deep as to submerge the ship’s figurehead, then immediately rose back up.
This pitching and rolling didn’t worry Mr. Hawkins or Nat Gibson. Having many years of sailing experience, they were used to it. They breathed with gusto this air impregnated with the salty tang of the ocean, filling their lungs with it. At the same time, they took great pleasure in contemplating the infinitely varied sites along the western shore.
This shore is perhaps more curious than that of the southern island. Ikana-Maoui, meaning in Polynesian “The Maoui Fish,” offers a greater number of creeks, bays, and harbors than Tawaï-Pounamou, a name that the natives give to the lake where green jade can be collected.7 From a distance, one’s view extends over the chain of mountains that are covered with green and where, in the past, volcanic eruptions had occurred. They constitute the skeleton or rather the backbone of the island whose average width is some thirty leagues. All in all, the surface of New Zealand is no less than that of the British Isles and resembles a second Great Britain owned by the United Kingdom in the antipodes of the Pacific. But if England is separated from Scotland only by the narrow stream of the Tweed, here it is a sea channel that separates North Island from South Island.8
From the time the James Cook had left the port of Wellington, the chances of the ship being successfully taken over had assuredly decreased. Flig Balt and Vin Mod often discussed this subject. And that day, at lunchtime, when Mr. Hawkins, Nat Gibson, and the captain were together in the officers’ quarters, they discussed it once again. Vin Mod was at the helm, and they were not running any risk of being overheard by the sailors on duty up forward.
“Ah, that wretched packet …,” Vin Mod kept repeating. “That’s what stopped our plan! For a whole day that confounded ship hung across our path. If its commander is ever sent up to the yardarm, I demand the right to haul on the rope that’ll grip his throat! Couldn’t he just have continued on his way instead of cruising along beside the brig? Without his interference, the James Cook would now be rid of the captain and his men! It would be sailing the eastern seas with a good cargo for the Tonga or the Fiji.”9
“All that’s … just words!” observed Flig Balt.
“We console each other the best we can!” Vin Mod replied.
“The question is to know,” continued the bosun, “whether the presence on board of the shipowner and Gibson’s son might oblige us to give up our plans.”
“Never!” cried out Vin Mod. “Our companions won’t ever listen to such a tune as that! Len Cannon and the others would have certainly figured out some way to slip into Wellington, if they had thought that the brig would just come back peacefully to Hobart Town! What they want is sailing for their own profit, and not for Mr. Hawkins’s benefit.”
“All that’s … just words, I repeat,” Flig Balt said, shrugging his shoulders. “Can we hope that the proper moment will turn up?”
“Well, of course,” affirmed Vin Mod, angered at seeing the bosun’s discouragement, “and we’ll just have to take advantage of it. And if it’s not today or tomorrow, then later on in the neighborhood of Papua10 in the middle of those archipelagoes where the police hardly ever bother you. Let’s suppose, for example … the shipowner and a few others, Gibson’s son, two or three sailors don’t show up some evening … We don’t know what became of them … The brig continues on, right? …”
And Vin Mod, speaking in a low voice, whispered these criminal thoughts into Flig Balt’s ear. Determined not to let him weaken, resolved to push him to the end, he could not restrain himself from uttering a powerful curse, when the bosun tossed out, for the third time, this less than encouraging reply:
“Words, words, nothing but words, all that.”
Vin Mod shouted out another curse, which, this time, was heard as far as the officers’ dining room. Mr. Gibson, having risen from the table, appeared at the after doorway.
“What’s the trouble?” he asked.
“Nothing, Mr. Gibson,” replied Flig Balt, “a sudden pitch that almost stretched Vin Mod out flat on the bridge …”
“I thought I was going to be tossed over the rail!” added the sailor.
“The wind is strong, the seas are unforgiving,” said Mr. Gibson after having examined with a rapid glance the brig’s sails.
“The breeze tends to pull to the east,” observed Flig Balt.
“True. Pull closer in, Mod. No trouble about getting closer to land.”
Then, that order being given and executed, he returned to his quarters.
“Ah!” murmured Vin Mod, “if you were in command of the James Cook, Master Balt, instead of letting the ship do the carrying, you’d let it luff.”
“Sure … but I’m not the captain!” replied Flig Balt, heading toward the bow.
“He’s going to be one, though,” Vin Mod repeated to himself. “He has to be … should I be hanged!”
During the next day, they saw fewer whales than before, which would explain the scarcity of whalers in the area. It is rather along the eastern shore that crews try to catch them, toward Akaroa, and the bay surrounding the islands of Tawaï-Pounamou.11 But the sea was not deserted. A certain number of coastal vessels were coming and going, sheltered by the land across and beyond the Bay of Taranaki.12
In the afternoon, still served by a strong breeze, having lost sight of the summit of Whare-Orino,13 two thousand feet high and whose base rises out of the sea, the James Cook passed before the ports of Kawhia and Aotea, where a flotilla of fishing boats were heading in, unable to weather the open seas.14
Mr. Gibson had to reef in the topsails, while holding the foresail, the mainsail, the spanker, and the jibs. If the sea grew rougher, if the wind became a tempest, he would still have a refuge for the night, since around six o’clock in the evening the ship would be sheltered by Auckland.15 So he preferred not to alter his route.
Supposing that the James Cook were required to seek shelter from the bad weather on the open sea, it would find it without difficulty in Auckland. The city occupies the back and north of a harbor that is one of the most reliable in this part of the Pacific. When a boat enters its narrow mouth between the Parera rocks and the “Manukan hafen,”16 it finds itself inside a basin, protected on all sides. No need to reach the port. The basin suffices, and even entire fleets would find good mooring space there.
With such advantages for maritime commerce, it is not surprising that the city has rapidly achieved great importance. Including the outlying areas, it counts around sixty thousand inhabitants. Arranged in tiers on the slopes of the southern side of the bay, the city is quite varied in aspect. Superbly laid out with its squares and gardens, decorated with tropical flowers, its broad, clean streets, bordered with hotels and shops, this curious city, industrial and commercial, might be the envy of Dunedin and Wellington.
If Mr. Gibson had sought refuge in this port, he would have encountered a hundred ships coming and going. In this northern part of New Zealand, the attraction of gold mines was felt less than in the southern part of Ikana-Maoui and especially in the provinces of Tawaï-Pounamou. There, the brig could have rid itself—without much difficulty—of the recruits embarked in Dunedin and replaced them with four or five sailors chosen from among those dismissed from other ships. So little did he esteem Len Cannon and his comrades,
