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Netlinkz to deliver Starlinkz to New Zealand and Pacific markets after major deal

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Spark New Zealand Limited, together with its subsidiaries, provides telecommunications and digital services in New Zealand. It offers telecommunications, information technology, media, and other digital products and services, including mobile services; voice services; broadband services; internet sports streaming services; cloud, security, and service. The company also provides IT infrastructure, business cloud, business and outsourced telecommunications, software, big data analytics, data center, and international wholesale telecommunications services. In addition, it offers local, national, and international telephone and data services; finance products; group insurance products; and mobile phone repair services. Further, the company retails telecommunications products and services; and distributes equipment. It serves consumers, households, small businesses, government, and large enterprises. The company was formerly known as Telecom Corporation of New Zealand Limited and changed its name to Spark New Zealand Limited in August 2014. Spark New Zealand Limited was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand.

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SANTA CRUZ, PATAGONIA, AND THE FALKLAND ISLANDS

Follow the series … This blog post is the third part of “ ” The Definitive Guide to your next PHP framework Didn’t read it yet? To have a complete understanding of this topic have a look at and Introduction to PHP Frameworks Guide to PHP Frameworks part 2 Introduction to the third part By now, If you already came across the first two parts of this article, you should master the art of working with frameworks. PHP Working without stress and rather than what you need to. coding only what you want Have you started using PHP frameworks? It is a nice feeling, isn’t it? I told you! Think that we are still halfway through and below there are still plenty of frameworks to discover. I am sure you will find the one perfect for you Table of content Li₃ Nette Framework Phalcon Pop PHP Prado Silex Silverstripe Conclusion Li₃ As we have seen above, several frameworks are refactoring version or new project heavily based on other PHP frameworks. Li₃ is not different. It was born in October 2009, under the name of Cake3, from the idea of . Garrett Woodworth and Nate Abele project manager and developer of CakePHP Built for PHP 5.3 onwards, Li₃ claims to be one of the first frameworks to bring to the hand of web developers break ground technologies. This project has also managed to gain several important sponsorships like Engine Yard (PaaS based in San Francisco), Ratify and Atelier Disko. Among its more relevant technologies, , I have to mention its API maybe the first to include support for relational and non-relational databases together, and its class structure. In fact, they made of flexibility its battle horse the structure of the class allows you to organize your project or replace and override the built-in classes in a very easy way. Its use of closures and anonymous functions also allow the developer to bind method calls. Li₃ include MySql, MongoDB, CouchDB, and Redis, with support for Cassandra and ElasticSearch as well as PHP ActiveRecords and Doctrine 2. When I asked to Mr. Nate Abele Founder & CEO of Radify (a tech company that builds automated software and chief developer of Li₃) what does he think about the framework and how to choose the best he gave me a very funny quote: ”That’s like asking what’s the best food. Different frameworks are for different types of apps and different ways of thinking about problems. There’s certainly some overlap, but I don’t think one could argue that a single one out of all of them is best.” Li₃ is, without doubt, a good framework, it seems to have a quite big community around it, as per other frameworks you need to step into and see if you like it from your own experience. Li₃ Official Website GitHub Repository Nette Framework Created by David Grudi and then further developed by a big team, Nette is not to be considered a framework but as a combination of different services. It includes: , a high-tech template language, definitely beats Smarty/Twig; Latte a proprietary dependency container; DI a PHP unit testing suite; Tester a debugging tool and; Tracy a PHP container for services and of course the open-source framework. Dependency Injection The framework itself is also divided into small packages, you can find: nette/application; nette/di; nette/mail; nette/utils, etc. Each package has its own release cycle and it’s released when needed. With these packages, you can build nearly everything, API, personal site, and medium project. Nette itself is a great framework for building anything because it has a really cool architecture. You can switch every part of its system to a different one. For example DB, you can easily use Doctrine or there is an active record layer called Nette Database. If you would like to create API on PSR-7, you can! The team developed a lot of projects on PSR-7 even if Nette is not PSR-7 compatible. It is an MVC framework that supports PHP 5 and PHP 7. Making of