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To
Lady Loch,
Whose Many Virtues Have Shed a Lustre on the
High Position She Occupies as
Oh! Wonderland of the Southern Seas. Oh! Beauty Spot of the World Oh! Land whose glacier-crowned mountains pierce the fairest of Heavens—whose rivers rush over beds of crystal and gold—whose lakes, embosomed amid the lonely hills, shimmering in the sunshine, as it were vast sapphires in a setting of emerald, ruby, and amethyst—whose forests deep, dark, dense, are the home of a myriad birds that flit like living gems from bough to bough. Oh! Land of flaming sunlight and gloomy shadow, of calm and storm, of summer heats and wintry snows.
Thou art so near and yet so far.
So near, for I can close my eyes, and, lo, I am once again in the mysterious recesses of thy olive and pale green woods, I wander again by thy rushing rivers, I look up with mental vision from where, as in a vast amphitheatre, thy hills on every side tower up, terrace above terrace, till their tops of steely blue, purple, and silver, reach the clouds. I sail again into thy solitary fiords, where the iron-bound coast, cleft asunder by some awful convulsion of nature, is penetrated, showing how vast and terrible is nature, how little man. I stand on the summit of thy mountains and look far abroad at the bewildering sea of ice peaks, and below at the clouds and mists that hide the lower earth. Yea, indeed, thou art so near.
And yet so far. I open my eyes. Houses, streets, shops, men and women, dress, fashion, civilization, wealth, poverty, dust, dirt, turmoil. All the petty struggles and contemptible shifts of this everyday life, and thou liest smiling in thy tranquil loveliness, or frowning in thy sublime tempest, and many and many a league of angry sea between.
Can it be?—is it possible that so many years have sped that I have almost lost count, since I traversed thy gloomy gorges, thy romantic valleys—since I wandered by thy lakes—since I was “borne like a bubble onward,” upon a frail raft of Korattis, down thy river rapids—since I scaled thy heights—since I ate of thy Mamuka fern, thy Nikau palm, and thy Kumera, or lay in a native Whare of Kohe-Kohe poles and Raupo, or under a tree by the camp fire, or beneath the shadow of a flax bush, listening to the legends of his race told by some lordly Maori—since I compassed thy length from the North Cape to the Bluff, thy breadth from Tauranga to Cape Egmont, from the Katuku river to Port Chalmers?
Even so. The years have sped. The time is past. But never forgotten. Ah, no! never forgotten.
more jealously guard their rights of property, no nation who are more ready to take up arms to resist encroachment on their land; and, as the lines of demarcation were necessarily somewhat arbitrary as between the tribes, these disputes were constantly arising, and almost as constantly being settled by an appeal to arms.
It was this very question of disputed territory that led to the disastrous wars between the Maoris and the British that, a few years since, were the curse of New Zealand, and which were the fruitful cause of so much rapine and bloodshed.
Of the tribes named none were more frequently at feud than the allied Waimate and Te Nama tribes, and the powerful Patea tribe, the disputed territory being a tract of land on the north bank of the Waingongora river. The two parties were fairly evenly matched, and in their desultory wars, or rather raids (for they were more like the forays of the old border freebooters than aught else, with the difference that their object was to carry off prisoners instead of black cattle), success as often attended one side as the other.
The principal pahs, or palisaded enclosures, of the tribes were: of the Pateas, on the Patea river, 26 miles north-west of the Wanganui river; of the Waimates, near the Kaipokonui stream, about 38 miles further; and of Te Namas, one mile north-west of Opunake Bay. which is 17 miles from Waimate, and the scene where this story opens.
The chief, or Rangatira, of Te Nama tribe was a brave but ferocious warrior named Marutuahua, a descendant of the great chief of the same name, who was the progenitor of the powerful Kawhia tribes, of which, in fact, Te Namas were a branch. But he was no less wise in council than he was brave in war, and no voice was listened to in the Korero, or parliament of the tribe, with more attention than that of the sapient and eloquent Marutuahu, Te tangata kai whakaako, or the man who teaches.
The pah, or fortification, or rather village, was, like others of the same character, a roomy quadrangular enclosure, surrounded by strong palisading, sunk deeply into the earth and pointed on the tops of the posts, an abbatis in fact, strengthened by wooden flying buttresses and heavy beams. Immediately inside the fenced wall ran a trench, or covered way, sloping inwards and extending all round the quadrangle. It was entered by a narrow gateway of solid beams, elaborately carved in the usual style of Maori ornamentation. Hideous faces, with lolling tongues and elaborately tattooed cheeks, grinned, leered, and scowled, over and on the lintels of the doorway, the faces of the Atuas of the tribe, the intervening spaces being carved in regular curved and angular lines and cross hatchings, embellished with circles of the achromatically colored mutton fish (haliotis) shell, and rings formed out of the tusks of the wild boar. Inside the pah were the whares, or houses of the tribe, that of the Rangatira being larger than the rest, and profusely carved and ornamented, also the Wharekura, or place of meeting and residence of the chief Arikis and Tohungas or priests of the tribe.
The pah stood on the summit of a not very lofty hill, which rose in successive terraces from the low lying land, and which was difficult of access except by means of a narrow pathway leading up to the gate.
The Waimate and Patea pahs were similar enclosures, tho former one especially being so strongly constructed as to be almost impregnable. It was certainly one of the most formidable strongholds in the whole of New Zealand, and was situated in an admirable position for defence, nearly insulated, and joined only to the mainland by two narrow shingle sp'its. On the outer or sen side was a perpendicular cliff one hundred feet high, and on the land side was a natural ditch filled with deep water. The summit was riat, and was covered with pits for the reception of provisions, as well as for shelter.
This fortification was the stronghold of the Waimates, who, under their chief, Tamaiti, occupied the neutral territory between the Namas and the Pateas, which two were at feud, if not at open war, the Namas taking part with the whites who had settled at and about Taranaki and Rawhia Bay, and the ferocious Pateas having declared for the Uriweras and other inland tribes under the banner of the fanatic Hau-Hau leaders, who were at war with the intruders, as they deemed them, and whose battle cry was “Extermination to the Pakehas.”
The lingering beams of the declining sun danced merrily on the sparkling surface of Opunake Bay, a horseshoe-shaped roadstead a a third of a mile deep, about twenty miles south of the extensive kainga, or pah, of the powerful Taranaki tribe. The rapidly dying light glinted on the rocky cliffs which stretched from one head of the bay to the other, and which rendered access inland impossible save in one spot near the centre, where was a sandy beach about two hundred yards wide, over which flowed the translucent waters of the Opunake river, a rapidly running, shingle-bedded and boulder strewn stream having its rise in the snow-clad cone of the giant Maunga Taranaki, that glistened like an enormous sugar loaf of dazzling whiteness, fifteen miles or so away to the north east. Back from this opening into the land lay a dense bush of huge pine, birch, and totara, whose sombre foliage gradually became more and more darkened by the purple twilight, while farther inland, and belting the lower part of the distant ranges, shone the bright mass of red rata blossom, which imparts to the New Zealand mountain scenery so weird and lurid a glow.
Save for the lapping of the water on the sandy beach, the occasional break of a wave against the rocky cliffs, the rhythmic murmur of the stream, and the droning buz of the mosquitoes from the swamps, there was a profound silence, broken only by the rushing rustle of a night owl in search of his prey, or the distant querulous bark of the kuri (wild dog), a silence soon to be dispelled by the voices of the nocturnal fauna of the New Zealand forest.
Slowly the sun sank beneath the flashing waves of the Western Ocean, then suddenly the narrowing lines of light disappeared, and in a few minutes the scene was enveloped in a mantle of thick darkness, and then broke into full chorus the song of night.
The shrill piping of the kiwi. —This singular bird, the —Maori hen. A brown bird of the rail family, about as large as a pullet. It is very tame, and does not fly.apteryx, belongs to the ostrich family (Struthionidœ). Practically it is wingless, and therefore cannot fly. It is rarely seen except at night. Its feathers are long and narrow, almost filamentary, and are used by the Maoris for making their best mats. Its note is a peculiar shrill cry, not unlike its name in sound.
By and by the moon rose, tipping the tree tops with a strange weird light, and bathing the distant mountains in silver glory, although ever and anon a heavy cloud would flit across her face, and make the gloom denser than before. During one of these transient gleams of moonlight might have been heard a rustling in the undergrowth as if some person or animal were passing through the bush and approaching the sandy beach, and then, forcing his way through the thick fern and tutu (poison plant), appeared first the head and shoulders and then the entire figure of a young man. He emerged from the tangle, and stepped forward on the sand, stopping at the creek, and kneeling down to drink.
He was a tall and stalwart young fellow, clad half in European, half in Maori costume, that is to say, while his lower limbs were encased in stout serge trousers and seaman's boots, the upper part of his body was enveloped in a highly ornamented flax mat. On his head he wore a broad-brimmed felt hat, and over his arm he carried a rifle.
No Maori he, as his ruddy Saxon features, embrowned by exposure to the sun and air, but unseamed by the Moko, indicated. How came he there, so far from the haunts of the Pakeha?
But as he knelt and drank of the limpid water, a dark form stole noiselessly from behind a thick clump of hini-hini scrub, and, approaching the unsuspecting victim with uplifted meré, dealt him a savage
Tainui Te Ngatiawa, as he called himself, was a Maori of gigantic proportions, strong as a bullock, yet lithe and slippery as an eel. Throwing the senseless body of his enemy over his shoulder as easily as he would have done that of a child, he struck into the bush with that peculiar intoed lope or trot characteristic of most savage nations, notably the American Indians and the Maoris. His first intention had been to kill him out of hand, and to leave him in a lonely part of the bush, to be devoured by wild dogs, pigs, and hawks. But as he proceeded the devilish instinct of cruelty inherent in the Maori breast filled his mind, and, not content with slaughtering his victim, he determined to torture him. The Maori is a firm friend, but a ruthless and relentless enemy. He is an adept at all the varieties of torture, and in the refinement of cruelty has made it a study, almost approaching the dignity of a science.
And Tainui was one of the most malignant of his race, and he chuckled with fiendish delight at the anticipated torments of his prisoner. He would carry him to the swamp, bind him with flax, tie him down, strip him, and then revive him if he could, and gloat over his agony as he lay helpless against the attacks of the thousands of mosquitoes that infested the morass. He would hack his joints with his maripi (knife) until nature would bear no more, and would then dash out his brains with his meré. Such was the revenge of this truculent savage on his hated rival.
But barely had Tainui quitted the bay with his hapless load, when another actor appeared on the scene. Grating lightly on the sandy bar, a small canoe, impelled by skilful hands, shot into the mouth of the stream, and there stepped from it to the beach a woman—a woman tall of stature, dark of skin, tattooed on the nether lip and clad in a frayed and tattered dog-skin mat and kilt. She stepped forward to the edge of the bush, standing perfectly still, her head thrust forward in an attitude of rapt attention, striving to pierce the dense pall of blackness that shut out everything from sight, for a heavy cloud had again obscured the moon. She gazed this way and
She had, while coasting along the bay, heard Tainui's triumphant yell, and had paddled to the spot whence it had appeared to come, but now all was dark, all silent.
But as she moved toward the creek her foot struck something which emitted a metallic sound, and stooping, she found the pakeha's rifle, which the Maori, in his excitement, had overlooked. At that moment there suddenly arose, and from a spot at no great distance from the shore, a short, sharp, agonised cry, the voice of a human being calling for assistance. It was not repeated, or, if it were, it was drowned in the discordant forest music which it instantly evoked.
Presently, rising above the confused medley of sound from the feathered denizens of the woods came another cry, this time a shout of dorision, followed by a faint groan, and a weak cry for help.
Guided by the sound, the woman dashed into the bush, trampling down the fern, forcing her way through the prickly and tenacious lawyer-bush, and threading the intricacies of the tangled supple-jacks with a comparative ease, even in the darkness, that indicated perfect familiarity with tin? peculiarities of the New Zealand forest.
After passing through the bush as rapidly and noiselessly as the nature of the ground would permit, for a couple of hundred yards, she came to the edge of a small swampy opening in the timber, overgrown with tussocks of grass, and there she again stopped to listen. As she did so, the moon suddenly broke from behind a thick cloud, and showed with terrible distinctness a strange scene.
On a small patch of open ground lay stretched, bound and helpless, a human form, while another stood near him mocking at the torments he was suffering from the ferocious attacks of a cloud of virulent mosquitoes. Well did she understand the meaning of that terrible sight. Well did she know the maddening torture inflicted by those diminutive pests when every spot on the body is covered by them, iust risen from a foul and foetid coast swamp and hungry for blood.
Twice she raised the rifle to her shoulder, twice she lowered it in indecision, until the sufferer with a low groan fainted, and his tormentor rushed forward at him with an angry cry. The sharp knife in his hand glittered above his head in the moonlight as he prepared to cleave his victim's heart—
There was a sharp crack, a flash of name, a puff of pungent smoke, and the assailant bounded forward, and fell prone on his face across the body of the senseless man.
Not a moment too soon. Another second and the keen maripi would have been plunged into the breast of the prostrate youth.
A rush and flutter of startled birds in the surrounding trees and the dim bush shrubbery, the howling of a score of wild dogs, the trump of a drove of wild pigs that were feeding in the neighborhood, and all was silent. Another heavy bank of cloud blotted out the moon, and all was once more darkness.
About the same time as the incident occurred as related in the preceding chapter, the whare or hut of Marutuahua, chief of Te Nama tribe, was occupied by two persons in deep converse, the Rangatira himself and a stranger. The Rangatira, who sat or rather squatted on a rug in the centre of the apartment in dignified state, was a man of about fifty years of age, and of stern, almost forbidding, aspect, having his face seamed all over with the moko of his tribe and rank, his emblazonment of savage heraldry in fact. He was clad in a flax petticoat or kilt, and a kakapo mat, and wore on his head a fillet of kea feathers, and in his ears a long greenstone drop, and a shark's tooth. In his hand he held the meré, the dreaded greenstone weapon that had crushed the brain of so many of his enemies, and cloven the skulls of so many slaves led out for sacrifice.
His visitor was a man of about the same age, a hard-featured, weatherbeaten, austere, and sinister-looking man, with a grey beard and hair, and the unmistakeable look of a sailor. He was a pakeha, a white man, clad in coarse European fashion, and he sat on a low box smoking a short wooden pipe.
“I tell you I have no home, no country. I am an outcast and a fugitive, one who would not care to live, nay, who would not live another day, were it not for Frank.”
“Ah, Paranaki,” said the old chief, with an attempt at a smile, “I like Paranaki.”
“Everybody likes Frank; he's a good lad is Frank, far too good for a father like I am, far too good.”
“But why do you hate your own people as you do?” asked the chief.
“Because I have suffered wrong, nothing but wrong, at their hands. Listen, you. I was a rich man once, and I was a fool. I had money, plenty of money; I sailed my own ship, and was part owner in another, and I spent my money freeely, lavishly, recklessly. Spent? I gave it away, threw it away.” He paused, and then went on in a lower voice, “I had a wife too, a wife whom I loved, and who, as I thought, loved me. Poor fool, poor fool. Perhaps she did love me at first; I don't know. We had a child, this lad Frank. When he was nine years old I took him a voyage to sea with me, to South America and back, at his mother's request. She said he was delicate, and meeded a change of air. Ah, the false, deceitful Jezebel. When I returned I found her gone, and I heard a tale that turned my blood to ice. She had gone off, fled with my familiar, my trusted friend, my partner—fled—and left me almost a beggar. They had taken all they could, they had involved me in debt, and the law left me bare. My ship was sold; I was ruined! ruined! Had I met her then, or him, I would have killed either or both. But no, they had gone and left no trace. I travelled the world over for three years in
The chief bowed his head in assent. “But Paranaki, is he content to remain here? Does he not wish to go back to his own people?” he asked.
“I think not. This free, wild life suits him well enough, I fancy. Besides, he's a good lad, and loves his father, and will never leave him while he lives. When I am dead, why—after all, why should he want to leave here? His experiences of civilization are not so pleasant as to make him anxious to return to it. And the specimens of white humanity he has met here, the few whalers and Sydney traders that call occasionally, manned mostly by escaped convicts and other scum, are not such as to give him a very exalted notion of the race. He's contented enough, and happy enough, he and that lad of yours—”
“Ha!” ejaculated the old man proudly, “toku tamaiti Matariki” (my son, the star of June).
“They are fast friends, and then again, I rather fancy—but that's what brings me here to-night; I'll explain.”
“My ears are open; speak.”
But what Richard Burnett was about to say was not said, for just then the mat that hung over the doorway was lifted and over the threshold stepped a girl.
Who shall describe her, that Maori maiden, that nymph of the wild New Zealand forest? She had none of the heavy flatness usual in Maori female features, she was tall and lithe, with a lovely face, a soft, light olive complexion, beautifully rounded limbs, and hands and feet unusually small. Straight as a dart, active as a deer, graceful as an antelope, she looked a princess, as indeed she was, Hine-Ra, the Rangatira Wahine.
She was clad in the usual dress of a Maori girl of high rank, a short petticoat of flax and dyed reeds, and a mat of kiwi feathers ornamented with tufts of the snow-white throat feathers of the tui-tui. Her feet and ankles were encased in slippers of dressed shark skin, round her neck and wrists were strings of tiny shining shells, and on her head was a fillet decorated with a plume of the wing feathers of the blue crane.
“Matua,” she said, addressing her father.
“Tamahine,” was the reply, “speak.”
“Where is my brother? Where is Matariki? I fear some evil has befallen him.”
“What need you fear? Matariki is no baby. He is the son of a Rangatira,” was the dignified reply.
“I know, and yet I fear. He was to have been here long before sunset; he promised me he would, and I—”
“No need for fear, I say; but do you not see our guest?”
The girl blushed slightly, for politeness to strangers is the first rule of Maori social ethics, and extending her hands to him said, in her soft musical voice, “E hoa” (friend), the salutation due to his age and standing in their community.
“E ko,” was the reply, “but why this fear for your brother” it is not yet late, the Cross has not yet turned in the sky, and Matariki is a rangatira, and beyond the spells of wicked Atuas.”
“It is not wicked Atuas I fear,” she said simply; “it is wicked men. I have heard that some of the Pateas have been seen in a canoe off Otumutua Point—”
“Pateas are dogs, and dare not land on these shores. And if they did Matariki is the son of a chief, and fears them not,” was the rangatira's stately reply. “Girl, get you gone with your foolishness.”
“But will you not send out to find him? He promised me to be at the pah long ago, and I feel, I know not why, a strange presentiment of evil.”
“To calm thy fear, E Hine, be it so. Bid Arawa (Shark) and—stay, I will go myself. The pakeha will pardomme, but as he sees, my daughter is alarmed, and she is very dear to the koroheke” (old man), said the chief, turning courteously to his guest.
“Certainly, my all means,” was the reply; “another day will suit for our korero, better perhaps than now.”
Marutuahua lifted the mat that covered the doorway and passed out, leaving the pakeha and the Maori girl together.
“Why, E Hine, do you fear for your brother Matariki? True, the day is ended, but it is not yet night,” said the former in a reassuring voice.
“True, Ehoa, but I feel, I am sure, something has detained him Matariki promised me to be here long before sunset, and he never breaks his word. The Pateas—”
“The Pateas?” interrupted Richard Burnett, scornfully. “As your father has said, the Pateas are dogs, and are of no account. Be not afraid, Hine; all will be well, and he will be here anon. He and my son Frank—”
“Ha, Paranaki—”
“And that reminds me, I had something to say with regard to him that might as well be said now. I had intended to speak to your father on the subject first, but perhaps it were better, as you are here, to talk to you. My boy Frank—”
“Yes, Paranaki.”
“You know Frank, and you are very fond of him. Is that not so?”
“Yes, that is so. Paranaki is the friend of the Maoris. I love Paranaki,” she replied simply.
“But,” said Burnett, somewhat staggered by the naivale of the answer, “Frank is a pakeha.”
“And what of that?” she said; “he is a pakeha Maori—he is my brother.”
“Ay, brother, that's all very well. But there is another kind of love which—”
“I do not understand,” she said, seeing that the other paused.
“The Maori knows but one kind of love, and I love Paranaki.”
“Yes, but then you see—I hardly know how to explain it—you love your father?”
“Assuredly I love my father.”
“And Matariki, your brother?”
“And Matariki, my brother.”
“That's quite right, but then you see Frank is not your brother.”
“To me he is as my brother.”
Mr. Burnett was puzzled. The girl was evidently so innocent, so guileless, so ignorant of wrong, that he was at a loss to make his meaning clear. She, however, opened a way to him by asking,
“Is it wrong to love Paranaki?”
“Well, not exactly, as you would say, wrong, but there is a difference. When a young girl loves a young man who is not her brother, and when he loves her, why it usually, unless there is some grave reason to the contrary, ends in—in—a different kind of relationship altogether.”
“Yes?”
“It usually ends in—in—marriage.”
“Yes?”
“And you couldn't marry Frank, you know.”
“Why not?”
This was coming straight to the point with a vengeance, and he felt still more puzzled. However he went on:
“Oh, there are many reasons. You see Frank is a pakeha, a white man, and you are—”
“I see,” she replied, the rich blood suffusing her dusky cheek, “and I am only a Maori.”
“Well, that's one reason. Then, again, he's too young to think of marrying, and your father might object, and—”
“Enough, the first reason is sufficient. No more need be said. Paranaki is a pakeha, and the Rangitira Wahine o te Nama is but a Maori, after all. I did not think of that. It is enough,” and so saying, the haughty beauty turned away, lifted the hanging mat, and left the apartment.
The old man looked after her sorely perplexed, and, putting on his hat to go, muttered between his teeth, “Confound the women.”
Ay, just so, Richard Burnett; a sentiment that has been expressed a thousand times before and since: “Confound the women.”
Frank Burnett—as the reader will have guessed the youth who had so narrowly escaped death at the hands of his savage enemy was none other—came to himself with a dull consciousness of an aching and throbbing brain, and a sharp tingling pain in every part or his body, a sensation as if thousands of red-hot needles were being plunged into his flesh.
For a little while he lay in a semi-comatose state, utterly regardless of where he was, or what was going on around him, but as reason and memory once more asserted their sway, he became aware of a human voice reciting, or rather chanting, in a low monotonous tone, the words of a Maori charm which he had heard used only by the Arikis of the tribe with whom he sojourned.
Opening his eyes, he found himself lying on a kind of rude couch or bed composed of the tassels of the toi-toi reed, and covered with a feather mat, his own and other mats being used as a covering for himself.
Looking round, and as his eyes became accustomed to the semidarkness, he perceived that he was in a somewhat roomy, rocky cavern, the floor of which was of smooth sand, and with an entrance or mouth opening to a small sandy beach on which the waters of the sea beyond lapped and rippled with a soft murmur. Further in and near the extremity of the cave, a small fire was burning, over which crouched a female form intoning the spell spoken of, and intent on an earthen kettle, the contents of which simmered briskly over the flame.
For a while he lay silent, wondering how he came into so strange a place, and into the companionship of so singular a being, and striving to recall to memory what had lately passed. But in vain. All he could recollect was kneeling to drink of the Opunake stream. Beyond that was a blank, except that he had a dim idea of pain and deadly peril, although of what or how he had no conception.
As he lay thus, vainly striving to concentrate the thoughts that fleeted through his aching head, and watching the moonlight as it danced on the waters and silvered the little beach before him, the woman rose from the fire, and, mingling the boiling contents of the pot with cold water to cool them, approached him.
As she stepped forward into the comparative light he caught a glimpse of her features, and in a tone of surprise, not unmingled with alarm, and even with terror, ejaculated, “Matutira te Taipo?”
“Koia (yes), Matutira te Taipo.”
This singular woman was a mysterious being, well known to all the tribes of that part of the country, and was as heartily dreaded as she was universally known, personally or by repute. The Maori, like all other uncivilized or only partially civilized peoples, is essentially superstitious, and is always apt to put down the strange
tapu (making sacred), but, to a great extent, that of life and death, in their hands. He believes implicitly in various kinds of signs and omens, and in spells, charms, and conjurations, and it is therefore not to be wondered at that Frank Burnett, who had passed so many of his youthful and therefore impressionable years among the Maoris, should have, to a very considerable extent, become imbued with their superstitions and the nameless terrors of their singular system of priestcraft.
Amongst those who exercised this kind of influence over the tribe was this extraordinary woman, Matutira te Taipo, or te Ruawahine, that is to say, the prophetess, witch, female dreamer, or priestess of the third rank, who possessed a power over the Maoris little inferior to that of the chief, Marutuahua himself, and who shared with Hoturoa, the Ariki, or chief priest of the tribe, the awe and veneration accorded to their spiritual guides by these children of nature.
Matutira was a woman of great eloquence and some insanity, who was regarded by the Maoris, not only of her own, but of the other tribes in the vicinity, in the double light of a conjuror and prophetess, and this role she filled to perfection, being invested in an atmosphere of religion and mystery. In a word, she embodied the genius of her race, intensified by a little madness, that only added to her supernatural personality in the eyes of her followers.
She was an old woman, at any rate old enough to have so far outlived the friends of her youth, that her admirers found it easy to invest her origin in marvellous fables, without having any envious persons to disprove them.
Her habits in life were odd and uncanny. She lived alone—or alone save for an old slave as odd and uncanny as herself—in a solitary cavern by the sea shore, with no visible means of support except the offerings of fish, birds, and vegetables which were regularly laid near the entrance to her dwelling by those who wished to court her favor, or to avert her displeasure.
Amongst other awful gifts accorded to her by popular belief was the power somewhat resembling what is known in Europe as that of “casting the evil eye,” meaning that, being more or less in league with the unseen world, she could exercise a good or malign influence over persons, places, and things. In a word, she was a reputed witch, whose spells for good or evil were of potent power, and were to be sought or avoided as the case might be.
As Matutira advanced toward the couch on which Frank Burnett lay, he partially raised himself on his elbow, and asked huskily, “Where am I? What is the meaning of this? What would you with me?”
“Ekoro (oh, young man), son of the Pakeha, fear not,” was the reply; “thou art safe. Thou art here by the command of the great Atuas whose servant I am. He is Atuakikokiko, and from thy mouth, even from the mouth of the alien, shall come the Irirangi. Was it for nothing that the god Pipiwharauroa spread across the sky in a cloud yesterday to tell me to prepare for a stranger? Not so. I had the Moehewa (a dream). I was in the Reinga (abode of spirits) last night, and I spoke with the Atuas of my ancestors. ‘Go,’ said they, ‘to the Opunake stream, and save the life of the Waraki (European), who is in deadly peril. The means thou wilt find. Go.’ I went, and found it even as the Irirangi (voice of a deity) had spoken. Thou layest bound and helpless, tortured by the Naenaes. Already had thy would-be murderer lifted his hand to strike the fatal knife into thy heart, when with thy rifle I slew him. Did I do well to take the life of one of my own people to save thine? I did but as I was bidden, and the Atuas know best.”
“I owe you my thanks, Ekui (mother), but how came I to this place?”
“In my canoe I brought thee hither to preserve thy spark of life. Not I, but the gods, willed it. Thy assailant I left for dead in the bush.”
“And he—who was he who sought my death?”
“No matter whom. He was a Maori. He hated thee, and where the Maori hates, he kills.”
“Hated me—wherefore? I never gave a Maori cause to hate me.”
“No? Ask thine own heart, Pakeha. Is it then nothing that there is a fair face and bright eyes in the tribe that thou hast dared to aspire to, ay, and that looks on thee with favor too. And shall our young men suffer the pale-faced Whanako (thief) to steal, not only their land, but their women?”
“Good mother, I know not what you mean.”
“Indeed? Is then Matutira te Taipo blind? Hast thou not cast eyes of love on Hine-Ra?”
“Hine-Ra?”
“Ay, Hine-Ra, the daughter of our chief, the princess of our tribe.”
“Upon my soul, you do me wrong. That I do like and admire Hine-Ra—love her, if you choose—I admit, but only with the love & brother might bear to a sister.”
“Yes, yes, so thou sayest, so perchance thou thinkest, but what says the proverb? ‘He kokonga whare e taea te rapurapu; he kokonga ngakau ehore e taea.’ (We can touch every corner of a house, but the corner of the heart we cannot.) Enough of this, kati (be quiet). I have here a decoction of the poroporo (solanum lacincatum), which will heal thy wounds. That is my word.”
So saying, she laid down the hake or bowl she had in her hand near the couch, and going to the entrance of the cave, emitted a kind of whistle or hiss, in response to which, from his lair outside, shambled
A veritable Caliban in this wild place he looked, with a large apelike head, covered with a thick shock of coarse black hair. His eyes, which were black and bloodshot, rolled wickedly on each side a nose of the wide African type, and he was deeply tattooed all over the face, showing that he was a slave captured in war, for slaves born or taken young are left tipai, that is, untattooed on the face. His mouth was a huge cavity, displaying an irregular set of enormous yellow tusks, and he was not only ngutiriwa, or hare-lipped, but, as was not unfrequently the custom with slaves, he was whatero, that is to say, he had had his tongue cut out, so that he could only emit a few unintelligible and hideous sounds.
His legs were bowed almost into a circle, and were, even at that, absurdly short for his body, while his arms were as abnormally long, both, however, being tremendously muscular, exhibiting tokens of vast strength, and being covered with thick black hair. In short, this deformed dwarf resembled nothing so much as a huge chimpanzee, or a gorilla, the likeness being more striking from the fact of his us ing his hands in locomotion, going, in a manner, on all fours.
The name of this repulsive object was Katipo, a word signifying a venomous kind of spider, and never was name so aptly applied, for he was as malignant in disposition as he was horrible in appearance. He was clad in a short ahumehume, or kilt, and his shoulders and body were covered with an old worn out and tattered dogskin mat. He paused at the entrance to the cavern, resting on his hams and claw-like fingers, and, with a hideous grin that displayed his tiger-like fangs, crouched, looking up into the face of his mistress for commands.
In compliance with directions given by the witch, the dwarf Katipo applied the embrocation prepared by his mistress to the still smarting skin of Frank Burnett. The effect was marvellous, for, almost as soon as it was applied, the venom appeared to be neutralised, as if by magic, and the hot pricking sensation to vanish.
His head still ached from the blow with the meré inflicted by the treacherous Tainui, but the stroke had not been powerful enough to cause any fracture, and the roromi (shampooing, or rather gentle stroking and squeezing skilfully) applied by the mute to the sufferer's head, albeit, much to his disgust, soon relieved the pain.
While this was going on the woman had retired to the upper end of the cavern, and seemed to be busy again with the fire that glowed there, burning therein certain ingredients that gradually filled the atmosphere with a faint pungent odor.
At length, bidding the slave retire, she approached Frank once more. Her features appeared to have undergone a marvellous transformation. Her eyes absolutely blazed with a wild prophetic fire, partial insanity it might be, but Frank could not help being singularly affected thereby. Seating herself on the ground near him, she gazed into his eyes with her dark lustrous orbs, and began again to chant the mystic Karakea. At first the words were broken and disconnected, but having a kind of rude rhythm, and, as she proceeded, the prophetess seemed to become inspired, and the measure and character of the chant insensibly changed into a low wail, the tangi of her race:
“This is the word of Matutira te Taipo, of Matutira te Ruawahine, of Matutira no te Matutu. The Atuas have spoken, the Kehuas have whispered ‘Ka Ngaro a Moa te iwi Nei’ (the tribe will become extinct like the moa). But how? Even now I feel the Hau, that tells me the Atuas are here. What do they say to me? I cannot tell. Not to me shall the future be shown. But to this youth, this alien, this stranger to our race. He alone has been chosen. He alone has the gift. From his lips alone must I learn the dread future. Enough. He is here. It is the time. Ka hua te Marama. He hua. (It is full moon. The 13th day of the moon.) Mara po (midnight). Blood has been spilled. Let me prepare the Matutu”
As she spoke, or rather chanted, in a monotone, Frank felt a sensation of listless apathy gradually creeping over him. He seemed steeped in a kind of delicious languor, from which he had neither the power nor the inclination to arouse himself. The faint odor of the smoke from the fire filled his soul with an overpowering sense of peace, and rest, and perfect tranquillity. It was as if the present were all in all—as if there were no past, no future; no thought, no memory.
And yet his mind was active. He saw, he heard, he understood everything that passed.
He saw, as in a dream, yet clearly and distinctly, as if with some finer, keener perception than that of the eye, the woman rise from where she sat, and, with certain cabalistic signs, circle slowly round the fire, the while she chanted in a dialect he did not understand what seemed to be an incantation, or charm. Her voice, low at first, grew louder by degrees. A thin cloud of a most subtle and exquisite perfume filled the cavern, impregnating the atmosphere and producing a singular feeling of buoyancy and elation.
Gradually the cloud of smoke became more dense and less transparent, and as it did so it seemed to form itself into vague shapes which, in turn, expanded and contracted, and then rolled back into formless clouds of winding smoke.
Frank Burnett seemed to sleep, and yet he had a perception that he did not sleep. His eyes were wide open, and his brain as receptive as ever. But it was only receptive. What he saw he knew, but he only knew. He neither thought of the reason, nor wondered at the meaning.
