Free Aunt Effie and the Island That Sank by Jack Lasenby Page B

easy. Much easier than beating up into the wind, tacking and beating your way uphill.”
    “So the sea’s got hills and slopes but it’s really flat.”
    “Yes. And the earth’s really a box with six flat sides.”
    Lizzie nodded. “Aunt Effie?”
    “Yes?”
    “Is the sea better than the land?”
    “Of course it is! And the Hauraki Gulf is the best sea in the world.”
    “I think so, too!” said Lizzie. And we all nodded, and stamped, and sang sea shanties, and shoved on the capstan bars, and kedged the Margery Daw across the flat paddocks.

Chapter Eleven
    Mr Firth’s Tower, the Model T Ford, and Banana Bob; “You Mustn’t Call Him that Name”; We Learn How to Strain Tea-leaves Through a Moustache; and Alwyn Gives Cheek.
    We stowed away the rope ladder, and built a set of steps up each side of the Margery Daw. Using rusty sheets of corrugated iron, Peter knocked up sheds all over the deck. We hammered in nails to hang our oilskins on when it wasn’t raining, and Peter built a dunny for when it was. She began to look less and less like a scow.
    Peter built a chimney so big, it had benches each side of the fire, and we could all sit inside it on cold nights. “That’s a real inglenook chimney,” said Marie, and Aunt Effie growled, “All that rubbish will have to go when we get her sailing again.”
    “What’s sailing?” asked the little ones, and none of us seemed to remember.
    Daisy hadn’t forgotten though. “Are we going to sail down the Piako River,” she asked, “back into the Hauraki Gulf?” Daisy always had to skite about getting 100% for Geography inSchool Certificate.
    Aunt Effie ignored Daisy and looked ahead through her telescope. At midday she and Marie got out their sextants and shot the sun. They did lots of difficult sums and got Peter to check them. At last they had to ask Daisy what they’d done wrong.
    She simpered. “You divided where you should have multiplied,” she told Aunt Effie. “You multiplied where you should have divided,” she told Marie. “You used the wrong logarithms!” she told Peter.
    Daisy rolled her eyes to show how hard it was, and did a complicated long division sum in her head. “We’re here!” she said, and made a mark on the red Whitcombe & Tombs school atlas Aunt Effie was using to navigate our way across the Upper Thames Valley.
    “Thank you, Daisy,” said Aunt Effie. “You can take an extra turn on the capstan. At six in the morning,” she announced, “we should sight Mr J.C. Firth’s Tower near Matamata.”
    There was thick mist in the morning. We shifted the rails ahead, heaved on the capstan, which we now called a whim, and the Margery Daw rolled forward. At six o’clock, Aunt Effie waved her hand, the mist parted, and there stood the Tower. We felt uneasy. The dogs looked at Aunt Effie sideways.
    The Tower had battlements, loopholes, and a high door with a ladder that could be pulled inside in case of attack. “Are there cannons on top?” we asked. Aunt Effie said she thought so, but only for starting races.
    “Then why did Mr Firth build the Tower?” asked Lizzie.
    “So he can look over his huge estate and see the men are working,” said Jazz.
    “So he can see if the Maoris are coming to eat him,” saidAlwyn.
    “I think Mr Firth ate the Maoris, rather than the other way round,” said Daisy. “Look at the way he got their land off them after Tamihana died.”
    “I can see the Hopuruahine Dairy Factory!” said Marie.
    “Why isn’t the chimney smoking?” asked Lizzie. Steam and smoke poured out of the top of the factory, but none came out of the chimney.
    “The steam’s coming off the jockeys from the Matamata Racecourse,” said Aunt Effie. “They wear overcoats and sit in the top of the Hopuruahine Dairy Factory to make themselves sweat. The smoke’s from the cigarettes they use to stunt their growth. That’s why jockeys are so small.”
    Daisy looked at Alwyn whom she’d caught smoking an acorn pipe filled with