io8 SPORT AND TRAVEL 



but whether or not the lady chooses her husband 

 from the winning boat is a delicate question, which 

 does not, I think, enter into the conditions of the 

 race itself. At any rate, the bride is landed on the 

 beach and has to run a gauntlet of deafening ap- 

 plause from enthusiastic thousands. 



Our stay at Rotorua must, like all good things, 

 come to an end at last. Rising very early one morn- 

 ing, we take a regretful leave of the mist-wrapped 

 lake and the steaming terraces and hillsides, whose 

 beauties and horrors alike have been a source of such 

 keen enjoyment; the whip cracks, the rickety old 

 stage-coach groans on its springs, and we are whirled 

 off over the lava-roughened hills, past Waimungu, 

 past old Tarawera, and so down through the fern- 

 clad jungles to Wairakei, Lake Taupo, and the Wan- 

 ganui River, where new scenes of undreamed-of 

 beauty await us in this imperial wonderland. 



By this time no traces whatever of the fever re- 

 mained, and my shoulder was beginning to ache for 

 the feeling of a gun again. I had not the slightest idea 

 as to the whereabouts of either Perry or Wheeler : 

 only one letter, from Perry, had reached me since 

 taking leave of them in December, saying that he 

 had lost Wheeler somewhere in the Philippines, his 

 own plans being apparently quite vague. However, 

 I guessed that by now he would have followed his 



