"What a glorious opportunity! And yet it is not every one who could have taken prompt advantage of it. I should have been delighted to have been in it." Mannering looked with approval at the animated countenance of the speaker as he said-- "Waka Nene and I would have been only too glad to recruit you and a few more of the same stamp. It was very good fun while it lasted. My friend Waterton came on as soon as he could get across from Hokianga, and was in the thick of it. His right-hand man was shot dead within a foot of him." * * * * * Though ordinarily reserved, Massinger, when abroad, made a point of conversing with strangers of all callings and both sexes, in an unstudied fashion, which often produced unexpected gains. He was wont to tell himself that this careless comradeship was like turning over the leaves of a new book. For is not the mind of any human creature, could one but catch sight of certain cabalistic characters, traced deep in the tablets of the inner soul, more exciting, more amazing, more comic, more terrible, more instructive than any book that ever left printer's hands? Yet never, at home or abroad, had he encountered a companion like to this one. A wonderful admixture of the heroic and social attributes! The reckless courage of a Berserker; the air of born command which showed itself in every instinctive motion; the love of danger for its own sake, as yet unslaked by time, by dangerous adventures over land and sea; the iron constitution which could endure, even enjoy, the privations of savage life, joined to an intellect of the highest order; speculative, daring, fully instructed in the latest results of science and sociology, yet capable of presenting every subject upon which he touched in a new and original light; while around the most grave issues and important questions played a vein of humour, comic or cynical, but irresistibly attractive.