on the horizon.
Before eight, however, some smoke was sighted, astern and off the starboard side, and they were not long in seeing a steamer rounding Cape Campbell.
Vin Mod and Flig Balt were not put out. Surely, given its pace, it would soon have passed the brig.
It was a government mail carrier, which had not as yet shown its colors. Now at this instant a rifle shot was heard, and the British flag was unfurled from the yardarm.
Harry Gibson had stayed on the bridge. Was he going to remain there as long as the mail carrier was visible, whether it intended to cross the strait or head for Wellington?
That’s what Flig Balt and Vin Mod wondered, not without some concern and even a certain impatience, as they were so late being alone on the bridge.
An hour stretched by. Mr. Gibson, seated near the crew quarters, seemed disinclined to retire. He exchanged a few words with the helmsman Hobbes and watched the packet, which was now less than a mile from the brig.
Imagine how disappointed Flig Balt was, along with his accomplices, a disappointment bordering on rage. The English packet was moving at slow speed, and little steam puffed out of its exhaust. It rocked to the undulation of the long swell, barely troubling the water from the wash of the propeller, making no more wake than the James Cook.
Why had this ship slowed down so much? … Had some misfortune befallen the engine? Or was it simply a reluctance to enter the port of Wellington at night, where the channel offered so many difficulties? In any event, for one of those reasons, no doubt, it seemed to have decided to stay until dawn under low steam and, consequently, in view of the brig.
That was enough to frustrate Flig Balt, Vin Mod, and the others and to make them somewhat anxious as well.
Indeed, Len Cannon, Sexton, Kyle, and Bryce all thought at first that the packet had been sent from Dunedin in pursuit—that the police, having learned about their embarkment and their departure on the brig, were now seeking to recapture them. Exaggerated fears and certainly unfounded. It would have been simpler to send by telegraph the order to stop them as soon as they arrived in Wellington. One does not send a government ship to round up a few rowdy sailors, when it is easy to jail them in port.
Mr. Gibson exchanged a few words with the helmsman.
Len Cannon and his comrades were soon reassured. The packet made no signal to communicate with the brig, and put no tender in the water. The James Cook would not be the object of a search, and the recruits from the Three Magpies could rest at ease on board.
But if all fear was banished on this account, one can easily imagine the anger felt by Bosun Balt and Vin Mod. Impossible to act that night, and the next day the brig would be at its mooring in Wellington! Attacking Captain Gibson and three sailors could not be done in silence. They would resist, they would cry out, and their cries would be heard by the packet, which was but a few hundred yards away. The revolt could not begin in these conditions. It would have been quickly put down by the English vessel, which, in a few turns of the propeller, would have drawn alongside the ship.
“Damnation!” Vin Mod grumbled. “Nothing we can do about it! We’d risk being hoisted to the yardarm of this damned ship.”
“And tomorrow,” added Flig Balt, “the owner and Nat Gibson will be on board!”
If they had moved away from the packet, perhaps the bosun would have attempted it if the captain, instead of returning to his cabin, had not stayed the greater part of the night on the bridge. As it was, it was impossible to head out to sea. So, they had to temporarily abandon their plan to take over the brig.
The next day broke early. The James Cook passed Blenheim,20 situated on the shore of Tawaï-Pounamou on the east side of the strait; then it approached Point Nicholson, which juts out at the entrance to Wellington.21 Finally, at six o’clock in the morning, accompanied by the packet, it entered the port and moored in the middle of the harbor.
*Facsimile of an illustration published in the Great Voyages and Great Navigators by Jules Verne (Hetzel’s note).
4
At Wellington
The city of Wellington is built on the southwest point of North Island at the far side of a horseshoe-shaped bay. Well protected from the sea winds, it offers excellent moorings. The brig had been favored by the weather, but such was not always the case. It was often difficult to navigate in Cook Strait, which is crossed by currents whose speed sometimes reaches ten knots, even though the tides in the Pacific are never strong. The seafarer Tasman,1 to whom is credited the first discovery of New Zealand in December 1642, ran great risks of running aground and then being attacked by the natives. Hence the name “Bay of the Massacre,”2 which figures in the geographic nomenclature of the straits. The Dutch navigator lost four of his men who were devoured by cannibals on that shore, and, a hundred years later, the English navigator, James Cook, left in their hands the crew of one of the ships in his fleet, commanded by Captain Furneaux.3 Finally, two years later, the French navigator Marion Dufresne4 and sixteen of his men met their death in an attack of the most frightful savagery.
In 1840, in the month of March, Dumont d’Urville,5 aboard Astrolabe and Zélée, passed by Otago Bay of the southern island and visited the Snare Islands and Stewart Island at the southern end of Tawaï-Pounamou. Then he sojourned in the port of Akaroa, where he had no need to complain about the natives. The memory of this illustrious explorer’s passage is marked by the island that bears his name. Inhabited only by bands of penguins and albatrosses, it is separated from South Island by the “French Pass,” where the sea is so treacherous that ships do not voluntarily enter into its channel.6
Today, under the authority of the British flag, at least as far as the Maoris are concerned, every security is assured in the latitudes of New Zealand. The dangers that were of human origin have been warded off. Only those in the sea continue, and even so, they are of a lesser sort, thanks to the hydrographic maps of the area and to the establishment of the gigantic lighthouse built on an isolated rock in front of the Nicholson Bay,7 where Wellington is located.
It was in the month of January 1849 that the New Zealand Land Company sent the Aurora to establish settlers on the shores of these distant lands. The population of the two islands counts no less than eight hundred thousand inhabitants, and Wellington, the capital of the colony, is itself home to some thirty thousand.
The city is pleasantly situated, solidly constructed, and has broad streets that are properly maintained. Most of the houses are built of wood (for earthquakes are frequent in the southern province) as are the public structures, among others the governmental palace in the middle of its beautiful park and the cathedral, whose religious character does not exempt it from such earthly cataclysms.8 This city, less important, less industrial, and less commercial than its two or three rivals in New Zealand, will equal them someday no doubt, given the drive and colonizing genius of Great Britain. In any case, with its University, its Legislative House composed of fifty-four members, among them four Maoris named by the governor, its House of Representatives coming directly from popular suffrage, its colleges, its schools, its museum, its productive factories for frozen meats, its model prison, its squares, and its public gardens, where electricity is going to replace gas, Wellington boasts an exceptional standard of living, which many cities in the Old and the New World might envy.
If
