Chapter Four
HAAST’S EAGLE
By day the world around Skilton House, Max's home, resounded with the eerie bell calls of the wattle-birds and the loud shrieks of parrot. While at night the dark air was filled with the many strange hoots, booms, and lingering cries of the nocturnals.
Max worked his long holidays in the aviaries helping the Manager, Rangi O'Regan, a Māori with an Irish Grandfather, and his five staff members. Any heavy work, such as enclosure construction, had been completed back in the winter, when the birds weren't breeding. Thus, the summertime daily round consisted of feeding, cleaning, watering, sweeping and delousing. The steady stream of tourists and aviary visitors also needed keeping happy and informed, while any hatchlings that had been tossed from their nests by their mothers or siblings, but deemed by the Professor to be worth saving, required hand raising.
Dickie turned up and pitched in whenever he needed some cash.
At times Max would get 'moony' and wonder what Harriet Leith was doing at a particular moment and what it might mean to 'ride a train on the outside' and when would he see her again? He thought about her too much, he knew.
He was keen also to begin his fencing lessons. He had played 'sword' with sticks all his childhood, but soon, in his new life, he would at last take up real steel and be taught by someone who actually knew what he was doing. Although on that point The Professor had mentioned that Mr Fletcher, the Fencing Tutor, had retired at the end of the year and the University had not yet found his replacement.
These two factors made the holidays drag intolerably. Still Max sometimes became wistful.
For he knew that at some small level he was standing at the edge of something new, and that in stepping off, much as one steps off from a station platform and onto a train, his stepping into the new would, by its very nature, involved stepping away from something old. Or more that his stepping away made the present old, that it gave it a date stamp and made it drift into the past as the future rushed in to replace it. And although he hoped for the future like he never had before, he was also mature enough to see that the present wasn't in fact that bad and was here for his enjoyment. So, it was much like getting on the train at St Austell, in the old country, to get off at Penzance, both nice enough summer towns, thus little reason to rush aboard and onward. Max often found himself thinking along the lines of ‘this is the last time I shall do this' or that, about any number of tasks that he came upon or was asked to complete around his home and it's grounds. And so it was, with some thought and a little feeling, that he prepared to step slowly from adolescence into a more adult world.
About Harriet Leith, he felt a little dismayed and a little giddy. He kept thoughts of her in that proverbial secret place... and visited them often. Dismayed at himself for becoming smitten with a young lady simply by way of a single fleeting, one way, glance. No, it was more than a glance on his behalf, more an earnest study; on hers less, she had never even seen him. Dismayed and maybe amused too at all the mileage his imagination had got out of that one episode. Did it never tire of recalling her face to his mind? Also giddy, a little, because that is what romance, even the unreciprocated type, even the chance, the hope of romance, does.
One other point held him from rushing with full abandon into the future; his ponytail was still too short to wear with any pride.
* * *
There had only been two weeks left until the start of the new University year when the Director of the National Museum, one Julius Von Haast, reappeared from the forests of South-Westland. He had paused a single night in the frontier town of Fox River, to bathe, clip his rather bushy beard and rest, before boarding the first train back to the capital.
Once in Collingwood he did not stop but took the next train up the Valley Line to Rockville Central Station. Finding his feet again he marched down the road to the National Aviaries. The traveller was greeted warmly at Skilton House and quickly invited to dinner.
No sooner had the napkin left his lips and the last swallow been made, than he reached into his travel bag and, to everyone’s surprise, placed on the table a huge skull.
Mrs Skilton gasped, a thin hand shooting to her mouth, but did not voice a complaint. While her men, The Professor, Max and Dickie, who had somehow also arranged himself an invite to dinner, all leant forward for a better look.
“My, my,” was all Professor Skilton could manage for the first moment or two.
“I am begging your pardon Madam,” apologised Von Haast hastily. Years of globetrotting had done a lot to dent his once thick German accent.
“My,” said the Professor again as he reached out a tentative hand “May I?”
“But of course,” came the reply.
The Professor half lifted, half dragged the massive piece of bone toward himself. It had clearly once been part of an enormous bird. The skull was at least as long as a rugby football from the tip of its hooked beak to the base of the skull. The two younger men sat and stared.
“Some kind of raptor,” stated Max's Father, turning the skull appreciatively in his hands.
“Indeed” replied the Director. “We have known of the possibility of such birds for some time. A bone here, a story there, legends. But now we have found almost complete skeletons, great claws and wing bones.”
“Any guess at a wingspan?” asked Dickie, overcoming his shock and adding “Sir” as an afterthought. Von Haast surveyed him for a moment before answering;
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Maybe up to ten feet.”
Dickies eyes grew round and he let out a long rush of air, “Ten feet!” he repeated in awe.
“So much for your Presbyterian Albatrosses,” chuckled Max.
Dickie just nodded. Director Von Haast went on;
“The biggest eagle on earth, the perfect terror for our Moa.”
