Page:Through South Westland.djvu/163

Rh we could see a few signs of habitation. I tried hard to persuade Transome that I saw a woman waving to us. “Here,” he said, “take the glasses, I told you there was no one there,” and when I looked it was an old white horse waving its tail. We rode on, and came to the next stream, but it was altogether too wide and deep for any horse, and we turned up towards the hills thinking possibly it branched again. We remembered our host at the Mahitahi and his warning, “It’ll sweep ye away”; and a hungry, treacherous river it looked. We rode with handkerchiefs tied to sticks fluttering overhead, but, apparently, there was no one to see us. The heat was grilling, wafts of hot air off the stones smote our faces, and I longed inexpressibly to be out of the saddle. Also, except for a little cocoa and a crust of bread at eleven o’clock, we had had nothing whatever to eat.

About a mile up, the stream branched into three. The first we forded without difficulty, the next was deep and swift; five times the Scorpion refused it, and finally her master brought her out, and we rode back along its edge, anxiously looking for some means to get over. We arrived at a place where the two streams became one; the ruffle on the water going over some imbedded drift wood, showed there was bottom for at least some way across. Here the Scorpion was made to understand she had got to go over, for her master had made up his mind. I sat on Tom, and we both watched—he apparently as anxious for