Free Aunt Effie and the Island That Sank by Jack Lasenby

slept for several weeks.
    One morning, we sailed under the bridge Mr Firth had built upstream of the Okauia Springs. There, the river became too rocky for us to go any further. Weeping willows trailed in the water and hid the western bank.
    “Run a rope around those branches,” said Aunt Effie, “and pull them aside.” The trailing branches and green leaves opened like a theatre curtain. We poled the Margery Daw up the creek they had hidden. Peter and Marie let go, and the willows closed behind our stern.
    “We’ve covered our tracks.” Aunt Effie looked back at the green curtain between us and the river. “They’ll never find us now,” she said, and we knew whom she meant.
    That was a cheerful chattering creek, just wide and deep enough to float the Margery Daw. Aunt Effie harnessed us totow ropes, one team on each bank, and we pulled. When we got tired, she stood on the bowsprit, cracked a bullock whip, and shouted rude words.
    “Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!” said Daisy.
    Crack! the whip went just above her head, and Daisy shut up and towed the Margery Daw on her own a good couple of chains.
    Crack! the bullock whip went again. We didn’t know whether it was the whip or the rude words, but we leaned into our harness and pulled much harder. We loved being bullocks.
    One afternoon, we came to the end of the creek. “There isn’t enough water to turn around and go back down,” said Peter.
    “You can always dam a creek and make a pool big enough to turn a scow,” said Aunt Effie. “But we’re not going back!”
    “We’re not leaving the Margery Daw?”
    “Never!” Aunt Effie gave her bullock whip a last crack and hung it up. “It’s several months since we had any fresh vegetables or fruit,” she said. “You’ve probably all got scurvy. Any loose teeth? Puffy gums? Sores that won’t heal?” We shook our heads. “We’ll boil up some rimu leaves and a handful of tea-tree berries, and make spruce beer. Captain Cook used it to stop his men getting scurvy.”
    “Are you sure your teeth haven’t fallen out?” Alwyn asked the little ones that night. “Perhaps you just think your teeth are still there.” The little ones pulled back their lips so Alwyn could see them.
    “I suppose they’re all right,” he said. “I’m not sure how many you’re meant to have.”
    Ann was angry when she found the little ones crying and trying to count their teeth. “Your teeth are perfectly all right,” she said and told off Alwyn. But he hid behind the mast, stuckhis head out so the little ones could see him, tapped his teeth one by one, and counted them aloud till he got to sixty-four The little ones counted theirs, found they hadn’t half that number, and cried again.
    In the morning, Aunt Effie brought on deck the pit-saws, cross-cuts, axes, mauls, and sacks of wedges. She nodded at a tall rimu. Marie and Peter eyed it and worked out which way they wanted it to fall.
    Alwyn bent over and looked between his legs at the tree. He told the little ones, “When you can just see the top of the tree, that means it will fall to exactly where you’re standing.” They bent over, looked between their legs at the top of the tree, and ran for their lives.
    Marie and Peter chopped the notches, wedged in their jigger-boards , climbed up, and began putting in the scarf.
    By the time they started on the back-cut, the rest of us had most of the rigging flaked and stored, the jib-boom run in, the topmasts on deck, and the mainmast stripped for shifting.
    By the time the cross-cut jammed, and Peter drove in a wedge, we had the mainmast on deck and were shifting the mizzen. We’d just lashed fast both masts, and lowered our shear-legs, when the rimu fell.
    Its chips, sawdust, stump, and sloven were a different colour and smell from the giant kauri we’d felled at Mercury Bay. We sniffed the resin and got our noses sticky.
    We picked the softest tips of the rimu leaves, boiled them with tea-tree berries, and drank the spruce beer to