A BAY OF ISLANDS ROMANCE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIX, Issue 116, 19 May 1906, Page 1

A BAY OF ISLANDS ROMANCE.

THE FATE OF THE INVENTOR

About twenty miles to the southward of the Bay of Islands stands a short stone's throw from the mainland, a mighty mass of rocks, forming a narrow channel through which shoals of whales used to pass on their way south.

Mr Frank Bullen makes this circumstance the setting of one of his short stories in " Sea Spray," his newly-pub-lished volume. "The Fate of the Inventor," as the story is called, describes how one Ropata, a Maori whaler, first hit upon the idea of entrapping the whales as they passed through the narrow channel at Whangamumu. Ropata and his comrades spread across the lower end of the channel " a great net of 2in rope, fifteen fathoms long, and seven fathoms wide, with bordering ropes of sin stuff, and bridle ropes of sin stuff at either end, spliced into seven inch hawsers." After a long and weary waiting, a school of sperm whales, led by a majestic bull, came steering majestically into the channel. In a few minutes all was confusion and wild uproar. The whole channel seemed packed with the heaving bodies of the mighty monsters, who wore panic-stricken and helpless in the face of this new terror. For a few minutes Ropata and his boat's crew sat as if stupefied. Only for a brief space though. Then, with a yell of triumph, Ropata urged his men to pull forward, and as they emerged into the gigantic turmoil each man seized a lance, and lunged it at the nearest black mass to him, as if the old destroying instinct of his cannibal ancestors had suddenly awakened within him. Ropata was transformed. Uttering inarticulate cries, his beard flecked with foam and blood from his clenched jaws, his arms seemed to work like pistons of a steam engine, as untiringly, as "forcefully, and yet withal he kept a wary eye upon the closely packed masses before him, and cast an occasional glance at the straining hausers on either shore to see if they still held. And then suddenly came the catastrophe. He had thrust his lance deep down into the body of a whale, wallowing by the side of tho boat, and while wrenching at it in the effort to withdraw it, the whale swiftly rolled outwards, spurting blood. Ropata should have let go, but did not, why, none would ever know, and his body flew through the air, falling between two dying monsters, and disappearing between the crimson foam. *

To attempt a rescue was impossible, for the space between the boat and the point where he sank was close packed with the gigantic bodies of the victims."

After a brief space, Ropata ls comrades set to work again and fought on until six whales were harpooned and beached. The days-work assured the success of the new venture, and opened the partner's way to wealth. But the body of the inventor of the great scheme was never seen again.