A Night Cruise on the Stainbow.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIX, Issue 24, 14 December 1907, Page 27

A Night Cruise on the Stainbow.

A “Nocturne" on the Hauraki Gulf.

The night was dear but dark when I stepped aboard the commodore’s yacht to return to Auckland. After the excitement of the race, the crews of the fleet had settled down to the no less important occupation of refreshing the inner man. Jest and laughter resounded through the wide circle of the bay. The riding lights ef the boats shone bright against the blackness of the shore. The big hotel lights in double tier showing up the white outlines of the long pier with ghostly effect. The night dews were heavy, the sky cloudless with a peculiar Italian softness —a “gentle black browed night,” such a one invoked with such passionate abandon by the love-lorn daughter of the House of Capulet; or witness of the magnanimity of Lorenzo when “Jessica like a little shrew slandered her love and he forgave it her.” To no Italian sky does a fine night in the Hauraki gulf yield pride of place. It is nine p.m., when mine host gives command to spread the wide wings of the Bainbow to woo the light S.W. airs that breathe over the high headland of Wiawera. When we get under weigh it is almost windless, but as we slip out from the fleet it increases in strength, until the steady ripple from her bow and along her bends show that the lofty canvas is picking up the wind. Sounds of voices from astern grow weaker as we head our course, but the steadfast burning eye that, night by night, in weather fair or foul; warns the wandering mariner of danger to be avoided, or sheds a kindly glow of greeting to file stranger from other lands seeking in this beauteous island of the Southern seas a home and abiding place. To us Tjri light speaks of the dangerous ragged reefs of Whangaparaoa which have to be avoided—to-night they give out no sound of waves breaking on them—but the days and nights be when a veritable hell of waters swirl round the black, vicious rocks that jut out from the long promontory which faces trie island of Tiri Tiri. The breeze freshens, the lights die out astern, while ahead the lighthouse looms near. We open up the channel on our starboard hand, the multitudinous lights of Auckland throwing a wide luminous arc upon the dark sky. From the west a brilliant meteor shoots athwart the sky from N. to S., leaving a flaming trail which, like a gigantic sword blade, divides, momentarily, the heavens from zenith to horizon. We haul our wind, a willing crew rousing in the main sheet and flattening in the head sails, and head up for Rangitoto, the gloomy sentry of the glorious Waitemata. As we clear the passage, we pick out from the lights ahead the Beacon winking at us in a confidential and wholly impudent manner at the uniform rate of one wink per six seconds. The night grows cold, and the commodore and 1 go below, leaving the ship in charge of the younger generation of commodores. We are awakened up to have a drink of tea, and become acquainted with the fact that we are becalmed off the Narrow Neck, and the clock time stands at three-thirty. The moon in the last quarter and riding high, when the pale fires light up the eastern sky; brighter grows the light, a faint pink merging into the green of ripening apples in shades of infinite delicacy. A rooster (immediately identified positively as a neighbour’s) breaks the silence, his wide-flung challenge instantly taken up until the North Head echoes with the noise. The waters, like rolled sheet lead, Begin to pick up the faint colours of the sky. light airs coming down on us leave black bars across its smooth surface. Bean Rock lighthouse looks like a multi-legged spider with a red spot on its back, showing up against the pallid background, while all around are to lie seen scows, “on their hooks," with their

head sails down and wet mainsails black in the morning light. We eatch the breeze and stand round the North Head, our great sail area enabling us to stem the tide with ease. A short board enables us to pick up our moorings, which done, and sails stowed, I can look around. Auckland city and the Waitemata Harbour have been so often gushed over that it may appear mere presumption on my part to say anything about it, but, please, kind reader, remember that I write of it at the hour that finds most of these authors in bed. 1 write of it with all its beauty spread out la-fore me. not by the flickering gaslight in tho contaminated atmosphere of a closed room. The sun is just lifting a rim over Motoihi, casting a dazzling swathe of golden light across tho calm water—the gold is not the dull, dead gold of coin, it is alive—glittering sinuous lines of dazzling light, ever changing, kaleidoscopic; the grim North Head is crowned with a halo of glory, tho flood of light sweeping along the North Shore brings every twittering sparrow, every whistling starling out from chimney pots and caves, to sing the “lifting up of day.” Orakei, in the shadow, shrouded in a film of soft white mist still sleeps, in contrast to the awakening wharves. Here and there over the city a white shaft of smoke betokens those early astir. The rising sun lights up the picturesque villas on Point Resolution, their red tiles standing out in marked relief against the sombre green of the pines and maero.carpas, and bathes lovingly, with his caressing beams, the snowy towers of the dwelling place of the Father of Auckland. » The dominant note of peace and beauty is for a while disturbed by an incoming steamer, gross and brutal in. her appearance, thrusting tons of water ahead of her bluff bows, emblematical of the spirit of sordid commercialism, as she grinds her irresistible way up the harbour, with her 5000 tons of coal under hatches. We land, and as I take my way home along Devonport’s water front. I try to call to mind harbours more beautiful —Sydney, certainly, Queenstown, also, when climate is counted out; but all points considered, Waitemata, with her host of subsidiary ports along the confines of the Hauraki Gulf, must ever rank with the world's most perfect havens.