the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) and KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principles its core features programming it is an easy-to-use and fast PHP framework. As per others, even Nette has a BSD license which imposes minimal restrictions and increases the opportunity for developers to improve the quality of the code within. Nette Framework (I mean all packages together) is current in 2.4 mainline. Previous versions are 2.3, 2.2, 2.1, and 2.0. At the moment, the team is preparing Nette 3.0 with full (PHP 7.1) support. But, as said, all Nette packages are PHP 7.2 compatible. Right now, the whole Nette team has about 6 people and it seems to be deeply used in all the East Europe being voted as the third most used framework of 2015 from a SitePoint survey. Unfortunately, even with the presence of very good docs, there isn’t a lot to say about this framework. But it is clear that the team behind is trying to increase the quality of the product and all its surroundings, Its open-source license is helping a lot with it. Like I advised for the others, you need to put your hands into it in order to understand if Nette is a framework that is right for you. I had the opportunity to chat with two of the most prominent persons within the Nette community, their names are and . Tomáš Votruba Milan Šulc Just looking at the impressive number of contributions they had on the GitHub projects you will understand that you are talking with someone that knows their stuff. Since the limited amount of new features released from Nette in the last 2 years, Tomáš is spending most of his time working on Symfony and writing for his blog. An amazing post he wanted to share with us regarding this topic is a comparison among his preferred 3 frameworks; Symfony vs Laravel vs Nette Milan’s main goal was to improve the documentation, it is written in either Czech or English. His contributions to this section were huge. He highlighted the growth that the Nette community is having, especially in the Czech Republic where the team organizes a meet up on a monthly basis called PoSobota, and once a year they gather on a summer “ ” in which they code and drink (not sure about the percentage of them). NetteCamp Nette Official Website GitHub Repository Phalcon It is easy to understand the aim of a product when you see one, and it’s even easier to see it when it is so highlighted. Phalcon’s first and most important purpose is speed. Andres Gutierrez, the developer started this project by taking a completely different path from the others. In fact, Phalcon PHP is a web server extension and , it is written with a lower level programming language like C and Zephir which provides the ability to create it in higher level language and compiled into PHP. This process simplifies the development reducing the time for coding. Phalcon PHP in its beta version (called Spark), was released in 2011. The first version instead is dated November 2012. In here, there was included a very fast ORM, cache element and its fundamental code was following the MVC pattern. With the following version, other features were announced such us PHQL, which is a dialect of MySql that speed up the queries and request to the database and Volt a template engine. The first version of Phalcon that supported LTS is the 3.0.0 that inter alia supports PHP 7. A remarkable side project that arrived from the Phalcon team is Phalcon Slayer, a wrapper that reconstructs the framework supporting Composer. As declared by the team and emphasized in the official website, this framework is focused on velocity and as result it is one of the faster, if not the fastest PHP framework among all. Phalcon Official Website GitHub Repository Pop PHP Nick Sagona is a New Orleans LA lead developer that came up with the idea of refactoring several old PHP libraries and putting together an open-source project. The first version of Pop PHP was released the 19 March 2012. The focal point of his effort was to merge these libraries in an MVC set of components in order to create a web application in an easy way. The second version, not supported anymore but still available, was released in July 2015 and developed to take advance of PHP 5.4 and the use of Composer. Version 3 released one year later had some update from the previous version and was written to support the new features implemented in PHP 7 and PHP 5.6. The last version now available from the official website and GitHub is the 3.6.5. This is a very good product, it was counted several times among the best PHP framework and it . currently includes most of the features accessible by much bigger frameworks Routing, service locators, an event manager, form generators, automated emails, a PDF generator, caching, debugging, logging. And to this list, I need to add Popcorn, a REST-based micro framework for deploying quick web applications. Nick was so kind to answer my questions about Pop PHP, what he said was that the project started with a small library of components that he wrote to handle the website and apps he was developing back then. And it grew pretty quickly from there, based on expanded needs as well as keeping tabs on trends and standards in the industry. He surely has put a lot of personal time into it, but he added that he would