"Nature is good enough to contract for the cooking here, which is the least she can do before she blows them all up some fine day. Just watch these people directly." As indeed he did, much marvelling. First of all, two of the women cleared a space, about three feet long and two wide, in the warm earth; into this they placed a layer of stones, which they covered with leaves. Upon this were placed the pork, the _kumeras_, and some pigeons shot on the way, all of which were rapidly and satisfactorily cooked. The evening meal, so miraculously prepared, as it seemed, having been concluded, Erena retired with her female attendants, pleading the necessity for a night's rest to prepare them for the opening day of the Great Exhibition. The two men walked up and down, smoking the meditative pipe. But long after his companion had retired to rest, Massinger lay awake, unable to sleep amid the strange, almost preternatural, features of the locality, while the anticipation of a war between his countrymen and this stubborn and revengeful people taxed his brain with incessantly recurring thoughts. What would be the first act in the drama? He thought of isolated families of the settlers, now living in apparent peace and security, abandoned to the cruelty of a remorseless enemy. Would the horrors of Indian warfare be repeated? Would a partial success, which, from their advantageous position, and the absence of any large body of regular troops, the natives were likely to gain, be avenged by merciless slaughter? In either case, what bloodshed, agony, wrongs irrevocable and unspeakable, were certain to ensue! What would be the outcome? He thought of the farmsteadings he had seen, with neat homesteads, garnered grain, contented hardy workers, their rosy-cheeked children playing amidst the orchards. Were these to be left desolate, burned, ravaged, as would be inevitable with all outside the line of defence? Then, again, the populous _kaingas_, with grave _rangatiras_ and stalwart warriors; the merry chattering _wahines_, sitting amid their children when the day was over, much like other people's wives and children, enjoying far more natural comfort than the British labourers' families--were they also to be driven from their pleasant homes, starved, harried, pursued night and day by the avenger of blood? Like the heathen of old, dislodged by the chosen people with so little mercy? The carefully kept _kumera_ plantations, so promising for another season, were they to be plundered or destroyed? The lines from Keble returned to his memory-- "It was a piteous sight, I ween, to mark the heathen's toil-- The limpid wells, the orchards green, left ready for the spoil."