THE ENDEAVOUR BOY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13307, 13 October 1906, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE ENDEAVOUR BOY.

BT TOHUJfGA. I BT TOHUXGA. I They have been keeping a.t Gisborne the anniversary of the coming of Captain Cook, whose destiny it was to give his countrymen another chance to prove themselves fit to have colonies. Nor is that so long ago J as sometimes seems to us, for the boy who j first cried "Land lio!" from the mastI head of the Endeavour, 137 years since, might easily have come to it again with the | Jane Gi.fords, 71 years later. Jane Giffords I are with us yet, hale and hearty; no that ! only two lives separate us from the time lof th© great navigator. But these two lives, : cover human cycles, the cycle of war and ! the cycle of peace— who shall say hi' , the next cycle may bring forth? i The Endeavour sailor-boy, if he lived ! through, saw Britain emerge triumphant ' from the fiercest of trials, having spent his | prim© in that long and deadly wrestling for j the mastery of the seas. He saw allies become enemies and enemies become allies, J saw all Europe at England's thvoa.'J, ant? j nil Europe'at England's feet. France and ' 'russi.. and Russia, Austria and Denmark. ( Norway and Sweden, Portugal and Spain, the L ..Ji and th=* Germans, he aw them all combine to pull England down, and saw them most completely fail. .He saw AngloSaxondom divided against itself in fratricidal strife, not once but, twice. And h» learned to know >.hat only on© man could be relied on in the pinci.--t.li© man who was British in every fibre of his being and to the very marrow of his bones. Pressed men and volunteers, the cream of the country and the scum of th© towns, he -.aw them to be all good together in those ; ong years of England's sorest need. At the Nile and at Copenhagen and at Trafalgar; in a dozen naval engagements of lesser note and in a thousand single-ship combats; the sailor-boy who came with Cook and lived to fight with Nelson held against a world in arms the kingdom of the seas. Peace is most good, but do we never tlvnk of tho price of it? New Zealand is ours, but do we never think of the heroic sacrifice by which it was bought'' Cook came and claimed it for us—all he- our to him!—but is even a toddling child ,o foolish as to imagine that this rough-and-tumble world cares a rap for paper claims? So Cook wrote "British" across the map, sailing and planning for us until a savage s'ew him—and then his sailor-boy, fullgrown, made the writing good. Can wo not see that New Zealand was being argued over wherever. the red cross was borne into the smoke of battle, that th© future of Auckland and Otago was being settled wherever the scuppers ran crimson with loyal English blood? They didn't know, perhaps, just what they fought for —that sailor-boy of Cook's and his warhariened mates. They only knew that they were English, and that if they wero unworthy England itself was lc.it. And for them mothers wept and wives despaired and sweethearts tired— the sorrow and the suffering are over and done with, but the fruit of it all remains to this day, remains in our Peace and in our prosperity, in the security of the homes that would not have been hero had • not those ocean-warriors made Cook's title «w. : ud and given unchallenged passage to the Jane Gifford and her sister ships. It is ea-sv to sneer at the fightU.'{-man, easy to talk of the Lcrrors of war and of the fad waste of human life in causeless battle, easy ,to exalt the peaceful home and the ploughed field and the unarmed merchantman.; j That is as easy as it is to -view "disdainfully the battered Wooden sailing vessel which - bore Captain i Cook round the thundering Horn and through i Pacific storms and gales, and to compare it with the great steamers which ply now on the Southern routes. But when should we have been to-day without the creaking wooden ship and the rough man who manned it? Isew Zealand could never have ; been known ' had Captain Cook waited for a liner, and could never have been ours had his sailor-boy not grown into a good i fighting man. I Not as we see it now was the land that Cook came to. It was an uncut jewel, in barbaric hands, a Sleeping Beauty that waited for the Prince of Toil. He bailed away and left it to its slumbering, but tho tale that he told passed among our forefathers and never stayed. Sailors yarned of it in the dog-watches when Nelson kept sentry-go and longed for these Fortunate Isles when they froze in Arctic waters and sweltered in Indian seas. Men spoke of it in English inglenooks and Scottish bothies and Irish cots. They thought of it when war-worn peace set the adventurj ous longing for fresh fields, when . swarmj ing England hummed like a hive with men and women for whom there was no room. Until the swarming time came and whitewinged ships broke from the Western trail and steered southward and ever southward with their human freight. Cook's sailor-boy, as has been said, might have been with them; and whether he was or not the tale that Cook told was their inspiration, they also followed him to take possession after many years. This Endeavour boy, this sailor-boy who sailed with Cook and saw New Zealand first of all, as the records tell us, this sailor-man who sailed with Nelson and may have seen the Jane Gifford drop over the edge of the grey English sea, as no records tell us but as we may rightfully be- j lieve, wrought for our New Zealand as steadfastly as though he had lilted axe against the primeval forest or driven plough through her virgin soil. Need we deny it because he didn't know it? Need we -hesitate to read the past because, neither he nor any other man could read the future? He and hisunnamed, unknown, common fellows—served their country, lived for it, fought for it, died for it, and there is not a blade of English grass that springs to-day in New Zealand which r wav not planted with their cutlasses and fertilised with their blood. For brave men plant, long ages after they are what we call dead; and their blood flows further than seems to short-sighted eyes. We , say he is dead, this Endeavour sailor-boy, with his cheery cry of "Land ho! from his post on the swaying mast. And if he is—for who knows anything of death, or what it 's or why or how long or anything perchance it is granted him in his long sleep to see visions of her as when she rose like Venus Aphrodite from the waves, unadorned and unashamed, peerless in her beauty, a law unto herself. For, maybe, even then he loved her and felt his heart go out to her, and knew thai never again could he be 'without a mistress of his- own. Maybe even then, his eyes grew dim because of her beauty; maybe, his senses swam with the sweetness of her breath, borne breezeward to storm-tossed men; maybe, his soul knelt at her feet and was enchained there for ever; maybe—why, anything may be, when love is born. For do we think that only captains have souls, that only those who can speak their minds can feel? And do we not know that New Zealand's praise was chanted, ever after, wherever an English ship carried an English man? And is she not worthy to be loved, bv the dead or by the living; worthy to be fought for and wrought for, whether in the future or in the past? Has she not been set alono and apart by Him Who made the stars to crown her, and the oceans to encircle her? Now, as ever, to the men of to-day as to the Endeavour boy of old, none can compare with her, for none are like her, in all the world, and perchance it may be that tho cycle of war may come again, and that those to whom New Zealand has given all they have or care for, may be called on to do for her, knowingly, what the Endeavour boy mangrown, did for her all unknowingly. And how can she usk too much of those who have been nursed at her breast &nd ch-jped in'her arms, when a stnmger, wh>, only saw her sleeping, loved her er-«r after, and kept her safe amid her oceans against -siscounted odds ,