As he spoke the Professor tapped the skull thoughtfully with his finger.
“That drunk Scots explorer...”
“My old companion Charles Douglas?” clarified Von Haast.
“Yes, that was him. He claimed in one of his journals to have shot and eaten two raptors of immense size in the Landsborough River valley.”
“Indeed” replied the Director smoothing his waistcoat happily. “I believe we now hold one of the very same.”
“Are they extinct?” blurted Dickie suddenly. “I mean did you see any live ones?”
The Director clicked his tongue.
“And there is the ultimate question. Do these great birds still hunt the mountains and forests of the south-west? Fiordland is vast, and mostly unexplored. There is certainly still Moa there to eat, so why not the great eagle?”
“The local Māori?” asks the Professor.
“Yes does it eat the local Māori?” added Max helpfully, with a twinkle in his eye.
“Thank you Maximilian,” replied the Director, possibly enjoying the young man's off humour a little himself. “The local Māori, the few that live south of Hokitika, talk of Hokioi and in some cases Pouakai. Giant birds that do kill humans. One old fellow even told me in some detail that the birds have a red crest, yellow wing tips and black and white coloured bodies. I don't know. But it does seem that whenever they cross south of Jacob's River... they keep one watchful eye on the sky.”
“I would dearly love to see one in flight.” whispered Dickie, with an almost religious sounding reverence.
“Indeed,” enjoined The Professor. “A worthy sight.”
“Well,” announced Von Haast “It is getting late. But first Mr Skilton, a favour?”
“Of course.” The Professor carefully laid the skull aside before turning his attention back to the Director.
“Tomorrow should prove to be a... how shall we say? A media circus. For while discovering this fine eagle, I have also managed to survey the pass, suitable for rail, through the southern divide to the Scots. The Collingwood-Dunedin rail link is to go ahead!”
“Good grief!” spluttered the Professor. “You certainly shall be the man of the hour. Well done old boy! Well done indeed. Both this remarkable find and now a way through the divide! I am yours to command!”
“Thank you friend. I wonder if you would be kind enough to spend an hour or so of your time, at your earliest possible convenience, in seeking formal legal protection for our giant raptor? Get it on the protected species list before it becomes a trophy item.”
“Yes. Of course, I shall lodge the protection order first thing. What name have you given it?”
“Harpagornis moorei”
“Hook bird, makes sense. But the moorei?”
Von Haast gave a chuckle.
“We found the skull in a tunnel, well, a cave, a sink hole, sitting on top of a pile of Moa bones. So Moorei in honour of Mr Moorhouse, our noble railway tunnel digger.”
* * *
William Sefton Moorhouse's ambitious plan to tunnel through 'the marble mountain', as it had become known, and create a rail link to Nelson via New Manchester, what the Māori call Motueka, was a project that enjoyed much public interest. It had just however, been eclipsed by the notion that a southern rail to the Scottish allies was indeed possible.
Although the 'Takaka Tunnel' would be a very useful addition, opening the Collingwood – New Manchester – Nelson line and carving some considerable hours off the alternative Midland Railway Company's 'Collingwood - Westport - Inangahua Junction – Glenhope – Nelson' branch, its benefits were fairly localised. A link with the southern Scots, however, was something altogether different, the plan belonged to a separate realm entirely; a railway to another country!
Julius Von Haast had been right, the following was a very busy day. And by the end of it he was the talk of the town. By the end of the next, the entire Dominion.
The Dominion Press carried the headline 'Haast's Pass! Missing Link found!' and a large photographic of the bearded geologist. There was a wordy write up about the proposed rail building scheme and a second picture, this of a map of the suggested extension to the Coastal & Main line through to the previously unheard-of Scottish settlement of 'Omakau' on the eastern side of the South Alps. There was only the briefest mention of Harpagornis moorei.
On the other hand, The Murderer's Bay Argus, true to its differing editorial style, and readership, was the opposite. It seemed to ignore 'Haast's Pass' instead focusing on 'Haast's Eagle: Terror of the Southern Skies'. It's cover page sported a large blow up of the hook beaked skull, vivid descriptions of the bird's killing prowess and some jockey had even taken the time to sketch out a scene of the great raptor swooping down on some hapless Māori.
It was The Dominion Press however which provided Max with some information he could use. It stated that a meeting would be held, at the Railway Hotel – Gibbstown, on the night of the 24th of January 1878, at which the shareholders of the Coastal & Main Railway Company would state forth the details of; and call for tenders for; the construction of a railway locomotive of suitable tolerance and horsepower for the sole task of completing the Collingwood-Greymouth-Dunedin passenger express with the utmost speed and comfort. All the leading engineering firms were expected to show a keen interest.
This meant Leith.
In the sitting room of the Skilton homestead Max reread the newsprint, his heart beginning to beat faster. Maybe he and Miss Harriet Leith had a date.