Page:Adrift in the Pacific, Sampson Low, 1889.djvu/23

 the time of our story, Charman's boarding-school was one of the largest in Auckland, New Zealand. It boasted about a hundred pupils belonging to the best families in the colony, and the course of study and the management were the same as in high-class schools at home.

The archipelago of New Zealand has two principal islands, the North Island and the Middle Island, separated by Cook Strait. It lies between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth parallels of south latitude—a position equivalent to that part of the northern hemisphere occupied by France and Northern Africa. The North Island is much cut into at its southern end, and forms an irregular trapezium prolonged at its north-western angle and terminated by the North Cape and Cape Van Diemen. Just where the curve begins, and where the peninsula is only a few miles across, the town of Auckland is situated. Its position is similar to that of Corinth in Greece, and to that fact is due its name of the Corinth of the South. It has two harbours, one on the west, one on the east, the latter on Hauraki Gulf being rather shallow, so that long piers have had to be built into it where the smaller vessels can unload. One of these piers is Commercial Pier at the foot of Queen Street; and about half way up Queen Street was Charman's school.

On the 15th of February, 1880, in the afternoon a crowd of boys and their relatives came out of the school-house into Queen Street, merry and happy as birds just escaped from their cage. It was the beginning of the holidays. Two months of independence; two months