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Dickey Barrett: with his ancient mariners and much more ancient cannon! At the siege of Moturoa: Being a realistic story of the rough old times in New Zealand, among the turbulent Maoris, and the adventurous whalers, ere settlement took place.

Chapter IX. The Feast

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Chapter IX. The Feast.

By all accounts to hand, the year 1831, in New Zealand, bore the reputation as having been one of the earliest and finest springs on record. The sun had just crossed the equinox into the tropic of Capricorn, as the day of this sometime previously talked of feast came on. Upon this highly favoured region of the earth, for weeks together, old Sol and all the orbs in the canopy had diffused their radiant lights, uneclipsed by any perceptible vapour. An inexpressible, enthralling sweetness pervades these remote islands when spring withholds for awhile her intermittingly aeriform blusters, and her exuberant tears. Such awakens all life into joyous-like vivacity, instilling into the human portion, on witnessing the reinvigorated animation around, a consciousness of Benign dispensation. The Great Pacific here, during such a salubriously atmospheric continuity, is like unto an elaborate opal-table extending as far as the eye can reach. The win-ling shore has its high beetling cliffs, and likewise its wavy-like rolling downs, and alike are they each attractive from the myriad-figured colours which Flora over them at this season in profusion strews. On inland forest glades, the dreamy murmur of the distant pellucid flowing brooks, is accompanied by the short and tender wooing madrigals of the Feathered family. The flocks of wild geese, gannets, and swans float leisurely in the still air overhead, with an imperturbability, born perchance from the prospects of continuous stormless hours. The whole of ambient space, too, at this season, is redolent with the exhalations of aromatic vegetation: the galaxy of diversified beauteous tableaus here, which the retina of the eve takes in, involuntarily generates in the intellectuals observer, an idea of that interminable beatitude which ever is panted after, and which ever kindly Hope inspires!

All save the wretched slave cooks, and their motley attendants were, upon this special red letter day, strutting consequentially-like, about Ngamotu pab in their gayest coverings—such as these were. A considerable number of small woollen-shawls, with garishly enlivening devices and colors, had, just in the nick of time, been landed from the “Flyingfish,” which the females wore as a kilt about their plump round page 55 ed loins, and which the men wore as a sash round their naked shoulders. The latter had new flax mats, called Pongi, of their own manufacture, as girdles around their flanks; the chief feathers of the gannet stuck fastidiously among the hair of their heads; and, the former had necklaces and bodice from artistiquely plaited coriaras, wore broad chaplets constructed out of strips from the bark of the karamo shrub; a few with flowers and feathers in their hair, paint, charcoal, and petals of flowers on their faces; their most distinguished wahines crowned with the gaudy huia-bird inanimate! Boots nor stockings—these, then, were not in the category of their necessary essentials. But, really, impartially speaking, scant, admittedly, as were the vestments used, they certainly, for all that, displayed much more picturesqueness with them, if not quite so methodical, as can be anywhere seen in crowded feasts or fairs in Europe.

Seats at the feast were to be taken when the first afternoon shadow came on a certain triangular line on the breast of Paritutu. There was a nice sloping green hill, quite convenient to the big pah, all marked out in divers sized oblongs—one of which, to each hapu respectively, was allotted. Of course, there were no such things as the luxury of tables and chairs, in those times, anywhere seen about. Still, the close, stiff, plastic mould, was so ingeniously hewn out, as to be quite well adapted to the style of banquetting then, which these semi-humanised people pursued. Each had sufficient squatting room afforded him, and a slight elevation on their front, whereon the sundry viands could be, whenever required, conveniently placed. There were there, likewise, the sturdy, rollicking British seamen, in their white moles, their blue guernseys, and their flat-crowned blue cloth caps, aslant on their heads in a jaunty fashion, with ribbons at the side. And these seemed all quite at home, that is to say, with the general conduct and arrangements pertaining to the feast. Te Puki, with his well-developed and comely young daughter, by his side, like to the Great Alexander and Thais, sat at the head of the farthest up oblong, on this incline which was occupied, in addition to himself and daughter, by a few of his most intimate friends. The other chiefs superintended the proceedings of their own people in their allotted oblongs. The steaming kits, choke full of flesh, fowl, fish, taros, potatoes, kumeros and kumikums, which were placed in front of them. Gracious alive! any stranger looking on would have been bound to have had, at once engendered, sceptical ideas as to their capacity of, at one bout, being enabled to have consumed more than half of the viands But lo! how all incredulity of the power of deglutition of these human cormorants would have instantly vanished, when the first course on the menu was entirely absorbed, and also, four or five others, equally as elaborate, which came on the back of it, served in precisely the same way. There they sate and gorged at the toothsome tit-bits to the very point of displosion. Thanks to the neighbourly whalers, they, the Natives, had no need to resort to their customary indigenous beverages. They were now, every man amongst them, quite conversant with the page 56 compounds of London, Lisbon, Jamaica, and even the Isle of Skye: and, of which, manifestly, they were infinitely more enamoured. True! there were a few honey-conserved berries for dessert, but such did not relish at all upon the top of rum and whiskey. Thereupon, through the aforesaid mutability of taste, the women and the children had a desirable monopoly of the fruit.