love if he could have more time to market or promote this framework a little bit more. Pop PHP Official Website GitHub Repository Prado Sometimes, projects start on the wrong foot and there is very little that you can do. Prado seems to be one of them. This project was first started by Qiang Xue, a Chinese software engineer with plenty of experience in open-source software. This framework came alive by taking Asp.net and Delphi as inspirations. The first release of this product was released in June 2004 and it was written in PHP 4. For this reason, the quality of this version was very restricted and originated some issues. Qiang refactored it using the more modern PHP 5 and with the new version, , gaining votes from public and judges panel. he was able to win the Zend PHP coding contest in 2004 In May 2005, the team of developers decided to rewrite the framework from scratch again to fix few problems found in the second version. From version 3 upwards this project became much more stable, its code was moved to Google code before and GitHub after and this moving results in more contributors able to fix the problems, thus a better product. , a PHP framework that succeeds Prado leaving the concept of page/events and focuses on an MVC design pattern. In October 2008, the development team released Yii Nowadays, a good amount of people are still supplying help and develop new features even though the which I will describe in the next episode (so subscribe to my newsletter to get notified when it is published). majority of the work is now focused on Yii Prado Official Website GitHub Repository Silex Fabien Potencier is the creator of Symfony as you will see later in this article, as one of the best and most popular PHP frameworks in this list. Silex shares the same creator of Symfony and firstly released in the last quarter of 2010, is now at version 2.0. , it is mainly used to create small web applications and REST APIs. Silex is a micro-framework heavily based on Symfony Silex is available in two different types; , which has only a basic routing engine, a built-in security function, sessions and cookies handlers and some other minor features but is extremely fast and ready-to-go. The slim The second version is called , and as the name suggests, it is the packed version of the two. fat It includes Twig, a template engine, Doctrine a database abstraction, and other features taken over from the mother framework Symfony. At the moment, as several benchmarks comparison demonstrated over the past few years. Silex is known as one of the best and fastest micro-framework If you need to build a very small application or an API, spending some time learning Silex is a wise choice. The final result will be excellent and you will start to get to know the basics of Symfony, which is good if you want to scale up your application. Silex Official Website GitHub Repository SilverStripe , an open source software under BSD license. Here is another item that belongs to the CMS category SilverStripe can be considered both a CMS because of its administration panel that permits the user to edit parts of the website and the so-called core the PHP SilverStripe Framework, The software was first developed almost 20 years ago by SilverStripe Limited, a web company initially based in New Zealand and Australia. The development of the second version that leverages some of the new characteristics of PHP 5 was started in late 2005 and eventually released on the 3rd of February 2007. A huge milestone was hit in 2010 when the software was downloaded 250000 times. SilverStripe 3.0 and 3.1 were released in June 2012 and October 2013 and now supporting API usability, Composer, YAML and improved the uploader feature. A big difference from other CMS is the clear separation between the authors that are in charge of creating content and the developers/designers that have to change the structure of the website. This highlighted separation gives an easy-to-use interface to the authors and provides more flexibility to web developers at the same time. Technically is a good software developed in PHP5.3 using Object Oriented design, It follows the MVC pattern and Object-relational mapper. Among its features, you can see a bespoke version of TinyMCE, SEO friendly URL, support for UTF-8 and internationalization as well as hundreds of modules, widgets, and themes that can be used to extend the core of the application. In summary, , SilverStripe is a very good CMS that can be used and edited as a proper framework Throughout the years, this has earned trust, thanks to the good quality of its code and the several prices they have won. SilverStripe Official Website GitHub Repository Do not miss the next episode… This blog post is the third part of the Kindle book “ ” The Definitive Guide to your next PHP framework Check: Guide to 24 PHP Frameworks Part 1 Guide to 24 PHP Frameworks Part 2 to see the introduction to this article and some other framework’s reviews The last parts will be published during the next couple of weeks or you can. Now It’s Your Turn I hope you enjoyed my frameworks’ comparison so far. The next part will be published soon. But now, I want to hear from you: As you have seen there are plenty of PHP frameworks out there. Which one are you going to try first?

