. We’ll show them what we can do! But what about Miss Bendalind? What are we to do for a leading lady?”

  I turned to Miss Laurie. “Will you come with us as our leading lady?” I said; “as—my leading lady?”

  “Yes; as your leading lady,” she softly replied.

  HAERE-RA! Dick, old fellow,

  VAL.

  A Note on the Author

  Arthur John Rees (1872–1942), was an Australian writer born in Melbourne. He is best remembered for his mystery and detective novels and short stories. Although he was a prolific writer and his works were enjoyed widely in Australia and England, his biography is obscured. He most likely travelled to Europe in his early twenties and lived in England for some time. Many of his novels are set in English locations.

  Discover books by Gabriel Fielding published by Bloomsbury Reader at

  www.bloomsbury.com/ArthurJRees

  The Merry Marauders

  The Moon Rock

  The Shrieking Pit

  This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Reader

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  Copyright © 1913 Arthur J. Rees

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  eISBN: 9781448213702

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