Chapter XIV: ACROSS THE SOUTHERN ALPS—continued

“Good Luck is the gayest of all gay girls,
Long in one place she will not stay,
Back from your brow she brushes the curls,
Kisses you quick, then runs away.

But Madam Bad Luck, she soberly comes,
No fancy has she for flitting,
Snatches of strange, sad songs she sings,
Sits by your side and brings her knitting.”

Good Luck had walked with us over the pass and down the valley; but at this point of the journey she must have either outdistanced our lagging footsteps or returned the way she came. Anyhow, she left us, and our troubles began. When we halted the warm sun had left the narrow valley, and before we could get a fire going the chill air began to search out the very marrow in our bones. The dryness of the eastern side of the range had given place to the humidity of the west, and every bit of wood or plant was either green or sodden with moisture. Finally, when we did get a fire going it was a very smoky one, and gave little heat except what was required for the boiling of the “billy.” We ate a frugal meal of tinned meat, bread, and tea, made mattresses of damp green branches and ferns cut with our pocket-knives, crept into our sleeping bags, lit our pipes, talked over the events of the day and the prospects of the morrow, and then tried to sleep. Fyfe’s leg was beginning to trouble him; but he said little about it. The mere fact of his mentioning it at all was, however, sufficient to give me some concern, for Fyfe was never a man to make a mountain out of a mole-hill. We spent a miserable night in our sleeping bags, and when we awoke at five o’clock next morning were cold and stiff. Tea was made from compressed tabloids, and sweetened with saccharine. In this compressed form it is possible to carry in one’s waistcoat pocket enough tea and sugar for an expedition lasting several days. Saccharine, however, does not seem to be a good substitute for sugar, as there is no nourishment in it, and tea in tabloid form is an invention of the devil.

At 6 a.m., shouldering our packs once more, we started down the valley. Cold and stiff as we were, there was no buoyancy in our stride, and I could not fail to see that Fyfe was limping badly, though he toiled bravely on.

It was Sunday morning, and a clear sky gave promise of another glorious day. The valley was densely wooded, the forest coming down the steep hillsides right to the water’s edge. There was scarcely a scrap of level ground anywhere, and the river was a seething torrent. It was necessary to shout to make our voices heard above its everlasting roar. We proceeded for a little way along the side of the stream, and then took to the bush, but returned to the edge of the river again a little farther on. The boulders were very large, and had we not both been rock-climbers they would have troubled us considerably. As it was, however, we lost but little time, for whoever happened to be leading tackled the difficulties without hesitation, selecting the route, and quickly noting the best hand-grips as he went up one side of some great boulder that blocked the way and down the other. After an hour or two’s scrambling we found our progress barred by a gorge in the river, and we had to climb through the bush on the hillside. Here Fyfe had the misfortune to strike his leg twice in rapid succession on sharp angular rocks—the débris of an ancient moraine that lay hidden under a luxuriant growth of the most exquisite mosses and ferns. In each case the blow was severe, and very painful because of the already inflamed wound on the leg, and, though we were still in the cool shade of the forest, the pain was so intense that the perspiration came out in beads on his forehead. We struggled on in rather a gloomy frame of mind, till, at 10 a.m., we came to a second gorge in which the scenery was very grand. A rocky plateau, worn smooth by flood water, fringed the left bank of the stream at a considerable height above. Pools of water lay here and there in the hollows of the rocks. Along this plateau we proceeded. Across the stream the rocks rose straight from the water’s edge, clothed with ferns and mosses, and fringed above with trees, amongst which the scarlet blaze of the rata blossom made a glorious contrast with the sombre green. The scarcity of bird life in such a beautiful wood seemed strange. At times we could hear the beating of a wood-pigeon’s wings in the air, and, on looking up, would see a solitary, grey-plumaged bird flying across the narrow valley. Or we would hear the whistle of the kaka—a bush parrot—and note the flashing scarlet of his under-wings as he went from one branch to another, eyeing the strange intruders into his domain with that insatiable curiosity that is such a feature of his character, and that, alas! so often leads to his destruction.

The Alpine vegetation was now far behind us. Everywhere was a luxuriant growth of moss and fern and tree. In one place a titanic boulder blocked the river-bed, and the waters thundered through a narrow defile, over which a man might easily jump. At the lower end of the gorge the river ran for some distance between precipitous walls, and we had once more to take to the pathless forest on the mountain-side. Then we climbed down to the river again, and began the same scramble over the interminable boulders. This scrambling over and under rocks made us get into all sorts of strange attitudes. We felt, if there were much more of it, that we should soon qualify for the position of acrobats in a circus.

But the cold, hard, damp bed of the previous night, following upon a long and trying day’s exercise, had left us rather stiff for such contortions, and we simply longed for a hot bath and a rub down. We even talked about such a luxury, and scarcely were the words uttered than we found Mother Nature with the bath ready at hand.

All this morning we had noticed at intervals, as we marched beside the stream, a strange and somewhat offensive smell. We had attributed it to some plant in the forest, or to decaying vegetation. In jumping from one boulder to another I saw that the water below had patches of oil floating on it, and the offensive smell was very strong, so I stopped to make an investigation. On putting my hand into the water I found it was quite hot. Here was just what we wanted. I called out to Fyfe that I had found a hot spring. He was at first inclined to doubt my words; but when he remembered the strange smell that abounded in the valley he came back, and, in less time than it takes to tell the story, we found ourselves in the garb of Adam, and revelling in the luxury of a hot bath in the midst of a garden more glorious than the original Eden, but minus the temptations and distractions with which our original ancestor was beset. The water ran into a clear pool, and where it welled up in one place beside the glacier water of the river we could have, at the same moment, a warm bath on one side of our bodies and a cold bath on the other. This bath freshened us up wonderfully, and took all the stiffness away. Our only regret was that we had no means of taking a sample of the water away with us for analysis.

