continued from page 23 from one pot to the other. He told me that he came from Ruatoria and never went to school. He made Ruatoria sound a grand place, and his eyes sparkled as he remembered the times when he had been a little boy. Some of his stories were funny and made me laugh. Uncle would laugh too, and Tamihana would have to say, ‘E pa! Keep still ay? or else we'll have to swim back.’ I didn't like that idea, because the shore was so far away and I could only swim twenty-five yards at the Macrae Baths. But Uncle kept on: about how he had ridden a horse into the picture theatre, how all the girls had run after him but Nanny had been the fastest, on and on, tale after tale. ‘Boy, you're a real bag of wind!’ Tamihana said, when Uncle started on about his exploits on the football field. But Uncle took no notice of him because I was a good audience. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘If it wasn't for me getting two tries and drop-kicking a goal in the last five minutes, East Coast would have been haddit! Naturally, I saved the game, that's what everybody said. They said I would have got in the All Blacks easy!’ Tamihana winked at me. He pointed to Uncle and whispered, ‘He's porangi, coz.’ Then he jostled his father and said, ‘Hey! You'd better wake up!’ Uncle got offended and swore at him. But Tamihana just swore back. I wished I could swear; I tried, but the word came out hushed and embarrassed and hid itself in a dark corner. The bottom of the boat was becoming quite filled with the seeething bodies of crayfish, and I was quite astonished to realise that it was afternoon. It must have been afternoon, because Uncle Pita told me that there were only a few pots to go. I was hungry too, my tummy grumbling that it hadn't had lunch. We reached the last pot and were spilling the crayfish into the