The vision, if vision it were, grew clearer. He seemed to be able to discern through the mist, faintly and obscurely at first, but after a time more distinctly, a phantasmagoria of figures and objects.
At this stage, in obedience to what appeared to be a series of mesmeric passes made by the witch, he began to speak. He knew that he was speaking, and yet the words seemed not to emanate from him, but from some other person. He knew that he was describing what he saw, and yet he knew not the sequence of what he said.
What was it? Trance, spiritism, mesmerism, clairvoyance, magnetism, or an abnormal straining of the imaginative faculties brought about by the operation of the fumes arising from the substances burnt in the fire? Who can tell?
Or was it the Mata-Kiti of the wizards of New Zealand and the South Seas? Is there, after all, any truth in the mysticism, the occult forces, the Astral Book, the white and black magic, the brothers of Light, and of the Shadow, of the Hindoos and the Egyptians? It were perhaps too curious to inquire in these pages.
Suffice it to say that, according to. Maori superstition, it was what is known as Atuakikokiko.
As has been said, the words issued from his lips as if by abstract volition.
“The clouds clear away,” he said, “and I see the pahs and kaingas of many tribes. The fields are green with the kumera and the taro, and the rowers chant the chorus of the plentiful fishing. The young men snare the birds of the forest, and the women weave the baskets and mats. The blue smoke of the fires steals through the trees. There in abundance of food in the huts and timangas, there is water in the stream, and the wine of the tutu in the kahakas. These are the days of peace. But the red war cloud rises in the North. The tongues of flame lick the rafters of the whares, the rivers run with blood, and the land is desolated with rapine and murder. The spear and the merè are at work, and the parekuras are many. It is the abomination of desolation, for tribe is pitted against tribe, family against family. The tangi of the widow and orphan is heard far and wide, and the smoke of the poaka-roa rises from many ovens. But, lo! from the far off lands of the west come the Tiwhas, the Warikis in their winged canoes, and like locusts they cover and eat up the land. The Maori is driven forth from the lands of his fathers. There is pestilence and famine in their midst, for the Atuas are angry with their children. The Maori says ‘E kore e take te parapara a ona tupuna, tukua iho ki a ia’ (he cannot lose the spirit of his ancestors, it must descend to him), but it is a lie. The Maori sells his birthright for the Pakeha's gold; still worse, for the poison that destroys him body and soul. Ever thus has it been, ever thus will it be: the white man plants his foot in foreign lands, the aboriginal must go. As in other countries so here. The Maori is doomed. War, pestilence, famine, vice, disease, all the spirits of evil wave their death-dealing wings over the descendants of Kupe, Turi, and
As the young man uttered the last words the fire, which had burned low, shot up with one expiring flicker, revealing a strange scene in the cavern. The medium through whom the prophecy had been spoken sat up on his couch, his staring eyes fixed on the column of smoke, and his face white and bathed in perspiration, the prophetess crouched on the ground, her head hidden in a mat, while at the entrance to the cave the bestial form of Katipo cowered on his hams and claw-like fingers, his yellow tusks grinning, and his bloodshot eyes scintillating, like some fabled monster, half animal, half demon, prepared for a spring on its victim. The voice ceased, the tongue of fire died suddenly out in a blue flame, Frank Burnett fell backward on the couch in a deep, exhausted sleep, and the cavern was buried in thick darkness, and in silence profound as that of the grave.
Mataraki, the son of Marutuahua, the Rangitira, or chief of Te Nama tribe, the youth with regard to whose absence from the pah Hine-Ra, his sister, had expressed her concern and alarm, was a young Maori of about the same age as Frank Burnett, and had, ever since he and his father had come to dwell with the tribe, been his constant companion, and, to a considerable extent, his tutor in the wild woodcraft and sea-craft of the dark-skinned Maoris.
Mataraki, brought up as the only son of their chief, and as, there fore, their future ruler, had been carefully educated in all the laws and observances of the race by the priests, and in its manly sports and exercises by the best hunters and fishermen and the most noted warriors.
All that a Maori knew he knew, all that a Maori could do he could do. He was an adept in the use of every one of the native weapons; every snare for birds, every net for fish, every implement of war was known, every fruit, fern, tree, and root familiar to him. No voice louder than his in the Hari, the Ngeri, or the Totowake; no one more agile in the Haka, Tokaro, Poi, or Tutungarah; no limbs more fleet in the race, no eye more keen, no ear more acute, no sense more fine for the thousand and one signs of the heavens the sea, and the forest.
More, too, than this he knew. He could track with an unerring instinct the pathless wilds, could dive and swim like a waitoreke (otter), and, thanks to the elder Burnett, who had presented him with a rifle, and had taught him how to use it, was an unerring marksman, rather an extraordinary accomplishment for a Maori who is usually an indifferent shot.
On the same day that Frank Burnett had been attacked by the treacherous Tainui, Mataraki had wandered into the bush in an opposite direction, and farther from the pah than was his wont. He had been out in search of a kotuku, having promised to shoot one for his sister, but had met with no success, and had gone on in a south-easterly direction almost unsconsciously, until, after crossing the Kaipokonui stream, and within a little distance of the Waimaté pah, the shades of evening had overtaken him, and he had, after a short pause of indecision, turned to retrace his footsteps.
He knew that he was on neutral ground, but he also knew that while the territory of the Waimates was open to him, it was equally open to the Pateas, between whom and his clan a tribal war had been proclaimed, if it were not in active operation.
But although he was aware of the risk he ran of meeting some wandering party of his enemies single-handed, he felt no fear, for he also knew that the Pateas entertained a wholesome dread of his deadly rifle. Besides that, he thought the Pateas, even in force, would never venture, although they saw him, to attack him on neutral ground, for fear of embroiling themselves with the Waimates, who, although at peace with both parties, were a powerful tribe, and one which could easily turn the scale against either of them if they chose.
Therefore, without a thought of danger, he strode boldly through the growing darkness in the direction of home, heedless of the harsh rasping and crackling of the fern and undergrowth that he trod underfoot. Once, as he neared the stream he had crossed, he fancied he saw, through the dusk, a dark shadow flit across the path at some distance ahead of him. He stopped, listened. There was nothing, save the ordinary sounds of the forest at evening, and the dull boom of the breakers against the blue clay cliffs on his left.
Nevertheless, he advanced more cautiously, keeping a sharp lookout on both sides, and his rifle over his arm ready for use. But as he passed a thick patch of flax and brushwood that bordered the river, a net was suddenly thrown over his head, and at the same moment he felt himself seized by a dozen powerful hands, and rendered helpless. His rifle, which he had fired aimlessly and uselessly amongst his captors was torn from his grasp, and in a few seconds he lay bound hand and foot with an aho of twisted flax, and totally unable to move, a prisoner in the power of his fierce enemies, who, with loud yells of savage exultation, performed a haka of triumph round his prostrate form.
One, who seemed to be a kind of leader in the party, a gigantic and ferocious-looking Maori, deeply tattooed from the forehead to the chin with the well-known Moko of the Pateas, at length signed for silence, and, approaching the captive, and spurning him with his foot, said tauntingly:
“This is Matariki, the great warrior of Te Nama. This is the clever Matariki, who walks into the Haupapa like a baby or a blind puppy. Where are now the big words he spoke against the Pateas?”
“The Pateas are dogs,” was the scornful reply; “they are very brave when they are ten to one. They can boast when they have Te Nama a bound captive, but let them meet Te Nama free and in the daylight, when they can look upon his Moko, and they will run like pigs, they will cry like women, they will hide like Kiwis.”
“Te Nama speaks boldly. We shall see what he will say when his hand is hung upon the Kuwaha of Rehua's Wharè, when the Patea girls spit in his face, and the old women burn him with firebrands.”
“Rehua, like all his tribe, is a Tutua, or he would know better than think to frighten the son of Marutuahua with threats of the torture. Enough, the Pateas are traitors. They have broken the Aukati, and the Namas shall sweep them from the face of the earth as the whirlwind scatters the dried flax sticks. I have spoken.”
The captors of Mataraki knew well enough that that expression meant that he would say no more, nor heed any taunts or insults that might be levelled at him, and although, in accordance with Maori usage, they showered filthy invective and coarse threats on him, still it was in a half-hearted sort of way, for his hint as to their having violated the Aukati was not without some weight. They knew that their neighbors the Waimates, on whose land the outrage had been perpetrated, were a proud and jealous race, and that this infringement on territorial rights might be made a cause of war, and for the Waimates to join, or even to assist, the Namas might be, and doubtless would be, a very serious matter for them.
Still the capture had been made, and if the worst came to the worst it only remained for the aggressors to aver that it had taken place a point further on, and on the Te Nama side of the tribal boundary. Certainly, the Pateas were notorious liars, but Matariki out of the way, there would be none to contradict the statement, even did the matter come to the korero.
After a hasty consultation, therefore, the prisoner was lifted up and carried down stream by his captors, until, arriving at the boulder-strewn entrance, he was roughly deposited in the bottom of a large canoe which had been drawn up on a small spit at the sea mouth.
At a word from their leader, the entire party hastily shoved off the craft, jumped into her, and, taking their oars, pulled sturdily away to the south eastward across the Waimate (or, as it is now called, the South Taranaki) bight, and, stealing away into the darkness which covered the tranquil sea, were soon out of sight of land, and beyond the reach of pursuit, even had any been instituted.
It was a pull of about 25 miles in a straight line from the Kaipokonui stream, whence the young Maori had been so unceremoniously carried off, to the Patea river, on whose bank the pah, or stronghold of the tribe, was situated, but the dark-skinned rowers bent steadily to their work, and the canoe shot over the water with surprising rapidity.
Already the moon was high in the heavens, kissing the dancing
But although the excitement in the settlement was intense, there was, as yet, no undue noise, nor any sounds of rejoicing or acclamation. Maori etiquette forbade the appearance either of the Rangitira or any of the chief men of the tribe, for curiosity or a display of unwonted interest in either person or occurrence was looked upon as a weakness only permitted in women and children. Therefore came it that, although between a double line of scowling faces, it was amidst an ominous silence that Mataraki was partly carried, partly dragged, through the bush to a small raupo hut outside the pah, into which, bound as he was, he was ignominiously thrust, a coarse mat thrown over him, and, surrounded by a cordon of guards, was left to sleep, or to ruminate on the unlucky chance which had left him a bound prisoner in the hands of his enemies.
The sun had scarcely risen above the mountain tops in the morning when the loud cry of the herald, resounding through the pah, warned him that the principal men of the tribe were being assembled to the Kerero, and after an hour or so (for the Maori likes to do everything with due deliberation), the prisoner was led forth, bound as he was, to the Wharekura, or house of council, to confront his captors, who waited there to meet him.
The fierce Rehua, the chief, his equally ferocious brother Titotiki, and all the priests and head men of the tribe, were inside the house, while outside, and forming two dense lines, were the rest of the Pateas, the men standing silent with scowling faces, and the women and children rending the air with their shrill cries of triumph over, and objurgation at, their hated foe.
Bound, and sore and stiff almost to numbness in all his joints, he strode boldly forward, wearing upon his impassive countenance no expression, except a smile of contempt at the vituperation with which he was assailed. His entrance into the Wharekura, which was made with a proud step, and a calm, fearless look, was the signal for a profound silence.
At length Rehua spoke, in a soft, silky tone, unusual in him, and one foreboding no good to its object. Looking round at the assembled
The hot blood flushed to the prisoner's face at this, to a Maori, the direst insult, and he answered in a harsh, constrained voice.
“You do well, Rehua o Patea, you do well to insult one who is in your power. But it is all one. The Pateas were always blackguards and barbarians. They know no better, and must be taught.”
“Ha! barks the mongrel cur so loud?” ejaculated the chief, stung to the quick by this contemptuous reply. “Has then the Patea forgotten how to curb the tongue of insolent youth?”
“The Patea has not forgotten, because he never knew,” said Matariki, coolly.
“Be it so. I would have spared this braggart, I would have given him a whipping, and sent him whimpering home. But not now. Listen. Let the moko be cut from his face, let him receive the torture of the maripa and the firebrand, let him be dishonored, and let his body be cast outside the kainga for the wild pigs to cat. It is my word.”
The doom of Matariki was sealed, and the dread sentence of the chief would have been carried out on the instant but that there occurred an event, totally unexpected, which for a time interrupted the proceedings. Even as Rehua spoke, a Maori scout or runner burst into the place, breathless with haste, and bathed in perspiration, and, regardless of etiquette, rushed to the chief and rapidly poured a few words into his ear. The effect was electric.
“Good,” he cried; “better and better. Now we shall see. Take hence this prisoner, bind him still more securely, and bring him before me at noon. Be content, oh, Arikis; I will wreak such a vengeance on him and his as shall make the Atuas of his tribe pale with rage and impotent fury. I have spoken. Away with him! Brethren, remain, I have a word to say.”
Matariki was hurried away on the moment, and was once more thrust into the whare whence he had been brought, and the Korero or council of the principal men of the tribe again proceeded.
It was indeed no light matter which had thus summarily put a stop to the proceedings in the Wharekura in relation to Matariki. The scout who had entered so abruptly had brought intelligence which affected far higher interests than the mere torture of a prisoner. That could be postponed, this demanded instant and close attention.
A few words of explanation here become necessary in order that the situation may be clearly understood, and so that the incidents in this story may go on uninterruptedly.
The tract of country lying inland from the coast, and between Opunake and Taranaki was the cradle of that singular institution arising out of a mingling of Maori superstition and imperfectly understood Christianity, known as the Hau-Hau religion, a creed so fanatical in its character, and so disastrous in its effects, as to have caused more bloodshed and general devastation than even the tribal wars which had, from time to time, been such a curse to the country.
Hau-Hauism as it originated, and Hau-Hauism as it rapidly developed into, were two totally different things. Its founder was a probably well meaning, but altogether fanatical, if not absolutely insane, man named Te Ua, who lived in the district, and who was regarded by the natives as a kind of saint, or prophet, or miracle-monger, or wizard, for to the Maori mind these terms are nearly synonymous. He was deeply imbued with the wild and fantastic superstitions of his race, and on these, impelled thereto by the teachings of the missionaries, he had built up a superstructure of what to his mind were the principal tenets of Christianity, or rather perhaps the doctrines and precepts inculcated by a study of the earlier history related in the Old Testament.
Be it as it may, Te Uá was a dreamer of dreams, and a beholder of visions. He had, so he preached, personal communication with the Angel Gabriel, and professed to have been authorised by that being to promulgate the new religion of “Pai-Marire,” a term meaning “good and gentle.” It is somewhat difficult to understand now what the exact doctrines he proclaimed really were, but it is not too much to suppose that the religion he taught was of a mild and peaceful character.
But his successors, Hepanaia and Kereopa, the leaders of the new movement, were men of a widely different stamp to Te Ua, and under them the “Pai-Marire” soon merged into a murderous and bloodthirsty fanaticism. The religion, so suited in its new aspect to the turbulent and warlike Maoris, rapidly spread throughout the middle portion of the North island. Tribe after tribe joined the standard of the new prophets, and it only needed a spark to set the whole land in a blaze.
That spark was too soon applied; whether wisely or unwisely,
Hostilities were imminent, unavoidable perhaps. The first skirmish took place at Ahu Ahu, a small settlement a few miles south of Oakura, near New Plymouth. It was brought about by a detachment of the —th, and about 100 settlers under the command of Captain Loyal, destroying the crops on the Kaitaki ranges as a punishment for some act of insubordination. The infuriated Maoris rushed upon them, barking like dogs (whence their name of Hau-Haus), and the whites fled. Captain Loyal stood his ground, however, and was slain, his head being cut off and carried round through the tribes by propagandists, under the belief that out of the mouth their Divinity spoke his oracles, a belief inculcated and fostered by the wily leaders of the rebellion.
Encouraged by their first success, the Hau-Haus proceeded to still further acts of violence and bloodshed. Near Waitara, a mission station in the same district, the missionary and the lieutenant in charge, with his wife and three children, were treacherously murdered by the Mokau Maoris. At Sentry Hill, where the chief Tito Kawarau lost an eye, a sanguinary encounter took place, resulting in much loss to the whites. At Turu Turu Mokau, between Normanby and Hawera, the redoubt with a force of 25 men was attacked, and a captain and nine men were killed, and most of the others wounded. At Te Ngutu o te Manu, the gallant Van Timson and others of his rangers were killed by a deadly fusillade from the Rotos. Other disasters followed fast, the wave of war spreading rapidly to the eastward, until they culminated in the terrible slaughter by thy Maoris, under Rawiri, entrenched in the celebrated Pah Pukehinahina, or “Gate Pah,” near Tauranga.
Meanwhile the seeds of disaffection, ending in many cases in open revolt, were spreading throughout the length and breadth of the land. From the Parihaka pah, about twelve miles from Opunake, which the British troops had captured after a fierce struggle, and where they had mounted a six-pounder gun to overawe the natives of the district, to the Bay of Plenty on the north-east, the entire country was in a ferment, and the savage Hau-Hau prophets, Hepanaia and Kereopa, had spread their murderous doctrines of bloodthirsty fanaticism.
Ill fared it with the few tribes that preserved their allegiance to the whites, or even those neutrals who were suspected of pakeha proclivaities, for, incited by the lust of bloodshed, and encouraged by the vacillating policy of the British, tribe after tribe joined the new religion, the “Pai-Marire,” or “good and gentle,” as it was called in grim irony, with all its concomitants of rapine and slaughter.
Of the few tribes who had remained faithful or partially faithful
On this tribe the Hau-Hau leaders had vowed dire vengeance, but, protected as the pah was by the sea on every side but one, where the mountain rose abruptly from the sandy shore to a height of 865 feet, the chief, secure in his fancied inaccessibility, laughed his savage foes to scorn.
But the Hau-Haus were not less cunning than ferocious, and while withdrawing, or apparently withdrawing, from the neighborhood, were in fact only waiting a fitting opportunity to wreak their vengeance on the tribe that had defied them.
It was a wild night. The gale, which had been blowing all day, had risen to a hurricane. The rain fell in torrents, and amid the pitchy darkness the lightning blazed, and the thunder bellowed, while the mighty billows, rolling in unchecked from thousands of miles of the vast Pacific, seemed to shake the very foundations of the rocky mountain, adding new terror to the scene. Even the bravest heart within the pah was appalled at the terrific conflict of nature, and every one sought such shelter as the whares afforded from the pitiless storm.
Rain-drenched, her wild elf-locks streaming in the wind, and her eyes glittering with the fire of madness, stood Totana, the priestess or sorceress of the doomed tribe, on the very edge of the cliff, amid storm and dark, her arms pointing to the murky sky, crying, as if moved by the spirit of prophetic fury, “Heaven and earth are rent! —man next!”
Surely it was prophecy, for even then the invading Hau-Haus had already scuttled the canoes, and were stealthily scaling the mount. The inmates of the pah, taken by surprise, were slaughtered, almost without resistance, and the few who managed to elude the murderous meré were driven into the water, and drowned. None escaped; not one. The Hau-Haus had scored another sanguinary victory, and the Ngamaunganui tribe was extinct.
This, then—the outbreak of this terrible war, and the intelligene that the northern tribes had declared war against the British, and had, in fact, entered into open hostilities—was the important news brought to the Patea chief by the scout, and this it was which had saved Matariki, for the time, from the torture.
We left Frank Burnett lying in an exhausted sleep in the cavern of the sorceress, Matutira, watched by the malignant dwarf, Katipo, who, crouched near the entrance, but waited a sign from his mistress to strangle the young man with his claw-like fingers.
When he woke he was alone. The witch Matutira, and the hideous dwarf, where were they? Were they merely creatures of his imagination, or was this all sorcery? Was it all a dream? No: it was real, or how could he be where he was? And where was he? In a cave, opening on the sea, he saw that; but where or how?
He went to the mouth of the cavity. There was nothing to be seen except the wide expanse of ocean before him, and a long way distant to the North the bold outlines of the Nga-motu group of rocky islands standing off Cape Egmont. The little shingle beach opposite the entrance to the cave extended only a few yards on either side, and was then shut in by perpendicular cliffs, so that escape in that direction was hopeless. He turned back into the cavern, and examined that. Nothing to be found there, beyond rugged granite walls. No hope of escape that way. He sat down to think. No: yet stay; might there not be some hidden doorway, some secret outlet? He would examine carefully. There was a rude lamp on the floor; and with the aid of his flint and steel, which he never went without, he soon had a light. There were numerous clefts, crevices, and niches in the walls; but all were closed with solid rock. There was no way of escape. Absolutely none.
What did it mean? Was it that he was left imprisoned in this unescapable cave to die of starvation? No: most certainly not: for there, around him on every hand, was food; such as it was, of course; but abundance of it. Kumera, Taro, the pith of the Mamuka fern tree—all, everything that sustains life among the Maoris; and, more, the dried Mutton Bird, which, with its wealth of oil, is far more nutritious than the ordinary steak or chop of Europeans. All this was stored there in plenty; and it was, therefore, clear that the youth who had been decoyed or brought into the toils of Matutira, the witch, was not doomed to die of lack of food. There were his and other mats, a heap of firewood, and, leaning against the wall, near the entrance, his rifle.
But he was a prisoner, that was also clear. He did not know where the cave was located; for that was a secret jealously guarded by the tribe, nor had even Matariki or Hine-Ra ever spoken to him of its existence, although they must have known. Yes: he was a prisoner. He sat down and thought. Could he swim along by the cliffs? He knew not how far they extended. It might be miles; and then there was the terrible risk of sharks, which abounded near the coast.
As he mused, his face buried in his hands, he suddenly heard
Presently the canoe grated on the beach, and a vooice called “Matutira! Matutira te Taipo!—Katipo!” There was no response, and after a short pause the new comer dragged his canoe up the sand, and entered the cave.
“Not here,” he muttered. “Where the deuce is she? This is confoundedly unlucky. How have I managed to miss her, and at this particular time of all others? Confound it all, I must search further,” and he turned, somewhat irresolutely, as if to go.
But Frank had recognised the visitor, and, stepping from his hiding place, called his name—
“Jack—Jack Hall!”
The one addressed sprang rapidly round, and the two men stood gazing into each other's faces, as if each in doubt of the other's intentions.
Jack Hall spoke first. “Why, what in the name of Heaven—or the other place—brings you here? I thought—but there, no matter what I thought — how did you get here, any how?”
“I hardly know myself, but here I am, and likely to remain here, unless—”
“Yes, unless?”
“Unless you help me to get away.”
“To get away? But—but—I must know more of this matter before I do that. What are you doing in this accursed place at all?”
“Matutira te Taipo brought me here last night, or so she said, at least.”
“Matutira te Taipo brought you here last night?”
So she told me.”
“And where is she now?”
“That's more than I know. She must have gone away while I slept. I only know when I woke, half an hour since, she had left.”
“This is a rum start, young fellow, a very rum start,” said Jack Hall musingly. “Blow me if I can understand it.”
“Perhaps.” responded Frank, “I'd better tell you the whole story, as far as I know, for I feel awfully confused about it. Seems to me like a dream.”
“Well, perhaps you had,” replied the other drily.
While Frank Burnett is relating his adventure, or as much of it as he knew, we may as well describe Jack Hall, the Maori scout, as he was called, especially as he will occupy a somewhat prominent part in these pages.
Jack Hall, or to give him the benefit of his full appellation, the Maori scout, was no Maori at all, unless he may be called a naturalised
He was a true pakeha Maori, had a thorough knowledge of bushcraft, and of every part of the country; spoke the language, even to the various dialects, of which there are seven, and was well known to the whites as Jack Hall, and to the Maoris as Hake Hori. He was celebrated throughout the country, not less for his skill with the rifle than for the rapidity and secrecy of his movements, and his thorough acquaintance with the tactics of Maori bush warfare, and was, therefore, looked upon as no small acquisition to the British.
Amongst the Maoris, especially the friendlies and the neutrals, he possessed very great influence, even to the extent of being permitted, and frequently invited, to take part in their Koreros and most sacred rites, while to the disaffected tribes he was an object of dread, for had he not been declared tapu by the great Atua himself, the Atua of Atuas, who dwelt in the crater of Ruapehua? Had he not been invested with the Pounamu tapu, the sacred clouded greenstone drop, taken from the ear of the Supreme Deity, which it was sacrilege for even an Ariki to touch? Was he not a wizard, endowed with the most powerful functions of the Makutu, and able, were he injured or offended, to call down fire from heaven, to dry up rivers, to drive away the fish, and to blight the crops?
The simple fact was that he was a gipsy by birth, and had at one time been a conjuror,—a professor of legerdemain,—and his marvellous tricks of sleight-of-hand, manipulation of the cards, and knowledge of chemistry enabled him so to befool and mystify the, in such respects, simple-minded children of Nature, amongst whom he dwelt, as to impress them with the belief that he was a being of supernatural powers. Certainly some of the priests—the wise men of the tribes—doubted this; but, as they were equally interested in gulling the common people, it suited them very well to keep up the deception, and to play into his hands so long as he played into theirs.
Jack Hall listened attentively to Frank's recital with a slight smile of contempt when he mentioned the magic cauldron and the mesmeric passes.
“And who was the Maori who, you say, struck you down with his mere?”
“That I know not. Matutira would not tell me his name.”
“And she shot him with your rifle, and left him dead in the bush by the Opunake stream?”
“So she said.”
Jack Hall paced the cavern uneasily, muttering to himself, “So this is Tainui's work. I thought the fellow was lying when he told me his cock-and-bull story of having been fired at as he was quietly passing through the bush in search of me. All the better, as it gives me a still greater hold on him. “And now,” he said aloud, suddenly stopping in front of Frank, “what is it you want me to do?”
“Help me to escape from this horrible den.”
“Young fellow,” was the reply, “I know who gave the patu on the Opunake—”
“And who was it?” interrupted Frank eagerly.
“Perhaps you will know some day. At present it is my secret, and hers. Enough, you want me to help you to get away from here ?”
“If you will.”
“I both will and can. I know more of you than you think for, and I—I—like you. More than that, you can be of service to me; therefore, I can and will aid you. But you must do something for me in return. I do nothing for nothing.”
“Anything I can—”
“Just so—make no rash promises until you hear. I will help you to quit this place, and—I will help you in another direction, when it is needed. Now listen. First of all, you must promise me not to say one word to anyone—anyone—mark me—either about last night's attack, or about this cave, or even its existence, until I give you leave.”
“Not even to—?”
“Not even to any living soul,” was the stern reply.
“Very well, you have my word, my oath if you will. I promise.”
“Enough! your word will do. The man who will break his word will break his oath, at least I think so. Then, again, you must promise to meet me, alone, at such time and place as I shall appoint.”
“Yes, but when?”
“That I will find means to let you know.”
“I promise.”
“Very well; now watch. I am about to show you the secret of this cave, a secret known only to myself, to Matutira, and to—another. Light the lamp.”
Frank did so with a beating heart. What wonderful revelation was about to be made to him?
Jack Hall went on—“Observe these rocky walls; not a chink, not a crevice that a mouse could penetrate. Here you might stay until the day of doom, unless, ah, unless—now look.”
As he spoke, he crossed the cavern, and, removing some of the firewood, gave a strong push with his shoulder against the apparently solid granite-wall. Wonder of wonders! it swung noiselessly back,
“There,” he said, “there lies the way to freedom. The road is long and tortuous, but it leads you to an opening in one of the spurs of Mount Taranaki. Once there, you will easily find your way to Te Nama pah, which lies south-east of where you will come out. You will have two guides, one the lamp, which will serve to guard you against the rocks and stalactites, the other a rope, which you must never once let go. If you do, you will be lost, for there are thousands of tunnels, openings, and blind galleries running off in every direction. If you enter one of those, you are doomed. Remember; now go.”
Frank peered into the chasm with a shudder. It was dark as Erebus, cold and smelling of damp.
“Must I go alone?” he asked.
“Alone. I have other work to do, which must be done quickly. That is the only way. My canoe is too small for two, will barely carry me. But fear nothing,” he added more kindly, “there is nothing to hurt you. A few bats perhaps, and lizards, but they are harmless. Go.”
Plucking up heart of grace, Frank, expressing his gratitude, entered the passage. The dim lamp showed nothing save a gloomy vault, so vast that its rays could not penetrate to the sides.
“Have you got the rope?”
“Yes.”
“Then good day. Remember my caution. Go.”
As he spoke, the rocking stone which closed the entrance—for it was one of those wonderful natural phenomena—shut to with a loud and sudden clang, which nearly made Frank drop the lamp, and which reverberated along the dismal chasm with a sound like long-continued thunder.
On, on, on, over the rugged floor, now along a narrow passage of black basalt, which glittered in the lamp-light as if powdered with diamonds, and which was barely wide enough to allow him to squeeze himself through, then across a vast hall the dimensions of which he could not see, and anon amid a very fairyland of shining white, blue, and pink columns of stalagmite and stalactite.
There was a silence as if of the grave, broken only by his resounding footfalls, the drip, drip, of water from overhead, and the occasional flutter of wings, as some bat or other nocturnal bird, startled by the glimmer of the lamp, flew to deeper solitudes.
As he progressed, and as his eyes became more accustomed to the faint light, he strode forward with more confidence, until, at arriving at a place where the water had formed a deep pool of evil smelling mud, he suddenly came to the end of his guiding rope. The sludge had rottened the rope, and it had broken. At the same moment, and while he was trying to find the end of the other broken part, a huge vampire bat came fluttering past, and with the sweep of its wings
It need hardly be said that, as the night waned, the prolonged absence of Frank and Matariki both, from Te Nama pah, created no little surprise and consternation, both in the whare of the chief and of Richard Burnett. Where could they be? The night brought no sign. Morning dawned, and still no news.
The old Maori pretended to think little or nothing of the event, but it was evident that he was anxious.
Hine-Ra was in deep distress, and conjured up to her imagination all kinds of evil bodings. Had they fallen victims to wicked Atuas? Had they been torn by some terrible wild boar? Had the Taipo, that fearful being that prowls in the bush at night in the form of a gigantic lizard, devoured them? Had they been captured by the Pateas? These and a hundred other questions she tortured herself with, unable to answer any of them.
Richard Burnett, although disinclined to visit the chief's whare after what had transpired the previous evening, hovered about the place, evidently ill at ease, and unable to rest in one place.
Scouts had been sent out in all directions to search the bush far and near. Some had returned, others had not. Nothing had been discovered. There were so many paths, leading in all directions from the pah, that it was impossible to track them. And so the weary day passed, and night drew on apace. Could nothing be done? Nothing but watch and wait.
Tainui, too, was missing, but that was nothing. He was an ill-conditioned sort of fellow, whom nobody cared much about, and who came and went pretty much as he chose, so that nobody thought much of his absence. Still it was strange. But ere yet the declining sun had kissed the Western Wave, one of the lost ones was found. Arawa, a young Maori who had been sent out to search, and struck into the bush in the direction of the ranges, had met, in a deep gorge between the southern spurs of Maunga Taranaki, miles from the pah, Frank Burnett—quite lost in the strange country in which he had found himself, and weary, footsore and hungry—and had conducted him home.
Many were the questions with which he was plied; but he seemed confused, and either unable or unwilling to give a clear account of himself. He had been out on a shooting expedition, had wandered he knew not whither—lost himself, in fact. He had seen nothing of Matariki since the preceding day, when he himself had started to go north along the beach; and he believed Matariki had gone
Both the chief and his father seemed to suspect that there was something more—something he was concealing; but, as he appeared to be ill, and troubled, they forebore to press him further at the time.
Later came other news pointing at Matariki. Hepi, one of the searchers, had found a newly-made trail leading beyond the Kaipo-kouni river, and then turning back. This he had tracked back to the stream, when he had come on signs of a recent struggle, and the trampling of many feet. Further down the river, near the mouth, he had found the mark of where a large canoe had been drawn up on the beach.
That was all, but it was amply sufficient to indicate what had occurred. Matariki had been surprised by a party of marauding Pateas, and carried off. Oh! there should be a deep and bitter reckoning for this outrage.
But what had occurred to Frank Burnett, and how had he contrived to extricate himself from the perilous position into which he was plunged by the breaking of the guide rope, and the sudden extinction of his light? He had his flint, steel, and tinder-box, it was true; but the coarse wick of his rude bush lamp was saturated with water, so that that was useless. He did not dare to turn round for fear of missing the direction in which he had been travelling when the accident occurred; and, worse still, he was in a wide part of the chasm, so that he could not guide himself by means of the walls.
He was lost, bewildered, and as helpless as though he had been stricken blind. There was but one chance, namely that he might regain the rope. Without that he was indeed doomed. Nothing could save him from a long and lingering death by starvation—most terrible fate of all—unless he should cut the matter short by blowing his brains out by a shot from his rifle.
But no, life, dear life is sweet, and specially to the young. He would not despair, he would not give up hope. The other part of the cord could not be far distant, and he would make a supreme effort to find it. The lamp, which had fallen at his feet, he easily found, but the rope, the precious, precious rope? He groped in the cold fœtid water and mud until his hands were benumbed, still the cord on which his sole hope of life hung eluded his grasp.
Then another idea struck him: was there no further rope? Was this a deep laid and diabolical plot on the part of Jack Hall and Matutira te Taipo to destroy him, and thus hide the secret of the cave! No, no, a thousand times no.