Guide to 24 PHP Frameworks [Part 3]

ZKP Meets ML in Verifiability: Existing Scheme & Experimental Analysis

This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 license. Authors: (1) Zhibo Xing, School of Cyberspace Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, and the School of Computer Science, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand; (2) Zijian Zhang, School of Cyberspace Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, and Southeast Institute of Information Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Fujian, China; (3) Jiamou Liu, School of Computer Science, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand; (4) Ziang Zhang, School of Cyberspace Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China; (5) Meng Li, Key Laboratory of Knowledge Engineering with Big Data (Hefei University of Technology), Ministry of Education; School of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, 230601 Hefei, Anhui, China; Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Industry Safety and Emergency Technology; and Intelligent Interconnected Systems Laboratory of Anhui Province (Hefei University of Technology) (6) Liehuang Zhu, School of Cyberspace Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China; (7) Giovanni Russello, School of Computer Science, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. TABLE OF LINKS Abstract & Introduction Background Zero-Knowledge Proof-Based Verifiable Machine Learning Existing Scheme & Challenges and Future Research Directions Conclusion, Acknowledgment and References III. ZERO-KNOWLEDGE PROOF-BASED VERIFIABLE MACHINE LEARNING A. Definition We model zero-knowledge proof-based verifiable machine learning through participants, algorithms, and workflows. There are two types of participants, namely verifier V and prover P. Since V does not have enough computing power or data, V needs to delegate some machine learning tasks (training or inference) to P. So the main bulk of the computations involved in the machine learning are performed by the prover P, and further verified by V that whether all these computations are performed correctly. Depending on different tasks and privacy settings, the two participants may possess different data and objectives. Neither of these participants is honest, they will try to steal private data from other, which may lead to privacy compromise to the data owner. And the prover P may further performs the computation dishonestly (e.g. learning with incorrect data, or directly generating a well-formed learning result), which can cause a severe impact on the learning task. Gennaro [56] provided a formal definition of outsourced computation with four algorithms. In order to provide an accurate and unambiguous description, we define the noninteractive verifiable machine learning modeled after that. Definition 4: A zero-knowledge proof-based verifiable machine learning allowing a prover P to trustfully execute given machine learning task T with specific input data D for verifier V is a tuple of below algorithms: • (PK, V K, T D) ← Setup(T, λ): By inputting the task T and a security parameter λ, the algorithm generates an prover key PK for the prover P to generate the proof. And a verifier key V K for the verifier V to verify the proof. • c ← Commit(PK, DP ) : By inputting the input data D, the algorithm generates the commitment c for those inputs that need to be hidden. • r ← Execute(T, DP , DV ) : By inputting the task T and input data D, the algorithm perform the task T and outputs the execution result r (varies depending on the task, maybe a prediction or parameters). • π ← Prove(PK, DP , DV , r) : By inputting the evaluation key EKT , input data D and result r, the algorithm generates the corresponding proof π for the execution process. • {0, 1} ← Verify(V K, π, c, r, DV ) : By inputting the verification key V KT , proof π and commitment c, the algorithm checks whether the committed inputs are used for execution with c and π. And whether the execution process is correct with π and V KT . If the verification pass, the algorithm outputs 1, otherwise 0. • π ← Sim(T D, c, r, DV ) : By inputting the trapdoor T D and a result r, the algorithm generates the corresponding proof π. The workflow of verifiable machine learning is shown in Figure 4. Both parties agree on the machine learning task T and input data D(including the dataset, model, auxiliary input, etc.). After receiving the commitment c of input data D from prover P generated with Commit, verifier V runs Setup to generate keys for proving and verifying. Prover P performs the machine learning task with Execute to acquire the result r. During which the proof π is also generated by Prover P with Prove. Finally, with the execute result r and corresponding proof π, V can verifies whether P execute the machine learning task T correctly through Verify. If proof π pass the verification, then V is convinced that P has faithfully executed the machine learning task T to obtain the result r with input data D, otherwise, V rejects the result. And we give several basic properties for this scheme to meet: • . If P has honestly completed the task with the given input, then outputs 1 (Accept) with the Completeness Verify probability of 1. • . If P is malicious then outputs 1 with a negligible probability. For any PPT adversary A, Soundness Verify . If the scheme leaks no information about the prover’s private input DP besides the verification result to V. • Zero-knowledge If one scheme meets completeness and soundness, then it is a verifiable scheme. A verifiable scheme is mostly used in outsourced training scenarios, where V sends the model M and the training dataset D to P. Thus, the scheme only needs