Whose Was The Mastiff?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 85, 7 February 1941, Page 14

Whose Was The Mastiff?

BOUT 40 years ago I was in A Coromandel, fossicking for gold near the head of the Tairua River. I had as a mate a foreign sailor, a very bad, arrogant man about 50, who made two attempts to end my life, so I cleared out while the river was in flood, knowing he could not swim. I got to the store in the evening, but as there was no accommodation for lodgers, I climbed up on top of a stack of rye-straw for the night and made my way to the far end. I settled down and had not been long there when a big dog, a full grown mastiff, came suddenly and lay right up against me, trying to lick my face and doing his own toilet off and on. At last I objected and did all I could to chase him away, but gave it up. It was a bright moonlight night, and before retiring I and the storekeeper’s son, a lad of 16, has been laughing at the antics of a half-drunken Malay. He was full of "bunk" whisky-made up of methylated spirits and kerosene-and he attacked the lad with the shod heel of his boots in one hand when a big Irishman knocked him flat. So I thought it time to make myself scarce. About 2 a.m. the dog began to growl, and sitting up I saw the Malay climbing up the chaffcutter with a knife in his teeth. The dog made one dash for him and the two rolled out of sight. In the (Continued on next page)

FOUR INCREDIBLE STORIES (Continued . from previous page) morning I told the storekeeper, who said the Malay had not since been seen, and as for the breed of dog I described there was no such dog in the neighbourhood, and he’d never seen one all the time he’d had the store. * * * So much for Coromandel. About four years after I was in Eastbourne, England, having been married in the interval. My wife and I used to go short walks at dusk, and one evening we were taking a short cut at the back of Devonshire House, This short cut path had a gate at each end and the distance was about 250 yards from gate to gate, and each gate had a lit lamp. Suddenly a big dog appeared, a mastiff, identical with the one that defended me from the Malay years ago. He ran round and round us in circles, and was just as real as the other, for we patted him. When we reached the opposite gate my wife went to pat him and I opened the gate to let him out and to our astonishment there was no dog. One second he was there, the next he wasn’t. And here is the point, Though we did not know it that lane had a very bad reputation for hold-ups.

W.

D.

(Auckland).