What if he should find the part of the rope which had fallen from his hand, and retrace his footsteps to the cave? Better die there if need be, in the light of day, than here in this terrible darkness. But if he did, could he roll back the stone that closed the entrance? Alas! he knew not how, and to move that huge rock by mere brute strength were impossible.
Rendered desperate by numerous failures to find the rope, he stepped forward a couple of paces at a venture, sweeping the muddy pool on both sides, and, just as hope was fading out of his heart and brain, he touched something of greater consistency than the thin mud.
Great Heavens! if it should be the rope?
It was, but so rotten, so thoroughly decayed, that it fell into shreds and mingled with the sludge beneath his touch. No matter, it was there. How carefully, inch by inch he followed up that frail guide, until, after half an hour of incessant labor, now losing it, now finding it, and now losing it again, it led him out of the slough of despond in which he had been lost, and upon dry ground, where it once more became firm.
What a revulsion was that from the bitterness of despair to hope again. Let those who have experienced aught similar say; no one else can.
But now, bereft of light, his progress was necessarily slow, for there were unknown dangers and obstructions at every step. The road became more broken and tortuous, now wide, now narrow, now nearly blocked up with broken basalt, now with stalactites, he could only tell the difference by the touch, for although kept on the right track by the rope, he had to grope every foot of the way. It seemed as if he would never reach the end of the labyrinth.
But at length, gleaming dimly before him, at a vast distance, he saw what looked like a small star. Brighter and larger it grew. A blue, then a yellow, then a white light stole in, and, at last, almost blinded by the dazzling rays of the afternoon sun reflected from the white cone of Taranaki above, he emerged from the outlet into the full glare of daylight.
For awhile he was dazed. He wandered hither and thither, he knew not, cared not, whither. It was enough that he had escaped from that horrible den in the bowels of the earth, that he had come back from death to life.
Wandering without object as it were, he had, as has been said, been found by the young searcher, Arawa, and thence conducted to the pah.
Thoroughly wearied out as he was, Frank Burnett, on hearing what was supposed to have occurred to his friend Matariki, would gladly have joined any expedition for his rescue, but even in the midst of his bereavement, Marutuahua the Rangitira must abide by Maori tradition and conservatism. Maori etiquette must be maintained at whatever cost. The priests and elders of the tribe were summoned to the Korero, and, after sufficient discussion had been indulged in to impart the necessary dignity to the subject, it was decided that while an armed force should be despatched with the object of forcible rescue, for it was not deemed possible that the Pateas would dream of daring so far to outrage the laws of the Aukati as to proceed to extremities, the Rangitira himself, with the
Frank Burnett slept soundly that night in his father's whare, and was up be-times in the morning to join the war party, while his father prepared to accompany the more political deputation, to be called on, if necessary, as a kind of amicus curæ. Frank judged rightly that Hine-Ra would be up in time to see them start, as indeed, were all the women and children of the tribe. He had not an opportunity of speaking much with his father, who, in fact, was glad to avoid the subject, and therefore he knew nothing of the conversation between Richard Burnett and the girl in relation to himself.
Therefore was it that, when he sought her out, and proposed that they should walk apart and converse, he was greatly surprised to find that she met him with cold reserve, and treated him distantly and indifferently.
“What is the matter, Hine-Ra?” he asked.
“Nothing is the matter,” she replied.
“Something is the matter. You are unlike yourself. What have I done to offend you?”
“You have done nothing to offend me.”
“But you are offended at something, I am sure. What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Hine-Ra, dear Hine-Ra, let us not part thus. I go to rescue our brother. I may not return. Who knows?”
A quick flush glowed in the girl's dusky cheek, but she replied calmly, “Matariki is not your brother.”
“Not my brother!—What do you mean?”
“I mean that he is not your brother. You are a Pakeha, he is only a Maori.”
“What is that you say?”
“I say to you what your father said to me two nights since.”
“My father said!—What mean you?”
“I mean what your father meant. He told me that you were a Pakeha, and that we were but Maoris, and that therefore between us there could be nothing in common.”
“My father told you that? I do not understand.”
Hine-Ra had not a particle of dissimulation in her composition, and she answered him straightforwardly, and to the point. “Yes, your father spoke to me of you. I told him that I loved you, Paranaki Puraneti, and he said that was wrong, that you were a Pakeha and I a Maori, and that you must not love me, I must not love you.”
“But, Hine-Ra, I do love you.”
“Then you do wrong. Your father is right. You are white, I am
“Listen to me, Hine-Ra. I loved you, as I thought, with the love a brother should bear a sister: I thought so, But my eyes are opened; I look into my heart, and I find I love you with a fonder, dearer, holier affection. I love you, Hine-Ra, as the flower loves the sunshine, as the bird loves its mate. My heart goes out to you as the river flows to the sea. I love you, and would fain make you my wife.”
“It cannot be; your father has said so.”
“It shall be if—if—you, too, love me.”
“If I love you?—if I love—oh! Paranaki, why did you come here? Why did you come?”
“Then you do love me a little bit, after all?”
“The Rangitira Wahine cannot lie. I do love you, Paranaki, and you alone! And yet I must not. Go; you have made me say too much.”
“Yes, in saying that you must not love me. I say you must, and shall. Let me but bring back your brother, our brother, in safety, and then see who shall say me nay.”
A hurried kiss, a whispered vow, and he was gone, leaving Hine-Ra to weep alone, but whether with joy or sorrow she scarcely could tell. Perhaps a little of both.
When Frank Burnett arrived at the Wharekura where the two parties, those of war and peace, were assembling, there was a strange commotion. Jack Hall, the Maori scout, whom he had left the previous day in the cave in the cliffs, had arrived in hot haste on horseback, bringing important news. The Hau-Haus under Hepanaia and Kereopa had broken out in open war, and Te Kooti, another rebel leader, was also in arms devastating the country, murdering the whites and the friendlies, and carrying fire and sword throughout the land.
He was mounting his horse even as Frank came up, and had only just time to call him on one side, and whisper to him, “Ah! you here. You have said nothing about yonder?”
“Not a word.”
“Good. I will see you later. I have given a letter from the English commander to your father. You will know what it contains soon. I have only now heard of this affair with the Pateas. I will see what Jack Hall can do in the matter, if not too late. I must ride like the wind to the Waimate pah. Good bye,” and, so saying he mounted his reeking horse, and gallopped off.
Meanwhile strange events were happening in the Patea village, where we left Matariki no te Nama, a bound and helpless prisoner in the hands of his enemies, lying in a filthy whare, unable to move hand or foot, and having the pleasant prospect of being led out to a painful, prolonged, and ignominious torture and death.
It is probable that, had nothing occurred to alter the course of events, the sentence of torture and death, given in a moment of passion, would never have been carried out, inasmuch as Rehua would hardly have dared, after a minute's reflection, to seal the ruin of his own tribe by bringing down upon them the speedy vengeance of the combined Te Namas and Waimates, the one in revenge for the outrage on the son of their chief, and the other for the infringement of the jealously-guarded privilege or right of Aukati.
But now the war had broken out, and the Pateas were allied offensively and defensively with what was considered the overwhelming power of the tribes who had embraced Hau-Hauism, the case was different, and Rehua and his equally ferocious brother, Titokiti, felt themselves at liberty, without fear of results, to gratify their bloodthirsty cravings on their hapless victim.
The order of torture had been somewhat altered, the sentence being that the prisoner should have his nails torn out by the roots, his arms and legs broken, and a fire lighted on his abdomen, that being the first part of the programme. Then his eyes should be plucked out, his hands and feet hacked off, the moko of his face cut away, and he should be otherwise dishonored. Lastly, a stake should be driven through his body, and his head should be severed from the trunk, and hung up at the Kuwaha of Rehua's Whare.
Truly, in the refinement of cruelty the Maoris are adepts, and may fairly vie with any other nation under the sun, and take high honors. The torture was fixed for noon, and by that time the whole of the Patea tribe had assembled in a large square in the Kainga, or village outside the Pah, in order to assist, as the French say, at the festivities.
Betting, or its Maori equivalent, was freely indulged in on the chances of the prisoner exhibiting cowardice or bravery, terror or defiance, as to at what part of the proceedings he would scream in his agony, as to whether he would remain alive until the coup de grace, and other similar minutiæ which are looked upon by these children of Nature in the light of sporting events, worthy to be wagered about.
At noon precisely he was led forth, or rather dragged to the arena, the particulars of his punishment having previously been minutely detailed to him. He preserved a calm and unruffled demeanor, and smiled scornfully at the yells and objurgations levelled at him, chiefly by the women and children.
“Good,” said Rehua to him in a tone of mockery; “good, Matariki no te Nama is a brave warrior, he fears not death nor pain, and therefore shall his torture be agonizing and lingering, as it befits a brave warrior it should. A torture shall it be which shall set all the Atuas of his tribe howling with rage and envy. Has Matariki no word to say?”
Matariki looked at his tormentor with calm contempt as he answered coolly and deliberately, “Only this, that Rehua is a dog and a coward, and I spit in his face. That is my word.”
“Enough,” yelled the chief; “let the torture begin.”
The prisoner was partly unbound, stripped, his arms and legs extended and tied to stakes, somewhat in the form of a St. Andrew's Cross. The torturers stood at his hands and feet, ready to commence the fiendish work of tearing out his nails, and waiting but the signal to fall to. Rehua looked round on the assembled crowd with a diabolical grin on his face, and slowly raised his mere.
Suddenly there was a wild commotion among the crowd, and they fell back in apparent awe and silent terror.
“Stop!”
Who had spoken? An old woman, clad in wild attire, advanced from a lane which had been made for her through the ring of spectators to the feet of the victim, and stood erect and still as a statue, her eyes blazing with prophetic fury, and her skinny and wrinkled arm pointing directly at Rehua, who stood with features distorted with astonishment and passion. At her feet cowered a misshapen dwarf, who mowed and gibbered at the crowd with his tongueless mouth, as though he had been some huge monkey. It was Matutira Te Taipo—Te Ruawahine—Te Makutu—Matutira, the witch of the cave, and her familiar, the dumb slave, Katipo.
“Stop!” she repeated. “Are ye all mad? Know you what you would do? Oh! it is well that you should wreak your paltry vengeance on this youth, the only son of Marutuahua no te Nama, and at such a time too, when the Maori land is threatened with subjugation, and the Maori people with extermination. When the pale-faced Pakehas threaten to drive you into the sea, to destroy your pahs and kaingas with their artillery, and to seize on your fields and woods with the strong arm and the sharp sword. Now, when all the tribes should join hand in hand, and heart to heart, to repel the invader, you would breed discord and dissention in our very midst by these petty quarrels among yourselves. Think you this is the way to win over the friendlies, as they call them, and the waverers, and the neutrals, to make common cause against the pale-faced Pakeha? Oh! you are very brave, and very wise.”
She spoke with such deep concentration of passion and such intensity of scorn, and, withal, her argument was so palpably true, that there was a dead silence in the vast assemblage, and even Rehua himself was at a loss for a reply.
“What hast thou done, E Rehua no Patea?” she went on after a
A shudder of apprehension and alarm passed through the crowd at this, to them, terrible threat.
“Are these words mine? Not so. Behold!” and she pointed to the North East, “the Atua of Atuas himself is awaking. What does that portend?”
True enough, in the distance, in the direction of Mount Ruapehu, where the Great Ruler of all is supposed to dwell, the sky shone with a dull lurid glow, caused probably by the bursting forth of a stream of lava or an eruption from that well-known volcano.
The effect was electric. The vast assemblage, with dismay depicted on their countenances, rushed madly from the square with loud yells of terror, and sought refuge from the vengeance of the God in their whares or wherever else they could find shelter, leaving Matutira, the prisoner, Rehua and his brother, Titokiti, and a few of the priests behind.
Even the chief himself was visibly awed, and spoke in a low, anxious voice as he said:—“E Whaea, what would you have me do?”
“I know not. My eyes are closed to aught further. To-morrow one will come, so the Pipiwharauroa has told me, whose spells are more wonderful than mine. He will work wonders, and tell thee what to do. Meanwhile, unbind this youth, and treat him well. Remember. That is my word.”
So saying, she turned and left the place.
“Unbind the youth, and treat him well,” muttered Rehua, looking after her. “She did not say ‘Let him go,’ though, for all that. Titokiti, take off his bonds, convey him into the Wharekura, place a strong guard inside and out, and mind he does not escape. I must think this matter out. Oh, I have it. I will send to Hepanaia and Kereopa. On their advice will I act,” and muttering to himself he took the direction of the pah in deep thought, and was soon buried in the seclusion of his own whare.
To be the Rangitira of a powerful Maori tribe, and to command and sustain the influence which is necessary, requires a man of no common order.
A weak-minded, vacillating, uncertain man could rarely hold the position for long. He would be swept away by the bolder, fiercer intriguers (for intrigue is essentially one of the features of Maori political life), as the cobweb is swept out of the corner. In Maoriland, of all other places, the weak must go to the wall, and it needs all the diplomacy, tact, and skill of fence, mental and physical, that can be brought to bear for the chief to hold his own.
The divine right of primogeniture is acknowledged certainly, with restrictions; but the King must have, not only the right and the will, but the power, to rule. To put it into common colloquial English, “His arm must guard his head.”
Rehua, the Rangitira of the Pateas, was no common man. He was placed, by birthright, at the head of a numerous, warlike, and turbulent tribe; and, although he commanded, or appeared to command, the full confidence of those over whom he ruled, as being an astute counsellor and a mighty warrior, no one knew better than he did the uncertain tenure by which he held his office. No one knew better than he that, even on the slightest provocation, the Arikis, and other head men of the sept, would declare for his more ambitious and vindictive brother, the terrible Titokiti, whose bloodthirsty instincts, and hatred and jealousy of other, and, it might be, opposing tribes, were well known, and were more in accord with ordinary Maori feeling.
Rehua, in view of what had just occurred, and of the effect of the words of the witch, Matutira, felt himself, as it were, between the devil and the deep sea. He was in a most unenviable frame of mind. To tell the plain truth, he was in a state of what is graphically termed “funk”; for while, on the one hand, he felt that he had shown weakness, and consequently lowered himself in the estimation of his people, by giving way to the solicitations, or rather threats, of the witch, he was also fully aware that he had placed himself in a critical position as regarded the neighboring tribes, and the Hau-Hau leaders, whose policy was undoubtedly to conciliate them.
All as one for that, he had no immediate idea of allowing his prisoner to go. His pride, and to do him justice, the honor of his tribe, forbade his so far eating the leek; and he, therefore, kept him a captive, unbound, it is true, but not the less a captive, trusting to the chapter of accidents to enable him to escape from the embarrassing position of having a prisoner he did not want, yet could not part with, with becoming dignity, and without the loss of that self-respect and self-assertion which forms so material a part of the state and function of a Maori Chieftain.
The Korero of the Waimate and Te Nama tribes was attended by the head men of both, and long and loud were the speeches made for and against an instant declaration of war by both against the Pateas. The Waimates were naturally indignant at the breach of the Autaki, and many of their leaders clamoured for speedy vengeance.
But Tamaiti, the Rangitira, was no less astute and far-seeing in policy than he was brave in action. Jack Hall, the Maori scout, had been with him early that morning, and from him he had learnt how matters stood. The Hau-Haus, aided by the numerous tribes under Te Kooti, were in open revolt, and had commenced active war, and the Pateas had declared for the insurgents. Were he to take arms against the latter, he would embroil himself with the former; and situated as he was, on the very border-line of the territory they infested, it might, and probably would, go hard with him. True, he might possibly have the protection of the British, but even that was not certain; for Te Namas themselves had not, as yet, cast in their lot with the whites: and, besides that, there was no telling how the fortune of war might go, and whether the rebel forces might not drive the Pakehas into the sea, as they had sworn to do.
No, it was too hazardous, and he must temporize.
He professed himself as deeply grieved and indignant at the conduct of the Pateas, but he very politely yet very firmly declined to interfere. His territory was open to either tribe to pass through, so long as they did not fight on it, but he would neither make nor meddle in the affair. And in this he showed no little far-seeing cunning. If it came to a war of extermination between the two tribes, as it probably would, he must benefit either way, for, weakened as the winning party must necessarily be, there would be nothing to prevent his claiming and taking the territory of the loser.
And herein, like some rulers of a more advanced state of civilisation, did he display the harmlessness of the dove, with the wisdom of the serpent. Let Te Nama and Patea fight out their quarrel if they saw fit; he would stand by, and, like the fox in the fable of Old Æsop, would come in at the finish, and carry off the carcase of the fawn about which the lion and the bear had fought until both were exhausted.
No, he would sympathise with his neighbor; but, as for fighting for him, he must really beg to be excused. And so the matter ended.
The Korero of the Pateas, to which the runner sent by Rehua to the Hau-Hau leaders was expected to bring a reply, was summoned for the forenoon of the day following that on which Matariki had so narrowly escaped torture. The captive—for captive he was as
The ferocious Titokiti—a man who would gladly have slain him as he sat, with a stroke of his mere, but did not dare for two reasons, first, on account of state policy, and then because the Wharekura was tapu from blood—was studiously polite, behaving more like his host than his goaler, and endeavouring in the course of conversation to elicit from him his sentiments, and those of his father, in relation to the war which had been proclaimed.
But Matariki was reticent, and was not to be entrapped into making any admissions. He simply declared that he knew nothing about the subject, nor desired to know anything.
The night passed, and the day which was to decide his fate—for he well knew that he would not be permitted to escape without some compensating advantage to his captors—came, and the long weary hours dragged their slow length along. At two hours before noon the chief men of the tribe assembled for the Korero, and he was removed to a whare a little way distant to abide the issue, unbound, but strictly guarded as before.
A feeling of doubt and uneasiness pervaded the assembly, nor did any of those present venture to advise any decided step, as they knew that one false move might be a very serious matter indeed to them. It was therefore with unfeigned relief and gratification that the coming of the messenger with a reply from the Hau-Haus was hailed. He was nearly naked, and his brown skin shone with profuse perspiration as he entered the building only a few minutes late, for he had been carefully timed for the double journey.
He stepped quietly forward, and remained silent, waiting to be questioned.
“Thou hast seen Hepanaia and his brother Kereopa, the chiefs of the Hau Haus, O Heke of the fleet-foot?” questioned Rehua, after a short pause.
“I have seen them, O Rehua no Patea,” was the reply.
“And thou hast delivered our message?”
“Faithfully, even as thou gavest it me.”
“And the reply, what is it?”
“This is the word of Hepanaia the Rangitira of the Urieweras, and of Kereopa the Ariki. Let the ears of Rehua no Patea be open, even his and all assembled for the Korero. Matariki o Te Nama is thy captive; it is well; do with him as thou wilt; in thy hands we leave him. Te Namas are dogs, they are not with us, and those who are not with us are against us. Te Namas harbor the Pakehas, and Pakehas are our foes. Death and the torture to the Pakehas, and to all those who consort with them. Fear not the words of the Ruawahine; she is mad and dotes; doubt not, delay not. The Atuas are eager for the sacrifice. This is our word.”
There was a deep silence in the place while this message was being delivered, and a loud sigh of relief at its termination. There was no mistaking its import, nor its importance: death and the torture. That was the ultimatum, and preparations were made to carry it into immediate effect, and the assembly adjourned to the open square, heralds being sent round to summon the rest of the tribe to the sacrifice.
But while the proceedings were going on in the Wharekura, a stranger had quietly entered the village, moving about freely, and yet attracting no little attention. A stranger he was in the light of not belonging to the tribe, and yet no stranger to those who saw him, for, as has been said before, Jack Hall, the Maori scout, was well known to all the tribes, and no more known than feared, as being a powerful magician, and as having been declared Tapu by the great Atua of Atuas himself, the spirit who rode on the whirlwind, whose voice was the thunder, and who dwelt in the bowels of the volcano Ruapehu.
The prisoner was brought forth and conducted to the place of torture amid the derisive yells of the multitude, and placed face to face with his judges.
“Matariki o Te Nama,” said Rehua, “not I, but the Atuas, have spoken. Their word is death by the torture, therefore prepare.”
The youth bowed slightly, and said simply, “I am ready.”
But as the torturers laid their hands on him to bind him as before, Jack Hall stepped forward into the enclosure, and in a loud voice called out “Wait a moment!”
There was a hurried and surprised consultation in the group surrounding the chief; this, then, was the messenger from the Atuas whose coming had been prognosticated by the witch Matutira. What new complication was this?
Rehua spoke: “I see before me a stranger. He bears the Moko of the Maori, he is clad as the Maori, he speaks with the tongue of the Maori, and yet it is false, all false, for he is not a Maori, but a Pakeha. What does he here? What would he have? Does he not know that his life is forfeit, for he is a traitor and an enemy to the Maori, and therefore to the Patea? Let him speak, and go his way while he is yet safe.”
“Pshaw!” was the reply. “Let not Rehua no Patea speak such big words to Hake Hori no Te Makutu, at whose name the Rangitiras, priests, and sorcerers of the tribes may tremble. Well thou knowest, E Rehua, that, did I but will it, I need but speak the word to bring down fire from the sky that should destroy thee and thy tribe in an instant. Well is it that I am not an enemy to the Maori, but a friend; but threaten me not, nor tempt me too far.”
“I know thou sayest thou canst do this, but I doubt thy vaunted power,” said Rehua with an assumption of boldness he was far from feeling.
“Indeed,” replied the scout; “thou would'st have proof? Well, thou shalt. Bring me hither a bowl of water.”
At a signal from the chief a large hake of water was brought and placed at the magician's feet.
A profound silence reigned, and the multitude held their breath in awed curiosity as, for an instant, he raised his eyes heavenward, then, with a deft movement of his hands over the bowl, he, unperceived, flung from a small phial, hidden in his palm, a few drops of some liquid into the water, which in an instant burst into a bright volume of flame.
The effect was electric. With a yell of terror, the whole multitude, including Rehua himself and his company, fled as if for their lives. The denouement had been so unexpected, so terrible in its aspect, to them, that, with the wild instinct of self-preservation, they sought safety in flight, regardless of all else.
“Matariki,” said the scout hurriedly, “now is thy chance; take it, fly. Cross the river at the Karakamea ford. There thou wilt find friends. Begone, and quickly.”
“And thou?”
“I shall remain. Fear not for me. Go.”
The young man needed no second bidding. With a bound like that of a deer, he fled across the Kainga, and in a few seconds was lost to sight in the scrub.
The scout stood perfectly still, his arms crossed on his breast, and his features calm and unmoved as though nothing had occurred.
But presently the Maoris, recovering from their unreasoning terror, began to emerge from their places of shelter, and cautiously to approach the square. Among the foremost was Rehua, who, with a wild cry of rage at seeing that his victim was gone, rushed forward, and demanded of the scout where he was.
Quietly, and without moving a muscle, he replied: “The Atua had need of him. I changed Matariki into a hawk, and he flew away.”
“It is a lie!” exclaimed the chief savagely.
“Beware, E Ruhua. Beware, I say. Thou hast seen my power once. Take heed that I do not exercise it on thee. Again thou doubtest my power. Thou shalt see. Summon thy people hither; I will not harm them.”
Slowly and somewhat reluctantly the crowd gathered round, keeping, however, at a respectful distance, yet anxious to witness another manifestation of the power of the sorcerer.
“E Pateas,” he said in a calm voice, “I changed your prisoner into a hawk, and he flew away. I told your chief so, and he said I lied. What, then, is it so great a thing to turn a man into a bird? No. It is nothing to the great Atua, whose servant I am, and whose behest I do but obey. I will show you a greater thing. Rehua no Patea, give me something, a pendant from thine ear, a feather from thy mat, a hair from thy head, a cutting from thy nail, anything.”
As he spoke he threw down his mat, revealing himself naked to
“But,” said Rehua, in alarm, “thou wilt not pronounce the Apiti on me?”
“Fear not, Ehoa, I will not harm thee. Give me what I ask.”
Reluctantly enough, Rehua plucked a feather from his mat, and handed it to him. He would rather not have done so, for he was terribly frightened; but it would never do to let his people think that, and therefore he gave it with an assumption of boldness, and the best grace he could.
“Now bring me hither a calabash,” said the magician. A calabash was brought. “See,” he continued, “I place the feather on the ground, and I cover it with the calabash; so. Now, behold!” He stepped back from the vessel, and made one or two passes with his hands.
“Now,” he said, “thou, Rehua, or thou, Titokiti, or any other of the tribe, come forward and raise the calabash.” There was a slight pause of hesitation, and Titokiti stepped forward and lifted the calabash. As he did so, he stood stupefied with astonishment, for from under it flew out, and upwards to the sky, a beautiful kuku or wood pigeon.
A long-drawn sigh of awe and amazement rose as if by common consent from the dumb-founded circle of spectators.
“That is something,” he said. “I will show you more.”
He emitted a loud, strange cry, and the bird, pausing in its flight, turned, and flew back to him, alighting on his shoulder, and pluming its wing with its bill.
Then the magician placed the bird under the calabash, and invited someone to lift the vessel again. Rehua did so this time, and the bird was gone, and in its place the feather. “There is the feather from thy mat, E Rehua; take it, and when next thou doubtest the power of Haki Hori, remember what thou hast seen.”
It was sufficient. There was no more to be said. Haki Hori, the scout magician, replaced his mat on his shoulders, and the crowd melted silently and wonderingly away.
“And now, E Rehua, I would hold converse with thee.”
Rehua, without a word, led the way to his own whare, and the consultation, whatever it were, lasted until evening.
The sun shot up like a huge burning shield from his vast bath in the east, and above the serrated peaks of the inland range of volcanic mountains of which the ever-smoking Tongariro and Ruapehu are the crowning glories, into the pure, calm, semi-tropical heavens, on a bright and clear summer morning.
With him came a faint wind that scarcely rippled the surface of the sleeping sea. To the north and east rose, in the distance, glittering like one huge pure crysolite, the monarch of all the north island mountains, the giant Taranaki, whose head, towering 8270ft. above the sea, forms a perfect cone, crowned with a diadem of eternal ice and snow. Between, and stretching away from the blue cliffs of the main land as far as the eye could reach, lay the green, purple, and olive forest—dense, dark, mysterious.
Viewed from the sea, the land showed along curved line of lofty, rocky, broken headlands, with here and there a stretch of shining white sand and shingle beach, on which the surf and heavy ocean rollers broke with an endless boom, like the roll of muffled drums.
Further inland was a partially-cleared expanse of bush land, in which was located a small settlement, consisting of a few rudely-constructed buildings, built for the most part of fern tree stems, and thatched with raupo. Prominent among these, and standing not far from the coast-line, was a rather extensive range of framed buildings of heavy timber, pierced on all sides for the purposes of musketry. Over its main gateway, which faced the sea, drooped and flapped lazily in the faint wind the British Ensign, with its field of bright blue and its gaudy broad cross-bars of red and white. This was the block house, and the head-quarters of the English and colonial forces.
These consisted of a detachment of one of Her Majesty's line regiments, a battery of two field guns, a regiment of colonial infantry, and a company of Ogilvie's horse, in all, with sailors, a force of 1100 men, under the command of General Champion; and were stationed at a spot in the fertile country near Waitotara, about 78 miles from Taranaki, 20 from Patea, and 24 from Wanganui; their object being the reduction of the Wereroa pah, which was held by a strong body of disaffected Maoris.
Behind the building spoken of, the white tents of the troops who formed the encampment were placed in rows with as much regard for order as the nature of the ground would allow; and in rear of all lay an upward sloping forest, which stretched away until hidden in the hazy distance, for the sun had not yet dispersed the white mist which rises rapidly from the vast lagoons and swamps that lie inland of the coast of that surpassingly lovely, but ever moist, territory.
Looking from the land that fine summer morning was to be seen, about a couple of miles from the shore, a small squadron of vessels, embracing one line of battle ship, and one large and two smaller
Even as the sun shot up above the ranges, and as the bugles rang out reveille in the sleeping camp, a puff of smoke issued from the lofty black side of the Repulse, the flag-ship, followed by the thunder of a large gun, which reverberated over the roadstead and died out in echo after echo among the distant hills, waking into noise and activity thousands of brilliant-hued birds in the thick forest behind the encampment.
The signal-gun was followed by three little balls run rapidly up to the main truck, breaking into flags, displaying the signal for the commander of the land forces and his staff to repair aboard to a council-of-war. In response to the call, soon was to be seen the general-in-command, with his brilliant staff, being rowed down the river and out into the offing, to attend the council.
With what transpired there we have nothing to do at present, further than to say that the conference lasted several hours, and that the discussion was heated and acrimonious, the chief military officer declining to attack the pah with the force he had available, and asking for not less than 2000 men, although, it may be remarked, en passant, that the place was afterwards carried and captured by Sir G. White with 473 men.
Reports of all kinds were rife in camp as to what was about to be done, although, of course, and as usual, those who talked loudest, perhaps, knew least about it. Wearied with inaction, and exasperated by the close proximity of their savage foes, whose taunts, cries of derision and yells of defiance rang in their ears almost without intermission, the troops would only have been too glad to advance to the attack; but this, whether wisely or not, the officer in charge absolutely refused to permit, believing, as he did, that it would be a useless sacrifice of the lives of his men.
Breakfast over, and the ordinary daily routine of morning duty being finished, there was nothing for the men to do beyond lounge about the encampment, smoke, play cards, and converse. It was truly a waste of time, a waste of energy, and, so far, a sad waste of material, for, although strict discipline was kept up, these days of enforced idleness could not but have the effect of, in some measure, disorganising and disheartening the military.
With the sailors it was different. Accustomed to being cooped up within the narrow limits of a ship, these hardy sons of Neptune looked upon the whole affair as a holiday, and enjoyed their unwonted freedom as they would a prolonged picnic, to be made the most of while it lasted. Nevertheless, while they sang, and laughed, and skylarked to their hearts' content, they chafed at the delay, and eagerly wished for the chance, as they put it, to have a slap at the brown-skinned beggars.
As was their wont, the troops, naval and military, had after parade, broken off into small knots and coteries, wandering listlessly
“Confound their politics,” said Larry Byrne, a merry-eyed, redheaded Irishman, and a corporal in the colonial regiment; “what the divel do they mane by keeping us here like a parcel of more-porks in a cage?”
“More-porks be hanged!” growled Billy Bent, the privileged Jeremiah of his company;“I only wish we did have more pork, and better of its quality. It's little enough we get, and that not fit for a decent Christian to eat.”
“Never mind, Billy, my boy,” said another; “when we get into the pah yonder, you shall have a nice, fat, tender Maori to your own cheek. I'm told they're not half bad eating, boiled—”
“Hoot awa', mon,” interjected Andy MacPhail, a grizzled old veteran of the regulars; “it's mair like thae Maori deevils will eat yersel', an' a tough morsel ye'd be, forbye I dinna think they'd mind that.”
“Well, I only wish we could give'em the chance. It'll be a stiffish job taking the pah, I fancy, and a good many of us are likely to lose the number of our mess before it's over. But all's one for that if they'd only let us try it. I'm sick of this eternal delay, and wouldn't mind making one to have a slap at it on our own hook.”
“Ay, and get shot for insubordination even if ye succeeded. Ye're a sensible kin' o' laddie, I maun admit.”
“Shiver my toplights! if I wouldn't make another, just for the fun of the thing, and chance the ducks,” exclaimed Jack Hinds, a rollicking seaman from the Repulse. “If I had my way—”
“Don't you think you'd better change the subject?” interposed Serjeant Lee, drily. “I do; I fancy this is rather a ticklish kind of talk. It might do very well for the barrack-room; but here, in the open field, in time of war, and before the enemy, it might get some of you into trouble, don't you see?”
“Sorra wan o' me cares,” ejaculated Larry Byrne; “anything for a change, as the fellah said when he left off fellin' threes and played at diggin' wells.”
“Yes, a nice change, out of the frying pan into the fire. But come, some of you fellows, give us a song, can't you? or spin us a yarn. There's Jim Lloyd there, he's good for a yarn, I know, if he likes.”
“A yarn? Well, I don't know,” responded the individual referred to; “what sort of a yarn?”
“Oh, any sort. Let's have something funny if you can. I declare I'm getting blue mouldy for want of a good laugh.”
“Well, I'll do my best, mates. I do remember something rather curious a few years since, when I was on the diggings in Queensland, and I'll give you that if you like.”
There was a general chorus of “Hear! hear!” A few of the loiterers near gathered round, and Jim Lloyd gave his story of—
We never supposed his name was Trotters, you know, but that's what we called him, and what he had been called ever since I had known him. He was a mate of mine on the Fitzroy above Rock-hampton, at the time of the Port Curtis rush, which many of you may remember turned out such a rank duffer, somewhere about '60.
Trotters was an undersized, herring-gutted fellow, “little but wiry,” as he used to say of himself, with sandy hair and blue-grey eyes, weak and red round the lids, not unlike those of a pig, a little cocked-up nose, and a mouth twice too big for him. He was, to tell the candid truth, a mean little cuss to look at, and he wasn't much good as a miner; but be was useful, a sort of chap who could turn his hand to almost anything—cook, cobble up a pair of boots, stitch a button on, cut hair, and so on, all middling well, and therefore he was handy to have about the camp, and so we didn't use to expect him to do much real grafting.
