The Payment another ‘Eruera’ story by E. S. Morgan Eruera sat on the sunny back-door step whacking a tin with a stick. In the tin grew a gnarled stumpy old cactus which his mother treasured. Sometimes Eruera played with the long tough cactus spines, drawing with them in the smooth-trampled clay of the back-yard, or testing his courage by pushing one slowly into the tough skin under his big toe, until he could bear it no longer. Once a spine had snapped in his fingers, and a little black spot showed where part of it still remained in his toe. Eruera stared at that spot now, his fat brown foot clutched to his jersey. At the sound of children's voices, Eruera dropped his foot and the stick, and ran to the gate. There were his school mates, Nino, Paul and Isaac. ‘We're going fishing Eru, you coming?’ they called. In two minutes Eruera had found his fishing-line under the verandah, and the four were on their way to the jetty. But they didn't go straight to the jetty. There were too many pleasant things to do along the way. There were walnuts to gather under the huge tree that overhung the road. There was the culvert where the taniwha answered you with long booming calls when you shouted into it. They never stayed long at the culvert, and no-one ever stopped there or shouted into it when he was by himself. They stopped at a ricketty wooden gate and stared for a minute or two at a little white cottage. ‘There's good ginger beer in that house,’ said Isaac. ‘That's my Aunt Sophie's house. She gives me ginger beer any time,’ Eruera said grandly. ‘Go and ask her for some now,’ said Nino. At the back door Eruera called timidly ‘Hullo, Aunt Sophie,’ but was glad there was no answer. The other boys coughed and whispered and stared around. There was a little shed there, its door open and half off its hinges. Inside was a crayfish pot, a bundle of flax, and rows of brown bottles, their corks tied down with string. There were a lot of bottles, and Aunty Sophie was kind. Eruera was sure she would want them to take a bottle. They opened it with Nino's sheath-knife.