“I think that may be the case,” said Grapple.
The chief smiled delightedly.
“Oh my friend,” he said to Mr. Bone. “That is good. Good, good. Come with me. We wish to make a powhiri and hakari feast for you and your whekere,” he said, glancing at Jinot.
“I think, sir,” whispered Jinot, “that he believes I am the factory. He sees a factory as a kind of servant. Or slave.” For he reckoned that the Maori had slaves.
“Oh, what bosh! You do not understand the situation, Mr. Jinot Sel. He is in complete accord with me. He understands everything.” Mr. Bone, as was his usual habit, withdrew his repeating watch from his pocket. Before he had completed the motion the crowd sucked in its breath as one and stepped back, horrified expressions on their faces. They murmured “atua” at each other. Mr. Bone looked to John Grapple for an explanation.
“Hum hum,” said Grapple, with a twisted expression, putting aside his Scots speech in favor of plain English. “They fancy your watch is a demon, they say they can hear its heart beating.” Mr. Bone smiled to hear such simple suppositions and added to the tension by pressing the button that activated the chiming mechanism. A soft ding-ding came from the watch. A man in the crowd shouted something.
“What did he say?” asked Mr. Bone.
“He said the demon wishes to escape from his prison,” said Grapple. “I suggest you put your watch away, sir, as the Maori have strong feelings about such instruments. Some years ago a whaler stopped here to rewater and gather spars. The clumsy captain managed to drop his watch in the harbor and a number of fatal illnesses and calamities fell on the people in the following weeks. They ascribed those troubles to the evil spirit that was lurking beneath their harbor.”
But Mr. Bone decided to display his whiteman power. Frowning, he shook his watch and then spoke to it harshly as though to a disobedient child before putting it back in his pocket, where once again it seemed to call impetuously to its master to be released. The crowd breathed and drew back a little further.
When Mr. Bone asked Grapple sotto voce where the chief had learned his English, Grapple said it was likely he had served as a sailor on an American whaler or sealer and was of a secretive nature that led him to hide his knowledge in order to gain advantages. Mr. Bone smiled at the chief. He took note of the tattoo pattern that he might recognize him again.
“So, sir,” he said, “do you mostly fish, or make war?”
“Sometime fish, sometime war.”
“Ha. And what do you suppose I do with my life?”
“You travel about?”
Mr. Bone spoke slowly and loudly as one did with foreigners, and also because the birds in the branches above them overwhelmed their voices. “No, I rarely travel about. I live in America and, as I said, I make the best axes. Like that one.” He pointed to the Penobscot ax the chief still held in his hand. Mr. Bone extended his hand and waggled the fingers with a beckoning motion to show he wanted the ax returned to him. The Maori looked at Mr. Bone, his eye darkened and he fled with the ax.
“Here!” cried Mr. Bone. “You ruffian! Bring that back at once.” But the man had disappeared into the ferns.
“You are impetuous, Mr. Bone,” said John Grapple. “Metal tools are highly prized here.” He smiled and his voice wheedled, the Scots accent thickened. “He believes ye gae at tae him as a gift. Why do ye not come tae ma hoose and we’ll hae a wee dram and gab eh? Let us move awa frae thes bickerin blaitherskites.” Indeed, the birds were fiery in their declamations.
• • •
Jinot and Mr. Bone ate and slept in a hut in one of the established missionaries’ enclaves. Gourd plants grew up the sides, extending their tendrils to the roof peak, and jeweled geckos hunting insects rustled through them. “When Mr. Rainburrow’s mission buildings are in place we will shift houses, or when I find a factory site and put up our first dwellings. But for the time being we must accept this small guesthouse under the trees as our temporary home,” said Mr. Bone.
“Do I hear my name mentioned?” called the missionary’s voice as he came into the twilight hut smiling and humming a hymn. “I am well pleased with the site for our mission. It lies on a moderate bluff overlooking the harbor and has a brisk stream of excellent water running through it. We have already begun the construction. Before I left fifty or more Maoris were cutting great poles and lashing them together with vines, a curious but effective way of construction.”
At the end of the second week the missionary had become a partner with the trader Orion Palmer, a Maine man who had come to New Zealand years before in a sealer and had no intention of returning to the pine tree lands, where trees burst with cold in the winter nights.
• • •
Jinot rose before dawn to the sound of intertwining birdcalls, haunting organ-like notes, slow and deliberate as if the bird was deeply considering the composition. Low notes and harmonics seemed to express both sadness and resignation. A distant bird answered from far in the forest and the somber voices laced together. He twisted his head this way and that trying to find the feathered creature that made such a poignant song. And he saw it, a large blue-grey bird opening and closing its wings, fanning its tail. It showed a black mask and under its chin hung two blue wattles. The bird arched its neck, opened its strong curved beak and called lingeringly: … ing… ong… ang ang… cleet!.. ing.
Outside Jinot climbed up to the ridge through a forest so unlike the pine forests of Maine, New Brunswick and Ontario, or any other he had ever seen, he never could have imagined it. He sensed antiquity in the place but could not know that he was walking through the oldest living forest on earth, part of a world never scoured by encroaching glaciers, never overrun with grazing mammals. With the industrial ugliness of London fresh in his mind, New Zealand’s beauty moved him powerfully. It was a fresh world pulsing with life and color, the trees dripping vines, epiphytes, scarlet flowers and dizzying perfumes spilling from cascades of tiny orchids, supplejack knitting the forest together, red-fluffed rata — a place hidden from the coarser world by its remoteness. He had the feeling he should not be here; perhaps it was one of the tapu places the missionaries had joked about. The ground was cut with wooded ravines. At the bottom of each ran a clear stream. Threads of water twisted through tree roots. Birds crowded the tree branches like fruits and the crowns twitched with their movements. He would come to know many of them and the trees — totara, beech, kahikatea, rimu, matai and miro, manuka and kanuka, the great kauri and nikau palms. When he came on a secluded stand of kauri, their great grey trunks like monster elephant legs, he touched bark, looked up into the bunched limbs at the tops of the sheer and monstrous stems. He imagined he felt the tree flinch and drew back his hand.
In his desire to see every part of this new forest he left the trail and descended into a ravine. It was like a somewhat nightmarish dream when he ignorantly touched a glistening leaf and received a burning jolt of pain. Looking closely at the leaves of this small tree, the stinging nettle tree, he could see silvery hairs. Alas, not a true paradise. And there were mosquitoes. A wave of anxiety suddenly washed over him and he felt he had to get out of the ravine quickly. His feet tangled in creepers and rough vines, in the maze of supplejack. An extraordinary jumble of plants, grasses, vines, trees, shrubs were crowded together in huge knots. His clothes, decayed by long exposure to sun and salt, began to tear as he climbed up again, slipping on the muddy slope, hoping to find the trail again, his pants in ribbons from cutty grass.