But, O, exalted Cæsar! whatever, startled readers, shall be said to this? These children of the wild desert waste here, had actually brought into practice, at this early period, at such-like banquets and carousals, the practice co-eval with the British Constitution itself, of tossing each other in full bumpers!—setting forth, after the excellent manner of their prototype, either their friends or that of their own very questionable inborn qualifications! These pages, delicate reader, ought not really to be occupied with such fulsome grandiloquence, as was lavishly paid out on this occasion; but, unless you are provided specimens, how can any judgment be given? Waiwara, a Waitara chief, was the foremost, after the ponderous gorge, to rise with, apparently, much difficulty, upon his feet, to confabulate. Thus delivering himself in the Maori tongue:

“Salutations, O, Te Puki! Salutations, O, Rawhinia! Salutations to the chiefs from the directions of the four winds! My heart rejoices very much at all which I here see. But rats, as is well known, often will spoil the gladness of the harvest, and the child cries the most that's disturbed from a pleasant dream. Should trouble come on the heels of this feasting, and a man with a strong arm, swift feet, and quick far-seeing eye be wanted, I am He! Yes, I am He! That's all!”

Then rose Porokope, of Tataraimaka, saying: “Salutations to Te Puki, and the remnant of his line! Salutations also to all the Great Chiefs here along with their own People! Should anyone be wanted to turn aside the whale when the canoe is in danger, He is here! before you all at this moment—here! Should the evil day come when Te Puki and his very fine daughter gets upset with the work which the tornado produces, and a man to shield them from the flying debris is required—I am He! I am he! Lo! here he is before you! That's all!”

When Porokope got seated, up then got Ranea, of the Hua, and spoke thus: “Te Puki and his nui nui pai [offspring], the matchless Rawhinia! and all the people under their own great chiefs—Salutations to you all. If limbs are required for overtaking the enemy, and arms to annihilate him when that he is reached—here they are! Here they are! If a man is desirable for Rawhinia, to protect her from the fury of the hot broiling sun, and the extreme cold of black midnight, who will keep her pure and unspotted as a young seagull—here, look upon me, all ye people—look! I am the man, who will spread more terror than a thousand carved images upon the palisading round the pah! Who, I say, shall do all these things? Here he is! Lo! I am He! I am He!— the man who is now addressing here, at this time, the people. I am He!”

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Then upstarted on his legs the Ngamutu great generalissimo Whara Pori, unostentatiously saluting all, and merely said: “The might of some men now, I come to know, lies in their tongue—understand! Now I have no more to say.” This was all the harangue which Pori made.

Lastly, Dickey Barrett stood erect: saluted all those here gathered together, and gave loud utterance to these very words: “People all! If Te Puki, and she, lately, who by a good providence is restored to his arms, relies through wedlock for a prop on windy voices, fallacious assurances, and ridiculous and absurd conceits,—I am not he! I am not he! These few words is all, this day, my speech!”

These words, together with what Whara Pori had uttered, instantly aroused most appalling and wrathful commotion among the visiting chiefs, insomuch, indeed, as the face of Te Puki whitened with inward trembling, apprehensive of unseemly proceedings being about to mar the harmony of the feast. These bellicose chieftains all stood up in the midst of their people, in their own alotted ground, with livid countenances, threatenings, in their deep hoarse voices, and open defiance in their posture. They gesticulated just as if they meant that the whole world would stand aghast at the frightsome manifestations of their terrible wrath. The staring manner they turned up the whites of their eyes, widened their purple pulsating nostrils, showed their white gleaming teeth, and protruded their red tongues between, was a sight by those who saw them, not very readily forgot. A few of the whalers, who had now lived many years in Maori land, declared that it was, doubtlessly, shaping for the greatest “shindy” in any one of their several experiences with the “swarths,” when Pori, who had silently sat all the while with his chin on his breast, and thoughtfully looking down to his knees, at length slowly arose erect, and quietly asked the people if there were any among them felt acowed at the blowing-off of a whale, so as to interfere with the action they ought promptly to take to secure the spoil? “If not so, then how do you allow this wind-bellowing of a few to stop the harmony of the whole? Better a dead moa, I say, than that every woman and child of a kianga [village] should recklessly be scared out of their wits!”