But if Trotters wasn't much of a hand at right down hard work, there were three things he could do to perfection, namely, sleep, talk and eat. He'd sleep the clock round if you didn't rouse him up; he'd talk till further orders if you didn't choke him off; and as for eating, well, that's how he got his name.
It was this way, as I've been told, for he got it before I knew him. It was on the Rocky River diggings. Everybody on the field knew what a gormandiser he was, and one night a lot of fellows at the Miners' Arms got talking about his qualifications in that line. They made a bet among 'em that he could polish off a six pound leg of mutton and a four pound loaf without notice, and at a sitting. The butcher had killed some sheep the day before, and Ned Conn—that was the landlord—had just such a leg of mutton, ready cooked, and untouched, in the house.
Well, a party of four was deputed to go down to his tent and ask him to come up and win the wager if he could. It was about half-past ten, and the little beggar was snug in his bunk, fast asleep. However, they managed to wake him up, and told him their errand.
“Well, mates,” he said, thoughtfully, “I don't know. You see, I've just had a billy of thick porridge and treacle, and a dozen sheep's trotters for supper, and—however, to oblige you, I'll come up and do it.”
And he did. And that's how he came to be called “Trotters.”
On the Fitzroy he was as bad as a famine. Stores were irregular in coming up, and sometimes ran short, and how he lived when they did Lord only knows, for not a shanty on the place would board him at any price. Two or three had tried it, but he made such a holy show of the provisions that they had to give him best. He never by any chance missed a meal, and the way he used to gorge when he was at it was a caution.
“I wouldn't ha' minded so much,” said old Brown, the boss of the “Jolly Reefers,” after he had had to get rid of him or be eaten out of house and home. “I raly wouldn't ha' minded so much if the wittles had seemed to do him any good, but they didn't. He kep as thin as a rake, and the more he e't the 'ungrier he seemed to get. Raly, it was a standin' reproach agin' my quezeen.”
Mind you, I believe Trotters was as honest a little chap as ever lived. He wouldn't wrong a man out of a farden, but when it came to a matter of meat it was another thing. He must and would have it, no matter where it came from. Not that he was particular in his eating. He'd devour anything, possums, native cats, bears; and they did say that when he was hard set he'd not turn up his nose at a guana, or even a snake, like a blackfellow.
There was no end to the scrapes he used to get into through this insatiable wolf in his maw. One day, I remember, a party of sailor chaps, who were working a hole not far from us, had got a rattling good Irish stew for dinner, enough to serve seven of 'em. Poor Trotters was hungry as usual, and as he snuffed the grateful aroma of the rich compound his feelings got the better of him, and he felt that he must have a taste. Rushing to the tent in hot haste, he called to the man whose turn it was that day to cook: “I say, don't you belong to Bo'sun Bill's crowd up the gully?”
“Yes, and what on it?” was the reply.
“Nothing, only your mates have struck it rich, and you'd better—”
But the deluded man had gone. He had never stopped to think, but, totally regardless of the bubbling stew, and the dangerous proximity of “Trotters” thereto, he had rushed of incontinently to where his mates had “struck it rich.”
If they hadn't, “Trotters” had, for when they reached the tent in hot anger at being so fooled, the flesh-pot was empty, the luscious mixture of chops, steak, potatoes, onions, etc., had gone, and, “like the baseless fabric of a vision, left not a rack behind.” “Trotters” had scoffed the lot.
After that he was missing for three days. I verily believe that if those sailor men had found him they'd have half killed him; but, as it served as a laugh for the camp, they got to laugh at it themselves.
How or where Trotters lived those three days no one knew, but when he came back and sneaked promiscuously up to their tent (just after dinner) like a dog expecting a thrashing, he looked so meek, and, withal, so comically penitent and woe-begone, that the hearty fellows burst into a roar of laughter, and not only forgave him, on promise of amendment of his ways, but actually gave him a feed.
But he did not always get off so easily. His great field day was when he helped the butchers on killing days. He was handy and useful to them on such occasions, and they didn't grudge him what he could eat, mostly the scrag ends of mutton, shins of beef and such like.
One time, when he was giving Johnson the butcher a hand, that worthy was suddenly called out to see a drover about the purchase of some cattle, and the two went over to the “Jolly Reefers” to settle their business, leaving “Trotters” in charge of the establishment. In a few minutes Johnson returned to his shop, and, as with old Mother Hubbard, “when he got there, the cupboard was bare.” Trotters, unable to resist, had made a raid, and departed.
The way that knight of the cleaver went on was something to listen to. He came down to our claim armed with a stockwhip in search of the offender, and he just raised Cain.
“Where is the thieving vagabond?” he shouted; “let me catch him and I'll cut,” etc., etc. “The unconscionable rascal! I'd given him as much as he could tuck into him not an hour before, enough for any four men, I'll swear, and I hadn't been away five minutes before he scoffed a good six pound of prime beef sausages, to say nothing of a couple of pound or so of tripe. Six pound of sausages if there was an ounce, as I'm a living sinner. Oh! oh!! oh!!! Only let me catch him, I'll,” etc., etc., etc. And he did catch him two days after, and trounced him until some of us interfered.
Other similar escapades, some of which met with condign punishment, others which did not, I might adduce, but one, and one which capped the climax, will be sufficient.
Long Jack M‘Intyre got married to Kitty Brown, daughter of old Brown, of the “Jolly Reefers.” It was quite a grand affair, for Long Jack was in a good claim, and old Brown opened his heart on the occasion and gave a splendid dinner to all invited, as many as the house would hold. Gave, I said, but there, hold on awhile—
It was a swell dinner, there's no mistake about that. Turkeys, geese, ducks, fowls, hams, tongues, pies, tarts, everything that the human heart could desire, and pay for your own liquor, which, after all, was a fair thing, you know.
The wedding was to take place in the schoolroom at Yaamba, the township, the clergyman coming up from Rockhampton for the purpose, and so to Yaamba everybody went, to see Jack hitched up.
At the hotel everything was ready for the wedding party on their return. The waiters were busy setting the tables in the big dining-room and the bar parlor, the eatables were done to a turn, and the cook in an unlucky moment had left the kitchen and all that therein was to see everything was right, and the girl who was assisting him had gone into the house out of feminine curiosity, when Trotters, who had been mooching around all morning, saw the coast clear.
And “Trotters” made a raid. How he did it in the time passes the human understanding; how mortal stomach could contain what he must have devoured is an inscrutable mystery, but there it was.
There was hardly a thing set out on that long kitchen dresser that had not been partaken of: legs and wings of turkeys and other fowls wrenched off, lumps of breast dug out, chunks of ham and tongue cut off, pies maltreated, tarts scrunched, and even the bride-cake
But where was “Trotters?” Ah! where? Where was last year's snow? “Trotters” had been, “Trotters” had departed, and lo ! “Trotters” was not.
When the wedding party returned from Yaamba, after the ceremony, headed by old Brown in his buggy and robes of state, and tailed by everyone on the diggings who had, or who could buy or borrow, a horse or wheeled vehicle, the picnic commenced.
Old Brown danced a pas du diable on the verandah for the edification of all beholders. Long Jack M‘Intyre, the bridegroom, reddened and paled by turns, and looked as foolishly uncomfortable as if he had been the cause of the contretemps. The pretty bride—and really she did look pretty in spite of her somewhat full-blown charms—went off into hysteries in a cloud of book muslin and satin ribbon. The bridesmaids sobbed aloud in sympathy, and for the rest, everybody made remarks which need not be repeated, but which referred, more or less, to “Trotters.”
But there was no use in crying over spilt milk, and so the best was made of the disjecta membra that the marauder had been good enough to leave, and when the happy pair had departed for Rock-hampton to catch the steamer for Brisbane, amidst a shower of rice and old slippers, and when as evening came on and the big room was cleared out for a dance, “Trotters” and his misdeeds were well nigh forgotten, and even old Brown had almost forgiven him.
But that was “Trotters'” last exploit on the Fitzroy. He never showed his nose in the neighborhood again; although several times we heard of him—once as having been presented with a dose of small shot from a gun for having helped himself to a round of corned beef; another time as having had the dogs set on him for having hired himself to a farmer to dig potatoes, and having eaten over four pounds of cheese at his first meal; a third time as having been ducked in the dam for having devoured an entire damper and half the rations for six men at a shearing shed; and again as having been thrown overboard and left to swim ashore from a coasting schooner on board of which he had engaged as cook, for robbing the harness cask, and polishing off a fortnight's meat in four days.
After that, except that we heard that he had been sent to gaol for a month for looting a baker's oven, and that the prison authorities were only too glad to let him go in a week, he seemed to fade out, and there were no more reports of him. “Trotters” and his wonderful powers of assimilation were forgotten amongst us.
But, years after, I happened to be in Melbourne, and one Saturday night, walking along Bourke street, my attention was attracted to a glaring, flaring picture outside a show, a picture of a remarkable-looking being clad in skins, and apparently in the enjoyment of a solitary cannibal feast. The showman at the door was expatiating in a strident voice on the wonders to be witnessed inside.
“Here you see,” he yelled, “the wonderful wild man of the woods, just caught in the desert of Afrikey, alive! alive!! alive!!! This extraor'ny bein' lives entirely on rawr flesh, which he eats six times a day, three pound at each meal, bein' the onprecedentated amount of heighteen pound of solid rawr meat within the short space of twelve hours. To be seen alive! alive!! alive!!! and only sixpence, sixpence, I say. Be in time. Just going to begin. This is the last opportunity you'll have of seein' this most wonderful bein', the wild man o' the woods, as was caught,” etc., etc., etc.
As I had never seen a wild man of the woods of the character of this one, I determined to pay my sixpence, did so, and walked in. He was a most extraordinary being, and that's a fact. And he ate the raw meat, and with gusto too, and that's another fact.
But—Good Heavens !—could I be mistaken?
No.
There, in despite of the color he had put on his face, in despite of the outrageous dress in which he was rigged, there was “Trotters.”
The lank hair, the piggish blue grey eyes, the enormous mouth, the cadaverous cheeks, there he was, and thinner than ever. I spotted him in a moment.
I said nothing, but waited outside after the show was over, and presently I saw him come out.
Sidling up to him quietly, I whispered in his ear “Hallo! ‘Trotters.’”
The effect was instantaneous. He started, looked at me suspiciously, and then, all at once, recognized me.
“What sort of a game do you call this, Trotters?” I asked.
“It ain't a very good game for me,” he replied, sadly. “You see they've engaged me because I'm a good eater.”
“By George! you are,” I replied, “there's no mistake about that.”
“And so,” he went on pensively, “they give me my grub to represent the Wild Man of the Woods—but Lor' bless yer, they are beginning to grumble about my appetite—say they can't stand much more on it, and yet they only supplies me with enough to feed a baby, that is such a baby as I am. I assure you, I haven't had what I call a good square meal since I've been with 'em. Raw meat is all very well in its way, but what I want is a meal, a good square meal.”
“Never mind,” said I, “never mind, old man, come and have a drink.”
“A drink I do not want, a drink I will not have,” he responded. “To-morrow, being Sunday, is a blank day with me. Lend me, or give me, five shillings, and you'll see what I do with it.”
Purely and sheerly for the fun of the thing, I gave him five shillings, making him promise to return when he had expended it.
And he did.
He ccame back to me armed with a Maori kit, and said this: “Master, I've spent the money as you gev me. Do you know what I've done? No, yer don't. Well, I've made preparation for tomorrow. I've been down to the ccorner of Swanston street, and I've bought a cove, leastwise an individual, out. Here's my dinner for to-morrow, Sunday. I've bought his entire basket—all he had. And all had 'll jus about suit me for to-morrow, forty-two sheep's trotters.
Scarcely had the loud laughter and applause which greeted the termination of Jim Lloyd's story died away, when the sentries were heard challenging. The reply was evidently satisfactory, for in a few seconds there appeared, coming at a rapid trot or lope up the open parade ground, a tall form clad in the inevitable Maori mat and kilt, and deeply tattooed on the face. But that he carried a rifle over his arm English fashion, he might have been taken for one of the Maori friendlies, of whom a number were engaged as runners or messengers, but as he topped the slope, and came full into view, he was recognised at once, and welcomed with cries of “Jack Hall! Jack Hall! The Maori scout!”
The savage and fanatieal hordes led by the detestable butcher, Te Kooti—hordes formed of parties from the tribes inhabiting the Kaimanawa country, and the district about the numerous heads of the Rangitikia river, amongst whom, to their eternal disgrace of their nationality and their manhood, were said to be not a few renegade Europeans and Americans, Pakeha Maoris, escaped convicts for the most part, supplemented by a number of beach combers and deserted sailors from whalers and trading vessels, who, regardless of the claims of country or humanity, had joined the bloody standard of that ruthless chief—had declared a war of extermination not only against the Europeans, but also against the more peaceful and friendly Maoris who had not joined in the revolt. This blood-thirsty host, their minds influenced with what has well been called “the drunkenness of blood,” occupied a vast stretch of mountain and forest country, extending from the head of the Wanganui river and Taupo Moana on the north to the Ruahine ranges on the south, and lying inland from the sea, and practically inaccessible to the British troops and their allies.
A country indeed beautiful, with its fine rivers, its stupendous
cuisine.
Ferocious beyond compare were most of these tribes, and more especially the immediate followers of their pre-eminently ruthless, restless, and treacherous leader, whose name had become a synonym of all that was blood-thirsty and implacable, the name detestable and execrable of a man utterly diabolic and vile.
In a great measure, except when actually engaged in warfare, the Maori is peaceful enough, and instances have been known, and those not a few, where he has shown a nobility and magnanimity, a chivalrous spirit even, that would do honor to a far higher civilization; but this unprincipled man, devilish in his cunning and cruelty, knew neither pity nor remorse, and was as much dreaded by the outlying tribes with whom he was not immediately associated as he was by the whites and the friendlies themselves.
Scarcely a day passed when news was not brought into camp, by one or other of the runners or scouts employed by the British, of some outrage, either on the encampments of white settlers, or friendly Maoris, which served to keep the various outposts in a continual ferment of excitement and alarm.
As related in the preceding chapter, the quiet of head-quarters was rudely disturbed by the abrupt entrance into the camp of Jack Hall, the well-known scout, who, in breathless haste, demanded at once to be shown into the presence of the commander-in-chief, as he had most important news to deliver.
The entire encampment was at once alive with wonder and anxiety, especially as the scout, without giving a hint of his intelligence, had at once put off in a canoe for the flagship, where the authorities were in conclave.
Rumor and speculation were rife, and the wildest theories were advanced, and surmises made, as to what the nature of his information might be, some supposing that the Maories had quitted their stronghold at Wereroa, others that they were advancing in force, and others, again, that a large body of friendlies had joined the rebel hordes.
The news came soon enough, for, ten minutes after the scout had reached the ship, General Champion and his staff were seen taking to the boats and being rapidly rowed to land.
The bugle rang out the “Fall in !” and an ambulance and strong guard was ordered out and hastily despatched from the camp. Then
The sad news was soon confirmed, for at dawn the following morning the ambulance returned, bearing the bodies of the unfortunate eight wrapped in blankets. The detail had found them, some shot, some brained with the murderous mere, but all disfigured and dishonored.
How it had occurred it was impossible to say. The men were all old campaigners, and had always been prepared against sudden attack, and the blockhouse was looked upon as next to impregnable to any force of Maoris. It was supposed that the attack must have been made while they slept.
Following close on this intelligence, a Maori scout came into camp with a rebel's head dangling from his hand by the hair. He brought the news that a hot fight had occurred between Te Kooti's followers and a large party of friendlies at the settlement of Ngaurahoe, on the Manganui a Te Ao river, a tributary of the Upper Wanganui, about thirty miles distant. The rebels had descended from the hill country between Tongariro and Ruapehu, and there had been a hard fight, in which at least ten of the rebels had been killed. The loss of the friendlies he could not tell. Out of this fight he had escaped, bringing away the head as a trophy.
Once more the camp was astir with sounds of martial preparation, and strong detachments were sent off to the assistance of such of the friendlies as might have escaped slaughter.
When asked for particulars, the Maori said that no warning had been given of attack on the peaceful friendlies. They were totally unprepared, when suddenly, like the bursting of a thunder-cloud, the ferocious hordes of Te Kooti swarmed in upon them, and commenced an indiscriminate slaughter. Men, women, and children were ruthlessly shot down. There was no merey shown nor expected, nor until the entire settlement was exterminated or had fled into the bush, did the rebels pause in their devilish work. He could not tell how many had been slain, but, before he escaped, certainly not less than twenty women and children, and double as many men, weltered in their blood, and did any of them show the faintest symptom of life they were hacked with the maripi, and hewed with the mere till death took them out of the power of their tormentors.
The day but one following brought ample corroboration of the truth of the Maori's story. As the rebels turned to depart from their work of devastation, their attention had been attracted to three children who had escaped the general massacre. Their ages were ten, four, and two years. What should be done with them was the question that arose. It was their first impulse to kill them, but they finally determined to take them as slaves for sacrifice, or to be eaten. They were fairly well treated at first, but the brutal instincts of the Maoris were only for a time dormant.
Soon murmurs were heard as to the foolishness of carrying about children, and impeding the rapidity of travel with such encumbrances. Again weapons were pointed at them, and again turned aside by kindlier interposition.
“Abandon them!” cried the brutal Te Kooti, “and let them find their way home, or where they wish to go. They will not live long. They will soon become the prey of the kuri and the wild pig, of the hawk and of the crow.”
And in the midst of the lone wilderness these three young children were left to, perhaps, a worse fate than even death at the hands of a rebel Maori. Night was approaching when the resolve was taken, and so; without food or clothing, these three unfortunates were left in the desert to be preyed upon by wild beasts, or to die of hunger.
Cowering with fright and cold, the three children huddled together—too young to know the danger to which they were exposed—too little to realise the fiendish nature of the crime that had been committed against them.
But one thought was in their minds, and that was to reach the post where the white man dwelt, which they knew was far away down the river from their own home, in the direction where the sun sank at night.
Ere they had dried their tears and looked about them, their captors had disappeared. Before them, in the direction of their home, arose a rampart of mountains with its bleak and dismal gorges and caverns, the haunt of packs of savage kuris, and droves of wild pigs. Through these, past countless dangers, lay the track which would lead them home, and thence to the camp of the merciful white man.
Then all the bravery and instinctive bush knowledge of the eldest boy came to his aid. He cheered his younger brothers with soothing words, told them that there, beyond the bleak mountains, were the men who would give them to eat and drink, and let them play and be merry. The younger ones cried for their mother, but his noble example fortified them, and, giving him their confidence, they started for the mountains.
For four or five miles the two trotted beside him, till, at last, hungry, weary, and footsore, the two-year-old-child threw himself on the earth, and said he could walk no more. Entreaties were in vain. He showed his blistered feet—an answer which admitted of no reply. Then, with the aid of his brother, the elder boy managed to drag the tired little one on his back, and pursued for a few hundred yards his wearisome journey. He could walk but a few yards at a time. He, too, was hungry, weak, and footsore, and the rests he had to make were many. Still he would not hesitate. Shelter was before him—shelter with all its comforts and safety. He would not let his courage flag, nor permit that of his younger brothers to fail.
When the mountains were reached the three took refuge in a rugged cavern or crevice in the rocks, and there passed the night, to await the dawn of day.
Again the journey was undertaken under yet more distressful circumstances. They reached what had been their home, and found nothing—nothing save the sickening sight of festering corpses, a prey to the wild beasts and foul birds of the region, and the blackened ruins of a few raupo huts, for the marauders had fired the village ere they left.
No food, no shelter, no clothing; for what had not been destroyed had been carried off. There was nothing for it but to face the wilderness again. And they did it. They ate of the wild berries and fern-pith that they found, and, breaking off the tender twigs of the hine-hine and veronica, and the succulent leaves of the pig-face (mesembryanthemum), chewed them to procure some nourishment.
But not once did determination desert the little hero. He persuaded, and threatened, alternately carried, and made his little charges walk, until, after fifty hours of almost superhuman exertion, and forty-five miles of travel, the encampment was reached.
Everything was done to make the little ones forget the dangers through which they had passed; their wounds were dressed, and they were supplied with food.
There was but one feeling in the camp respecting these children, shared by everyone, from the commander down to the youngest drummer-boy, namely, that the Colonial Government should take them for its wards, educate and train them; for the heroism which they had already shown gave the promise that, if turned in the right direction, there was in all these three Maori children the stuff of whicch heroes are made.
“Be jabers! Jim Lloyd,” said Corporal Larry Byrne to the recognised raconteur of the camp, when the story of the little Maori boys had gone round among the men, “there's a yarn licks all yours into fits, more betoken its thrue, and that same is not what can be said of all you spin, me lad.”
“It's not a bad yarn as it stands, I'll allow,” replied the veracious James, pragmatically, “and when I've just dressed it up a bit, put in a touch here and there, as it were, I flatter myself—”
“Ye flatter yersel'? Deil fly awa' wi' me if ye dae ought else but flatter yersel' ! Set ye up for a conceitit gowk, wha thinks no pie can be good unless ye've had a hond in the makkin' o't. Ye'd pit in a touch, ye wad. Ye're just one o' thae improvers wha'd improve natur hersel', until ye'd improved iverything o' the face o' the earth,” interrupted Andy Macphail, tartly.
“Begorra, Mac, me bhoy; ye hit him hard that time and no mistake. Jim's just the bhoy to paint the lily and adorn the rose, as the pet sings,” said Larry Byrne. “But what's in the wind now, I wondher? Here comes Jack Hall, and he ginerally has something to tell us worth hearin'”.
The individual referred to sauntered slowly up to the little group of soldiery, who greeted him with effusion as being one who could relieve the monotony of existence by giving them the latest news. In reply to their questioning, he said—
“Well, there are two bits of news that may or may not be interesting. First and foremost, I'm told that Captain Rogers has taken the eldest of those Maori children on his own ship—adopted him in a manner. Rather young for a powder-monkey, I fancy, but he's a plucky little chap for all that. The other two are to be sent to Auckland, I'm told. The second is that I've an idea those Maoris in the pah out yonder mean mischief. I was out in that direction this morning, and I not only heard them dancing the Tutungarau, but singing the Ngeri, and that means something serious, or I'm mistaken.”
“And what may those hard words mean, if you'd be so kind?” asked Jack Hinds, the sailor.
“They mean,” replied the scout, sententiously, “war, hard fighting, and plenty of it. They mean that which, if you ever see or hear, you'll never forget. They mean the war-dance, and the war-song, and that means trouble, I know.”
“The war-dance!” was echoed from all sides.
“Yes, the war-dance, and, what's worse, the war-song. I'm told by a fellow I have in my pay, and under my thumb, that they're preparing for something, only he can't find out what. I have my suspicions, however. I've given the colonel the hint, but he doesn't seem to have taken much notice of it. I only hope he's right—but I've told him, and it's no further concern of nine.”
“But you never think the beggars would attempt to attack us here?” queried Billy Bent.
“Shouldn't wonder if they did—there's no telling.”
There was a general laugh at this astounding proposition. The idea of a rabble rout of ill-armed Maoris presuming to dream of attacking numerous and well-intrenched disciplined troops was too absurd for their gravity, and was one which could only be treated as a subject for contemptuous mirth.
“‘The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements,’” laughed the corporal, who was apt at quotation.
The scout's countenance did not move a muscle.
“Very well,” he replied; “those who live longest will see most. It's a very bad rule in war to hold your enemies too cheap.”
“But, hoot awa', mon,” cried Macphail, “what makes ye think o'siecan a thing? Surely ye're no' in richt doon airnest?”
“Maybe not. Maybe I'm a fool and dreamt it. Maybe I fancy the Maoris in Wereroa yonder are just about as tired of being cooped up in the pah as you are of lying here doing nothing, and want a change. Don't you take old Aparima for a fool. He knows, just as well as you do, that Captain Smith is away with two hundred men to aid the Ngaurahoe friendlies, and that Sergeant Lee is with him. A mistake that. Lee should never have left the camp. He knows more about the Maoris and their deviltries than any half dozen men in the force. You mark me, and don't you forget it, either Aparima intends to cut and run, and get clear off to join the main body of Han-Haus, or he intends to make a fight of it.”
“But, guid Lord, mon,” argued the old Scotchman, “what are ye thinkin' o'? Why, if they come within range o' oor airtillery we'd sweep 'em fro’ the face o' the airth.”
“Maybe, maybe. You don't know much about Maori bush fighting yet, it seems to me. Because you've had a few skirmishes with parties of half-armed natives, and driven them off, you look on them with contempt. But your general doesn't, and he's right. Wait till you come to close quarters with a couple of thousand painted warriors—warriors, mind you, mad with rage and pain from the preparation, and then see what you'll think of it. I tell you, and I know, there isn't a braver or more desperate being on the face of the globe than a Maori warrior thoroughly prepared for war. And don't you make any mistake about it.”
So saying, Jack Hall turned on his heel, and abruptly quitted the group, leaving them silently watching his tall form until it was hidden by the thick growth of fern and forestry that bounded the view in the direction he had taken.
A dim foreboding of evil, a gloomy premonition of impending ill, soon hovered over the camp, as his warning words, with such additions and embellishments as the speakers chose to make, were whispered from mouth to mouth. Even the colonel, although he had affected to treat the warning lightly, was impressed by it, as was evident by his placing double sentries, and sending out videttes to scour the bush and watch the pah.
But the enemy made no sign. They were, in fact, quieter than usual, and their very silence was felt to be ominous. General Champion was less inclined than ever to force the fighting, for his troops were materially weakened by the absence of two hundred men sent in hopeless pursuit of Te Kooti. Thus matters stood at this juncture, the opposing parties each sullenly awaiting some demonstration on the part of the other. It was the lowering calm before a thunderstorm, the dull, heavy quiet before a tempest, the smouldering spark before a blaze.
It was true that the terrible Tutungarau had been danced, that the rage-inspiring Ngeri had been sung, and that Aparima the Rangitira in the beleaguered pah knew of the departure of so large a body of the enemies' troops.
There is scarcely anything more appalling than to witness a Maori war-dance, to hear a Maori war-song. They are so utterly savage, so utterly bizarre in their character, that it is almost impossible to describe them.
Many writers have tried, and all have failed.
It is one of those things that must be seen to be realised, and even then there is no language that can afford an adequate description of this, one of the most remarkable outcomes of pure savagery grafted on what may be called an innate idea of wild and partially tutored religion.
I will attempt—although I know before I commence that the attempt will be weak, and cannot possibly give any fair idea of the force, the mesmeric power which is brought to bear, and which does bear, on the proceedings—still, I will, I say, attempt to describe a Maori Tutungarau, or war-dance.
To begin with, the whole of the fighting men of the tribe, which includes all of adult years (except those who are tapu), are congregated by means of the striking of a wooden gong into an open space set apart for that purpose, either within the pah, or within the Kainga. There they are harangued by the chiefs and Arikis, who incite them by all the words in their power to perform deeds of bravery.
The war parties throw off their mats, daub their faces and bodies with red ochre and charcoal, twist their long hair into lumps or knots, adorn themselves with feathers, and then proceed to execute the war dance.
As thus: The whole army of warriors start in a body, and, after running about twenty yards in a straight line, arrange themselves into lines, five, ten, twenty, or forty feet deep, when they all squat on their haunches.
At a signal given by the leader they all spring to their feet, holding their weapons, guns, meres, spears, or clubs, in their right hands. For a moment they stand perfectly still, and then, at another signal, the dance begins.
Each man elevates his right leg and the right side of his body. Then his left. Then, like a flash of lightning, and all at once, they leap about two feet into the air, at the same time brandishing their weapons, and cleaving the air with them as though they were cutting down imaginary foes. At each successive movement they yell a chorus, which terminates in a long-drawn, deep, oppressive sigh, a sound it is quite impossible to place on paper, but which is not unlike the outward snort of a wild boar, as thus, Nga.
All this is accompanied with gaping mouths, inflated nostrils, distorted faces, out-hanging tongues, and fixed, starting eyes, in which nothing can be seen but the dark pupil surrounded with white.
Such a pitch of excitement have they been wrought into that every muscle in the body quivers. Again and again is this performance gone through, until those taking part in it fall exhausted, or until the priests bid it to cease.
While it lasts, time is strictly marked by the performers slapping their thighs with their open hands, and by a number of old women of the tribe, who, stark naked, but overdaubed with red ochre, act, so to speak, as fuglemen.
The Ngeri or war-song is, for the most part, sung by an improvisatore of the tribes, each line or pause being repeated by the others as a kind of chorus. It is supposed to be launched at the opposing enemy, and is always of a taunting, challenging, or threatening character. The following is almost a literal translation of one of these Ngeri, sung by a West Coast tribe during the late Maori war:—
We left Haki Hori closeted with the Patea chief, Rehua, after his marvellous exhibition of sorcery (which was, by the way, neither more nor less than simple sleight of hand), in deep converse on some subject of importance as it would seem, for strict orders were given that they should not be interrupted.
And of vital importance it was, being nothing less than overtures from the British commander-in-chief that the Pateas should throw in their aid and influence on the side of the whites, and promises of protection, and large gifts of land, money, guns, powder and shot, blankets, and other articles so much coveted by the natives.
The Maori is essentially a man of business, and he must be indeed shrewd who can beat him at a bargain. But he is as wayward and vacillating as a child, and it often happens that in dealing with him, after he has got the best of his opponent to, perhaps, three times the value of what was at first offered, he will demur altogether and refuse to go on with the negotiation.
So it was in this case. Like the chief of the Waimates, he would and he would not; he would do nothing but temporise. He had already joined the standard of the revolt, but that went for nothing. He would withdraw from that engagement without scruple, could he make certain of a solid advantage by doing so. To do him justice,
Therefore was it that, with all his powers of persuasion, and the undoubted influence he had gained over him, the scout could obtain no more definite promise than that he would think the matter over, and that, for the present, the most he would do would be to remain neutral, and with this answer Haki Hori was compelled to be content.
The conference being over, the chief invited him to become his guest, and offered him food and a whare in the Kainga to sleep in, for, to tell the truth, he was so frightened of the supernatural powers of his visitor that he did not deem it expedient to have him in the pah.
The scout accepted both, and, after a meal, retired to rest, not before observing, with an amused smile, that a guard was placed round and at the door of the whare, ostensibly as a mark of honor, but really, as he well knew, to prevent his escaping during the night.
He made no remark, however, and parted with his host at the entrance to the whare, amicably and apparently on the best terms.
Perhaps he had no intention of leaving at first, but, noticing that by some strange oversight Matariki's rifle had been left standing in a corner, he determined to take possession of it, and carry it away.
A little after midnight, then, when the village was wrapped in slumber, and when all was silent save the wild dogs howling in the distant bush, he softly rose from his couch of toi-toi tassels, gained possession of the rifle, and plugging up his nostrils with cotton wool, took from a hidden pocket a small flask and a linen cloth. The latter he saturated with some sweet yet acrid smelling fluid from the former, stole noiselessly to the entrance of the whare, where his two guards were squatted across the doorway, and waved the cloth gently near them. The effect was instantaneous. They both fell at once into a profound slumber.
He had two other guards to pass, but as they were drowsily nodding, half asleep already over the fire in front of the hut, to perform the same operation on them was easy enough. Having done so, he cautiously crossed the open space between the lines of huts, and, passing into the deep shadow of a whare, glided silently, and like a grey shadow in the dim watery moonlight, into the gloomy recesses of the forest.
It need hardly be said that in the morning, when the whare was found empty, there was no little consternation. Of course his guards swore that they had never closed their eyes all night. But he was gone, that was clear. Gone, and not a trace left.
Rehua stormed and railed and threatened condign punishment, but that would not bring the wonderful being back.
Then came into full force the Maori power of invention. One said he had seen a crow fly past. That must have been him. Another that he had gone off in the form of a black pig with one eye, a favorite one for wizards to assume, according to Maori mythology. A third averred that he had changed himself into a rat without a tail, and had departed in that shape.
But how could a rat without a tail, or, with a tail, or for the matter of that, a black pig, or a raven either, carry off a rifle with him? Bah! that was nothing; could not the being who could change a feather into a bird, and a bird into a feather, change a gun into a leaf, or a stick, or a straw, if he chose?
* * *
How fared it with Matariki, when, by the aid of Jack Hall, he escaped from the clutches of his deadly enemies, the truculent Rehua and his tribe?
Without let or hindrance he reached the crossing place and plunged into the bush, secure, as he thought, from pursuit, for he felt assured that the great magician who could bring down fire from Heaven was powerful enough to prevent that. He felt some compunction at having left his preserver alone to face the fury of the Pateas at finding him gone, but, after all, it was the will of the Atuas, and they knew best.
Rapidly, yet cautiously, he threaded the intricacies of the forest until, entering an open glade, he suddenly came across a gigantic Maori, who seemed to start out of the earth at ten yards distance from him, and whom he recognised in an instant.
“Tainui!” he exclaimed in surprise.
“Tainui,” was the reply. “I am here to meet you and guide you to the Nama camp. Come, it is not far distant.”
“You here to meet me! Who sent you?”
“Hake Hori. He has his hoi-hoi hidden behind yon clump of bush, and bade me wait for you. He will overtake us in good time. But come, you are expected.”
