Free The Runaway Settlers by Elsie Locke

soon tiny green shoots appeared in neat rows all over the slope. ‘Yes, it’s fertile, early land,’ rejoiced Mrs Phipps.
    One day while pig-hunting the boys came across a sow with five little piglets. Mr Dyer took two of the piglets and the other three were put in the new chicken-run already prepared for the broody hens. Here in the evening Archie was found, happily feeding them with the family’s milk which they sucked from his fingers. They were funny little reddish-coloured creatures that were soon tame enough to let Emma play with them although, being only a little creature herself, she pulled them around roughly.
    As each of the first two was carried off to be made into roast sucking-pig, Archie cried and protested. As for the third one, he clung to it with such love and determination that his mother had not the heart to take it away. Soon he was following Archie everywhere, like a puppy. Archie called him Wagga.
    On a warm morning in October, Mrs Phipps harvested the first spring cabbages, onions and radishes. They were carefully packed into sacks roped at both ends to be slung across the shoulders, swagger fashion; and Bill and Jack set off on the journey to market them in Lyttelton.
    ‘Shall we spend some of the money, Mother?’ Jack asked hopefully.
    ‘Yes,’ she answered with her teasing smile. ‘I shall require needles and white thread, some linen buttons, paper for your lessons, and—saltpetre for curing bacon—’
    ‘You shan’t eat Wagga, you shan’t!’ cried Archie and ran outside to make sure his pet was still there. Mrs Phipps went on, ‘and some cup-hooks for the wall. That will do, I think. Six items.’
    Jack repeated the list. ‘Needles, thread, linen buttons, saltpetre, paper, cup-hooks, and fishing lines. Seven items.’
    His mother laughed with him. ‘Six and one make seven.You are doing well with your number lessons,’ she said.
    The clay road was drying out with the warmer weather, although there were places where the boys had to skirt round patches of mud churned up by the hooves of horses. Above the Pinnacle they went, and around two small bays, until they mounted a hill and looked down into the wide valley beyond it. Here, where the dark trees met the rocky ridges which stretched up to the outcrop of Witch’s Hill, stood a cluster of huts. This was Rapaki.
    Bill and Jack had not directly encountered the Maoris. They were often seen around the Bay, gathering shellfish or fishing from their boats, which they handled expertly. They were Christians and tried to live like Europeans, but they only half succeeded. Their houses were not Maori style but built after the fashion of whaler’s huts. Reeds and rushes were woven over a supplejack frame, plastered with clay and roofed with thatch, with a chimney at one end and square holes for windows. Under the eaves there hung large eels and small sharks drying in the sun, sending out a strong fishy smell on the easterly breeze; and pigs ran about everywhere.
    But there were two modern buildings of which the whole village was very proud: the church and the school. Most of the older people and all of the young ones could read and write, which was more than could be said of many white people at that time. It did not matter to them if their European clothes were worn in odd ways, or if some of them still preferred a blanket tied across the shoulders.
    The boys walked silently down the hill. They felt nervous but neither would admit it. After all, they’d lived alongside the aborigines! But the blackfellows were slender and timid compared with these burly, tattooed men who shouted ‘Hu!Hu!’ in deep voices as they plied their paddles over the harbour.
    An old man with white hair was squatting against a sunny wall, with his head on his knees and his blanket spread like a tent. He did not look up until the boys were near. Then with a sudden shout he sprang to his feet; and people appeared from everywhere: women with babies tied in a pikau on