to focus on efficient proof generation and verification and does not necessarily require zero-knowledge properties, as the verifier V already possesses knowledge of the input. And if the scheme can only guarantee 1) the correctness of the result rather than the execution process or 2) the correctness of the process according to some proportion, then the verifiability is only partially satisfied. For the former, these scheme can only ensure that the results appear to be correct but may not fundamentally guarantee the reliability of the computation process. Malicious participants could potentially resubmit certain computation results and their corresponding proofs that pass verification, thereby reducing their computational costs. Regarding the latter, although it can mitigate poisoning attacks to some extent, it still has certain security vulnerabilities when considering malicious behavior that directly alters computation results in individual rounds. A scheme can protect the proverprivate input, for V knows nothing more than the verification result during the scheme. This approach finds widespread utility in scenarios such as federated learning, which places a strong emphasis on preserving the privacy of training data. Federated learning is designed to protect the privacy of data providers, but this very aspect can make it challenging to audit the training process. This scheme not only ensures the trustworthiness of the training results but also preserves the privacy protection attributes inherent to federated learning. zero-knowledge verifiable In addition, considering existing work, we also need to discuss another scenario, which is auditability. Auditability refers to the ability of a verifier to confirm that the data used by the prover is indeed the data they previously committed to, i.e., the verification of the commitment c. While this should be considered as a fundamental property of ZKP-VML schemes, its importance is equivalent to verifiability. Otherwise, the verification would focus solely on the effort expended rather than ensuring coherent correctness. However, given that a few schemes overlook this aspect, where they only verify the computation process and lack constraints on input data, it is also raised as one of the evaluation criteria. B. Challenges We clarify the challenges that a ZKP-based verifiable machine learning scheme faces. Based on the workflow mentioned above, to prove the correctness of some computational process, an intuitive idea is to transform the task T into a single algorithm fT and then prove the statement fT (D, M) = r by a zero-knowledge proof scheme, as shown in figure 5. Unfortunately, most of machine learning algorithms are too complex and large for existing zero-knowledge proof schemes, making the proof generation and verification impossible. Specifically, there are two main challenges. The first challenge is generalizability. Due to the nature of sample data, learning parameters, etc., the vast majority of computations involved in machine learning are floating-point computations. However, as a cryptographic technique, zero-knowledge proof works on groups of finite fields. Therefore, the statement containing the floating-point computation process cannot be directly translated into the circuit satisfiability problem expressed with elements over a finite field. This is just one of the issues that arise when transitioning between zero-knowledge proofs and machine learning. Other issues include but are not limited to representing computation processes beyond addition and multiplication, arithmeticizing towards different circuit representations, and so on. The second challenge is efficiency. On one hand, considering the complexity of the machine learning computation process, designing a specialized proof system is particularly challenging, and there are currently no such schemes available. On the other hand, the efficiency of general proof systems is often insufficient for practical needs in this scenario. Consider some general-purpose zero-knowledge proof systems, such as Groth16, one of the most commonly used zk-SNARK scheme. The computational complexity of its proof generation is O(|C|)E. |C| denotes the size of the arithmetic circuit, which is directly related to the amount of computation involved, and E denotes the exponentiation in groups. It is unaffordable to apply a computationally intensive task like machine learning to zero-knowledge proofs. For a specific model VGG16[57], the proof generation time reaches a staggering 10 years. Also the size of the generated evaluation key and verification key exceeds 1,000 TB, which also requires an enormous amount of memory to handle. How to prove the computational process of machine learning efficiently has also become a pressing problem.

Zero-knowledge Proof Meets Machine Learning in Verifiability: Background

Dick Sands the Boy Captain by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . THE "PILGRIM." here THE "PILGRIM." On the 2nd of February, 1873, the "Pilgrim," a tight little craft of 400 tons burden, lay in lat. 43Â° 57', S. and long. 165Â° 19', W. She was a schooner, the property of James W. Weldon, a wealthy Californian ship-owner who had fitted her out at San Francisco, expressly for the whale-fisheries in the southern seas. James Weldon was accustomed every season to send his whalers both to the Arctic regions beyond Behring Straits, and to the Antarctic Ocean below Tasmania and Cape Horn; and the "Pilgrim," although one of the smallest, was one of the best-going vessels of its class; her sailing-powers were splendid, and her rigging was so adroitly adapted that with a very small crew she might venture without risk within sight of the impenetrable