Matariki, looking narrowly at Tainui, observed that he kept his right arm concealed under his mat, and asked him the reason why.
The savage seemed somewhat confused by the question, but answered evasively that he had been wounded in a fight, and that the seout had applied the kokowai and the toto kuri to his hurt shoulder, and bound it up with papa kiri.
“A tight! What fight?” asked Matariki.
“Ah, you do not know,” was the reply. “The pakeha and the Maori are at war. The mere is red with blood, and the Parekuras are many. The fighting is yonder, and yonder, and yonder. The Pai marire has been sung, and Hepanaia and Kereopa lead the Hau-Haus to battle and slaughter. But come, you are anxiously waited for, and you will learn all when you join the tribe.”
“You seem weak and faint, Tainui. I fear you are seriously hurt. Tell me where the tribe is, and I will go on alone.”
The Maori smiled contemptuously as he replied, “Is then Tainui a baby that he should heed a little pain? The skill of Hake Hori is great, he extracted the bullet, and—”
“The bullet! was it then a bullet wound that—”
“I tell you it is nothing,” interrupted Tainui shortly, as he plunged into the bush and bade the youth follow.
* * *
The Tangaika of Te Namas had been camped at no great distance from the north bank of the Patea river, in accordance with the injunctions of the witch Matutira, who, accompanied by her familiar Katipo, had met them early in the day, and had informed Frank Burnett and the leaders of the party of what had occurred in the Patea camp the previous day. She had expressed no particular amount of surprise at seeing him where he was, although she must have wondered how he had escaped from the cave where she had left him. Still she asked him no questions, and only said to him, as she left the encampment, “Remember, oh Pakeha! what I have said. Wait here until night. If Matariki have not arrived by then, steal on the Patea dogs and slay them. But he will arrive, and ere long; of that be assured. There is one coming who is all-powerful to set him free, and who will do so. The Atuas have told me that, but not how. Enough. As for that other thing—silence. Remember; I have spoken.” And, so saying, she slipped away into the gloom of the bush, the repulsive and wicked looking Katipo crawling or shambling after her on his hands and feet as was his wont.
She had not long been gone when Frank was again surprised by seeing Jack Hall, the scout, stroll leisurely into camp, leading his horse by the bridle. He first spoke a few words to the Maori leader, and then, calling Frank on one side, spoke to him thus: “Young fellow, as I said before, I like you, for a reason I have Why, I may tell you some day. You have kept faith with me; I know that, never mind how, but I do. I promised to help you. I have helped you, and will help you further when the time comes. As for this Maori lad, this friend of yours, fear nothing for him; he is safe enough, and will be with you ere the day is over. If not, take your own course, only wait till after dark. But he will. I can get him out of the Patea camp, ay, though they were ten times as powerful, and I promise to do it. Be patient, wait, and fear nothing.”
He walked leisurely away, leading his horse, and soon disappeared in the thick forest, leaving Frank in amaze at the warning and promise he had received from these two singular and wholly dissimilar visitants, who seemed to be bound together by some secret, mysterious, and, to him, wholly incomprehensible tie; and the body of Maoris squatted on the ground, still and silent as statues, yet only waiting a word from their leader to become instantly transformed into a horde of yelling, leaping furies, more like fiends than mortal men.
All this time, or at least for several chapters back, we have left some most important characters out in the cold, so to speak. It is now about time to return to them and see what they are doing in connection with this story.
When Matariki, in company with Tainui te Ngatiawa, rejoined those of his tribe whom he found camped near the Karakamea ford over the Patea river, preparing for a night attack upon the Patea village and the rescue of their young chief, one of the first to greet and congratulate him on his wonderful double escape was Frank Burnett, who had joined the war party with the full intention of extricating his friend from his perilous position, or of taking a bitter revenge for his death.
The few words of Matutira had relieved him of great anxiety, for he did not deem it probable that, after what had occurred the previous day, and in the face of the warning and threats she had held out to the Pateas, they would dare to proceed to the extremities they had at first intended.
Besides that, the opportune appearance of Jack Hall, and the mysterious promise he had made, had tended still further to reassure him of his friend's safety.
As it had been decided, therefore, not to prosecute the warlike demonstration further just then, in view of complications with the Waimates and the revolted tribes, a rapid countermarch homeward was determined on, and put into immediate operation.
He had seen the gigantic Tainui arrive at the camp with Matariki, and for some reason which he could not divine had conceived a strong repugnance for him, he could not tell why. Nor could he help noticing that Tainui appeared to avoid his observation, and to keep in the background, or to slink away whenever he approached the spot where he was. It was strange, he thought; he could assign no cause for it, and strove to drive it from his mind. Certainly, once he mentioned the matter to Mataraki, who replied carelessly that Tainui had been wounded some days before, and that, perhaps, he was a little feverish, and therefore odd in his manner.
“Wounded a few days since,” mused Frank thoughtfully. “Can it be? is it possible? But no, that's all nonsense. What reason could he have?—and yet it's very singular. Where was he wounded?” he asked.
“Oh, I don't know exactly. In some skirmish up North, he says. Poor fellow; he narrowly escaped having his arm broken, and now, as you see, it's bandaged up.”
Frank made no further remark on the subject, but took a mental note of it for further investigation at a more fitting season.
“I have much to say to you, E Tuakana,” said he to Matariki as they proceeded on the march; “let us walk apart and converse.”
“Willingly, E Teina; what would you say?”
“Matariki, what I have to tell concerns my happiness very nearly; mine, and, I think—well—another's.”
“Speak, Ehoa; the words of a friend are as music in my ears.”
“Matarika, you love your sister?”
“Love my sister?—love Hine-Ra? Surely I do. What, then?”
“I will be brief and plain. I, too, love your sister.”
“Well, I know you do. Is she not your sister as well as mine?”
“Yes, but you do not quite understand. You love your sister because she is your sister. You are proud of her because she is good and beautiful, and the princess of the tribe. But I love her with a different kind of love.”
“You do?” asked Matariki somewhat coldly.
“Yes, I do; I love her with my whole heart, and I would gladly make her my wife.”
“Your wife?”
“Yes, my wife.”
“And have you told her this?”
“I have. I told her of it this morning, before we started on this expedition for your rescue.”
“And she—what did she say?”
“She said—what she told me—to think—to believe—that—that—she returns my affection.”
“H'm! And what does my father say?”
“I have not spoken to him on the subject. I have had no opportunity. I intended to have done so at first, but circumstances occurred which wrung the confession from me almost unawares.”
“What circumstances?”
“I fancy—I believe—nay, I know, that my father objects, will object, to our union.”
“Why?”
“That I hardly know, save for the difference in our race. What makes it still harder, and why I felt constrained to declare myself, is that he has spoken to her—has told her as much. She was offended, and properly so, and treated me coldly, cruelly, and so then I, madly, perhaps, confessed my passion. Ah! Matariki, be my friend in this.”
“Paranaki, I am your true friend always. Believe that. But my sister, the Rangitira Wahine, is not to be lightly won. Not—pardon me—even by you. Te Nama is a proud race, the proudest and noblest in this land of Aotearoa. We are not as other Maoris, for in our veins runs the blood of Hou, and, by the female side, of the Morioris themselves, the great people who dwelt here before our ancestors came from Hawaiki. Yea, indeed to us may be applied the saying: ‘I kunei ma i ha Hawaiki.’ (The seed of our coming is from Hawaiki, the seed of man.) No, my sister must not be lightly won.”
“I will do everything—”
“Enough; I will think of this. I will speak to my father. I will speak to her. In the meantime, remember what I have said, I am your true friend always. We are still brothers, even although you should never be Taokete to me. And now we will change the subject.”
“Good, let us talk of you. Tell me of your adventure with the Pateas, for at present I know next to nothing.”
Matariki thereupon related to Frank the whole of the circumstances touching his capture, and subsequent salvation from torture and death on two occasions, also his marvellous and totally unlooked for escape.
“I, too, have a strange story to tell, but not now. I am bound under promise not to mention it until I receive permission. When that permission is given I will tell you all.”
“That is well. A friend of Te Nama must keep his word.”
“I may tell you this much, however, that Jack Hall was mixed up in my singular affair somewhat in the same way, and yet altogether differently, as he was in yours.”
“Haki Hori?”
“Yes, Jack Hall, the Maori scout, as he is called.”
“He is a strange and incomprehensible being. He brought down fire from heaven, and burned up a vessel of water. I saw him do it, or I would not have believed it possible.”
“Brought down fire from Heaven, say you? How did he do that?”
“How? By the Makutu; how else?”
“And do you believe in the Makutu?”
“Do I? I hardly know. I know some of the tricks of the sorcerers of our people. Yes, tricks, for it is trickery and fraud; but this is different. I know not what to think. But that he did bring down fire from Heaven I know, and that he caused water to burn—not to smoke, or to steam, or to boil, like the sacred Rotomahana, and Rotorua, and Wairakei, and a hundred other lakes away to the north-east, but to burn, to blaze; how else could it be done? I know he did it, for I saw him.”
Frank Burnett walked on in silent thought. His father had taught him to laugh at the puerile necromancy of the Maoris, had shown him how many of their tricks of pretended magic had been performed, and had laughed their priestcraft and sorcery to scorn, and he had grown up to partake of the feeling of unbelief and contempt. But there was something about this mysterious man totally beyond his comprehension. He seemed to know everything, to be everywhere. He had promised to free Matariki from the power of the Maoris, and, lo! he had done it. He was not a Maori, and yet he possessed a power over the tribes that not even their mightiest Arikis, Tohungas, and wizards possessed. What was it then? Clearly the Makutu or some other supernatural agency, or—if not, what?
To quote, or misquote, Marcus Clarke: “His thinly-clad intellect would take cold if he ventured so far up the mountain. He must hasten to take refuge at the fireside of the great Don't Know.”
It was a long, weary march from the Patea river to Te Nama pah and Kainga, near Opunake Bay, and it was late before the war party reached home. But the Maori is trained to endure fatigue and privation, and he makes nothing of a day's journey through the bush, even where, to one unused to it, the path, or no path, would seem next to impassable.
Everything was quiet in the settlement. Although messengers had been sent out in various directions, who brought in reports and rumors, more or less true, of fighting in this or that direction, and although it was certain that active operations were going on, and that the European troops and the disaffected Maoris were in motion, still, in the immediate neighborhood of Te Nama neither one nor the other had, as yet, made any sign.
Probably the leaders of both parties, as well as the Rangitira, the great Marutuahua himself, were waiting for events. It was most probable that the latter would refuse to join the insurgents, as both his position and his interests lay in the other direction; but whether he would co-operate actively with the British, or whether he would simply remain neutral, had yet to be decided, and that would require deep consideration in the Korero, which, in the absence of his son, he had not given notice to summon.
The meeting of the chief and his son was marked by no special display of emotion, even though the latter had so narrowly escaped a painful and disgraceful death. The meaner persons of the tribe might indulge in the hongi, or even in the tangi, but the patrician dignity must be kept up.
Therefore was the greeting in the whare of the simplest character. “Aitimai E Tamatai,” said the father. “Tenakoe E Matua,” the son. Turning to Frank the former said briefly, “Aitimai Ekoro.” “Tenakoe E Rangitira,” was the reply; and the ceremony was over.
Where was Hine-Ra? Frank would have been glad to know. She was not there, and it would have been altogether contrary to usage to ask, at least then and there. He was courteously invited to take a seat on a mat, while Matariki once more related the incidents of the past two days. The old man listened without interruption, his face impassive as that of a statue, until the end of the narrative, and then saying briefly, “It is good. We shall see,” waved his hand in token that the young men might depart. They separated at the entrance of the whare, Matarika to seek out his sister, and Frank to have an interview with his father.
“I am glad that you have come, Frank,” said the elder Burnett, “for I have much to say to you. On your decision to-night, or at all events to-morrow, will greatly depend your future. This is the turning point, and it remains with you to say which way it shall be. So far as I am concerned, I shall interfere neither one way nor the other, but shall put the facts plainly before you and leave you to make up your own mind.”
“Very well, father,” said Frank, in no very complaisant mood, for he, too, had something to say; “very well, what is it?”
“If Frank had anticipated that his father was going to speak about his late conversation with the Maori girl, he was mistaken, as he soon discovered.
“You are aware,” said Richard Burnett, “at least I suppose you have heard by this time, that war has broken out between the whites and some of the tribes?”
“I have heard something of it, but nothing very definite.”
“I can give you some particulars; but, first of all, read that. It is a letter given me by the Maori scout, Hall, early yester-morning, before we started on our fruitless expedition to the Waimates, and comes, as you will see, from the British head-quarters at Taranaki Read it.”
Frank took the official-looking document, and read it in silence. Let us take the liberty of looking over his shoulder, and seeing what it contained.
Head-Quarters, New Plymouth.
Sir,— I have the honor, by order of the officer commanding the Imperial and Colonial forces, to call your attention to the very serious aspect of affairs in relation to the outbreak of hostilities by various disaffected tribes of natives against Her Majesty's Government and the peace and well-being of the colony. In doing so, I feel no doubt that you, as a British subject, will at once declare yourself for the side of law and order; in fact, I might, did I so desire, claim your allegiance as such subject, and desire you to report yourself here by a given time. But I have no wish to enter upon any such arbitrary measure, the more as I believe that you can be of vast service to your Queen and country in another direction.
You will observe, sir, that I speak in the plainest possible terms, and in such a way as cannot be misconstrued. In fine, then, I am not unaware of the influence you possess and can bring to bear on the Chief Marutuahua, of Te Nama tribe, and of his priests and other leading men; neither am I ignorant of the fact that you have hitherto, although for what reason I know not, to a very great extent identified yourself with the Maoris, and repelled all advances on the part of your fellow-countrymen and the whites generally.
But I am confident I need not point out to you that this is a crisis when every Englishman's duty calls on him to set aside his personal feelings—grievances, it may be—and rally round the flag of his country. As I have already said, I wish to make myself clearly understood. You can be of great service, situated as you are, by inducing the tribe amongst whom you are located to declare for us, not merely as neutral friendlies, but as active auxiliaries to
our forces, It is not, of course, to be expected that they will do so without some compensating advantages. On that point you are fully empowered, first of all to assure them of British protection in its widest sense, and then to sound them as to the character and extent of compensating advantages they may require, and the direction they may take, whether in money, territory or otherwise. Having done this, you will be appointed on a board of arbitration, with a view of arriving at a clear understanding between the tribe and Her Majesty's Government. I need not say that, should you succeed in bringing this matter to a successful issue, you will find the Government not ungrateful for your services. Your views on the subject, in reply to this letter, as early as possible, will be esteemed a favor by Sir,
Your most obedient servant,Rowland B. Kerr.P.S.—I had forgotten to state that I understand you have a son, who, if I am rightly informed, is also English born, and who, as well as being expert in the use of fire-arms, has an intimate knowledge of the Maori tongue and acquaintance with Maori habits, modes of fighting, &c. Such an one would be invaluable to us, and, if desirable, we will gladly make room for him in a cadet corps, in view of a speedy commission being granted, which I can and do promise. And further, that the military authorities, should you fall in with our views, will be directed to regard him favorably for promotion as rapidly as possible. Richard Burnett, Esq.
Te Nama Pah, Opunake.
E. B. K.
Frank read the letter to the end, and then looking up to his father said, “Well, father?”
“Well, what do you think of it?”
“Nay, father, what do you think of it?”
“I think—but there, like a wasp, it carries the sting in its tail. The most important thing for you to consider is contained in the postscript.”
“That's true. But then you see the letter is not to me, but to you.”
“I know; I know.” Richard Burnett rose from his seat, and strode to and fro a few minutes wrapped in thought. At length he stopped opposite Frank, and said abruptly, “Frank, would you like to leave this half-savage life?—to leave me here to my misanthropy and hatred of my kind, and to go back to civilisation—?”
“Nay, father—”
“Boy, hear me out. Sometimes I think I have done you grievous wrong in dooming you to this wild, semi-barbarous life—in robbing you of the joys, the comforts, the sweets of civilization, and in bringing you up amidst the ignorant, untutored, pitiful surroundings of a Maori kainga. You do not know, you cannot understand what you have lost. Because I have chosen, in my selfishness and blind egotism, to embitter my own cup, surely there was no reason why I should pour gall and wormwood into yours. You have read the offer. It is a fair one, a good one, I admit. Accept it, and it will place you at once on the plane you ought to occupy amongst your fellows. You are fairly well educated, you are a crack shot, you have the special knowledge urgently required. You will rise,
“Father, do you wish it?”
“Do I? I have said I shall interfere neither one way nor the other.”
“Then let me ask you what you have to say to the proposition relating to yourself.”
“If it affected me alone, I should refuse to meddle or make in the matter. They talk to me of allegiance, of loyalty, of a duty I owe to my country and kind. Bah! Words, words, words. I have no country, I have no kind; none, save you, lad. They make promises. Of course they do. Again words, and words are wind. But even if they kept them, what can they do for me? Make me a magistrate, or a warden, perhaps. Or let me go back to live the civilised life which I loathe and despise, and which I have cast off for ever. A fine reward for me, ha! ha! ha!” The man spoke so bitterly and sardonically that even Frank, who was most of all used to his humors, felt anxious.
“Father,” he said, “I fancy you think too deeply about these things. Pray be calm.”
“I'm calm enough, lad, but what could they give me? Could they give me back my happiness, my peace of mind, my honor, my faith in human nature, the lost love of an unfaithful wife, the sullied truth of a treacherous friend? Could they repair the dishonor on my name? Could they make whole a broken heart, or fill up the desolate void of empty and joyless years? And if none of these, what then could they do? Nothing, nothing, nothing. But why do I speak thus? Why should I, like the mad Prince of Denmark, ‘unpack my heart with words, and fall a-cursing like a very drab, a scullion?’ No, Frank, boy, let me rather forget my sorrows if I can, and think more of your welfare.”
“Father, I have listened to you. I will not say that the offer made to you for me is not a tempting one, nor that I do not sometimes long to see that town life of which I know so little and think so much. But let it rest. It may not be. I am content with my lot. You have no wish to leave these scenes, nor have I. They suit me well enough, and I dare say, if I were cooped up in narrow streets, amid glare and glitter, and noise, and hurry, and push, I should, like a caged bird, pine for the pure air, and the freedom of bush, and mountain, and river and sea to which I am accustomed.”
“You have chosen,” said Richard Burnett with a sigh; “heaven grant you have chosen wisely, and heaven forgive me if any words of mine have caused you to choose wrongly.”
“I choose of my own free will,” replied Frank; “and yet I could wish you would accept their offer as regards yourself. Perhaps I do not see it with the same eyes as you, but we are English after all, and I suppose a fellow can't help liking his own country best. I should like—I hardly know how to express it—to do something
“Why, so be it then, lad. I will even do as they wish if I can, and I think I can. Not for my own sake, but for yours, and the country's that gave you birth. Mayhap they may find out some way to reward me that will not part us. I will set about it at once. But are you sure your decision is of your own free will, and not on my account?”
“Of my own free will and on my own account. And now I have something to say to you that affects myself and—and—and another, if you will listen.”
“Say on, Frank, although I think I can partly guess what it is,” replied the elder man gravely.
“I am not used to beating about the bush, as you call it, and will come to the point at once. Father, I love Hine-Ra.”
“So I almost thought. And if there were one reason above another why I should wish you to leave here, that is it.”
“But why should I not love her?”
“She asked me the same question, why she should not love you? I can only give you the answer I gave her—Because she is a Maori, you are a Pakeha.”
“But is that a sufficient reason?”
“I think so.”
“I do not think so. I am, if Pakeha born, in almost all things Maori bred. She is good, amiable, beautiful. She is of far higher birth than I, taking her race into account. She loves me. Why should I not, if I can, marry her?”
“And be taunted by those of your own blood as the husband of a semi-savage woman; as the father, it may be, of a half-caste brood.”
“Who is there here to taunt me? I have no desire to leave this place.”
“But if you should?—if, as you may, you should one day revisit your native land, could you take her with you? Could you endure the pitying sneers of those cold-hearted people whom you met—the covert insults levelled at her and your dusky children?”
“And even if I did visit England, the taunts levelled at me I should treat with scorn. As for those who dared to insult her, I should know how to deal with them.”
“But, my boy, reflect—”
“I have reflected. Father, pardon me for saying that I do not think you are quite true to your own principles.”
“As how?”
“As thus: you profess a hatred and contempt for your own people. You profess it, I say, and yet you cannot feel it, for you would build up in me the very pride of race which you condemn.”
“But, my son, by marrying her you would become one of them—”
“Not so; by marrying me she would rather become one of us. I have not forgotten what you have taught me, nor what I have read. King Cophetua married the beggar girl, Penelophon, yet was she not the less a queen. The nobleman may marry his black cook, yet is she not the less ‘My lady.’”
“Your argument is subtle, but hardly logical. The black cook would be, although ‘My lady,’ a black woman still. It is not to degree I object, but to race.”
“I have, then, another argument stronger than all, and to me an all-sufficient one—I love her, and she loves me.”
“Well, well, I cannot say that I am altogether convinced of the wisdom of this step, but I suppose I must yield. But what says her father to all this?”
“I do not know what he will say, for I have not asked him yet. But I have her love, her brother's good-will, your permission, and my own ardent wish to aid me; and if all those will not overcome the pride of Marutuahua and the exigencies of Maori state policy, I shall be mistaken.”
“We shall see, Frank, we shall see. Much depends on the course events take in another direction. However, leave the matter in my hands. Let the Rangitira and myself be the high contracting powers, and I dare say I shall succeed in gaining you the hand of your princess. I shall have to pay for it, I know; for the chief, although a good fellow in the main, and friendly enough, is not likely to do anything without what the military authorities call compensating advantages. But see, the clock points nearly at four; 'tis time we were in bed. Good night, or rather, good morning.”
A certain French authoress says that “Love is but an episode in the life of a man, but that it is the whole life of a woman.”
Byron, too, before or since, I know not which, says the same thing in nearly the same words—
Had she or he looked a little deeper into womankind, the assertion might never have been made, for woman is quite capable of exercising all the noble passions and sentiments which render humanity most beautiful and attractive, although it must be conceded that love is frequently the compass by which she steers through the ocean of life.
It was not until midday that Frank Burnett had an opportunity of meeting Hine-Ra. In fact, with the coyness of her sex, she had almost appeared to avoid him, although when she met him
“Dearest,” he said, in a voice thrilling with emotion, “are you not glad to see me again?”
She blushed rosy red, as she replied in soft accents, “You have brought Matariki, my brother, back in safety, and, therefore, I am glad to see you.”
“And for myself, have you not a word of welcome?”
“For yourself, my beloved one, I have many words of welcome, but why need they be spoken? It is the empty hake that gives out the most sound.”
“True. Still the words of welcome from your lips are like sweet music in my ear.”
“Why, then, E Paranaki, you are welcome as the flower to the bee, as the sunshine to the sea, as the water to the fountain, as the wind is to the mountain. Welcome are these to each other. They belong to one another. As thy heart comes into mine, mine goes out to welcome thine. Forgive my foolish child rhyme, love, but it was taught me by my mother who is dead years ago, and to me, save to you, the words are sacred.”
“Speak ever thus, sunlight of my soul,” was the murmured reply; “'tis as the song of the Kokoromako, sweetest singer of the grove.”
“Paranaki, you spoke to my brother, you told him of our love?”
“I did.”
“He has spoken to me about it, and intends to speak to my father.”
“I have spoken to my father, and have gained his consent. He, too, will speak to your father, and when his consent is obtained we will marry, for—no, I will never leave here.”
“Why, Paranaki, should you think of leaving here?”
“I do not think of it, dearest. I have already refused.”
“Refused!—what?”
Frank explained to her the nature of the offer that had been made to him, and she listened attentively. As he went on her face grew dark, and a hard look stole over her expressive features.
“And this is what the Pakeha chiefs have offered?” she said at length, when he had finished his explanation.
“Yes, and I refused to accept it,” he replied lightly.
“But you cannot refuse, you must not refuse,” she said.
“Cannot? Must not? Why not?”
“I am but a girl and do not understand these things, but I am a Maori, and I know that a man must fight for his race. He must. He must, or the women will spit in his face, and drive him forth with reeds. The Pakehas are of your race, they summon you to fight, and you must go. Yes, you must. It will break my heart, I know, but that matters not. Love is sweet, but duty is sweeter. Yes, you must go.”
“But I will not go.”
“Yes, you will. What think you my brother would say? What would my father say? What would the men of our tribe say? They would kill you and me if I married a man who had refused to fight for his race.”
This was putting the matter in an entirely new light, and one Frank had not before thought of. He did not know what to say. He knew that, according to her view, she was right. The crime of refusing to fight for one's tribe when called on was of so heinous a nature as very rarely to be known, and to refuse to serve for no better reason that that he did not want to serve, or that he was in love, would have caused him to be the laughing stock of the country.
Then, again, the decided position taken up by Hine-Ra was not a little perplexing. She seemed so totally to subserve her feelings and wishes to the stern call of duty, so completely to accept the situation with its concomitant of, to her, a broken heart, that he was bewildered.
He knew—he felt that, according to strict Maori ethics, she was right. Man's first duty was to his tribe and race. That needed no argument. It was one of the laws on which their political organisation was built. As he was racking his brain for some suitable reply to make, he felt his mat twitched, and, turning round, faced a young Maori, one of the runners of the tribe famed for his fleetness.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Hake Hori wants to see you. He will meet you at a place where I will take you to-night, after sunset. He says, do not fail. Will you be ready to go with me?”
“I will be ready. At what time will you come?”
“At sundown I will be at your whare. It is not far.”
“Good. I will be there.”
Hake Hori, the mysterious Maori scout, he would be the man to consult in his present difficulty, and him he would consult. In the meantime he would see his friend Matariki, and impart to him the new complications in which he found himself involved.
He walked with Hine-Ra in the direction of the chief's whare, saying very little, for, to tell the truth, his mind was in a whirl, and he parted with her at the door, and went in search of her brother.
Soon he found him, and to him related the difficult position in which he was placed.
“Hine-Ra is right,” was the young chief's reply; “you must go.”
“But I do not wish to go.”
“Is, then, my brother—? No, I will not speak the word, for it is not true—but you must go.”
“Must?”
“Yes, must. You know our Maori laws. When once war is declared, the husband must leave his wife. He has no wife but his tribe. The lover must leave his beloved. He has no beloved, none, but his tribe. You are a Pakeha. The Pakehas are of your race, and you must fight for them.”
“But supposing Te Namas should cast in their lot with the Hau-Haus, and therefore be pitted against the whites, how could I, how can I lift my hand against you, my friend, my brother—against the tribe that has sheltered me and my father, against her—Hine-Ra? How could I?—how can I? No; it is impossible.”
“You do not understand. Were it merely a war by the Pakehas against the Maoris, then Te Nama would be among the first to oppose the pale faces. But it is not so. The tribes are at variance, bitter variance among themselves. We have a long score to settle with the Pateas, and—and—some others, and our revenge on them shall be terrible. I say, and my father says, it shall. Believe me, it will. Had we only our own interests to serve, I know what we should do at once. But there are other interests to consider. Fraud must be met with fraud, cunning with cunning. With you it is different. Your plain line of duty lies straight before you. You must go.”
“And lose, it may be, my friends, the only friends I have. More, cast aside my heart's fondest hopes, and all for this miserable quarrel about which I care nothing! Oh! Matariki, do you then cast me off?”
“Friendship is nothing. Love is nothing. To the Maori, fealty to his race is everything. Again, I say, you must go.”
“But, my friend—”
“Enough. My friend, my brother, dear to me as you are, if it must be so, it must. Ere two suns have set all will be known. The Tutungarau will have been danced, the Ngeri will have been sung, the Teawhakari will have been dug, the Keretohi built, and the Pitau launched. You will be far away. Farewell. Haere atu ra,” and, so saying, Matariki turned on his heel, with a warm clasp of Frank's hand, and left him to his own disquieting thoughts.
Frank Burnett felt himself in a dilemma from which he could not see the way to extricate himself; love on the one hand pointing in this direction, plain duty on the other in that. As men sometimes do in such circumstances, he felt angry, and still angrier because he knew that his anger was alike unreasonable and unreasoning. He was angry with everybody—his father, the British commander, Matariki, Hine-Ra, and, not least, with himself. He was angry because he knew his anger was wrong, and more, that it was of no avail.
There was no mistaking what both Hine-Ra and her brother had said. Love, so far as she was concerned, lay right at the other end of the line of duty, and by no other course could it be attained. The fiat had gone forth. The sentence had been recorded. His country called him; he must go. Hard and unsympathetic as that sentence was, he felt there was something noble in it. He had never been taught the virtue of patriotism, and yet he knew instinctively that his duty lay in the direction indicated, and even felt the amor patriæ glow in his bosom. Yes, he would go, and at once.
His preparations did not take long. In the Maori bush, and living a Maori life, one is not overburdened with what is very properly called impedimenta. Food may be had, such as it is, from almost every thicket of the grove and tree of the forest, a sleeping-place found under yonder clump of Veronica, or amid the yielding fern that clusters under the leafy Pohutukawa, whose flowers glow richly red against the sombre foliage of the bush. As for washing, why the next stream will answer all requirements in that respect, so that to travel a la Maori, it will be seen that one does not need a portmanteau. A skin rug or a flax or feather mat, either worn cloak fashion or carried swagwise, a sharp knife, a hatchet, a gun, plenty of powder and shot, and a flint and steel, and the wayfarer who “knows his way about” need not fear lack of food, drink, and shelter.
Of course, the first step was to inform his father of the sudden change in his resolution, and, although Mr. Burnett could not, or would not, see the matter of duty to his race from the same standpoint as the Maoris had, still he said nothing to cause him to forego his intention of joining the British forces.
On the contrary, he gave him a letter to the commander-in-chief in answer to the one he had received from that exalted functionary, and supplied him with a sum of money, an old-fashioned but valuable gold watch, and a Colt's revolver, a kind of firearm which Frank had never before seen. With the latter he gave him a stock of ammunition, and with all a stock of advice and instructions how to act and conduct himself in the, to him, new world in which he would soon find himself.
The parting with Hine-Ra and Matariki was brief; not much was said. The former shed some bitter tears at sending her lover away, it might be to death, but was none the less fixed in her purpose. They separated with many kisses and the sweet vows of constancy which young lovers exchange at these
The parting with Marutuahua the Rangitira, and the Arikis, Tohungas, and other chief men of the Hapu, was more lengthened and ceremonious. Frank was generally liked in the tribe, and had, of course, to submit to the prolix and verbose speeches usual on such occasions with what patience he might.
Shortly after sunset, then, all preliminaries being settled, and farewell visits of ceremony paid, he sought out the young Maori who had spoken to him that morning, and, with him as a guide, left the kainga of Te Nama amid loud shouts of “Haere atu ra” from the men and the Tangi of the women.
Hine-Ra, standing near the doorway of her father's whare, saw him descend the open slope, pause for a moment as he gained the
The heavy dew yet lay bright and unexhaled on every herb and flower, on bush and liane, on belt of fern and carpet of moss in one of the wild forest glades between the south-eastern spurs that serve as buttresses to the mighty snow-clad cone of Maunga Taranaki.
The morning wind was crisp and keen, and carried with it the thousand and one fresh and exhilarating odors that sweep across the New Zealand bush, and bear with them so fresh, so faintly pungent, and, withal, so life-giving an aroma.
The sun, the harbinger of day, had barely risen, although the warm and rosy light was tinging the fleecy clouds that floated, like the fairy isles of an enchanted sea, seen only in the dream of the lotus eater, over the azure depths beyond.
Birds of rich plumage flitted, meteor-like, amongst the thick boscage of their sequestered haunts, as yet unopened to the untiring and insatiate avarice of Europeans.
The solemn verdure of the mighty woods, thick set with giant trees, the fruit-bearing karamea, the kauri, the kohekohe, the purple-flowered kotukutuku, the kowhai, the tipau, the matai, the totara, and the glowing rata, mingled with the light and feathery fronds of the ferns, and the fan-like heads of the tall palms, while thousands of parasites hung from their branches, formed an almost impenetrable network, a barrier rendered still more difficult to overcome by the dense undergrowth of tutu, papai, fern and flax.
On such a scene the sweet dawn was breaking when two men, emerging from their rude couches of fern leaves under a thick veronica bush, which grew near a crystal rivulet, shook the dew from their hair and beards, and proceeded to heap fresh fuel on the camp-fire which smouldered low hard by.
Their first care was, of course, for the morning meal. This was easily prepared. With the aid of a loop of flax on the end of a koratti, a couple of wekas were easily snared, and these roasted, with the accompaniment of a handful of the edible pulp of the mamuka, made a plentiful and wholesome breakfast.
The two men ate their food in silence, never exchanging a word until they had finished, when the elder, biting off a piece of tobacco from a chunk he carried, emitted a low grunt by way of query.
They were, as will have been guessed, Jack Hall, the Maori scout,
For a while the two men sat silent, Jack Hall apparently buried in deep thought, and Frank waiting for him to speak. At last the latter opened the conversation.
“You sent for me,” he said; “I am here. What is it you require?”
“Much,” was the reply; “wait a little while until I think it out, and I will tell you. But come, let us be going forward. We can talk as well walking as sitting still.”