These few words of Whara Pori's at once wrought a magical-like effect on the would-be redoubtable suitors for Rawhinia's hand, for, quietly after they resumed their seats, just as if they had been plunged somewhat what abruptly into the drippings of a melting iceberg. Naturally, there was a short interval of silence following the great hullabaloo, as musical instrument players, who have broken down in their piece, and are uncertain about what next best to take up.

Jack Love, the carpenter, timeously broke the brief temporary suspension by singing, at the full stretch of his well-modulated voice, the old English comic song of “The Humours of Bartholomew Fair,” which all either understood, or, however obfuscated, pretended so to do, as, after every chorus, which the whalers in full choir boisterously took page 58 part, the cheering and the laughter from every direction were—well, simply deafening!

After Love's song was over, and the tumult had a little subsided, Bill the Preacher intimated that he had got a few words to say. Speechifying was Bill's natural bent, and speechifying Bill would insist on having on every occasion. He was not going to give them, he preluded, exactly a sermon: this, he knew, was no time for that; but he would try something in the way of a friendly admonition, which, he hopped, would avail. “Thus,” he went on to say, “all who have gone carefully through and through the “Grand Old Book,” must have come across the description of a Great Feast, a feast ever so much greater than this one was, or would or could pretend to be, because it was given by the most powerful Chief or King, at that time, in all the known wide, wide world. At this feast, O, people! which I am now telling about, in place of trenchers hollowed out of timber, as those here now before us, they were all manufactured out of glittering pure gold, and filled up with all the dainties which the wide earth could bestow. And in place, too, of the three-water-grog which we are now sipping out of pupus [shells] it was the very choicest wine, perhaps the real sparkling Malaga, in cups of pure silver. Howsomever, my friends, at the close of this great feast, which, as I tell you, licked this one quite into ribbons, just. I suppose, as the feasters, as we seamen express it, were beginning to get three-sheets-like in the wind, what do they see? Ay! what do they see? The feast was indoors, remember. They, by the living Harry! saw the configuration of a man's hand! Aye! and that hand, without, apparently, the ghost of an arm attached, writing upon the wall, where it could be well seen by everybody—“Ye are weighed in the balance and found wanting.” Ay, and that same night, before that a single man of them had stirred from the feast, the enemy overwhelmed them within their own gates. Therefore, do take heed, all those given to recklessly vain boasting, that is, without having previously suitable shot in the locker, and the nerve, too, when occasion arises, to use them, for fear that they also should be weighed in the balance and found not up to the scratch—not exactly to the true knocker. Should it ever turn out, as many apprehend that it will, that we have an unfriendly visit from the Waikato, I say, Heaven help them! by the greetings our old guns can give them, by order of the Gaff, here sitting next to me—I mean Dickey Barrett.” … As the Preacher sat down, his features corrugated with austere enthusiasm, acclamations were given him by both races for his seasonable warning. Aye! and amidst the din of approbation, Whara Pori's voice was heard above it all, uttering, “Kute! Kute! Kute! wery good the Preacher!” and added, “With the arm of the Pakeha aiding, for the reputation of Taranaki, the beast of a Waikato cannot, I think, come too soon!” Then, at this instant, all the men, women, and children at the feast, started up, as if animated at once with the one spirit, throwing their arms horizontally to their front, and with cavernous voices, shouted “Haere mai, te Waikato! Haere mai, page 59 te Waikato! Ugh! Ugh! Ugh-haw! Ugh! Ugh! Ugh-haw! Haere mai, te Waikato!” [“We'll swallow you all up, neck and crop! flesh and bone! We shall! We shall!”]

As the queenly-like Rawhinia at this moment left her father's side at the feast, accompanied by a bevy of cheery young laughter-loving wahines, to seek temporary seclusion under the rapou roof of her private whare [house], another vociferons cheer from those remaining, reverberated—it has been alleged—miles away. Most deplorable, however, to state, the virus which the Tongan imp had so subtly administered, apparently still lingered in her—Rawhinia's—breast, for, on her departure, she threw a gracious, winning smile on group after group of the highly pleased Natives, without the slightest glance of regard bestowed on Dickey Barrett and his band of genial whalers. Then, as though it had suddenly flashed on her mind that she had exceeded herself with her affected antipathy, Rawh'nia wheeled gaily round, and bid a gracious “Good-bye” to William the Preacher and Ned Stelsan, another of the whalers.

“Rangi and Papa [Heaven and Earth!] she is worth fighting for,” exclaimed a young untattooed chief, as his eyes gloated on Rawhinia's radiant features, and supple, lithe figure; and these words which he spoke were within the hearing of Te Puki, her sire.

“Aye!” replied the devoted parent, much flattered, “and should fighting come—list, every one, now, hear me—the hand that proves the most effective in subduing our most bitter foe, shall join that hand, if he is so disposed, with my daughter's!”

These words, which here Te Puki spoke, were seen to illuminate, as it were, the manly, straight-forward countenance of Richard Barrett.