ice-fields of the southern hemisphere: under skilful guidance she could dauntlessly thread her way amongst the drifting ice-bergs that, lessened though they were by perpetual shocks and undermined by warm currents, made their way northwards as far as the parallel of New Zealand or the Cape of Good Hope, to a latitude corresponding to which in the northern hemisphere they are never seen, having already melted away in the depths of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. For several years the command of the "Pilgrim" had been entrusted to Captain Hull, an experienced seaman, and one of the most dexterous harpooners in Weldon's service. The crew consisted of five sailors and an apprentice. This number, of course, was quite insufficient for the process of whale-fishing, which requires a large contingent both for manning the whale-boats and for cutting up the whales after they are captured; but Weldon, following the example of other owners, found it more economical to embark at San Francisco only just enough men to work the ship to New Zealand, where, from the promiscuous gathering of seamen of well-nigh every nationality, and of needy emigrants, the captain had no difficulty in engaging as many whalemen as he wanted for the season. This method of hiring men who could be at once discharged when their services were no longer required had proved altogether to be the most profitable and convenient. The "Pilgrim" had now just completed her annual voyage to the Antarctic circle. It was not, however, with her proper quota of oil-barrels full to the brim, nor yet with an ample cargo of cut and uncut whalebone, that she was thus far on her way back. The time, indeed, for a good haul was past; the repeated and vigourous attacks upon the cetaceans had made them very scarce; the whale known as "the Right whale," the "Nord-kapper" of the northern fisheries, the "Sulpher-boltone" of the southern, was hardly ever to be seen; and latterly the whalers had had no alternative but to direct their efforts against the Finback or Jubarte, a gigantic mammal, encounter with which is always attended with considerable danger. So scanty this year had been the supply of whales that Captain Hull had resolved next year to push his way into far more southern latitudes; even, if necessary, to advance to the regions known as Clarie and AdÃ©lie Lands, of which the discovery, though claimed by the American navigator Wilkes, belongs by right to the illustrious Frenchman Dumont d'Urville, the commander of the "Astrolabe" and the "ZÃ©lee." The season had been exceptionally unfortunate for the "Pilgrim." At the beginning of January, almost in the height of the southern summer, long before the ordinary time for the whalers' return, Captain Hull had been obliged to abandon his fishing-quarters. His hired contingent, all men of more than doubtful character, had given signs of such insubordination as threatened to end in mutiny; and he had become aware that he must part company with them on the earliest possible opportunity. Accordingly, without delay, the bow of the "Pilgrim" was directed to the northwest, towards New Zealand, which was sighted on the 15th of January, and on reaching Waitemata, the port of Auckland, in the Hauraki Gulf, on the east coast of North Island, the whole of the gang was peremptorily discharged. The ship's crew were more than dissatisfied. They were angry. Never before had they returned with so meagre a haul. They ought to have had at least two hundred barrels more. The captain himself experienced all the mortification of an ardent sportsman who for the first time in his life brings home a half-empty bag; and there was a general spirit of animosity against the rascals whose rebellion had so entirely marred the success of the expedition. Captain Hull did everything in his power to repair the disappointment; he made every effort to engage a fresh gang; but it was too late; every available seaman had long since been carried off to the fisheries. Finding therefore that all hope of making good the deficiency in his cargo must be resigned, he was on the point of leaving Auckland, alone with his crew, when he was met by a request with which he felt himself bound to comply. It had chanced that James Weldon, on one of those journeys which were necessitated by the nature of his business, had brought with him his wife, his son Jack, a child of five years of age, and a relation of the family who was generally known by the name of Cousin Benedict. Weldon had of course intended that his family should accompany him on his return home to San Francisco; but little Jack was taken so seriously ill, that his father, whose affairs demanded his immediate return, was obliged to leave him behind at Auckland with his wife and Cousin Benedict. Three months had passed away, little Jack was convalescent, and Mrs. Weldon, weary of her long separation from her husband, was anxious to get home as soon as possible. Her readiest way of reaching San Francisco was to cross to Australia, and thence to take a passage in one of the vessels of the "Golden Age" Company, which run between Melbourne and the Isthmus of Panama: on arriving in Panama she would have to wait the departure of the next American steamer of the line which maintains a regular communication between the Isthmus and California. This route, however, involved many stoppages and changes, such as are always disagreeable and inconvenient for women and children, and Mrs. Weldon was hesitating whether she should encounter the journey, when she heard that her husband's vessel, the "Pilgrim," had arrived at Auckland. Hastening to Captain Hull, she begged him to take her with her little boy, Cousin Benedict, and Nan, an old negress who had