So fixed in the resolve to offer up herself on the altar of friendship, duty, and danger delightfully combined was this latter-day damsel, that she went off to London, and, having no parents or near relatives to control her--only a couple of trustees, who, provided she did not spend more than her income, permitted her to do pretty well as she pleased--took her passage to New Zealand by the very next boat, the _Arawatta_. The said trustees raised their eyebrows when informed of her intention, but consoled themselves, being men of sense and experience, remarking that if young women of independent means and ideas did not do one foolish thing they would be sure to do another, even perhaps less desirable. So, the decisive step being taken, she had only to tell a few friends--Mrs. Merivale, _née_ Branksome, being one--and get ready a suitable outfit for the voyage to this Ultima Thule of Maoriland. Up to this time, though hard knocks, hard fare, and hard marches had convinced Massinger that volunteer soldiering in Northern New Zealand was no child's play, yet, on the whole, the experience had been less depressing than exciting. The health of the triumvirate was unimpaired. The youth and uniformly good spirits of Massinger had served him well. Mr. Slyde's pessimistic philosophy had much the same effect, apparently, leading him to assert that "nothing mattered one way or another in this infernal country; that all things being as bad as they could be, any change would probably be for the better; that if they were killed in action, as seemed highly probable, it would be perhaps the best and quickest way out of the hopeless muddle into which the Governor, the ministers, the settlers, and the soldiers had got the cursed country. The alternative was, of course, to desert, which, for absurdly conventional reasons, could not be thought of. His advice to Massinger was to marry Erena Mannering and join the Ngapuhi tribe, which, under Waka Nene's sagacious policy, was bound to come out on top. That would be, at any rate, a decided policy, such as no party in the island had sufficient intellect to grasp. He might then give all his support to the King movement, and possibly in course of time be elected Sovereign of Waikato and surrounding states, do the Rajah Brooke business, and found an Anglo-Maori dynasty." These and similar suggestions, delivered with an air of earnestness, and the slow persuasive tones which marked his ordinary conversation, never failed to produce a chorus of merriment, in effective contrast to the unrelaxing gravity of his expression. As for Warwick, the war-demon which had possessed his Maori ancestors had temporarily taken up its abode with him, for, as the campaign progressed, he seemed day by day to be more resolute and unflinching, in action or out of it.