About midday we came to yet another gorge, where we halted for lunch. We got through without much bush-work, and arrived at a large stream that came in from the left. We took off our nether garments, put on our boots again without stockings, waded through, and in that guise walked for some distance along a comparatively level beach. When I looked round and saw Fyfe walking half naked behind me over the rocks I was seized with the ludicrous nature of his appearance and laughed heartily, only to have myself heartily laughed at in return. Our delight was now great, for we saw ahead of us a mile or so of comparatively easy walking, and fondly imagined that we had done with those troublesome gorges. But again our hopes were foredoomed to disappointment, for on rounding a promontory the river took a bend to the left and entered another gorge. It was the worst one of the lot. There was nothing for it but to take to the bush and climb the steep hillside to a plateau in the forest that seemed to run parallel with the river. We climbed up a long way, and got in amongst some tall trees where the forest was fairly open. The ferns here were exquisitely beautiful, and rare varieties abounded. Whole tree trunks were covered with the varied greens of the beautiful kidney fern, and at almost every step the graceful fronds of the umbrella fern rose above its neighbours and the lovely mosses that made a gloriously green and springy carpet for the uneven ground. It was a veritable fairyland, and one would not have been greatly surprised if the Queen of all the fairies had met us at any turn.

We kept well up the mountain-side, sometimes getting a bit of easy climbing, at other times making heavy work of it with our swags through scrub and luxuriant undergrowth; and all the time the rumbling of the waters, softened now by distance, could be heard down below on the right. But we could see nothing beyond a few yards. Suddenly the roaring of waters close in front fell upon our ears, and we found ourselves face to face with a high fall that came down in a succession of leaps through the forest. We followed it to the river and crossed where the precipice ended and the water ran over some gently sloping ground towards the river. Ahead was a level shingle flat. The valley was widening out and the hills were lower. Now, surely, our difficulties would be at an end. But after going a few hundred yards we saw the river again entering a deep and narrow gorge. We had been going pretty steadily for twelve hours. Fyfe’s leg was bad, and we were both a little tired, and in no mood to tackle the gorge, so we camped and made tea. Drift-wood was here in plenty. We lit a big fire under the overhanging trees, and dried our wet clothing. Meanwhile we took our bearings. The river, now swollen into a stately stream, forked on the shingle flats, and ran at a more leisurely pace. It seemed a good spot to cross in the event of our deciding to avoid the gorge by climbing a lower hill on the right bank.

We had taken with us at the start of this expedition two loaves of bread, a 4-lb. tin of meat and 4 lb. of marmalade, together with a small pot of bovril, and the tea and sugar tabloids, reckoning that, with our sleeping bags and some spare clothing, this would be as much as we could conveniently carry over so difficult a pass. We estimated also that this quantity of provisions would be just about enough to see us down to civilization on the West Coast. It was with a somewhat rueful countenance, therefore, that, after supper, we now looked at the two empty tins that had contained the jam and marmalade, and beheld only enough bread left for one frugal meal. Had Fyfe’s leg been sound we should not have minded, but it was now terribly inflamed and swollen to abnormal dimensions, so that we were not sure whether he would be able to stand another day’s rough walking.

Having dried our things, we scooped out, with our ice-axes, two hollows in the shingle on a bank overhung by trees, and, getting into our sleeping bags, lay down in them for the night. Should it come on to rain, it was decided to get up at any hour of the night and endeavour to cross the river before it became flooded. The sandflies were numerous and very troublesome, but they left us shortly after sundown. The shingle bank made a soft bed in comparison with the rougher rocks of the glacier moraines, to which we had been used on the eastern side of the divide, and under ordinary circumstances I doubt not that we should have slept long and soundly; but Fyfe’s leg grew worse and worse, and all night long he tossed, moaning, from side to side in a vain endeavour to get relief from the pain. I lay awake for hours, listening, and wondering whether we could cross the river in safety, and whether in the event of our doing so he would be able to continue the journey. Then I would commence to devise schemes for getting him down to the coast should he knock up altogether. I fully expected that I should have to leave him here and proceed alone down the valley in quest of aid. Once or twice during the night, when he was more than usually restless, I ventured an inquiry as to how he fared, and received a gloomy, monosyllabic answer that was the reverse of cheering. And then it was, in the silences of the night, as I lay a-thinking and a-planning, that the lines I have put at the head of this chapter came into my head, and I could not refrain from repeating them over and over again to myself—

“Good Luck is the gayest of all gay girls,
Long in one place she will not stay,
Back from your brow she brushes the curls,
Kisses you quick, then runs away.

But Madam Bad Luck, she soberly comes,
No fancy has she for flitting,
Snatches of strange, sad songs she sings,
Sits by your side and brings her knitting.”

Well, after all our good fortune, here was Madam Bad Luck come at last, and it really looked as if she had “brought her knitting.”

The camp fire dies down, and a weka or some night bird stirs the dry leaves near at hand. I watch the stars come out, and one fine star rise slowly above the eastern horizon. The night is clear and cold.

“And stretching, stretching over all,
Bends the unmeasured sky, that glows
With its pale stars—like the full close
Wherewith Eternity shall wall
Time round when Time shall fall.”