That boat was the foulest I was ever in; and the smell of the breakfast saloon when we threaded our way among the layers of steaming passengers stretched upon its floor and its tables was incomparable for efficiency.

A good many of us got ashore at the first way-port to seek another ship.  After a wait of three hours we got good rooms in the Mahinapua, a wee little bridal-parlor of a boat—­only 205 tons burthen; clean and comfortable; good service; good beds; good table, and no crowding.  The seas danced her about like a duck, but she was safe and capable.

Next morning early she went through the French Pass—­a narrow gateway of rock, between bold headlands—­so narrow, in fact, that it seemed no wider than a street.  The current tore through there like a mill-race, and the boat darted through like a telegram.  The passage was made in half a minute; then we were in a wide place where noble vast eddies swept grandly round and round in shoal water, and I wondered what they would do with the little boat.  They did as they pleased with her.  They picked her up and flung her around like nothing and landed her gently on the solid, smooth bottom of sand—­so gently, indeed, that we barely felt her touch it, barely felt her quiver when she came to a standstill.  The water was as clear as glass, the sand on the bottom was vividly distinct, and the fishes seemed to be swimming about in nothing.  Fishing lines were brought out, but before we could bait the hooks the boat was off and away again.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Let us be grateful to Adam our benefactor.  He cut us out of the “blessing of idleness,” and won for us the “curse of labor.” 
                                  —­Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.

We soon reached the town of Nelson, and spent the most of the day there, visiting acquaintances and driving with them about the garden—­the whole region is a garden, excepting the scene of the “Maungatapu Murders,” of thirty years ago.  That is a wild place—­wild and lonely; an ideal place for a murder.  It is at the base of a vast, rugged, densely timbered mountain.  In the deep twilight of that forest solitude four desperate rascals—­Burgess, Sullivan, Levy, and Kelley—­ambushed themselves beside the mountain-trail to murder and rob four travelers—­Kempthorne, Mathieu, Dudley, and De Pontius, the latter a New Yorker.  A harmless old laboring man came wandering along, and as his presence was an embarrassment, they choked him, hid him, and then resumed their watch for the four.  They had to wait a while, but eventually everything turned out as they desired.

That dark episode is the one large event in the history of Nelson.  The fame of it traveled far.  Burgess made a confession.  It is a remarkable paper.  For brevity, succinctness, and concentration, it is perhaps without its peer in the literature of murder.  There are no waste words in it; there is no obtrusion of matter not pertinent to the occasion, nor any departure from the dispassionate tone proper to a formal business statement—­for that is what it is:  a business statement of a murder, by the chief engineer of it, or superintendent, or foreman, or whatever one may prefer to call him.