“Going forward?—yes, but whither?”
“For the present, to the first stage in the journey you have undertaken—to the head-quarters of the British troops at New Plymouth.”
Frank started in surprise. How could this man know of his errand? The guide had not told him, even if he knew, for, after bringing them together, he had departed without a word, carrying back with him Matariki's rifle which the scout had found in and carried away from the Patea whare.
“How did you know that I was going there?” asked Frank. “Is it possible that you are indeed the sorcerer they say you are, and that you can read the secrets of men's thoughts?”
“I know many things,” replied the scout with a grim smile. “As for my power, perhaps I have the gift that these ignorant Maoris call Makutu, perhaps not. Perhaps I possess a power far beyond what they ever dreamt of. Bah! why should I hide aught from you? My future is woven up with yours, I know not how at present, but I know that so it is. As for these benighted Maoris, they think I practice what they understand as magic, spells, incantations, sorcery—what you will. Why let them so think. But no, my divination comes from a far higher source. I am of the Romany race, the oldest people under the sun. I am the seventh son of a seventh son, and of the wise woman of my tribe. What I know is told me by the stars. What they tell me is fixed, immutable from bygone ages. Mine is the science of peoples now swept away, of peoples of whom the very language is forgotten, of the ancient Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the peoples of India, who built and excavated those prehistoric temples and caves that are yet the wonders of the world. But it is not divination that told me of your errand to-day. It is merely the exercise of common-sense.”
“As how?” asked Frank, wonderfully impressed by the strange language of the scout
“As thus. I knew the contents of the letter I gave your father, and I guessed the rest. I knew you would tell Hine-Ra and your friend, Matariki, and I knew also what they would say.”
“Hine-Ra?” said Frank, with a slight blush.
“Even Hine-Ra, the beautiful Hine-Ra,” returned the scout with a little laugh. “Think you I am so blind as not to see what even old Matutira could not fail to see. Well, she is a beautiful girl, and as good as she is beautiful. For her sake it was—hers and yours—that I interfered to save that brother of hers—who was fool enough to put his head into the lion's mouth—from the torture. But enough of this. You ask me what I require of you. That I will tell you at the proper time. At present I wish to show you something. Look round, and tell me if you know where you are.”
“I know that I am amongst the lower spurs of the Taranaki,” replied Frank, after a careful look round him. “I know the sea is over yonder, in the west, Opunake is there, and away to the north is New Plymouth, whither I am bound.”
“Yes; anything more?”
“Nothing more. The place is quite unfamiliar.”
“And yet you were here, almost on this very spot, a very few days since.”
“That I emerged from that terrible cave in the bowels of the earth somewhere in these mountains I know, but I have no idea of the spot. Is it near here?”
“It is close by, and it is that place I want to show you, and so to impress it on your memory that when the time comes—and that time will come—you may find it at once, and without fail. Now mark. Is there anything you can see hereabouts out of the common?”
“No; I do not think so.”
“See you yon huge tree with the bright red blossoms, on the summit of that ridge?”
“I do. It is a Pohutukawa.”
“Well, what do you make of that?”
“Nothing.”
“I am afraid you are not so observant as you might be. Do you know that the Phutukawa grows only by the sea-shore, while this—”
“Is growing in the mountains. Yes, that is strange, I admit.”
“It is the only one of its kind in all these ranges, and is there-fore a prominent object. Now, mark what I say, and remember. From this track, which you cannot miss, get that tree in an exact line with the vast moraine you see rifted in the cone of the mountain, as I do now.”
“Yes.”
“Now strike for the tree. Follow me.”
“Yes,” said Frank when the gigantic myrtle was reached; “what next?”
“Keep your eyes on the right, and step forward, counting your steps. Good. Now stop. How many steps?”
“Forty-seven.”
“Forty-seven; do not forget. You perceive opposite you a little rugged gorge or gully that runs off to your left. Look up it. You observe the—one, two, three—the third flax bush?”
“I do.”
“Behind that flax bush, and hidden in a maze of piti-piti, is the opening to that mysterious underground road by which you escaped from the cave of the witch, Matutira. Come and see.”
In truth it was the very spot, and Frank shuddered with awe and terror as he gazed into its yawning and dismal depths, and thought of the fearful peril he had passed through in his passage along its terrible solitudes.
From the spot where they stood it was about twenty-five miles to New Plymouth, the place of their destination, and they therefore lost no time in regaining the track and speeding on the journey. It was rough travelling over those steep spurs and rugged gullies, but they were both excellent bushmen and made little of the difficulty. Besides, Jack Hall knew every twist and turn of the road, every bypath, every ford, and every short cut, so that, starting as they had done in the early morning, it was not yet late in the day when they reached the settlement.
There the news was sufficiently startling. As Jack Hall had warned the forces under General Champion they were likely to do the Maoris in the Wereroa pah had made a sortie, hoping to take the British by a sudden surprise. The latter, however, were prepared, and a short but sanguinary conflict had taken place, the Maoris being driven back into their stronghold. Both sides claimed the victory, but who gained it was not clear. Certainly the Maoris were repulsed, but as General Champion withdrew from the siege, being called away to suppress the rebellion at other points, it would scarcely be fair to look upon the British as conquerors.
In other places, however, the British arms were victorious. Colonel Boston had dislodged a large body of natives from a strong position on a hill at Kohéroa. These had been sent from Ngarua-wahia to attack Auckland, but the rout was so decided that they had to escape by swimming the Maramarua creek or by ascending the Waikato river in canoes.
A thousand of them were also driven from a strong entrenchment at Mere-Mere. These, too, evacuated their pah and escaped in canoes along the flooded creeks.
At Rangiriri the Maoris concentrated their forces in a strong pah, which was attacked several times, with but little effect, all one afternoon and night, though in the morning the natives made an unconditional surrender, 185 prisoners and 175 stand of arms being taken. There were also several brushes at Te Awumutu and Rangiawhia, where the British arms were again victorious. As a
But the most stirring event of the war in this part of the island was the capture of Orakau, a strong pah lying about five miles south-east of Te Awumutu. Here three hundred of the fierce Uriweras were entrenched under the Ngatimanipoto leader, Rewi. The place was besieged by Brigadier General Rarey with a force of a thousand men, and, after several vain attempts had been made to carry it by storm, it was determined to take it by sap. The siege continued for three days.
Knowing there were women and children in the pah, Rarey sent an offer under a flag of truce that, if the besieged would surrender, their lives would be spared. The reply was not a little heroic—“This is the word of the Maori: Ka whawhai tonu! ake, ake, ake!” (We will fight for ever, and ever, and ever!) Rarey then urged them at least to send out the women and children. The answer was Spartan in its simplicity—“The women will fight as well as we.”
On the third day, however, having exhausted their food and water, the Maoris abandoned the pah, and, although many escaped through the British lines, very many were slain by a company of the Forest Rangers who intercepted them in their flight.
On his arrival at head-quarters, Frank Burnett was most kindly and cordially received by the officers in command, not only on account of the influence his father was known to possess with the powerful Te Nama tribe, but also on his own account, as one who, having been brought up among the Maoris, knew not only their language, but their habits, customs, prejudices, and bush tactics.
He was at once placed under the necessary drill as a cadet, and took part in many of the engagements and skirmishes which were going on from day to day; and when General Champion, with his force of nearly two thousand men, was despatched to quell the insurrection which had spread to the East Coast, he was for a time retained on the head-quarters staff as interpreter, an office, aided as he was by Jack Hall, he filled to the great satisfaction of his superiors.
By a kind of tacit understanding between them, the two, although frequent companions, never referred to what had occurred either in the cave or on the shoulder of Taranaki, or, if Frank did in advertently mention the matter, Jack immediately became reticent or changed the subject. The most he could be induced to say was, “All in good time, my lad; you'll know all about it at the proper moment.”
Meanwhile the time went on, and Frank rapidly picked up the details of his new profession. From his father and his friends of Te Nama he heard occasionally, and never without a message from Hine-Ra and Matariki. The tribe, however, remained strictly neutral, for Marutuahua, with the caution of his race, could not be induced, in the unsettled state of affairs, to declare for one side or the other.
At length the young cadet was considered fit for active service, and bad news having reached head-quarters from the East Coast, Frank and Jack Hall were hastily sent with despatches, the former being ordered to place himself under the command of General Champion.
Habited as Maoris, they plunged into the bush to traverse the wild mountain, river, and forest country between New Plymouth and Tauranga, a country infested by bands of disaffected savages, trusting to their knowledge of the New Zealand bush and their mother-wit to keep clear of danger. The road, or rather no road, was very long, about one hundred and fifty miles as the crow flies, and therefore much longer from the many detours they were obliged to make; but Jack Hall, the Maori scout, was an admirable companion, and did much to beguile the tedium of the way by his stories and reminiscences of his free gipsy life, and his diverting experiences as a travelling conjuror in the old country, and his adventures and and hairbreadth escapes in the new.
Camped by a stream in the heart of the thick forest, the log fire blazing merrily at their feet, and the blue smoke curling upward to the star-sprent sky, he would wile away the after supper hours by relating these stories, of which he seemed to have an inexhaustible fund, and never wearied of telling.
The red demon of war had expanded her blood-dropping wings, had waved her flaming torch over the land, and the whole of the middle portion of Te Ike o Maui was lighted by the lurid glow. Murder, rapine, desolation were on every hand and the wailing Tangi of the widow and the fatherless rose to high heaven mingled with the vengeful Ngeri of opposing tribes.
The thunder of artillery formed a solemn bass to the crackle and roll of musketry and the savage yells of infuriated savages. The smoke from scores of burning homesteads and erstwhile peaceful kaingas—sweet incense to Bellona and her handmaids, Blood, Fire, and Famine—darkened the sunlight, and the air was tainted with the rank fetor of carnage and death.
The fiat had gone forth, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Pakeha was pitted against Maori, Maori against Pakeha, and both were drunk with blood.
The god Tutewanawana had awakened from his sleep in the bowels of the earth, and his craving could only be satisfied with wholesale slaughter. The war-gong had been struck, the Tuahua had been erected, the Tutungarau had been danced, the Pitau had been launched, the Ngeri and Umere chanted, and, so far as the
From the Western side of the island, where the war of Pai Marire commenced, it rapidly spread to the eastward and northward, and the natives of the vast territory between Taupo Moana and Tauranga, the Ngatipoaoa, Ngaiterangi, Ngatiwhaka-aue, Ngatiraukawa, Te Whakatohea, Ngatipouri, Ngatituwharetoa, and other tribes, speedily became involved, and were obliged to take up arms, either in self-defence, or on one side or the other.
The struggle, besides being one between the rival races, soon assumed all the horrors of internecine war, aggravated by the delirium of religious frenzy and the mad turbulence of an ever-excitable, jealous, and sanguinary people.
The records of that terrible time are indeed written in characters of blood, which will not be effaced for many generations The vacillation and hesitancy, not to call it by a stronger term, displayed by General Champion in connection with the Wereroa pah, led to many disasters, involving much unnecessary bloodshed, the crowning one being the terrible and undoubted defeat of the British forces by Rawiri and his warriors at the Pukahinehine or Gate pah, about three miles from Tauranga.
The Gate pah, so called because it served as the passage from European to Maori land, stood on a ridge of land sloping into a morass on either side, and here was fought by far the most disastrous of all the disastrous engagements in the whole history of Anglo-Maori warfare.
Early in the year the Chief Rawiri, with a party of hostile natives, constructed this strong pah, and fortified it according to the most approved Maori plan of defence. On the summit of the ridge, which was about thirty feet high, they built an oblong redoubt seventy yards long by thirty deep, of strong palisades, surrounded by a post-and-rail fence. In it were three tiers of rifle pits, roofed over with manuka scrub and fern, there being a space between the edge of the pits and the eaves of the roofs so as to afford loop-holes for the muskets of the garrison. In addition to this, the ground outside the redoubt where the hill falls off into swamp was further protected by lines of rifle-pits.
The British forces, under General Champion, consisting of some seventeen hundred men, with fifteen pieces of ordnance, were encamped at a place called Te Papa, about three miles from the pah, which is said to have been manned by not more than three hundred Maoris.
After reconnoitring the position of the enemy, General Champion advanced and invested the pah, placing detachments of regulars and 370 men of the Naval Brigade in front, the artillery being planted in four batteries at varying distances. The attack was commenced by a feigned advance in front, under cover of which Colonel Frère led a body of men skilfully along the edge of the swamp on
At daybreak the British artillery began to play on the Maori position, but the wily savages, with wonderful astuteness, had planted a flag about a hundred yards in their rear, and the fire being directed at this, the shot flew over the pah, and only did damage to the British troops under Frère, who were behind. The storm of artillery lasted with little intermission until four in the afternoon, when, a breach having been made in the left angle of the redoubt large enough to tempt an assault, a rocket was sent up as a signal for attack. The storming party rushed at the double into the breach, the troops in rear simultaneously moving so as to cut off retreat. With but little loss the breach was gained and the main redoubt entered, and the fate of the Maoris seemed decided, for they retreated by the rear only to meet the bayonets of Frère's troops, when, with the courage of despair, finding themselves trapped, they rushed back into the redoubt, fighting like infuriated wild beasts. At this moment, when the pah appeared to be won, from some cause which has never been clearly explained, a panic seemed to seize the British troops, who retreated in headlong and terrible flight, yelling out, “There's thousands of them! there's thousands of them!”
Vainly did Captain Hazelton, with the Naval Brigade Reserve, endeavor to stem the tide. Just as he reached the breach, a bullet pierced his brain, and as he fell the entire force—storming party and reserve—retreated beyond reach of the enemy's fire.
It was, there is no use in denying it, an ignominious flight, and, deeming it unadvisable to renew the assault, General Champion erected a breastwork about one hundred yards in front of the pah, with the intention of again attacking it in the morning.
The Maoris, however, evacuated it during the night, stealing silently and unobserved through the lines of troops in the rear, and even carrying away many of their dead and wounded.
On entering the pah next morning, a terrible sight presented itself. Friend and foe, white and brown, lay in confusion, weltering in their commingled gore. Four captains of one regiment lay dead within as many square yards. Two brothers, a lieutenant and a captain, belonging to a family of heroes, were shot, the former in attempting to recover the body of his brother. An officer, one of the very few who had escaped the wreck of the Orpheus on the Manakau Bar, had been shot in the neck and through both cheeks, and had lived long enough to bind up his face with his handker-chief over his wounds. Colonel Routh, the gallant leader of the storming party, was mortally wounded in the spine. The general went to him, but the poor fellow felt the repulse too keenly, and turned away his face, saying—“General, I cannot look at you. I tried to carry out your orders, but we failed.” The loss on both sides was fearful, and it is said that one regiment lost, on this occasion, more officers than did any English regiment at Waterloo.
To the everlasting honor of Rawiri and his Maoris, let it be recorded that, in direct variance to Maori custom, in this terribly sanguinary engagement, when their angriest passions must have been aroused almost to madness, no mutilation of the dead took place. Not only were the bodies neither stripped nor injured, but the watches, rings and money of the dead were left untouched.
Let the name of a Maori brave, Henare Taratoa, be inscribed in letters of gold on the scroll of chivalric fame. Henare Taratoa, who, ignorant half-savage as he was, when one of the English wounded lay a dying, and thirsted for a drop of water to soothe his agony, stole, in the dark, with the tender courtesy of a Christian gentleman, at the risk of his own life, through the English sentries, and returned with water to quench his enemy's thirst.
Such was the disastrous state of affairs shortly before the arrival of Frank Burnett and the Maori scout at Tauranga. The soldiers and the sailors who had fallen at the Pukahinehine pah had been buried in the little cemetery on the tongue of land that faces the mount at Tauranga, by their shamed and grieving comrades, who burned to wipe off the disgrace of their unreasoning panic and flight.
Nor did they have to wait long for the opportunity, for scarcely two months had elapsed since the engagement at the Gate pah, than Rawiri, who had collected his scattered forces and reinforcements from other rebel tribes, in all numbering about six hundred men, entrenched himself in another strong position at Te Ranga, a place some four miles from the “Gate.”
Owing to the terrible slaughter of officers, Frank was duly appointed to a small command, and even Jack Hall, who, as a rule, avoided active fighting, for once took up arms in aid of the whites, and donned an uniform. The British made one determined dash at the pah, and took it at the point of the bayonet. The company to which Frank was attached greatly distinguished itself, and the young officer, by his coolness and bravery in action, attracted the notice of General Champion himself, and was honorably mentioned by him in the orders of the day, and had his commission immediately confirmed.
The struggle was a very short one. The Maoris fled with a loss of over 120 men, leaving their leader, the brave Rawiri, dead, with 67 of his companions, in their rifle-pits—graves which they themselves had dug.
But terrible news came from the south-west. The ferocious Hau-Haus were mustering at a place about seventy miles up the Wanganui river with the intention of descending on the flourishing and insufficiently protected settlement of Wanganui, near the mouth of the river, and of slaughtering the inhabitants.
In hot haste, Lieutenant Frank Burnett was despatched, with his chosen companion, Jack Hall, to make his way across the country to the Wanganui river, there to discover what he could of the movements of the enemy, and to proceed to the settlement, and there
This was a task far more difficult and dangerous than the previous one, inasmuch as not only were the rebels more numerous, but because, in order to render his mission of any special value, he must needs pass through a part of the country which was the very hotbed of the fanatic and barbarous Hau-Hauism itself. In truth, it was a perilous undertaking. But, equipped for the journey, they cheerfully set out amidst the hearty good wishes of their comrades, officers and men.
Not an hour passed during that long and wearisome tramp that they were not in danger, frequently in deadly peril. The hardships they had to undergo were simply terrible. For days they did not dare to make a fire, for fear it should attract the attention of some prowling parties of natives, and bring their vindictive foes down on them. Having no fires, they could not cook their food, and the wekas, on which they, to a great extent, subsisted, bad enough to eat when cooked, were, when raw, simply disgusting.
Added to this, the weather was unfavorable, and camping out, night after night, or day after day, beneath the ever-dripping foliage and soaked undergrowth of a New Zealand forest in a wet Autumn, is an experience which few indeed would be anxious to repeat.
Cautious, yet venturesome, daring, yet not rash, they often, after reaching the Hau-Hau country, lay hidden within ear-shot of their ruthless enemies, overhearing their plans and listening to their blood-curdling schemes for the torture and death of the detested Pakehas.
At length, after numerous escapes from detection, and weary, footsore, haggard, and well nigh exhausted from hunger and exposure, they gained the settlement and reported themselves. They had no written documents, their orders and instructions had been merely verbal, but their information was so precise and detailed as to leave no doubt of its authenticity.
They reported that there was no doubt that the Hau-Haus intended in a very few days at the latest to surprise the settlement and slay every man, woman, and child they could find. This information was conveyed to the friendly natives who lived in and about the place, and these, with a heroism and loyalty which did them infinite honor, determined to oppose the aggression, and sent a challenge to the Hau-Hau fanatics proposing that they should meet them in battle next day at the Island of Moutoa.
This challenge the Hau-Haus accepted, and, sweeping down the river in their canoes, they landed on the shingle spit of the island, where they found the friendlies waiting for them. For two hours they chanted their horrible incantations, barking like dogs, yelling Hau! Hau! and making mystic passes with their hands, believing that they were thus destroying the strength of their enemies. At length they joined in a hand-to-hand combat. At first, the friendlies
For the part the young lieutenant and scout had taken in this affair they were publicly thanked, and in recognition of the value of their arduous services they were rewarded, the one by promotion, the other pecuniarily. Wanganui was saved, and the Hau-Hau strength was, for the time, broken.
The snake was scotched, not killed. Severe as had been the loss of the Hau-Haus at Moutoa, and decided as had been their defeat, they still kept up a kind of guerilla warfare on the outlying settlers and the friendly natives, swooping down on them at unexpected places, and carrying fire and sword wherever they could find an unguarded spot.
They had betaken themselves to their almost inaccessible fastnesses in the Kaimanawa ranges on the upper Wanganui, and there, safely entrenched, bade defiance to the British forces, which were powerless to reach them.
The advantage was all on their side. The country was overgrown with dense forest and thick scrub, with wide patches of deep treacherous swamp, and dangerous narrow gloomy gorges to pass and steep rocky cliffs to climb, and, posted as they were at every point of vantage, it would indeed have gone hard with any invading force which might have ventured to attack, even if they could have found them, which was very questionable.
Certainly there was the river, which might have been navigated in boats, but that was as dangerous as the land, as from the thickly brushed banks the soldiers could have been picked off as they passed, without the power of reprisal, for, even had they landed, the tantalizing foe would have disappeared in the trackless recesses of the bush, only to re-appear as soon as they re-embarked. Besides that, a strong force was not available owing to so many points having to be garrisoned, and the Wanganui friendlies, who had done such good service at Moutoa, although willing to fight in defence of their own settlement when it was threatened, were totally averse to entering on so perilous an undertaking as an attack.
Again, the Hau-Haus had been joined by a well-known chief and famous warrior named Kawiti, who, with his fighting men, had espoused the Pai-Marire cause.
Thus it was that, along the coast, at least, there was, for a time, a cessation of hostilities, the British holding the disaffected natives in
The time hung heavily on the hands of Frank Burnett, for, having received no orders either to rejoin his regiment or to move on to headquarters at Taranaki, he felt himself bound to remain in the settlement until relieved. The fact was that, in the absence of active duty and of the excitement of a camp life, he was suffering from what the French call maladie du pays—the doctors, Nostalgia—and common people, home sickness.
It was more than three months since he had seen his father, or, what was still more to the purpose, Hine-Ra, and his heart yearned to feel the pressure of her soft hand in his, to hear the music of her eloquent words, to receive her sweet kisses on his lips.
True, he had written to his father, and had received an answer congratulating him on his promotion and conveying welcome messages from Hine-Ra and Matariki, but, beyond that, giving him no information, as it was necessary to be cautious for fear the runners who bore the messages should be captured, and the letters afford any intelligence to the rebels.
Frank had also written to head-quarters asking permission to join the forces at Taranaki, and to call at Opunake on his way thither, and he now waited impatiently the tardy answer to his request.
Jack Hall, who was equally impatient of the enforced inactivity, had taken to making long incursions into the bush, for no special reason that could be divined, unless it were through sheer lassitude and ennui.
One evening, after he had been absent from the settlement three days, he returned looking unusually thoughtful and pre-occupied. He at once sought Frank out, and, saying that he had something important to tell him, proposed a walk on the beach, where they could talk in private.
“Frank, lad,” he begun, “I'm afraid there is something serious in the wind.”
“Indeed,” was the reply; “what is it?”
“That I don't rightly know. Can't rightly guess. But that there's something I'll be sworn.”
“Yes.”
“Yes. I've been up the river, and I'm sure there's mischief afoot. The Pateas have declared for Hepanaia, and Te Namas, as I fancy, although I'm not quite sure, for the whites, and that means trouble. Besides that—”
“Yes, besides that?”
“Besides that, the Hau-Haus have been reinforced by Kawiti
No, I dont't think so. What was it?”
“Well, it was this way. It must be over forty years since it happened, but it'll show you what the Ngapuhi were then, ay, and what they are to this day. The Ngatimaru were one of the most powerful tribes in the Pohutukawa and Karaka country ot the Thames, and had a strong pah on a steep terrace at Totara. One day they saw many canoes of warriors in their war-paint paddling up the estuary of the Waihou. This was a war party of the Ngapuhi, led by old Hongi, who had sworn vengeance on the Ngatimaru for some affront they had put on him, or that he said that they had, which was much the same thing. When they reached the pah at Totara, they found it so strongly defended that they did not dare to attack it, but professed friendship and peace. They were admitted into the pah, and the day was passed in the korero and friendly trade. But at night, Hongi and his warriors attacked the pah and slew a thousand of his enemies; not only slew, but ate them, and to this day their bones may be found in the valley of the Waihou. Rauroha, the Ngatimaru chief, was killed amongst the others, and his daughter, Urimahia, and many other women of the tribe, were carried off as slaves to the Bay of Islands. And what the Ngapuhi did then the Ngapuhi would do now if they got the chance, for what says the Maori proverb?—‘The spirit of his ancestors must descend to the Maori.’ And so far it is true enough. The Ngapuhi of today inherits the treachery and bloodthirstiness of his forefathers: the treachery which caused Hongi to go to England professing himself a devout Christian, and to exchange the Bibles and other presents which he had received from King George for muskets wherewith to arm his tribe; and the bloodthirstiness which led him to slaughter the populous Ngatimaru and Ngatiwhatua tribes, leaving behind him when he went nothing of the inhabitants but their bones, which may be found, whitening in the soil where their pahs once stood, to this day.”
“Then what is it you fear?” asked Frank.
“Why this. If it be true that the Pateas have joined the Hau-Haus, and Te Nama the whites, there is bound to be war. Te Nama is powerful and brave, doubtless, but what could they do against the Hau-Hau Uriweras, the Ngapuhi, and the Pateas combined? Nothing. They would be slaughtered or driven into the sea to a man, ay, and to a woman and a child, for none would be spared.”
“What is to be done then?”
“Hine-Ra is there, the woman you love. Matariki is there, your friend. Your father is there. They must be warned, and quickly.”
“But surely the British protection—”
“Could do nothing against such an enemy in force. The British are scattered along the line. The attack, if one be intended, would be without warning, and the mischief would have been done. I may be wrong, but I believe the united tribes are preparing for some one grand movement, and all I can learn makes me think that it will be in the way I have indicated. If they succeed in destroying Te Nama, they will be in a position to force the Waimates to join them, and will then be stronger than ever.”
Frank strode to and fro perturbedly. “What is to be done?” he asked in an agony of doubt and dread. “Hine-Ra in danger, my father in danger, and I wasting my time here. What is to be done? What can be done? Oh, Jack, my friend, what do you propose to do?”
“Rather what do you propose to do?”
“To go. Leave or no leave, to go. To warn them, to fight for and with them, if need be. Oh, my love! my love! in peril, and I not there to stand by thy side, to save, or die for thee!”
“Good lad! good lad! I expected this from you. But it may not be. No, leave this affair in my hands. To leave your post without permission—you know what that means? Death. Death, my lad, by the bullets of your own comrades. Death, and dishonor too, that's worse.”
“But—”
“Say no more. I am ready, and will start before daylight. Come, let us return to the settlement. There will be plenty of time, plenty, I tell you. I know all the short cuts, and can make Opunake in a little over seventy miles. That, on a push, I can do in less than twenty hours, and it will take the Hau-Haus a good deal longer than that to travel from where they are, the way they must travel. Be of good heart, my lad. As I told you before, my life is in some way bound up in yours. I know not how as yet, but the stars have said so, and it is true.”
Frank was sorely perplexed and distressed. Again, it was a question between love and duty, and he knew not which to obey.
But fortune was more propitious than he had hoped. Arrived at the settlement, he found that a runner had just come in, bringing despatches. Amongst others was one ordering him to set out for head-quarters as soon as the next boat sailed, or sooner if practicable, and graciously acceding to his request to be permitted to call at Opunake for a few days on his way. He tossed the letter over to Jack Hall when he had read it, and jumped almost to the ceiling in sheer exuberance of delight.
He was for starting on the instant, but the scout calmed him down.
“No hurry, lad, no hurry. Get everything ready for an early start. Then a good night's rest, for you'll find a twenty hours' tramp through the bush, the way we shall go, will be no joke, even for your young limbs. To bed as soon as you can. I'll be here for you long before the sun is over the ranges. To bed, and get all the sleep you may. Good night.”
So says the lively Gaul; and it is true.
Long ere the sun had shot up from behind the wood-crowned heights in the East, bathing the blue-grey firmament in a flood of delicate rosy light that betokened the coming day, Frank and Jack Hall had left the sleeping settlement behind them, and with rapid footsteps were brushing off the dewdrops that hung like diamonds on the thick carpet of fern growing in rank luxuriance underfoot. Both were well armed, and clad in Maori costume.
Leaving the regular track, they plunged into the bush so as to avoid the sinuosities of the road, intending, by a series of bee lines from point to point, to dispense with much unnecessary travelling.
Jack Hall had not uttered a vain boast when he said he knew all the short cuts. By a kind of instinct, bred of his intimate acquaintance with the New Zealand forest, he seemed to avoid the denser underbrush, to skirt the swamps and morasses which abounded in the neighborhood, and invariably to strike the rivers and creeks at passable fords.
Still it was very difficult travelling, and it needed a man to make the best use of his eyesight to prevent being caught round the neck or tripped up underfoot by the myriad supple-jacks that hung like tangled network from the trees, and lay wreathed and meandering along the ground, hidden under the closely-growing fern, or to avoid plunging leg deep into some concealed root hole, or being caught in the tenacious grip of an innocent-looking lawyer bush with its thousand fishhook-like thorns.
But both the adventurers were accustomed to the kind of work they had in hand; both had plenty of endurance, and plenty of wind; and, scarcely pausing on their forced march to snatch a mouthful of food or a draught of water, they made rapid progress on their way.
Generally speaking, their route lay in a line with the sea coast, sometimes on one side of the regular road, sometimes on the other, keeping, as much as possible, within the intricacies of the bush, so as not to be observed by any straggling parties of Maoris who might happen to be wandering about.
As they neared the Waitotara river, it became doubly necessary to exercise caution, for they were approaching the Patea territory, and if it were true that that turbulent tribe had declared for the Hau-Haus, it was more than probable that scouts or runners would frequently be passing, to keep up communication between Rehua and the Hau-Hau leaders, Hepanaia and Kereopa, and the allied Ngapuhi.
Therefore, although they abated but little of their speed, they moved through the bush in Indian file, flitting from covert to covert noiselessly as shadows, and, leaving the coast, struck into the bush in
As they neared the head of the Wairoa, the sun was rapidly declining in the west, and the evening began to fall. There was a dead, dull stillness in the air, not a breath of wind to rustle the boscage overhead, scarcely the flutter of a bird's wings, the shrill piping of a weka, or the cat-like mew of a kakapo, to break the silence.
The two companions sped on, ever cautious, ever watchful.
But other eyes were as watchful as theirs.
“My lad,” said Jack Hall, in a low-guarded tone, “I don't half like the look of things. It doesn't seem natural.”
“Why, what's the matter?” asked Frank simply.
“Don't you see, there are no birds about? They've been frightened away by somebody. I can't see any sign of a trail, and yet I feel certain that there are Maoris not far off, or have been not long since. I seem to smell danger in the very air.”
“Well, what's to be done?”
“I don't know. That's the worst of it. If I knew where the danger lay, I might—Ha! what was that?”
Even as he uttered the ejaculation, there stepped from behind a thick clump of veronica, and directly in the path, a tall, stalwart Maori, who stood with folded arms, and said, gravely—
“Tena Koe, Aitimai. Who are my friends, that they come without warning into the country of the Uriwera?”
With the rapidity of thought, Frank had brought his rifle to the present, but the scout, laying his hand upon his arm, replied quietly, “My friend is mistaken; this is not the country of the Uriwera, and the way is open to all.”
The Maori smiled and bowed with grim courtesy, as he said—
“It is my friends who are mistaken. The way is not open. It is closed by the Pai Marire. But no more. My friends are hungry; the road from Wanganui is long, and they have travelled quickly. But the hawk flies faster than the pigeon. My friends were expected, and the Kai-Kai awaits them in the Kainga. Come, let them eat and sleep, for they need rest after their journey.”
“We need neither food nor rest,” replied Frank; “we are peaceful travellers, and have far to go, therefore deem us not churlish if we decline your offer, and hinder us not.”
“Nay, that may hardly be. The Maori cannot suffer his friends to go empty. The Wharepuni of the Uriweras will be honored by the presence of two such guests as Haki Hori, the famous magician, and the young Pakeha follower of the ‘lame seagull.’”
Frank started, and played with his rifle irresolutely. They were known then, and perhaps their errand guessed at.
As the Maori had indicated, they were expected. Had their conversation been overheard? Had they been watched by Hau-Hau
“The Maori is not wise to stay us on our journey; our rifles shoot far and true, and—”
“Fairly and softly, lad,” interrupted the scout; “let me deal with this fellow. We seek no quarrel with you or your party. We are simply travellers bound on our own business. Why do you interfere with us?”
The Maori smiled sardonically as he replied—
“The young Pakeha is very brave; we all know that; but it is he who is not wise. The Maori scout is very clever; we know that too; but he is very blind and deaf. He has walked into the trap with his eyes open. Let him see what he has led his young friend into.”
As he spoke he emitted a shrill cry, which was answered by a blood-curdling yell, as a hundred or more savages sprang from behind the bushes and trees on every hand, all armed with muskets pointed at the two adventurers.
Resistance was hopeless, that was clear. They were fairly entrapped, and must perforce yield. Frank would probably have fought it out, but the scout counselled surrender.
“We are helplessly caged,” he whispered hurriedly; “be it so. We must meet cunning with cunning, and will outwit the beggars yet. Leave it to me.”
Then, assuming an appearance of chagrin at having been outwitted, he addressed the Maori leader—
“It is true,” he said; “the Uriwera is as cunning as he is brave. The Pakeha is clever, but he is a baby to the Maori. Enough; we are your prisoners. It is my word.”