been her attendant from her childhood, on board the "Pilgrim," and to convey them to San Francisco direct. "Was it not over hazardous," asked the captain, "to venture upon a voyage of between 5000 and 6000 miles in so small a sailing-vessel?" But Mrs. Weldon urged her request, and Captain Hull, confident in the sea-going qualities of his craft, and anticipating at this season nothing but fair weather on either side of the equator, gave his consent. In order to provide as far as possible for the comfort of the lady during a voyage that must occupy from forty to fifty days, the captain placed his own cabin at her entire disposal. Everything promised well for a prosperous voyage. The only hindrance that could be foreseen arose from the circumstance that the "Pilgrim" would have to put in at Valparaiso for the purpose of unlading; but that business once accomplished, she would continue her way along the American coast with the assistance of the land breezes, which ordinarily make the proximity of those shores such agreeable quarters for sailing. Mrs. Weldon herself had accompanied her husband in so many voyages, that she was quite inured to all the makeshifts of a seafaring life, and was conscious of no misgiving in embarking upon a vessel of such small tonnage. She was a brave, high-spirited woman of about thirty years of age, in the enjoyment of excellent health, and for her the sea had no terrors. Aware that Captain Hull was an experienced man, in whom her husband had the utmost confidence, and knowing that his ship was a substantial craft, registered as one of the best of the American whalers, so far from entertaining any mistrust as to her safety, she only rejoiced in the opportuneness of the chance which seemed to offer her a direct and unbroken route to her destination. Cousin Benedict, as a matter of course, was to accompany her. He was about fifty; but in spite of his mature age it would have been considered the height of imprudence to allow him to travel anywhere alone. Spare, lanky, with a bony frame, with an enormous cranium, and a profusion of hair, he was one of those amiable, inoffensive who, having once taken to gold spectacles, appear to have arrived at a settled standard of age, and, however long they live afterwards, seem never to be older than they have ever been. savants Claiming a sort of kindredship with all the world, he was universally known, far beyond the pale of his own connexions, by the name of "Cousin Benedict." In the ordinary concerns of life nothing would ever have rendered him capable of shifting for himself; of his meals he would never think until they were placed before him; he had the appearance of being utterly insensible to heat or cold; he vegetated rather than lived, and might not inaptly be compared to a tree which, though healthy enough at its core, produces scant foliage and no fruit. His long arms and legs were in the way of himself and everybody else; yet no one could possibly treat him with unkindness. As M. Prudhomme would say, "if only he had been endowed with capability," he would have rendered a service to any one in the world; but helplessness was his dominant characteristic; helplessness was ingrained into his very nature; yet this very helplessness made him an object of kind consideration rather than of contempt, and Mrs. Weldon looked upon him as a kind of elder brother to her little Jack. It must not be supposed, however, that Cousin Benedict was either idle or unoccupied. On the contrary, his whole time was devoted to one absorbing passion for natural history. Not that he had any large claim to be regarded properly as a natural historian; he had made no excursions over the whole four districts of zoology, botany, mineralogy, and geology, into which the realms of natural history are commonly divided; indeed, he had no pretensions at all to be either a botanist, a mineralogist, or a geologist; his studies only sufficed to make him a zoologist, and that in a very limited sense. No Cuvier was he; he did not aspire to decompose animal life by analysis, and to recompose it by synthesis; his enthusiasm had not made him at all deeply versed in vertebrata, mollusca, or radiata; in fact, the vertebrata-animals, birds, reptiles, fishes-had had no place in his researches; the mollusca-from the cephalopoda to the bryozia-had had no attractions for him; nor had he consumed the midnight oil in investigating the radiata, the echmodermata, acalephÃ¦, polypi, entozoa, or infusoria. No; Cousin Benedict's interest began and ended with the articulata; and it must be owned at once that his studies were very far from embracing all the range of the six classes into which "articulata" are subdivided; viz, the insecta, the mynapoda, the arachnida, the crustacea, the cinhopoda, and the anelides; and he was utterly unable in scientific language to distinguish a worm from a leech, an earwig from a sea-acorn, a spider from a scorpion, a shrimp from a frog-hopper, or a galley-worm from a centipede. To confess the plain truth, Cousin Benedict was an amateur entomologist, and nothing more. Entomology, it may be asserted, is a wide science; it embraces the whole division of the articulata; but our friend was an entomologist only in the limited sense of the popular acceptation of the word; that is to say, he was an [Illustration: Cousin Benedict] observer and collector of insects, meaning by "insects" those articulata which have bodies consisting of a number of concentric movable rings, forming three distinct segments, each with a pair of legs, and which are scientifically designated as hexapods. To this extent was Cousin Benedict an entomologist; and when it is remembered that the class of insecta of which he had grown up to be the