Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/109

Rh ain't so very particular myself, but that chap was such a d——d bad lot, bad all through; what can you make of 'im? In my opinion he got what he ought to get, and he'll get it 'otter by and bye." "D'ye mean, Bill, then, that there ain't no chanst for the like of 'im? Just 'Ell, and no more to be said? Why, we heard passon say just now, leastways, he seemed to mean it, that there is a chanst for all; 'twas somethin' about that cove in the Bible who owned up just as he was a-dyin', and he must have been an out and outer. That's in the Bible as well as 'Ell and damnation." Then a third voice cut in: "You believes in the Devil, don't you? Well, I don't see no use in havin' no Devil, if he don't get 'im."

I slipped away unnoticed. The same problem, which is the crux of keen controversy amongst learned Divines, put in a nutshell here on a forecastle deck.

Oct. 6. S.S. Tararua, a steamer of 2,000 tons, full of miners and others, bound to Westland; men sleeping in every possible corner; another steamer not far off, the Alhambra, as full as we are. We are lying at anchor after a passage of 1,200 miles from Melbourne, off the West Coast of the Southern Island of New Zealand, waiting for a tug steamer to take passengers ashore.

A lovely spring morning; and before us a panorama of coast-line more than a hundred miles in view, slightly incurving at either end, one unbroken mass of forest which flows down to the top of the low cliffs which flank the beach; folds upon folds of forest-clad terrace, hill, and ranges which lie up against a Southern Alps, snow clad, above 7,000 feet, even in summer. This great backbone of the Southern Island towards the south culminates in Mt. Cook, over twelve