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Mihawhenua: The Adventures of a Party of Tourists Amongst a Tribe of Maoris Discovered in Western Otago, New Zealand

Chapter XIX. Maori Theatricals

page 165

Chapter XIX. Maori Theatricals.

We did not reach the pa until near sunset of the second day after the eruption, having then been absent a week.

At the village we found everybody in a state of great consternation. The sounds of the volcanic disturbance had reached the pa, from which they could also see the intense glare in the sky and the large volumes of smoke sent up. The wind, blowing in that direction, had carried some of the lightest ashes as far as the village, and, being impregnated with sulphurous fames, these had created great disturbance in the minds of the Maoris.

Jars, whom I had gradually learned to distrust thoroughly, had taken advantage of our absence and the circumstance of the eruption to work upon the superstitions of the people. He had succeeded in some measure in convincing them that the startling phenomena which they had seen were owing to our agency.

It was thus that our return to the village was not attended with that cordial reception we should otherwise have received. It appeared that Jars had been instigating some members of the Council to have us accused of the deaths of Rimana and Onehini, which, he said, were clearly due to one of our party. Although he had not succeeded page 166in bringing about a formal accusation, he had raised against us the animosity of one or two influential members of the Council, which boded ill for our comfort in the future. Doubtless were we not so friendly with Te Kahu, or had we not proved of such service in arresting the advance of the war party who had intended attacking the pa, we might not have fared so well at the hands of the tribe in this treachery of the Frenchman. At first his antagonism did not reveal itself, and we had to contend against the secret influence of that worst of all enemies, the false friend. His underhand and treacherous proceedings were confined to attempts to poison the minds of several influential men of the tribe. In this he was ably seconded by his wife, who happened to be a relative of the missing man Rimana, and who consequently was easily prejudiced against the pakehas, who, she readily believed, had been the cause of her relative being lost.

The first direct evidence we had of the hostility of Jars occurred some days after our return to the pa, when we desired to make an expedition to the caves in which we had seen the drawings and writings. To Te Kahu, of course, we made known our desires, and prepared for setting out, without any thought as to the necessity of asking for a formal permission.

We were surprised, therefore, when Te Kahu informed us that a knowledge of our purpose had been imparted to the Ariki, and most exaggerated suggestions as to our intentions had been made, which had induced the Council to make known to him that the excursion should not be permitted. It was in vain that we complained of the page 167injustice of this proceeding, and declared the harmlessness of our object in wishing a further exploration of the caves. From our experience of a previous attempt to alter the decision of the Council, we should have been prepared for a disappointment. Te Kahu, however, gave us some gleam of hope by stating that on the first occasion on which we were in the vicinity of the caves, he would join us in visiting them. With this we had to be content for the present, but it redoubled my determination to beware of Jars in the future. The manner, too, in which he displayed his satisfaction with the success of his scheme, rendered it all the easier to penetrate the thin veneer of friendliness he continually wore over his malignant treachery.

We did not, however, pass the time without other small evidences of his attention, and more than once were subjected to petty annoyances, due to the agency either of his wife or himself.

For some days I had been continually thinking over the subject of our detention by the Maoris, and trying to devise some scheme by which we might get away, or perchance send word of our position to our friends.

First, I thought that possibly if we put written messages into bottles, and threw them into the river, they might be carried out to sea, and by some chance or other be picked up. This seemed a very feasible plan. There was only one difficulty—we had no bottles! No substitute suggested itself to me, nor could Gordon render any assistance. A float made of wood might not attraot attention. However, we determined to try this, and for several nights all page 168three were busy constructing different shaped floats of light wood, so contrived that we could deposit a letter within, and render it tolerably secure from injury from the water.

One evening, while we were engaged in this manner, Gordon had become very thoughtful after some animated chat on the subject of our experiences and hopes; he all at once started towards me, and, with an emphatic slap on the back, cried––

"By Jove! Brock, I have it!"

"Have what?" I enquired, jumping round.

"Why! a way to send a message," he replied, shortly. "Look here," he continued, as I gazed at him enquiringly, "you remember that kite Te Kahu used, to send word to his friends of our approach the day we came to the village?"

"Yes, of course I do," I returned.

"Well, if we could only get him to make us a kite like that, we might get a message sent away on a favourable breeze that would be carried to some township in the interior, and so reach our friends."

Gordon's face was ablaze with animated hope as he spoke. I became infused with a part of his enthusiasm, and replied cheerfully—

"The very thing, if we can only work it."

"We will work it! We must work it! We shall get Te Kahu to help us," said Gordon.

"Yes, but it must be without letting him know the object we have in view; and we must be careful to keep that infernal Frenchman in the dark."

