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 over, an’ a shoal of fishes a-passin’ underneath, an’ him a-haulin’ of ’em out with this ’ere hook, same as I might spoon dumplin’s out of a pot. An’ the Maori women too—how I did like to see them women a-catchin’ eels! Along in the creek they’d go, with their things tucked up, or off, an’ they’d stir up the mud as they went, an’ feel along the mud for eels, with a wisp of grass in their hand. An’ whenever a woman felt a eel, down she’d stoop in the water, an’ slip her hand, with the grass in it for grip, right under the eel—for they’re slippy things, them. . . an’ my stars! next minute there’d be that eel a-squirmin’ right out there on the bank afore you could say ‘Snuff,’ an’ the Maori woman a-feelin’ with her feet for the next.

“My word, though, didn’t some of them sawpit fellows use them poor women bad! There was one of ’em, Roimata (well-named, for it means ‘Tears’) used to live with Black Joe. My! he was a bad one!—an’ there he’d knock her about, an’ lock her in so’s she couldn’t get away, an’ carry on all sorts, till the poor soul was fair desperate, an’ tried to hang herself with a flax rope. But it broke, so it did, an’ cut her throat bad in the breakin’. The tumble, an’ the sight of her own blood scared her so as to save her; for a-lookin’ up an’ around an’ all ways for somethin’ to help, there she sees the chimney; an’ lively wi’ fright, she does what she’d never ha’ thought, most-like, o’ doin’, else—she scrambles up that chimney, an’ out, an’ down the other side, an’ comes to mother, all over bruises an’ blood (my word! she was a sight), but anyway, safe from Joe. Mother she kep’ her till it was evenin’ an’ she could get away to her own people,