A Minstrel In France | Page 7

a reason and a good one. Money was needed for the laddies who were going--needed for all sorts of things. To buy them small comforts, and tobacco, and such things as the government might not be supplying them. And so they asked me to be their auctioneer.
I played a fine trick upon them there in Christchurch. But I was not ashamed of myself, and I think they have forgi'en me--those good bodies at Christchurch!
Here was the way of it. I was auctioneer, you ken--but that was not enough to keep me from bidding myself. And so I worked them up and on--and then I bid in the flag for myself for a hundred pounds--five hundred dollars of American money.
I had my doots about how they'd be taking it to have a stranger carry their flag away. And so I bided a wee. I stayed that night in Christchurch, and was to stay longer. I could wait. Above yon town of Christchurch stretch the Merino Hills. On them graze sheep by the thousand--and it is from those sheep that the true Merino wool comes. And in the gutters of Christchurch there flows, all day long, a stream of water as clear and pure as ever you might hope to see. And it should be so, for it is from artesian wells that it is pumped.
Aweel, I bided that night and by next day they were murmuring in the town, and their murmurs came to me. They thought it wasna richt for a Scotsman to be carrying off their flag--though he'd bought it and paid for it. And so at last they came to me, and wanted to be buying back the flag. And I was agreeable.
"Aye-I'll sell it back to ye!" I told them. "But at a price, ye ken-- at a price! Pay me twice what I paid for it and it shall be yours!"
There was a Scots bargain for you! They must have thought me mean and grasping that day. But out they went. They worked for the money. It was but just a month after war had been declared, and money was still scarce and shy of peeping out and showing itself. But, bit by bit, they got the siller. A shilling at a time they raised, by subscription. But they got it all, and brought it to me, smiling the while.
"Here, Harry--here's your money!" they said. "Now give us back our flag!"
Back to them I gave it--and with it the money they had brought, to be added to the fund for the soldier boys. And so that one flag brought three hundred pounds sterling to the soldiers. I wonder did those folk at Christchurch think I would keep the money and make a profit on that flag?
Had it been another time I'd have stayed in New Zealand gladly a long time. It was a friendly place, and it gave us many a new friend. But home was calling me. There was more than the homebound tour that had been planned and laid out for me. I did not know how soon my boy might be going to France. And his mother and I wanted to see him again before he went, and to be as near him as might be.
So I was glad as well as sorry to sail away from New Zealand's friendly shores, to the strains of pipers softly skirling:
"Will ye no come back again?"
We sailed for Sydney on the Minnehaha, a fast boat. We were glad of her speed a day or so out, for there was smoke on the horizon that gave some anxious hours to our officers. Some thought the German raider Emden was under that smoke. And it would not have been surprising had a raider turned up in our path. For just before we sailed it had been discovered that the man in charge of the principal wireless station in New Zealand was a German, and he had been interned. Had he sent word to German warships of the plans and movements of British ships? No one could prove it, so he was only interned.
Back we went to Sydney. A great change had come since our departure. The war ruled all deed and thought. Australia was bound now to do her part. No less faithfully and splendidly than New Zealand was she engaged upon the enterprise the Hun had thrust upon the world. Everyone was eager for news, but it was woefully scarce. Those were the black, early days, when the German rush upon Paris was being stayed, after the disasters of the first fortnight of the war, at the Marne.
Everywhere, though there was no lack of determination to see the war through to a finish, no matter how remote that might be, the feeling was that this war was