After this we eagerly discussed the project, and deter-page 169mined that no time should be lost in asking Te Kahu to give us some further examples of his skill in kite-flying. Next day we accordingly preferred a request to Te Kahu, with the result that, as the afternoon was favourable, he got his kites out, and we accompanied him up the hill behind the village. The wind was blowing down the river, and from where we stood a direct line would reach a peak overlooking the river and the caves we had desired to explore. The first kite sent up by Te Kahu was weighted to reach and land on this peak, and we watched its progress with a considerable degree of interest. The skill of the Maori was not deficient, and he was rewarded by the kite touching ground a very short distance from the spot aimed at. Another kite was then despatched to reach the same spot, and, as if an affinity of attraction existed, it soared away until we saw it land only a few yards above the first kite. We then requested Te Kahu to send off one which would go over the hill. This he did somewhat reluctantly, as it involved the loss of a kite. He, however, prepared one of the least valuable of his kites, and despatched it on its way. Instead of flying in a direct line, as the others had done, it gradually rose up until it appeared to be riding on the breeze, and was then carried away over the hill and out of sight.

"How far will it go?" I enquired, after we lost sight of it.

"Far, far away towards the sea," said Te Kahu, "and come down on the moving waters and be lost."

There was a tinge of sadness in his voice that could not but impress us.

page 170

Gordon asked Te Kahu if he could not send up a kite that would continue rising for a certain time, and then descend gradually to earth again.

The Maori shook his head. He had never heard of such a thing.

"Gould he teach us to make and fly kites like that he had just despatched?" we enquired.

Yes, he could, and we would then be able to send up a kite that would fall with the evening breeze.

This was exactly what we wanted. We then sat down and examined minutely the one remaining kite that Te Kahu had. The construction of this seemed so simple that there appeared as if no great art were required to produce it, and we determined to try what we could do at once. The effects produced by Te Kahu were, however, so far beyond anything of the sort we had ever seen attempted, that we did not anticipate much success from our own unaided efforts. The issue, however, was so momentous, and what we desired to achieve so fall of consequence to us, that we made up our minds not to be thwarted by any ordinary difficulty.

When we returned to our whare we found that someone had been at work overhauling our wooden floats. We did not at first suspect any prying eyes, but on questioning Macdonald we found that he had not touched anything, but had been absent from the neighbourhood of the whare for over an hour collecting firewood. It was no doubt during this time that the disturbance of our property had taken place. Evidently, therefore, Jars had been playing the spy on us. He would not learn anything from what page 171could be seen as yet, but we must be particularly guarded for the future, and by no means let him become possessed of our intended use of these floats, or of any of the writing we proposed to entrust to them.

The consciousness that the steps we intended taking to ensure our release from Maoridom, or to communicate with the outer world, were surrounded by difficulty and danger, and might be attended with serious consequences if discovered, only stimulated me to greater determination and effort, and brought me to the resolution that nothing should defer them or stand in the way. Then I discussed seriously with my companions the action we intended taking, and the caution necessary to avoid raising the suspicions of Jars, or any of his Maori sympathisers, and to prevent their observation being directed to us.

That night Te Kahu invited us to be present at a theatrical performance given by the tribe in honour of the defeat of the war party encountered at the gorge. The entertainment had not begun when we reached the spot, but we had not long to wait. It was held in a large square in front of the chief's house. This was illuminated by two large fires kept blazing with light dry wood; one on each side of the place occupied by the performers. The audience, consisting of nearly every man, woman, and child in the village, were squatted in a crowd between the fires. Presently the noise of a war song was heard, which gradually increased into a yell, upon which a party of painted warriors, bedecked with feathers and fully armed, entered the stage portion and performed a short war dance; after which they retired. Then the real acting page 172of the evening began, and we saw many instances of the wonderful power of mimicry of the Maoris. The scene represented was the fight which had taken place at the gorge. Native actors were made up to represent Te Kahu and each of ourselves. Three men with whitened faces were intended for Gordon, Richards, and myself; while a fourth, representing Macdonald, was made up as a regular caricature of the Scotchman, so hideous and incongruous that I felt glad we had not brought Macdonald with us. The explosiveness of his blood would certainly have been brought into action, with consequences of no very comfortable nature, if not to the Maoris, most probably to himself.

The chief incidents of the engagement were faithfully and laboriously gone through, the performance for the most part consisting of dumb show.

We could not help being amused at the art displayed by the Maori actors in depicting ourselves, nor gratified with the prominent part we were represented as taking in the destruction of the advancing foe.

The grim and ghastly spectacle of the wholesale destruction of the crowd of humanity wedged in between the walls of the gorge was recalled to my mind by the burlesque action of the mimic slaughter enacted before us. I doubt if ever an auditor witnessed a stage representation of his own person with less satisfaction than I did on that occasion. There was, of course, the discomforting recalling of the death of our friend—an experience that could not fail to lend gloom to the evening. I noticed with some pride, however, that the truly heroic nature of poor Richards' act page 173was not lost on the Maoris, and that they awarded him the prominent place his conduct deserved, and also that great shouts of applause and commendation greeted the part he was represented as taking in the melée.

The audience around us watched narrowly the way in which we took the performance, and our applause of the actors gave great satisfaction both to performers and listeners. I was not sorry, however, when the gruesome spectacle ended, and we were able to escape to the privacy of our own quarters.