“Not prisoners,” returned the savage, silkily, but with a half-concealed sneer; “but guests, to be honored and treated with all respect. But come, the day wanes, and the Kai-Kai waits. Forward to the Kainga. It is not far, and the chiefs are impatient to welcome their visitors.”
Somewhat to their surprise, the two luckless captives were neither asked to give up their arms nor were bound. In fact, but that they knew they were practically prisoners, they were treated with as much consideration as though they had been ambassadors from some powerful ally, and their captors were more like a guard of honor than one of prisoners of war.
It was quite dark when they arrived at the rebel encampment, which was situated on a headland running out into a wide reach, almost a lake, on one of the affluents of the Wanganui river. It was approached only by a narrow tongue of land, and was strongly entrenched by earthworks, palisades, and rifle pits. Inside the pah, or Kainga, for it was only fenced on the land side, no little preparation had been made for the reception of the guests, as the Maori leader insisted on calling them.
Huge fires had been built in the open square, and the Wharepuni was ablaze with Maori lamps and furnished with piles of valuable mats. A gorgeous feast, from a Maori point of view, had been prepared, and they were invited to partake of it in company with the redoubtable chief Hepanaia himself and a number of the priests and other head men of the tribe; the other chiefs, Kereopa and Kawiti, being, as they supposed, at the principal stronghold further up the main stream.
Maori etiquette was strictly observed. The guests were pressed to partake of every delicacy the cuisine afforded, and were even offered beer and spirits, the spoil, doubtless, of some foray. Neither were they asked any questions as to where they were bound or what their business was, for the Hau-Hau chieftain could be as polite and gracious when policy required it, as he was ruthless and remorseless in war.
Neither Frank nor Jack Hall could understand this treatment. That it covered some deep design they were convinced, but what they could form no conception of. The most singular part of the whole was that they were not requested to lay aside their arms, and more singular still, they were indirectly but pointedly complimented on the skill they had displayed in making their rapid and difficult march from Tauranga to Wanganui.
The meal over, the Maoris withdrew with many effusive expressions of regard, and, the debris of the feast having been removed, the prisoners, or unwilling guests, were left to seek such repose as they might.
It need scarcely be said that neither of them felt much inclined for sleep. Of course they knew that escape was out of the question. They were too carefully and strongly guarded for that. Force was of no avail; they must employ finesse. But how? Even Jack Hall's repute as a wizard was of no avail here, for the Hau-Haus had discarded the traditions and superstitions of their forefathers, and had embraced the new religion of Pai Marire, which acknowledged neither Atua nor Irirangi, save through their own ruling spirit, the angel Gabriel.
Frank was sorely perplexed and troubled. The fate of the tribe amongst whom he had been brought up, and more than all, the fate of his beloved Hine-Ra, hung in his hands, and he was powerless to move. It was very bitter. The scout, less personally interested, and more, perhaps, of a philosopher, was less concerned, and sat calmly smoking, rather contentedly than otherwise.
After a long pause, Frank broke the silence by asking—
“Well, Jack, what do you think of it?”
“I think, my lad,” he replied, gracefully emitting a volume of smoke, “that we're in the two ends and the middle of about as queer a scrape as ever I found myself in, and at the present moment I'll be hanged if I can see my way out of it. What that blackguard Hepanaia means by it I can't imagine. Whether he intends to keep us
“Is there no way you can devise to get away from here?”
“None at present.”
“Couldn't you manage? Matariki told me of some wonderful power you had. I don't understand it—but couldn't you bring that to bear in some way?” asked Frank, anxiously.
The scout smiled grimly, as he replied—
“I've been thinking of that, lad, and if I had my materials here, my trained birds, and my chemicals, I might. But I haven't got 'em with me, and so it's no use talking of it. However, I'll see what's to be done to-morrow.”
“To-morrow,” groaned Frank, in agony of soul; “and in the meantime Hine-Ra may be in the power of—oh! I dare not think of it.”
“Ay, ay, poor lad, that's the trouble. But cheer up, keep a good heart, and, above all, a good face on it. What can't be cured must be endured, and we'll sleep on it.”
But they were not to sleep, or at least he was not to sleep just then, for at that moment Matene, one of the chief priests of the Pai-Marire was announced, and entered the Wharepuni. To this notable individual Frank took a dislike at sight. He was an elderly man, sleek and stout in physique, villainously cunning and treacherous-looking in feature, fawning and obsequious in manner, and oleaginous in speech.
After a few words of courtesy to Frank, he indicated that he wished to speak privately to the scout. The two went to the other side of the whare and entered into a conversation, which, as it was in a language or dialect unknown to Frank Burnett, was of course totally unintelligible to him, even if he could have heard it.
The conference lasted nearly an hour, the priest apparently coaxing and threatening by turns, and the scout listening stolidly and neither assenting to, nor dissenting from, what he said, further than to say he would think the matter over, and let him know next morning. With that he had to be contented, and at length took his departure.
“What's that old scoundrel been talking about?” queried Frank.
“That old scoundrel, as you call him, has been making proposals.”
“What proposals?—to let us go?”
“Well, hardly that, but, briefly, this: He wants us, you and me to join them, the Hau-Haus—you to drill and instruct the warriors in musketry and such like; me to act as scout and spy for them.”
“Join them! What! turn renegades?”
“Well, that's about the size of it.”
“Why, the old—’
“If we accept we shall be liberally rewarded with wealth and power; if we don't, why we shall have our throats cut.”
“Our throats cut?” exclaimed Frank, jumping up.
“That's the pleasant alternative—but easy, dear boy, easy does it.”
“And what did you say?”
“Me? Oh, I didn't say anything in particular. I told him I'd have to consult you.”
“Consult me? Why you don't imagine I'd—”
“I say easy does it. Keep cool. You do just as I do, say just as I say, and you shall see ‘the engineer hoist with his own petard,’ as the man in the play says. And now, to sleep, lad, to sleep.”
“But—”
“Not another word, to sleep; to sleep, to sleep.”
There was unwonted excitement in the Hau-Hau encampment the following morning. First because there was to be a grand Korero in relation to the two Pakeha prisoners, and second because during the night a considerable number of warriors had been sent away to join the forces of Kereopa and Kawiti on the Upper Patea River, with what object was only known to Hepanaia and Matene, but it was generally supposed for a raid on the coast, perhaps an attack on Taranaki itself.
The two prisoners were up betimes, and after a refreshing ablution and a hearty breakfast, were ready to attend at the Korero, to which it had been intimated to them they would be summoned during the morning. They were permitted to walk about in the square before the Wharepuni on condition of leaving their arms inside, which it was stipulated should not be touched, but the strong sentries posted all round showed how jealously they were guarded.
“Frank, lad, there's something brewing; I don't know what, but there is, and it's our business to find it out. Keep your eyes and your ears open, and mind what I told you last night. Do as I do, say as I say, and we'll trick the beggars yet.”
“Oh, this delay, this suspense is killing me. Hine-Ra, my father, Matariki, in danger, slaughtered, perhaps, by these savages, and me here helpless,” groaned poor Frank.
“Hope for the best, lad, hope for the best. I didn't sleep much last night, and if I did, it was with one eye open, ay, and both ears. There was something going on. There was a small war party came in from somewhere, and, if I'm not mistaken, a bigger one went out. Depend on it, there's something in the wind.”
“Oh! if it should be—”
“Let's hope not, lad. I know what you mean, but let's hope not. I could have sworn I recognised the voice of one of the runners who came in. And yet, he's a friendly, or was a friendly. I'm fairly puzzled. But wait, there's nothing for it but to wait; therefore patience, patience, lad, and shuffle the cards, and we may turn up trumps yet. If this were a straight game I should say we were unmistakeably enchred. But it's not a straight game, and what's more, it's not played out yet. Before it is, well—we shall see what we shall see.”
“I cannot have patience,” said Frank, passionately. “I would rather fight it out, make a bold dash for freedom, and if the worst come to the worst, why, let it come.”
“Time enough for that when all else fails,” replied the scout. “I know it is hard on you, lad, but I have a plan, a risky one, I admit, and I am thinking it out. Leave it to me. Watch, and wait,” and, with this vague consolation Frank was compelled to be content.
The hours sped slowly by, and it was quite noon before Jack Hall and the young officer were summoned to the Korero. Although they were received courteously, there was a marked difference in the demeanor of the chiefs and priests from that accorded them the day before. There was a curtness and decision in his tone as Hepanaia opened the conversation by saying, half-sneeringly—
“The Pakehas are welcome, albeit they come arrayed in garments which do not belong to them. The younger is a brave warrior, no doubt, and the elder a great magician. He can change men into birds, we are told, and bring down fire from heaven. So it is said, but Hepanaia is not Rehua, and he does not believe it. The eyes of the followers of Pai Marire are open, and they know better.”
Jack Hall looked straight into the eyes of the chief, who visibly quailed under his steadfast gaze, and replied sternly—
“Hepanaia is a great chief, and a wise, but he does not know everything. Let him not tempt the power of Haki Hori too far. We are here as friends at present. Let him not turn us into enemies, or it may be the worse for him and his tribe.”
These bold words were not without their effect. There was a whispered consultation among the Maoris, and Matene the Ariki took up the conversation.
“The Pakehas,” he said, “are here as friends, so they say, but that is yet to be seen. What have they to say to the proposal made to them last night?”
“This is no light thing you ask us to do,” replied the scout, gravely, “and we must know more, and be better assured before we answer. The words spoken by Matene in the whare last night, what were they? Wind. But the words spoken by the chiefs and Arikis and Tohungas in the Korero, they are not as idle breath. They are sacred. Therefore, here, and now, tell us what you would have us do, and what, and where, and how, our reward is to be, should we accept.”
This was a piece of diplomacy exactly suited to the Maori intelligence. They knew that a definite promise made in the Korero was as binding as anything could be, although, to tell the truth, that was not saying much, and Matene endeavored to avoid the responsibility by replying silkily—
“My words are not wind. What I promised in the whare is already ratified in the Korero.”
“Does Matene think the Pakehas are children, to be tickled by prattle, or Wekas that come to be snared at the hunter's whistle?” asked the scout scornfully. “Do the chiefs and others here know what Matene did promise in the whare? And if they do, how do we know that they do? No. The Maoris must tell us plainly, here, and now, what they mean.”
“The Pakeha forgets,” said the chief ironically, “that it is now for the Maori to command, and for him to submit; and if—”
“Ha!” interrupted the scout in a loud voice, “thou Hepanaia, would'st then threaten? I bid thee beware. Are, then, the Atuas, whose servant I am, dead? That we are in thy power I know. It is the will of the great Atua that it should be so. Why, I know not, but it is. But, proud chief, beware. Believe it or not, as thou wilt, I care nothing. Harm but a hair of our heads, and the vengeance of the gods—but I, too, now threaten, and threats are useless. The Pakehas are here to listen to the proposals of the Maoris. Let the Maoris speak, and speak fully, and we will reply. Not else. That is my word.”
The assemblage was startled, perhaps not a little frightened, at these bold words, for, although they had professedly embraced a new religion, the superstitions of their race were not wholly eradicated from their minds. Be that as it may, in the face of the firm stand made by Haki Hori, it was deemed best to come to a clear understanding.
The proposals, terms, and promises made the previous night were repeated and ratified by Hepanaia and the others, still further inducements being offered as the scout from time to time demanded them, and then there was silence to hear the Pakehas' reply.
It was brief, and to the point:
“E Rangitiras, Arikis, Tohungas, and wise men of the tribes,” said Jack Hall, “listen to my words. This is a great thing you ask us to do, and you know it. My young friend is a brave and skilful warrior, as you know, and I—but I need not speak of myself. The name and fame of Haki Hori is known to all the tribes from Otou, in the far north, to Mangatoetoe, in the south; from Whakaari, in the east, to Rahoti, in the west. True, we are Pakehas, but we are Maori in heart. This youth was brought up a Maori from his childhood: for me, let the moko on my face, the tiki on my breast, speak. What care we for the Pakeha more than for the Maori? Let my words be understood. The Pakeha pays well, but the Maori pays infinitely better. It is enough.”
This was a direct appeal to the avaricious side of the Maori character, which struck home, and a murmur of satisfaction ran through the assemblage.
“But,” he continued, “the Atua must be consulted. His will is supreme. Him will I consult to-day by my spells and conjurations that none else may see and live. To-day will I do this. If he says yes so be it. If no, it must be no. Let Hepanaia come to the whare after sunset, alone, and he shall have the answer. My young friend will speak for himself.”
Frank, who had hitherto taken no part in the proceedings, as he had been warned, briefly expressed himself as being bound by what Haki Hori agreed to.
But the chief did not appear quite satisfied.
“Come to the whare after nightfall?” he asked, dubiously.
“Even so,” was the reply. “If he fears to come alone—”
“Fears?” he exclaimed, angrily.
“If he fears, I say, let him bring his warriors.”
“The Pakeha is insolent,” he cried, hotly. “The Rangitira of the Uriweras knows not fear. I will be there, and, mark me, Pakeha, but that the interests of my tribe—”
“The interests of the Rangitira's tribe are not likely to gain much if he cannot control his temper,” replied the scout, coolly. “If I have said aught to offend, I am sorry. I meant no offence. But I must speak my mind.”
The threatened storm thus blew over, and the two Pakehas left the building.
For an hour or more they wandered about the place, mingling freely and on friendly terms with their captors, and partaking of the hospitality of the leader of the ambush into which they had fallen. Then they betook themselves to the whare, the young man to sleep, and Haki Hori ostensibly to consult the Atua on the momentous question which had to be decided.
Soon, very strange sounds were heard issuing from the interior of the whare, and voices appeared to come from all parts of the surrounding space, as if a number of unseen persons, disembodied spirits, it might be, were repairing to the place. The reader need hardly be told that this was caused by ventriloquism, in which art the scout was an adept, but it had the effect of causing the numerous guards to fall back to a wholesome distance, for Haki Hori's warning had not been forgotten.
“Frank, lad,” he commenced, when there was no danger of his being overheard, “we are in a tight place, there's no denying it, and we've got to get out of it to-night. It is as I feared. I learned enough to convince me that a war party has started to attack Te Nama, but when I cannot say; probably not for a couple of days or so, but we must be there first, and, what's more, we will, or at least I hope so.”
“But how are we to get away from here?” asked Frank, despondently. “Guarded as we are—”
“I am going to show you something, to tell you something I have never told before, at least not in this country. I am going to show you the secret of my wonderful power over the Maoris, for it is a power, and one which very few possess. I dare say, after what I have already told you, that you take me for a charlatan and an impostor. Well, perhaps I am a little of both. But there is no imposition in this, as you will see ere long.”
“What is it?” asked Frank, interested in spite of his gloomy fore-bodings.
“Did you ever read or hear of animal magnetism, mesmerism, electro-biology, or whatever else it may be called?”
“I fancy I have heard my father use the terms, but to me they convey no meaning whatever.”
“And yet that mesmerism is the very highest form and phase of what the Maoris call the Makutu itself, and the sorcery, witchcraft, magic, what you will, is only, in many instances, mesmerism in an uncomprehended and undeveloped stage. To the founders of my race, to the Magi of the East, who lived ages ago, the mysteries of this and other occult sciences were clear as daylight. But since then, one knows not where nor how the secrets have been lost. A dark wave of ignorance has swept over the world, and now your philosophers and teachers are groping in the gloom of the yet only dawning day. As one of the greatest of them said, they are only like children picking up pebbles on the sea shore, while the great ocean of truth lies undiscovered before them. To some of my race has the dread power been given, a power not to be used lightly, nor without due cause, and I, among others, have the gift.”
It was the second time the gipsy had spoken to Frank Burnett in this semi-mystic strain, and, sooth to say, the language was barely, if at all, within the grasp of his comprehension. He made no reply, and the scout continued—
“In your behalf, as in my own, will I try the effect of my power. I know, I felt, when I spoke to Hepanaia to-day that I could easily bring him within the influence, and to that end did I bid him to the whare to-night. He once here, and alone, the rest is easy.”
“But, great heavens!” exclaimed Frank; “what are you about to do? You surely would not murder the man in cold blood?”
“Who spoke of murder? Not I. Fear nothing. I will not harm him. I will merely cause him to release us.”
“Release us? and of his own free will?”
“Not so, not of his will, but of mine. But let it suffice. The hour draws nigh. Say nothing. Watch and listen, and you shall see and hear.”
“You talk strangely and promise strange things. I do not understand.”
“I promise nothing I do not think I can perform. I cannot explain. Such a power as I have spoken of I possess, but only over those who are susceptible. He is, I believe, susceptible, and by its
“And I, what shall I do?”
“As I have said. Watch, wait, say nothing, and follow my lead. Our rifles are there? Good. All is ready for the venture, and now silence.”
Hepanaia was as good as his word. Hardly had the rays of the sinking sunset shot their last glittering flash through the western bush, than, unaccompanied except by a body of armed warriors, who halted at a distance, the chief strode boldly up to the opening of the whare and claimed admittance.
“I am here,” he said, as in response to the invitation to enter, he stepped across the threshold. “I am here, and alone.”
“'Tis well,” replied Haki Hori. “I have consulted the Atuas and they have spoken.”
“Well?”
“It is well. The gods are propitious.”
The chief responded with a grunt of satisfaction. “And what say the Atuas?” he asked, half contemptuously, yet all eagerly.
“That is for thy private ear. Come apart that I may whisper the Irirangi into thine ear, for to no other must I deliver it.”
Taking the chief's hands in his, and leading him aside, the gipsy gazed steadfastly into his eyes and began to speak in a low monotone, which increased in intensity as he went on.
“Listen, oh Rangitira of the Uriwera, to the word of Uenguku, for from the eleventh heaven hath he spoken. To thee, Hepanaia, even to thee only, shall be shown the dark mystery of the future of the Maori race. It was to this end I sent for thee hither. It was to this end that, impelled by thy pride, but more by the mystic power thou could'st not withstand, thou camest alone. But not here shall the dread secret be made known. No, but at the head waters of the Wairoa, whither thou must lead us, me and this youth, at a spot I will show thee. Thee alone. Do'st thou understand?”
“Yes,” was the reply, given in a half-dazed way, “I understand, but I must consult—”
“Thou must consult no one. Thou must come, and at once,” interrupted the scout; then, loosing his hands, he made a rapid pass across his face, and continued, “Thou canst not speak, thou canst not move from the spot where thou standest until I give thee leave.”
In truth, the mysterious power of mesmerism had done its work thoroughly. The chief was fascinated, absolutely and entirely under the control of the operator, on whose brow, as Frank perceived, the perspiration stood out in large beads.
“It is enough,” whispered the scout to the latter; “he sleeps, and nothing can wake him until I will it. He will do my bidding now implicitly. Hand me my rifle, take your own, and let us begone, for every moment is precious.”
“But will they allow us to pass?”
“Yes, at his bidding, and he goes with us.”
“He goes with us! but how—”
“Ask no questions now,” replied the scout, sternly, “but let us go.” Then, turning to the chief, he said, impressively, “Come, the Atuas wait: lead the way, and bid the warriors let us pass. Thou hast a mission with us, and none must follow. Thou wilt return soon. Tell them that. Art thou ready?”
With a slight gesture he released Hepanaia from the statuesque position in which he stood, and the latter replied—
“I am ready; come.”
The way was open, and the party of three strode boldly forward through the pah, in the direction of the main land, uninterfered with. Certainly they were challenged by the sentries, but at a word from their powerful chief these fell back at once. Even Matene and several of the Arikis, who stood amazed at what they saw, and who attempted to intercept them, were silenced by the peremptory command of the Rangitira, whose word was law.
The narrow spit of land which connected the promontory on which the pah was erected was soon passed, and the party stood on the mainland beyond. But turning round, the scout saw that a number of men were preparing to follow, and he commanded the chief to bid them back. This was done, and the trio plunged into the recesses of the bush, and, under the guidance of their comatose leader, were soon threading the intricacies of the forest with comparative ease and rapidity.
To say that Frank was astonished at what had taken, and what was taking, place, would be but faintly to express his condition of mind. That a man of the character of the chief should so completely subordinate his will to that of another was totally beyond his conception, and he could only follow in silent amaze and profound bewilderment.
After a couple of hours' rapid walking, the Maori scout suddenly stopped.
“Here,” he said to the chief, “we part. The Atuas command that you shall return to the pah. The reason why you will know to-morrow. You will go, and should you meet any of your party you will bid them back. Tell them it is the command of the Atua Now go.”
Without a word, Hepanaia turned, and, retracing the track he had come by, was soon lost to sight in the gloom of the bush.
In reply to the enquiring look of Frank, who almost felt a kind of remorse at the strange trick which had been played, Jack Hall remarked—
“Have no compunction, lad, at what I've done. Did you notice they never once attempted to salute us with the Hongi? Did you not observe their unwillingness to make a promise at the Korero? Depend on it, all they wanted was to use us, and then, without a
Meanwhile, the successes of the British arms, and, to no little extent, the influence, persuasion, and promises of Richard Burnett, had at length induced Marutuahua and his tribe to come over to the English, and declare for, as it was called, the cause of peace and order.
Rehua, incited by his ferocious brother, Titokiti, and the Arikis of the Patea tribe, had professed himself in favor of the Hau-Haus, although he had not as yet absolutely entered upon open warfare. Still the pyre was ready, and it only needed the application of a spark to set alight the blazing fire of war along the west coast, as it already was in the interior and to the eastward.
The Waimates still remained strictly neutral, refusing absolutely to join either one side or the other, and thus, to some extent, aiding the British by acting as a kind of barrier to active operations by either party on their extensive stretch of territory.
It was not to be expected, however, that the bitter feud between Te Namas and the Pateas, who hated each other with an intensity of hate and jealousy, should, under this fresh development, long remain smouldering, the more especially as the Hau-Hau leaders, anxious to precipitate matters, desired nothing better than to involve their enemies Te Namas in war.
It was easily done. With a diabolical cunning, they laid their plans so that, while they themselves appeared to take no part in it, and, in fact, were understood to have withdrawn their forces from the neighborhood, Marutuahua was induced to enter into a war of retaliation.
Oh! it was a cunningly devised scheme, as will be seen, and possessed all the elements of that supreme deviltry for which they, and the notorious Te Kooti, were so celebrated, and which the whites so often found out to their cost.
Parties of the Pateas, under cover of night, landed at various points on Te Nama coast, killing, burning, and destroying the outlying crops. They did not attempt to attack the pah; the time
Burning with rage, and intent on vengeance, the astute Marutuahua lost his head, and allowed himself to be drawn into the trap. Hastily summoning his forces together, preparations were made for a raid on the Pateas. The usual preliminaries were gone through. The war dance was performed, the Ngeri was chanted, and the war canoes launched with the accompanying barbaric ceremonies. All the fighting men of the tribe were placed under arms, and soon the flotilla put off to sea, bent on inflicting a condign punishment on the marauding Pateas. The pah, left in charge of the old men, and the women and children of the tribe, was practically defenceless should a powerful enemy attack it. But that was not likely, for nearly the entire northern line as far as the Waimate territory was in the hands of the British.
But, likely or unlikely, it was done.
The Patea stronghold was attacked by the infuriated Namas, and, after fierce fighting, with considerable loss on both sides, Rehua, who was, after all, only a catspaw in the hands of Hepanaia and Kereopa, was obliged to retreat, leaving his pah to the mercy of the invaders. It was a victory for the latter, no doubt, but at what a cost?
Scarcely had Te Nama canoes got out of sight, when their weak fortress was suddenly attacked by a large body of Hau-Hau warriors, who appeared almost to spring out of the earth. They had—guided by the gigantic savage Tainui, who had been captured by the Hau-Haus, and also had, partly by threats, partly by promises of great reward, been induced to turn renegade, and to guide the invaders by a tract of almost impassable swamp and thick bush—passed through the British lines unnoticed. The fight, such as it was, was short, sharp, and decisive. The murderous mere and spear made quick work with the almost defenceless garrison. Men, women and children were ruthlessly slain, and, although a few prisoners were taken, bound and helpless, and a few escaped into the bush, nearly the whole of the inhabitants of the pah were left weltering in their gore.
But Tainui had a personal purpose to serve; revenge on the hated pakeha rival who had stolen from him, as he thought, the heart of the beautiful Hine-Ra, and love, if the bestial passion which inflamed his breast could be dignified by the name of love, for the girl herself. He had stipulated at the outset that she should be his prize as a reward for his services, although he knew well enough that the Hau-Hau leaders were as likely as not to refuse to keep their agreement.
Still he was no less cunning than ferocious, and had determined that, at all hazards, she should be his. Consequently, when the raid was made, he went straight for the whare where he knew she
True, her life was saved, but for what a fate was she reserved! To become the victim of the brutal passion of a being like that. Better death.
He, however, succeeded in inducing her to believe that he was there to protect her and to return her to her father, and in persuading her, while the Hau-Haus were intent on slaughter and plunder, to escape with him into the bush, and to remain concealed in a spot about half a mile distant, until he could return and conduct her to a place of still greater safety.
In the melee his absence with her was not noticed, and by the time he got back to the village the work of murder and spoliation was well nigh over. Half the whares were in flames, and the Hau-Hau leaders, having perpetrated their diabolical purpose, were busy marshalling their warriors for a rapid retreat back into their fastnesses beyond the reach of pursuit.
But Tainui had no intention of accompanying them, for the present, at all events. That would do when he had secured Hine-Ra, and he therefore lay perdu until they had gone. He knew that in the hurry much valuable spoil must have been overlooked and left behind, and some of that his natural cupidity made him determined to have.
No sooner, therefore, had the Hau-Haus quitted the scene of murder and rapine than he emerged from his hiding place, and speedily loaded himself with spoil, which he concealed in a suitable spot, ready for removal at a convenient time. He made a second journey, and a third; but, on approaching the village a fourth time, his footsteps were arrested by hearing voices, and at the same moment seeing two forms run rapidly up the open slope that led to the pah.
Too well he knew who they were, the Maori scout, Hake Hori, and the young Pakeha, Paranaki, his rival.
Not a moment was to be lost. He must convey Hine-Ra to a secure hiding place at once, for he knew that their first search would be for her. What more likely, however, than that they would follow in the track of the marauding party; still it was necessary to make all safe.
Crouching, or rather lying down, he quickly glided through the thick fern and undergrowth noiselessly as a serpent.
Soon he reached the spot where he had left Hine-Ra. With his natural cunning he had concocted a story calculated to induce her to accompany him further away from the village. But should she
“Quick, Hine,” he said when he rejoined her, “we must leave this place, and go further into the bush. The Hau-Haus have missed you and are in search. Come.”
But she had, even in her terror and misery, had time to think, and was, even at the moment when he arrived, preparing to fly from him. She knew that he had not been in the pah for some time. He must therefore have come with the attacking party, probably have guided them thither. She knew too that he was treacherous and pitiless, and she knew—none better—for a woman's knowledge of such things is intuitive, that if he had not absolutely persecuted her with his unwelcome attentions, it was only through fear of a speedy and condign punishment by her father and brother, and, ah! her lover. Was there anything more likely than that this was a trap to get her into his power?
Therefore she replied, “Whither would you take me? No, I will not go.”
“But, Hine-Ra,” he said, “the Hau-Haus will surely find you here, and—–”
“I care not, I tell you; I will not leave this spot—with you.”
There was an angry glitter in his eyes as he answered, “But I say you shall, you must.”
“You say,” she retorted scornfully. “Know you to whom you say ‘must?’ I am Hine-Ra, the Rangitira Wahine of Te Nama, and I command you to leave me.”
The lurking devil in his nature broke out at this. “You will not come!” he cried, “but you shall. Look you, Hine-Ra, I have loved you long with a love of an intensity that that pale-faced boy has no conception of. I hate him, and would have killed him if I could. You shall be mine, mine, if only to revenge myself on him. You have scorned me, I know it, and now you are mine, body and soul. Mine. Ha! ha! ha!” and he laughed in villainous triumph.
With a gasping sob, she turned to fly the spot, but he was too quick for her. With a deftness acquired by practice, and despite her struggles, he seized her, and in a few seconds had her bound round the ankles and wrists, and at his mercy. Then throwing her over his shoulder, as if to his bulk and strength the weight of her delicate form had been of no account, he strode through the tangled bush at a swift lope, regardless of her screams and pitiful cries for help, and headed for the thick forest at the base of the mountains.
“Help! help!” she shrieked. “Father! Matariki! Paranaki! Paranaki! Oh, my love, where are you?” In her struggles the bonds broke from her wrists, and, redoubling her cries, she beat her hands on the villain's head and neck in an agony of terror.
But all in vain, the dense forest drowned her voice. Alas! alas!
It was a sorry sight which greeted the eyes of Frank Burnett and Jack Hall as they rapidly ran up the slope that led to the pah. It was a terrible sight that met them as they entered the enclosure. The bodies of old men and young children, of women and girls, lay thick in twos and threes in the open square, or at the entrances to the whares, proving conclusively that the attack had been sudden and unexpected. The burnt huts were still smouldering, and there was not a sound, not a sign of life. Neither age nor sex had been spared. It had been a work of fiendish cruelty, of barbarous butchery, and none were left to tell the tale. But who had done it? That they knew too well. Where were the men, the natural protectors of these helpless ones? That they could not even guess at.
Sad, and sick at heart, Frank Burnett slowly strode towards the whare occupied by Hine-Ra, which had been spared from the flames. He was afraid to enter, lest his eyes should be blasted with the sight of a new Gorgon.
What if she lay there a mangled corpse, bedabbled in her own rich blood? Could he endure the sight? No. And yet he must enter. Even were it so, it was only one pang more.
No; she was not there. On the floor lay her rifle, and near it the body of a Maori with a blue-margined bullet wound, from which a few drops of clotted blood had trickled, in his forehead. She had done that.
Near him another, with his brain crushed in. But no Hine-Ra. Could she have escaped, or had she been, as was more likely, carried off a captive by the relentless Hau-Haus? Surely not, surely not. That were a fate worse even than death. Oh! it was too terrible, and Frank, unable to bear the weight of his anguish, sank down on a fallen log, and, burying his face in his hands, sobbed aloud, “Too late, too late.”
“Come, lad, come,” said Jack Hall after a while, laying his hand kindly on the youth's shoulder; “it's a bad job, I don't deny, but maybe not so bad as it looks. At all events, we must be up and doing.”
“Ay, up and doing,” cried Frank, springing to his feet, and waving his rifle wildly in the air. “Let us follow, and at least be revenged on these murderous fiends—–”
“As I've said before, easy does it, and, after all, it's their way of fighting; and if we were them, why, I suppose we should do the
It did not take them long. There was not a sign of life, the mere and the spear had made sure work, and none were left to tell the tale.
The whare of Mr. Burnett had been forcibly broken open and plundered. There were no signs of his presence, and the two men came to the conclusion, either that he had accompanied the men of the tribe on their expedition, whatever and wherever it was, or, as was more likely, that he had gone to New Plymouth on the business delegated to him by the British authorities.
It was easy enough to follow the retreat of the Hau-Haus; they had left a wide and well marked trail, and along this the two men sped rapidly in pursuit.
They had not, however, gone very far before they met, hobbling painfully along with a sprained ankle, and bleeding from a gashed cheek, a pitiable object, a mere girl, one of the captives who had been left behind unmissed in the hurried flight, and who was toiling back to regain what shelter the ruined pah might afford. From her they soon learnt all they sought to know. The Hau-Haus had carried off a number of women, but Hine-Ra was not among them. She was quite sure of that. She had seen her in the pah at the time of the attack, but not after. She had seen her in her own whare, and also seen three or four Maoris go into it. One was very tall and big. She was not sure, because he was painted, but she thought it was Tainui.
“Tainui!” shouted Jack, smiting his forehead with his open palm; “why what a fool I was not to have thought of that. I see the whole thing now.”
“Tainui?” questioned Frank. “What of him?”
“Tainui, the Maori whose voice I heard in the Uriwera pah—Tainui, who struck you down with the mere that night by the Opunake stream—Tainui, whom old Matutira left for dead in the bush. Yes, it's clear as daylight.”
“But,” said Frank, amazed, and not a little puzzled, “I don't understand. Why should Tainui attack me? I never—–”
“The reason is not far to seek. You loved Hine-Ra, and she you. Tainui, too, loved her, and therefore he hated you, and where the Maori hates he kills. Do you not perceive?”
“Tainui loved Hine-Ra? Impossible.”
“Not at all impossible. It is even so. Oh! the deep designing scoundrel! I see the whole affair. On some pretext, the warriors of the tribe have been drawn away, Tainui has led this party on the unprotected pah, and he, while the others have been intent on slaughter and plunder, has carried her off. Now I understand that scene in the whare. She was attacked by the two Hau-Haus, one she shot, the other was slain by Tainui.”
“Carried her off!” exclaimed Frank, in an agony of apprehension, “but how? where?”
“That we must find out. But come, we lose time. As we walk I will think.”
Swiftly retracing their footsteps, they soon regained the pah, scaring the hundreds of hawks and crows, and the packs of wild dogs, which had flocked thither, from their horrible feast.
Then came into play that wonderful power of observation and faculty of tracking which is to be gained only by years of experience in the bush, and which to the uninitiated seems little short of miraculous. A broken twig, a turned leaf, a bent blade of grass, the slightest, faintest indication suffices, and is as plain to the trained bushman as would be so many finger-posts to an ordinary traveller on the highway.
