I really believe the great desire of Brisk's life was to catch a weka.

He started many, but used to go sniffing and barking round the flax bush where it had taken refuge at first, long after the clever, cunning bird had glided from its shelter to another cover further off.
After dinner was over and Domville had brought back the tin plates and pannikins from the creek where he had washed them up, pipes were lighted, and a few minutes smoking served to rest and refresh the men, who had been working since their six o'clock breakfast.

The daylight hours were too precious however to be wasted in smoking.

Trew and Domville would not have had that comfortable nest-egg standing in their name at the bank in Christchurch, if they had spent much time over their pipes; so after a very short "spell" they got up from the fallen log of wood which had served them for a bench, and suggested that F---- should accompany them back to where their work lay.

"You don't mind being left ?" asked F----.