Jim didn't scorn the products of the bush, ferns whose roots made succulent eating, the shoots of Pikopiko and Kouka, the pith of the mamaku fern and of the nikau, as well as the many berries whose merits he knew as well as any Maori. He was a master of bird snaring. One of his first tasks would be to hollow out a couple of waka keruru or pigeon troughs and he never lacked for these toothsome birds. His duck-billed rifle kept him going with wild pork and this provided him not only with strong meat but also with dripping for his bread and lard for his cooking. He could stay snug as a bug in the bush for six months and never lack a thing. You might think he'd get lonely, but not Jim. A solitary sort of joker at the best of times a week or two in the settlements at the end of a contract would sicken him of town life and set him hankering for the bush again. It may be, being a robust male and as fit as a flea, his thoughts would turn, now and again, to the idea of feminine companionship, but if they did he kept it to himself. After about two months on this contract Jim had cleaned out all the totara handy to camp and was working on trees further and further away. He'd got to the stage where he took his midday kai with him, keeping a billy, tea and sugar on the job and taking bread and meat with him each day. One day Jim got that kind of funny feeling in the middle of the spine that solitary folk get when they fancy someone is watching them, unseen. Not that Jim was the type to get nervous, but as the feeling grew, day after day, he began to get annoyed. He knew of course that there were always Maoris likely to be around in the bush, bird-snaring and such. But he also knew that any such who came near his workings would come and have a korero with him for he stood in well with the tribes, in spite of the recent Hauhau troubles. There was a day when this feeling of being spied upon was so strong as to be almost a physical link between watcher and watched. You may smile as such a statement, but I can assure you from personal experience, that it was not uncommon for a solitary bushman to develop what we now speak of as extra-sensory perception. This particular day Jim not only knew for certain he was being watched but he could sense the direction from which the hidden watcher gazed. He turned suddenly and caught a glimpse of a brown face framed in long and matted hair. ‘Hey there!’ he cried. ‘Haere mai, matapopore.’ His only reply was a soft rustle in the undergrowth and the disappearance of the face. That night, either by accident or design, Jim left his tucker-bag on the job when he went back to camp. Next morning the tucker-bag was still there but the half-loaf of bread and the remains of a roast pigeon it contained had gone. If you'd been near Jim's workings in the days that followed you'd have sworn that he had gone porangi. He seemed suddenly to have developed the habit of talking to himself in a loud voice. But there was method in his madness. He was talking to the unseen watcher, who knowing herself to be discovered, kept further away and well out of sight. So Jim talked to himself in fluent Maori (which he spoke as well as any native) about the loneliness of a bushie's life and about the care and comfort which awaited any wahine who cared to share his camp. He kept close tab on his provisions and such in camp. If the woman was, as he suspected, one of those unfortunates banished to the bush by her people he more than half expected she would raid his tucker-store while he was away from his whare during the day. All he ever missed, however, was one of the cut-down kerosene tins he used for buckets. He missed it one evening when he got home but it was there in its usual place the following morning. He might even have thought himself mistaken if he hadn't found ashes in the corners. He tumbled to it at once that the woman had used it to carry away embers from his fire. A few days later, cruising through the bush, he came across the ashes of a fire and, close to it, a small umu in which a few karaka berry kernels still remained. He twigged at once that the woman had used the umu to steam a feed of karaka berries which, though extremely poisonous when raw, are safe and palatable when cooked and pounded to meal. Jim had a pretty good idea of what shifts the woman was being put to. He guessed she hadn't any knife, tool or weapon, and though no Maori would ever starve in the bush, life would be pretty grim, miserable and meagre for a women so badly equipped. He often told the old lady that it was then he began to have an admiration for the woman, whoever she was. He freely confessed that, placed the same way himself, he'd certainly have taken at least a few things from such a well stocked camp as his, if he'd come across it. He thought she was foolish not to have done so, but he admired her all the more for it. He knew she was still hovering round his workings, watching while he felled the trees, sawed them to suitable lengths, split them with maul and wedges to the required thickness, and finally split off the shingles with rapid and unerring blows of his broad axe. He still kept talking aloud, but now of course directing his remarks directly to her. He told her she was welcome to anything from his camp, and always told her what he was leaving her that night at the workings. She never took anything from the whare but the tucker he left on the job always disappeared. As the days went by and she discovered he was friendly she'd draw nearer, but for a long time she wouldn't answer him or let him catch sight of her. Jim didn't try to force her, for he knew she was as timid as a kiwi. In the end he got