A rapid examination of Hine-Ra's room in the whare, a cast round it, and the trail was struck. The scout, with Frank close behind him, followed it as surely as the hound follows the scent.
“The marks here are of two persons. Yes, of the girl and Tainui,” said Jack, as he pursued his way, speaking more to himself than to his companion. “Yes, she has come willingly so far. Ha! what is this? Here has been a struggle. She has refused to go further. But there are other tracks here, all single. Which is the right one? Let me think. I have it. By thunder! if I didn't almost expect it. He has made for the mountains with her on his shoulder. Come!”
“But are you sure?” asked Frank, toiling almost breathlessly in the rear.
“Am I sure?” replied the scout, with a cry of joy. “What do you call this?” and he held up a tiny slipper of shark skin that lay in the path.
“It is her slipper, and she is in the power of that monstrous wretch,” exclaimed Frank, with a sinking at his heart. “Onward! onward!—quick! quick!”
But as they began to ascend, the country grew more open, stony, and devoid of vegetation, and the scout was obliged to moderate his pace, and ever and anon to stop to pick up the lost trail, for the wily savage had instinctively avoided as much as possible those places that would leave a mark. Still Jack went resolutely on with all the speed he might, with Frank following him closely, and chafing at the delay.
“Fairly and softly,” was the reply to the youth's exclamations of impatience. “If it be as I half suspect, we have him caged as safely as a rat in a trap. If not, he must stop to rest before long; anyway we must not lose the trail. Follow me, keep silence, don't interrupt, and all will be well, lad.”
The strength and power of endurance of the savage must have been marvellous, for, burdened as he was, the trail led steadily on, mile after mile, up the shoulder of the mountain, without a sign of
Would he reach the hiding place he sought?
On, ever on, by dense overgrowth and thorny brake, over slippery rock and treacherous morass, until, topping a rise, he descended the opposite slope into a rugged gorge, and threading his way through a mass of piti-piti, plunged boldly into a gloomy cavern which led to pitchy darkness deep in the bowels of the earth.
“I thought as much,” said Jack Hall, wiping the perspiration off his brow, as, an hour later, he stood with Frank at the mouth of the yawning chasm. “I suspected he'd make for here. Well, it's been a long chase, but the fox is run to earth at last. I can read his plan as plainly as a book. Here he intends to remain for a time with his captive, until he thinks the coast is clear, when it will be safe for him to convey her to those blackguard vagabonds at the head of the Patea, who will welcome him or anybody, provided he is rascal enough.”
Frank groaned in spirit at the thought of his beloved Hine-Ra buried in that dismal abyss, and at the mercy of such a remorseless villain. “What is to be done?” he asked.
“We must prepare to descend,” was the reply. “He, beside myself, Matutira, and now yourself, alone knows the secret of this passage, and some of its intricacies. We may have to search them. Come, cut some flax.”
A bundle of flax leaves was soon cut, split and twisted into cords, which, tied together, formed an aho or thin rope of considerable length and strength.
But while they were at work on them, the scout suddenly raised his hand to command silence. For a few seconds he listened intently, and then whispered, “Quick! hide behind that bush; he is coming up the passage; I saw the rope move. Don't stir. Leave him to me.”
Noiselessly and rapidly the two men concealed themselves, and in a few minutes the hideous face of the savage peered out of the opening. Pausing for an instant, he emerged from the cave, glancing warily round as if looking whether the coast were clear.
As he stepped forward, Jack Hall stole silently from behind the bush to a spot between him and the entrance, at the same time bringing his rifle to the present and cocking it. The ominous click startled him, and, turning rapidly round, and seeing by whom he was confronted, he uttered a wild yell, and sprang back as if to fly.
“Stop a bit, Tainui,” said the scout quietly; “you and I must have a little talk.”
The diabolical grin which had overspread his features when he
“Blow his brains out if he moves,” said Jack to his companion, who had also shown himself, “while I truss him up like a fowl.”
With a skill acquired by practice, the unhappy wretch was soon bound hand and foot, helpless, and totally unable to move. “And, now,” said Jack Hall, “tell us all about it.”
But Tainui obstinately refused to disclose anything. He denied, point blank, knowing anything of Hine-Ra, and said that he had sought the refuge of the cave to escape from the Hau-Haus, whose captive he had been, and whose vengeance he feared for having escaped from them.
“Very well,” said Jack, “since you say so, we're bound to believe you, of course, only we don't. But there's another little matter to explain. What about that patu on the head you gave to this young fellow by the Opunake stream, the day you were shot, you know?”
Tainui denied this also.
“No more lies, you dog,” said Jack, sternly. “It's your turn now, Frank, lad. There lies your would-be murderer at your feet; do as you will with him. Serve him as he would have served you, or, to be more merciful, blow his brains out at once.”
But this Frank was by no means prepared to do. To kill a man in fair fight was one thing, but to murder in cold blood—for it would be murder—one who was helplessly in his power was—well, it was cowardly and detestable. No, he would not, could not, commit such a deed of infamy.
“Good,” said Jack, “I expected as much from you. But we can't leave him here. He might catch cold. You must come with us, Tainui, and see us find this Hine-Ra whom you didn't bring hither.”
At first the savage was obstinate, but at length, yielding to certain practical arguments of the scout's, who had untied his feet, he accompanied them, sullenly enough, into the cavern.
They did not need to go far. Disclosed by the light of two lamps which Jack Hall had unearthed at the entrance, they came across the lovely maiden crouched in a recess in the rocky wall, her beautiful hair dishevelled, and her tender limbs bruised and torn by her rough journey through the bush.
With a shriek of delight she recognised Frank, and the lovers were in an instant locked in each other's arms in a transport of joy and thankfulness. Mutual questions and answers followed rapidly, and for a time they were oblivious of aught else, and even Jack Hall forgot himself in surveying their happiness.
But Tainui did not. While they were thus engaged, the cunning savage, who had by some means freed his hands from their bonds, had silently stepped back out of the circle of light, and when, a minute later, the scout turned round to speak to him, he found him—gone.
When Marutuahua, Mataraki, and the rest of Te Nama warriors returned to their pah after their only partially successful raid on the Pateas, what a sight met their horrified gaze! Their whares destroyed or despoiled of their treasures, and their relatives, fathers, mothers, wives, and children slain or carried away into captivity. It was indeed a terrible home-coming, and long and loud was the Tangi that ensued.
But thoughts of bitter vengeance followed hard upon these wild expressions of grief, and it was determined in the Korero that a deadly raid should be instituted to sweep the treacherous Hau-Haus —for to them was rightly imputed the catastrophe—from the face of the earth, so soon as opportunity offered.
The chief and his son were inconsolable. The light of their eyes, the pride of their hearts, Hine-Ra, daughter to one, sister to the other, was missing—was, as they surmised, either slain, or a slave in the kainga of her captors. But nothing could be done rashly, nor without due consideration and preparation. First of all, the British authorities, with whom the tribe was in league, must be informed of the occurrence, and their aid sought to punish the perpetrators of the outrage. To this end, then, Matariki, the son of the chief, was despatched to head-quarters at New Plymouth, to confer with their representative, Mr. Burnett, and through him to the officer commanding the British forces.
When Jack Hall missed Tainui from his side in the cavern, his first idea was for immediate pursuit, but his next was the question, what was he going to do with him if he captured him? “No,” he he said, laughingly, “let the fellow go; he is not likely to trouble anybody again on this side Taranaki, and he'll most likely make his way to the head of the Patea, if he doesn't meet his deserts either at the hands of the Hau-Haus or the Namas.”
But what was to be done with Hine-Ra, now she had been rescued from the power of the brutal Tainui? To return by the way they had come was dangerous, for, as the scout remarked, there was little doubt that after the trick they had played on Hepanaia and the Uriweras, a strong party would be sent out in pursuit, and that, as they had been able to track Tainui, so the Maoris would, in turn, be able to track them. While they were in the cavern they would be safe, and the better plan would be to escape by water. To this end Frank and the girl must follow the passage to the end by means of the guiding rope, while he went back and brought round a canoe to Matutira's cave, which should convey them back to a place of safety, either to Te Nama or to New Plymouth, as the case might be.
There was no denying the wisdom of this course, and, as the day was waning, it was determined to carry the plan out next morning. Certainly it was a dismal and cheerless place in which to spend the night, but at the extremity of the passage several lamps were kept, so that they would have light, while in the galleries running off it were plenty of chambers where Hine-Ra might be made fairly comfortable for the night.
They had no means of knowing the time, Frank having left his watch at Tauranga, so that it was late in the morning when the scout started to bring round the canoe, and swing back the huge stone which lay between them and the fresh free air and daylight.
But while they slept in their strange place of refuge fresh perils had arisen. It was even as the scout had suggested. The Uriweras, enraged at having been so skilfully tricked, had sent out a strong body of warriors in pursuit.
This party Tainui had fallen in with as they were about camping for the night on the shoulder of the mountain, being unable any longer to see the trail, and, mad with rage at his defeat, had by his representations induced to pursue the journey.
“You have the Pakeha swine, and what is more, the Rangitira Wahine no Te Nama, the peerless Hine-Ra, entrapped and at your mercy,” he said, “if you will be guided by me. They are in a cavern under the mountain, a cavern which has an outlet to the sea. What I tell you is no lie. Come with me and I will show you what to do, and they cannot escape.”
“You must tell us more, and show us that you can do what you say. Words are but wind,” replied the leader.
“My words are no wind, as you shall soon see. In half an hour I will show you the opening in the mountain. That you can easily block up by piling boulders over it. The other way they cannot escape by, for they have no canoe there. That I know. But there is a large war canoe at the mouth of the Waiweranui, near Parihaka, and that you can take unseen, and, entering the cave from the sea—I know the place and its secret—can kill them or take them alive, as you wish. I say they cannot escape. That is my word.”
After a short conference among the leaders of the party, it was determined to follow the advice of Tainui, giving him to understand that if he were deceiving them his life would be forfeit, a condition to which he cheerfully agreed.
To the entrance in the mountain he therefore led them, and, as noiselessly as they could, they blocked up the gullet where it narrowed a little way down, leaving half a dozen men to watch it, while the rest, some thirty in number, rapidly marched off to steal the Parihaka canoe and carry out the other part of the programme.
When the scout, therefore, in the morning, reached the mouth of the gallery, what was his astonishment to find egrees impossible. Similing grimly to himself, he muttered, “This, then, is your work, E Tainui. We shall have a bitter reckoning when we met again.
Retracing his steps a little way, he struck off to the northward, and presently emerged into the open air from a small bush-hidden orifice, on the other side of the spur of the mountain.
The sun was already up in the sky, and he lost no time in descending to the coast to a spot where, at the mouth of a small creek, he kept a canoe concealed.
Jumping into it, he pulled along the coast for the cavern in the cliffs; but what was his astonishment at seeing a large war canoe, fully manned, shoot round a headland to the southward, impelled by sturdy rowers, and apparently making for the same point.
They raised a yell of triumph when they caught sight of him, a yell that sent the blood surging in his veins, and impelled him to lay his entire strength into his work. It was a race for life. They had the greater speed, but he had the advantage of a shorter distance, so that he reached the cave fully five minutes before they did.
As he had expected, it was empty. Not an instant did it take him to leap ashore, to pull up his canoe on the beach, to fling open the rocking stone and close it after him with a loud noise.
But in his hurried passage through the cave he had picked up a small case which stood in a corner.
“Back! back!” he shouted to Frank and Hine-Ra, who stood amazed at his impetuous entrance. “Back! for your lives, along the passage, and shelter where you can in one of the side galleries. We are betrayed by that villain Tainui, and the Hau-Haus will be here in a couple of minutes. But fear not,” he continued, “they shall have such a reception as shall ring throughout the length and breadth of the land.”
“What are you about to do?” asked Frank.
“Ask no questions, but take the maiden to a place of safety along the gallery.”
As he spoke, and as Frank retreated up the passage, he quickly lifted a small cask to a spot opposite the opening, pulled out a spile in it, and plunged a double wire into the orifice, fastening it down with the spile. Then he retreated rapidly up the passage, unrolling the wire as he went.
There was no time to spare, for barely had he reached the side gallery where the youth and maiden were sheltered, when the stone swung back again, and the hideous face of Tainui appeared grinning ferociously at the opening. The cavern beyond was filled with a crowd of howling, yelling savages, eager for slaughter.
“What are you about to do?” again asked Frank, in a whisper.
“Silence, and listen,” was the reply.
Following Tainui, a dozen or more of the Maoris entered the passage, the rest crowding in at the doorway, when the scout gave a few rapid turns to the handle and pressed a key in the
The result was instantaneous and not the less terrible. With a roar and a crash like that of the loudest thunder, the cavity was filled with a blinding sheet of flame, the earth seemed to lift and fall again, the granite walls to rock, and the rugged roof to collapse. The horrid clang reverberated in a thousand echoes along the mysterious intricacies of the vault, and then the deafening tumult was followed by a deep silence, and the flash of flame by thick, blinding, suffocating smoke.
The scout had blown up the entrance to the cavern, and the entire war party had perished in the explosion.
But, like Samson, when he pulled down the temple on the heads of the Philistines, he had brought destruction on himself as well as his foes. A huge mass of rock, hurled with terrific force, had struck him full in the chest and crushed it in. He had slain his enemies, and in doing so he had also slain himself.
When the dense cloud of smoke had somewhat cleared away, Frank and Hine-Ra found him crouched against the wall in a corner of the gallery, livid with pain, and coughing up blood. The death damp stood thick on his brow, for the end was near, and he could barely speak.
Still with a struggle he whispered, as the paroxysm of coughing ceased: “I told you my life was bound up in yours, lad. I knew it, but not how. My death has sealed your happiness, and it is well so. I thought to have seen your wedding, but it was not to be. Frank—Hine-Ra—good-bye—if—–.” A torrent of blood choked his utterance, and with a convulsive shudder he fell forward, dead.
A bright sunny day and a blue sky in Auckland, six months later. There is an unwonted stir in the neighborhood of St. Paul's cathedral, and all the rank and fashion of the city have congregated within the walls of the sacred edifice, for to-day the gallant (and wealthy) Captain Francis Burnett, —th Regiment, only son of Richard Burnett, Esq., P.M., is to lead to the hymeneal altar Hine-Ra, daughter of the Rangitira Marutuahua no Te Nama.
It is a very imposing affiar indeed, for the whole of the officers in garrison, headed by the commander-in-chief himself, in all thier bravery of scarlet and gold, have assembled to do honor to the ceremony, and the bishop himself, aided by the Rev. Charles Chasuble and the Rev. Herbert Hood, is to perform it. There are other notables there, of course—ministers, secretaries, heads of departments, and the like; but their black coats are of no account
Mr. Burnett looks a little less bilious than usual, and the chief and Matariki, and some other chiefs of friendly tribes, look somewhat ill at ease in their unwonted European finery, and are especially nervous about their white gloves.
The bridegroom looks very handsome, albeit a little flurried, in his regimentals, and the bride—ah! the bride—well, she looks simply lovely.
It is necessary, I suppose, to describe her dress, for the benefit of the ladies. Well, I don't quite know myself; but this is how Madame Elise, the fashionable milliner, gushes over it, and, as she made it, I suppose she ought to know. All I know about it is that old Marutuahua grumbled most confoundedly when he had to pay for it, but that's no matter. However, “the bride, who looked really charming, was attired in a very pretty dress of white ivory satin, embroidered with fern leaves, broad white satin sash, and trimmed with orange blossom, lilies of the valley, jessamine and Edelweiss lace; veil, wreath, and pretty bouquet completing the toilet. She was attended by six bridesmaids, all of whom wore pretty dresses of blue tarlatan, with flounces of lace, the first four wearing lily wreaths and net veils, and the two smallest wearing a soft feathery head-dress, and carrying lovely baskets of ferns and flowers.”
As I have said, that is how Madame Elise described it, and to make sure I cut it out of the next day's newspaper myself.
The wedding breakfast was given at the residence of the bridegroom's father, and the happy couple departed on their honeymoon trip to Sydney the same afternoon amidst the customary shower of rice and old slippers. I believe that is the usual way to describe these matters.
The war is at an end. The Hau-Haus have been thoroughly defeated, and are completely demoralised. Hepanaia and Kereopa are both killed, so is Kawiti. Te Kooti has fled, no man knows whither. The disaffected tribes have returned to their allegiance—for the time—and white-winged peace broods over the land.
The feud between Te Namas and the Pateas has been patched up, Rehua having, in the face of the turn affairs have taken, been only too glad to get off with a severe wigging at the hands of the British authorities, and paying a heavy indemnity as compensation for the injuries sustained by Marutuahua at his hands, and forfeiting all claim to the disputed territory.
His turbulent brother, Titokiti, not so easily managed, has left the neighborhood, and with a handful of other disaffected spirits, chiefly mauvais sujets from the Uriwera, Ngapuhi, and Upper Patea tribes, keeps up a little insurrection of his own, directed mostly against the peaceable friendlies about the head of the Wanganui River, where, amid the fastnesses of that wild mountainous region, he has taken
Marutuahua has entered into a treaty, offensive and defensive, with his neighbors, the Waimates, and when, as is not unlikely, the alliance is cemented by the marriage of Matariki with the princess of that tribe, Te Nama will become the most powerful on the coast.
Matutira, the witch, and her familiar, Katipo, are alive still, and continue to inhabit the mysterious cavern, now more mysterious than ever.
And that reminds me. A little way back I described Frank Burnett as “the wealthy.” Out of evil frequently comes good, and so was it in this case. The explosion in the cavern shattered the rocky walls and roof as stated. But it did more, for on one side the whole of the wall was literally seamed with gold. As it was within his territory, the old chief claimed it, and, what is more, got it; but, as he divided it equally between his son, his daughter, and his prospective son-in-law, a considerable portion came to Frank.
In a quiet corner of the quiet cemetery at Opunake is a granite column, broken off in the middle, and on the base is cut in black letters the name of “John Hall, the Maori Scout.” “After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.”
Pull the string, Mr. Showman, and let us see one more picture.
Five years have come and gone. The scene is in a quiet and quaint little village nestling at the foot of the Cheshire side of the Derbyshire hills. It is a pretty place, this out of the way village, shadowed on one side by the great pine-clad mount known as Tegg's Ness, and on the other by the solemn Langley Wood, and watered by the babbling Bollin River, speeding its way to the distant Mersey.
Sloping up from the river is a spacious stretch of wooded park land, and, crowning an eminence, a quaint and many-gabled mansion known to the residents as “The Hall.”
From an open doorway emerges a tall, well-set and handsome gentleman, and following him a foreign-looking lady of startling grace and matronly loveliness. With her are two children, a boy and a girl—there was a baby, but that is with the angels. They have come that sweet soft spring morning to take a last look at the fair English landscape around, to be seen by them no more, for today they will be speeding as fast as steam can carry them to catch the outgoing mail steamer for the Antipodes. three years have they spent on English soil, and have got to know and love the country well.
But there is another land far away they love better, a land of mountains, of lakes, of rushing rivers, of gloomy forests, of shining ice peaks.
They gaze on the familiar scene until their eyes fill with tears.
“Darling,” says the lady in a low, soft voice, “this is very beautiful, but—–”
“Sweet one,” is the reply, spoken in her own musical tongue, which he uses only in moments of tender feeling, “I know your thought. It is also mine. Yes, it is very beautiful, but it is not home. No, it is not home. My heart yearns in unison with yours for ‘our ain countree.’ Thither will we go, and there, please heaven, will we remain until
the end.”
Note.—For the information of readers not conversant with the Maori language, I may explain that it contains only 14 letters, namely:—A, E, H, I, K, M, N, O, P, R, T, U, W, and Ng. The vowels are pronounced as in French, except U, which is pronounced like oo in boot, and the consonants as in English, except T, which is pronounced somewhat like the sharp th in apathy, sympathy, &c., or rather like tth cut short. Ng is pronounced like the n in the French word encore. Every vowel in Maori is pronounced, that is to say, every word is divided into as many syllables as possible, although the diphthongs are amalgamated or coalesced.
R. P. W.
Aho—Rope or twine of twisted flax.
Aitimai—“Welcome to you.”
Aotearoa—Literally ao, world, universe, or land; tea, white; and roa, long, the name given to New Zealand by the original Maori discoverers.
Apiti—A curse.
Ariki—Priest of the first-class. The first-born son of a chief is an Ariki by birthright.
Atua—A god, a demon, a spirit. This term is also sometimes applied to any moving substance, the cause of whose motion is not apparent, as a clock, or watch.
Atuakihiko—A spirit taking up its abode in some one's body, and through him speaking or prognosticating the future.
Aukati—The boundary of a sacred place. In this sense, within neutral territory.
E—Denotes the vocative case.
E Hoa—Oh, male friend!
Ekore—Young man.
E Ko—Oh, girl friend!
Ekui.—Oh, mother!
Haere atu ra—Go in peace.
Haka—A dance.
Hake—A bowl, a basin, a calabash.
Hapu—Tribe or family.
Hari—Solo in a canoe song.
Hau—Wind blowing through the hair, a token of the presence of the deity.
Haupapa—An ambuscade.
Hawaiki.—The tradition as preserved by Te Heuheu, a late chief of Taupo, is that their forefathers came from this place in nine large canoes. Hawaiki is supposed to be an island or islands in the South Seas, but not definitely known where. Some authorities contend that they came from Hawaii, i.e., Hawa-iki, Little or Fiery Java.
Hine-hine—A shrub (elæocarpus).
Hinè-Ra (literally Girl Sun or daylight, or, as we should say, Sun or Day Girl). Hinè (pronounced Hinny) is a Maori word for girl, and Ra for the sun, which is supposed to be feminine, and the wife of the moon, Marama, masculine.
Hoi-hoi—A horse.
Hongi—The salute by rubbing noses together. This is considered sacred by the Maoris. A chief, whose pah might be attacked, would save himself and tribe by thus saluting his enemy.
Hou—One of the first Maori chiefs who arrived in New Zealand.
Irirangi—A voice from heaven, the voice of the deity.
Kahaka—A calabash.
Kai-Kai—Food, a meal, sustenance.
Kainga—An unenclosed village or town.
Kaka—A kind of parrot.
Kakapo—A night parrot (strigops habroptilus), a kind of yellowish-green owl, which makes its nest in a hole in the ground.
Karakia—A hymn, the general name for religious rites or worship.
Karamea—A tree bearing fruit like an orange, its juice being bright red.
Kareao—A climbing shrub; the supple jack. (Ripogonum parviflorum.)
Katipo—This is the only poisonous insect or reptile known in New Zealand. It is a large spider, of which there are two kinds, one red, and one black with a red spot on its back.
Kauri—The monarch pine of the New Zealand forest. (Dammara Australis.)
Keretohi—Outer fence.
Kiwi—A small bird of the ostrich species. The Apteryx (Struthionidæ). It has merely rudimentary wings, and therefore cannot fly. The feathers are long and narrow, and are used by the Maoris for making their best mats.
Kohekohe—The New Zealand mahogany or cedar. (Hartighsea spectabilis.)
Kohoromako—The chief of New Zealand singing birds. (Authornis melanura.)
Kohowai—Red ochre; used as an ointment for wounds.
Koratti—A flax stalk.
Korero—Council or Parliament; assemblage for the purpose of talk or consultation.
Kotuhu—The large white crane.
Kowhai—Acacia bearing a yellow flower. (Edwardsia microphylla.)
Kuku—The wood pigeon. (Carpophaga, N.Z.)
Kumera—A kind of sweet potato.
Kupe—The first person to reach New Zealand. He came in the Canoe Mataorua from Haiwaiki. Hence the proverb, “I Kunei mai i ha Hawaiki, te kune kai te kune tangata.” (The seed of our coming is from Hawaiki, the seed of man.)
Kuri—A bushy-tailed, yellowish variety of the common dog, the wild dog of the Maoris. In its wild state it does not bark, but howls like the wolf.
Kuwaha—Entrance, doorway.
Lame Seagull—A derisive name given to one of the British commanders by the Maoris.
Makutu—Witchcraft, bewitching.
Mamuka, or Korau, or Pitau—A fern-tree of which the pulp is eaten. ( Cyathea medullaris.)
Manuka—A scrubby plant or small tree.
Mangatoetoe—Cape Palliser, the S.E. point of the North Island.
Maori—Pronounced conventially as if spelt Mow-rie, and signifying native—not black and akin to Moor, as has been said by some.
Marama—The moon (masculine).
Maripi—A knife, a sharp-cutting instrument.
Maru po—Midnight.
Mat—A blanket or cloak, made of flax or dogskin. Some of them are highly ornamental, being woven or plaited in various colored designs, and decorated with reeds, feathers, &c.
Matai—Pine (Podocarpus spicata).
Mata-Kiti—prophecy or divination.
Matua—Father.
Matariki—The Pleiades, the sign of winter; it is in the ascendant in May, the first month of the Maoris, and creates an important epoch in their agricultural operations.
Matutu—See Makutu.
Maui—The name signifies the asker, the enquirer.
Maunga—Mountain.
Mere—a club or axe or greenstone, bone, or wood. The latter kind is also called Patu, and is in shape something like a violin, often elaborately ornamented with carving.
Moa—A family of colossal birds, which has become extinct during the past century; in height, ranging from ten to fifteen feet, approximately wingless, and akin to the Kiwi, the emu, the ostrich, and the cassowary. (Dinornithidæ and Palapterygidæ.)
Moewha—A vision or dream.
Moko—The general name for tattooing on the face.
Morioris—A people dwelling in New Zealand antecedent to the Maoris. The tradition is that they were the oldest race on earth, and that they rode on Moas, which had then the gift of speech.
Mosquitos—None but those who have been in the West Coast bush of New Zealand can form an adequate idea of the ferocity and virulence of these insects, especially in swampy country. The torments inflicted by these rapacious bloodsuckers at night are only equalled by those caused by the sandflies by day, and I know of no other part of the Australian colonies, except perhaps the south shore of the Hunter river, between Ash Island and lake Macquarie, near Hexham, N.S.W., where the mosquitoes are so furious, or their bite so painful.
Nae-Nae—Mosquito.
Ngeri—War song or chorus.
Nga—The plural of the definite article.
Ngahui—The third person to reach New Zealand.
Nikau—A species of palm (areca sapida), one of the most remarkable of the living plants of New Zealand, representing the flora of the coal measures of Europe and America.
No, or O—Denotes the possessive case.
Nui—Small.
O—See No.
Otou—The North Cape of the North Island.
Pah—An enclosed fortification or village.
Pai-Marire—The religion of the Hau-Haus. Literally “good, gentle.”
Pakeha—A stranger, a foreigner. Pa-ke-ha, a person from a far distant country.
Papai, or Kuweo—A prickly plant (aciphylla squarosa).
Papa Kiri—A splint formed of the bark of a tree to suit the form of a wounded limb.
Parekura—A battle field, a place where persons are slain.
Patu—A stroke, a blow.
Pipiwharauroa—A cloud extending across the sky (commonly called Noah's Ark), which was supposed to be a sign of the arrival of strangers.
Pitau—War canoe with a carved stern.
Piti-piti—A burr-bearing plant (acæna sanguisorbæ).
Poaka—A pig, or wild pig.
Pohutukawa—a beautiful tree, which blooms at Christmas into masses of gorgeous crimson blossoms (metrosideros tomentosa).
Poi—ball, played with a string appended; also a game with the hands.
Ponga—A tree fern (Cyathea and Dicksonia).
Pounamu—Nephrite or jade stone, a very hard, semi-transparent green stone which is wrought by the Maoris into ear pendants, axe-heads, meres, &c.
Rahotu—Cape Egmont, the most westerly point of the North Island.
Rangitira—A gentleman, a chief, sometimes but incorrectly spelled Rangatira.
Rata—A tree, at first a climber; it throws out aerial roots, clasps the tree it clings to, and finally kills it. Bears a profusion of scarlet flowers. (Metrosideros robusta.)
Raupo—A flag or rush used in building houses. (Typha angustifolia.)
Rehua—The star Sirius.
Reinga—The place of spirits, supposed to be beyond Otou or North Cape, that being the extremity of the land northwards.
Roa—Long
Rotomahana, Rotorua, Wairakei—The two former lakes (Roto moaning a lake, Mahana warm, &c.), among the myriad thermal springs, steam jets, mud volcanoes, fumaroles, geysers, hot lakes, and other wonderful natural phenomena, which have deservedly caused the remarkable Hot Lake district of Auckland to be called the eighth, if indeed it be not the first, as being the greatest, wonder of the world. It lies inland of the Bay of Plenty, and generally between 38 deg. and 39 deg. S. lat., and 175 deg. 30 min., and 176 deg. 30 min. E. long., thus embracing an area of about 3850 square miles in round numbers. The pink and white terraces were looked upon as the most beautiful and perfect of their kind in the world, and attract numerous visitors from all parts during the summer season. For their accommodation, the townships of Ohinemutu (the place of the last maiden), Whakarewarewa (to keep floating), and others have been built, in which good hotel accommodation may be had, and where guides may
Ruapehu—A volcanic mountain in the North Island; the dwelling place of the great Atua, or god of gods.
Ruawahine—Female prophet, priestess.
Taipo—Evil spirit.
Takaro—To wrestle.
Tamahine—Daughter.
Tamaiti—Son.
Tangaika—An avenging war party.
Tangi—A cry or wailing.
Taokete—Husband of a sister, brother-in-law.
Tapu—Sacred, a sacred rite, a singular religious ceremony, the power of performing which is confined to the priests, and which gives them almost unlimited power over the community. The word means literally priestmarked.
Taro—An edible plant.
Taupo-Moana—A large lake in about the middle of the North Island.
Te—The definite article singular.
Te ahi a Maui—See Te Iti a Maui.
Teawhakari—Ditch.
Teina—Younger brother.
Te Hohioi (Harpagonis Moorei)—The great eagle—now nearly extinct.
Te iti a Maui (literally the fish of Maui)—The Maori name for the north island of New Zealand. Maui, one of the heroes of antiquity, was supposed to have been out fishing with his brothers, and, with the jawbone of his grandfather as a hook, to have pulled that part of New Zealand out of the water.
Tena-Koe—Salutation; literally, “Here you are.”
Tiki—A greenstone ornament or amulet suspended round the neck, and worn on the breast.
Timanga—Storehouse raised on posts.
Tipau or Mapau—Tree similar to beech (Myrsine Urvilliæ).
Tiwha—Red, a name applied to Europeans.
Tohunga—Priest of the second-class.
Toi Toi.—This graceful plant is a tall kind of rush or grass, growing to a height of ten or twelve feet, and having at the extremity of its stalk a thick plume or tassel of soft, silky, almost downy fibre. A number of these tassels form a most luxurious couch. (Arundo conspieua.)
Tokaro or Takaro—To wrestle.
Tongariro—A volcanic mountain in the North Island.
Totara—Pine; its timber is very durable. (Taxus.)
Toto Kuri.—The ear of a dog is slit, and the blood boiled; a remedy for spear, &c., wounds.
Totowake—Alternate parts or verses in a paddling song.
Tuahua—A post or stone stuck in the ground to which the priest prays for victory in war.
Tuakana—Elder brother.
Tuatara—An anomalous reptile peculiar to New Zealand, an object of terror and loathing to Maoris; a mythic dragon or enormous lizard. In one of the legends translated by Sir George Grey it is described thus:—“It lay there in size large as a monstrous whale, in shape like a hideous lizard; for in its huge head, its limbs, its tail, its scales, its tough skin, its sharp spines, yes, in all these it resembled a lizard.” The Tuatara was one of the factors of the god Tutewanawana.
Tui—A beautiful black bird, having two pendent white feathers on the throat, not unlike clerical bands; hence the name “Parson-bird,” given by settlers. (Prosthemadera, N.Z.)
Turi—The second person to reach New Zealand. He came in the canoe Aotea.
Tutewanawana—The father of reptiles, and god of war. See Tuatara.
Tutua—A poor or mean person.
Tutu—A fruit-bearing shrub; fruit hanging in bunches; the juice is sweet and harmless, but the seeds and leaves are highly poisonous to man and beast; it produces a black dye, also a red. A kind of wine or spirit is expressed from the fruit. ( Coriaria sarmentosa.)
Tutungarau—War dance.
Uenguku—God of the rainbow; the chief god of many tribes. He dwells in the highest or eleventh heaven. The feathers of the hawk are sacred to him.
Umere—Song repeated in dragging or launching a canoe.
Wahine—Woman, female.
Waikato—The largest river in New Zealand.
Wairoa—Long Water. Wai means water or river; and roa, long.
Waitorcke—The otter, the seal.
Waraki—European.
Weka—The Maori hen, a rail as large as a pullet.
Whaea—Mother.
Whakaari—East Cape.
Whanako—One who takes that to which he has no right, a robber.
Wherè—A house, hut, or habitation.
Wharekura (literally, Red house)—The meeting place or temple of the tribe. It has its high priest or Ariki (the head of a tribe or family is an Ariki by birth), its tohungas or priests of the second rank, its adytum, &c.
Wharepuni—Sleeping house, guest house.
Whenua—Country, land or territory.