SMOULDERING FIRES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 260, 2 November 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

SMOULDERING FIRES.

(By Sheila'Quinn, Tennyson Street, Mount Eden; aged 16.)

The branches waved eerily in the darkness; weird grotesque shadows flitted in and out among the trees; the wind sighed mournfully as it rustled through the leaves and .behind towering majestically skyward stood Mount Tongariro.

Alone I sat beside the camp fire, the flames were smouldering and dying out, and as I gazed into the embers" my thoughts raced back over ithose last few years, and all the bitter memories I had tried in vain to forget came surging back to me once more. It had been three —no four years ago. I was a little chap of 12 at the time, living a life of utter freedom on the 6eas with my Uncle Jim, who had fathered me in his kindly old way ever since my own captain father had been drowned at sea many years before.

Everyone who knew Jim West liked and respected him. To me the old man with the white hair, the twinkling blue eyes, and the cheery ways, was the person round whom my whole life was centred. So as the years passed our friendship grew stronger than ever, and I thought that, like me, every one who knew him loved that old captain. I was wrong. Came a day when I found that Jim West possessed an enemy—an enemy who was capable of taking the cheery look from my uncle's face and leaving it worn and worried. Mark Jordan was his name, and it was not long before I knew him for what he was—an utterly cruel and ruthless type of man, who would stop at nothing to gain his own ends.

Rivals they were, my uncle and Mark Jordan, and I suppose it was this fact that led to the enmity that existed between them. Time and time again they came up against each other, and I learnt bitterly to hate that man. x This went on for years, but at last things reached a crisis. For months, slowly but surely -Mark Jordan had been ruining my uncle, and just when things were looking hopelessly bad, a splendid chance came our way.' It was a contract to ship a consignment from England to Singapore. The terms were • goodenough by far to give us a fresh start on the sea. Would Mark Jordan or my uncle get the contract ? That was the all important question.

In the end they decided it between themselves The one who reached Singapore first could have that contract. How well I remember it all. It was late i afternoon when we sailed slowly from the harbour at Sydney. Together we stood at the helm, and in the distance I saw Mark Jordan, standing motionless on the deck of his ship. His whole attitude seemed to indicate relentlessness, crueltv, and suddenly I was afraid. All that day we sailed on with Mark Jordan's ship only a little ahead of us. Night descended over the ocean and with it came a sudden and overwhelming danger. Fire broke out in our engine room.

My uncle, calm even in that emergency, called, all the hands, and for an hour we valiantly fought the flames. But it was. useless, and at last he ordered an S.O.S. to be sent out to Mark Jordan's ship. We waited for the reply, and when it came through we were stunned at the utter heartlessness of that man- who, not a mile away, must see the flames in the darkness.

"This time I will come out first. _ I ihope you 'burn with your ship, Jim West," "the reply was wirelessed hack to us. . "Man the lifeboats," said my uncle quietly. The flames were roaring fiercely about us now, and silently we stood together as the boats were quickly filled and pushed off until the last one was ready. "Everyone's left the ship, sir," the first mate reported. "Aye, very good," my uncle answered absently. "Take the lad with you, Newman." As I looked at his firm resolute face I was struck with terror. "Good-hye Pal," he almost whispered to me. "You know a captain never deserts his ship." I was half dragged, half carried to the lifeboat. It was pushed off, and then about 100 yards off, we viewed the end of the Wharato. For perhaps only ten minutes longer the flames raged, in crimson glory on the ocean, and then with (hardly a sound, the

ship sank, slowly at first, then rapidly, until the moonlight showed only the dark and restless waters. And, with the picture of my uncle, a solitary and gallant figure on that doomed ship, still in my mind, the spark of hate that I had. always harboured in my heart towards Mark Jordan burst into flame, and I vowed that if ever I got the chance I should revenge my uncle's death.

Two hours later we were picked up by a passing tramp vessel and taken on to England. And (the passing of years since that memorable night, had only made greater my resolve to find Mark Jordan—to ruin Hum, just as he had ruined and finally murdered my uncle. But though I had searched for three long years without ceasing, I had never •been able to trace the man. Completely and absolutely Mark Jordan seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth. Still there was the future, and perhaps "

My wandering thoughts were interrupted, as a man dashed into the camp. "There's been an accident. Some fool chap trying to climb the mountain at night. I'm afraid its a bad case."

We woke the men and rushed off up the incline till we reached the spot where a huddled form lay, and a dreadful drop above of eighty feet told its own tale. I bent forward and looked at the still form—crushed, broken —quite dead, and no sound escaped my lips, but silently I gazed in fascinated horror.

Fate —that strange • thing called fate, had, on this summer night in New Zealand, brought me to the side of Mark Jordan, and as I gazed upon the face of the man, as cruel in death as it had been in life, the man who for four weary years I had searched in vain, the smouldering fires of hatred died, and a strange peace stole over me. Mark Jordan's destiny was in higher hands than mine.