enthusiastic student comprises no less than ten [Footnote: These ten orders are (1) the orthoptera, grasshoppers and crickets; (2) the neuroptera, dragon-flies; (3) the hymenoptera, bees, wasps, and ants; (4) the lepidoptera, butterflies and moths; (5) the hemiptera, cicadas and fleas; (6) the coleoptera, cockchafers and glow-worms; (7) the diptera, gnats and flies; (8) the rhipiptera, the stylops; (9) the parasites, the acarus; and (10) the thysanura, the lepisma and podura.] orders, and that of these ten the coleoptera and diptera alone include 30,000 and 60,000 species respectively, it must be confessed that he had an ample field for his most persevering exertions. e.g. e.g. e.g. e.g. e.g. e.g. e.g. e.g. e.g. e.g. Every available hour did he spend in the pursuit of his favourite science: hexapods ruled his thoughts by day and his dreams by night. The number of pins that he carried thick on the collar and sleeves of his coat, down the front of his waistcoat, and on the crown of his hat, defied computation; they were kept in readiness for the capture of specimens that might come in his way, and on his return from a ramble in the country he might be seen literally encased with a covering of insects, transfixed adroitly by scientific rule. This ruling passion of his had been the inducement that had urged him to accompany Mr. and Mrs. Weldon to New Zealand. It had appeared to him that it was likely to be a promising district, and now having been successful in adding some rare specimens to his collection, he was anxious to get back again to San Francisco, and to assign them their proper places in his extensive cabinet. Besides, it never occurred to Mrs. Weldon to start without him. To leave him to shift for himself would be sheer cruelty. As a matter of course whenever Mrs. Weldon went on board the "Pilgrim," Cousin Benedict would go too. Not that in any emergency assistance of any kind could be expected from him; on the contrary, in the case of difficulty he would be an additional burden; but there was every reason to expect a fair passage and no cause of misgiving of any kind, so the propriety of leaving the amiable entomologist behind was never suggested. Anxious that she should be no impediment in the way of the due departure of the "Pilgrim" from Waitemata, Mrs. Weldon made her preparations with the utmost haste, discharged the servants which she had temporarily engaged at Auckland, and accompanied by little Jack and the old negress, and followed mechanically by Cousin Benedict, embarked on the 22nd of January on board the schooner. The amateur, however, kept his eye very scrupulously upon his own special box. Amongst his collection of insects were some very remarkable examples of new staphylins, a species of carnivorous coleoptera with eyes placed above their head; it was a kind supposed to be peculiar to New Caledonia. Another rarity which had been brought under his notice was a venomous spider, known among the Maoris as a "katipo;" its bite was asserted to be very often fatal. As a spider, however, belongs to the order of the arachnida, and is not properly an "insect," Benedict declined to take any interest in it. Enough for him that he had secured a novelty in his own section of research; the "Staphylin Neo-Zelandus" was not only the gem of his collection, but its pecuniary value baffled ordinary estimate; he insured his box at a fabulous sum, deeming it to be worth far more than all the cargo of oil and whalebone in the "Pilgrim's" hold. Captain Hull advanced to meet Mrs. Weldon and her party as they stepped on deck. "It must be understood, Mrs. Weldon," he said, courteously raising his hat, "that you take this passage entirely on your own responsibility." "Certainly, Captain Hull," she answered; "but why do you ask?" "Simply because I have received no orders from Mr. Weldon," replied the captain. [Illustration: Captain Hull advanced to meet Mrs. Weldon and her party.] "But my wish exonerates you," said Mrs. Weldon. "Besides," added Captain Hull, "I am unable to provide you with the accommodation and the comfort that you would have upon a passenger steamer." "You know well enough, captain," remonstrated the lady "that my husband would not hesitate for a moment to trust his wife and child on board the 'Pilgrim.' " "Trust, madam! No! no more than I should myself. I repeat that the 'Pilgrim' cannot afford you the comfort to which you are accustomed." Mrs. Weldon smiled. "Oh, I am not one of your grumbling travellers. I shall have no complaints to make either of small cramped cabins, or of rough and meagre food." She took her son by the hand, and passing on, begged that they might start forthwith. Orders accordingly were given; sails were trimmed; and after taking the shortest course across the gulf, the "Pilgrim" turned her head towards America. Three days later strong easterly breezes compelled the schooner to tack to larboard in order to get to windward. The consequence was that by the 2nd of February the captain found himself in such a latitude that he might almost be suspected of intending to round Cape Horn rather than of having a design to coast the western shores of the New Continent. Still, the sea did not become rough. There was a slight delay, but, on the whole, navigation was perfectly easy. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (2005). Dick sands, the boy Captain. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3250.html.images This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

SPARK NEW ZEALAND LIMITED

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SPARK NEW ZEALAND LIMITED

sparknz.co.nz

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Since 1987

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