Colonel Deane nodded approval. “A day of rest!” he said meditatively. “And, by the way, do you know that it is Sunday, good people?”
“By Gad!” exclaimed Captain Greendays. “So it is! How the weeks fly! Then to-morrow will be Christmas Eve,—and we sail from the Bluff on the 31st!”
“Only one more week!” I cried regretfully. “How many days can we stay here?”
“We must have Christmas Day, at all costs!” said Mrs Greendays.
Colonel Deane, who had been making rapid calculations with the aid of a “Tourist Itinerary” lying on a side-table, said that if we would hurry back we could allow ourselves Christmas Day at Milford and still have a day and a half to spend on the track, and this momentous question settled we went out to see what the Sound looked like by daylight.
It was very different to the Sound of our imagination. There was no sign of any “open sea”; the waters appeared to be completely land-locked, and were calm and peaceful as a lake,—calmer, in fact, than Kanieri had been on the day we were disappointed of our boating. And its loveliness and grandeur were far beyond anything we could have conceived. Mountains all round us, some heavily wooded, others black, bare, rocky, but all of them so tall that they seemed to touch the sky. Mitre Peak[1] looked from Sutherland’s as if it stood quite apart and separate from its sister-peaks, and Pembroke Peak, with its cloud of snow gleaming white in the sunshine against the blue sky, seemed to be part of the hill that rose close behind the landing stage where Sutherland’s launch looked a tiny boat against the stone platform. We could not see the Bowen Falls from where we stood, but the booming of the water as it fell 300 feet in a single plunge from a basin in the cliff to the Sound below was like the bass notes of a mighty organ reverberating among the mountains and tall cliffs.
“You can’t possibly stay in on such a lovely day!” protested Captain Greendays. “Come for a walk,—it isn’t at all a good plan to keep too still after getting so tired, you will feel more stiff than ever to-morrow!”
“Shall we go out in Sutherland’s launch?” suggested Colonel Deane. “That won’t be an infraction on your day of rest, Mrs Greendays, and as those people will probably turn up this afternoon we may not have the Sound all to ourselves again!”
“And a host of chattering people would quite spoil it!” I urged.
“Well, if you will promise not to go outside,” Mrs Greendays yielded. “I am so tired that I could not endure even a rocking in the cradle of the deep!”
So we spent the morning lazily drifting about in and out of the inlets and channels, under those mighty hills. We went close under the Bowen Falls, but did not experience the wonderful miracle that the Rev. W. S. Green relates as happening to him. “The steamer,” he says, “was allowed to drift up in the
- ↑ Mitre Peak, 5,560 ft.; Mount Pembroke, 6,710 ft.
