Chapter I I Am Lost and Found

In my earliest mental picture of myself I figure as a small creature of unknown derivation, conscious of no void behind me, sure of an eternity in front. Around me, tangling its fronds above my head, is high fern, shutting out the hot rays of the March sun. There are strange creatures moving on the soil, whizzing past among the leaves, filling me with emotions at once fearful and delightful. Stirring uneasily within me is a sense of wrongdoing, yet I push my way on and on, following the black cicadas and huge brown locusts, as they leap before me, frustrating all efforts at capture. But presently I become conscious of something lacking. Wonderful as are the joys of this newly-found freedom, there is a thing here strange to my experience and as awe-inspiring as novel—solitude. I become aware of the absence of human voices, of the need of that mighty and comforting column, the parental leg.

Here follows an interval of nothingness. Probably sleep brought a respite to my fears, my futile efforts to escape from the tangle of fern, for when I again become aware of page 2myself the sun no longer brightens the leaves overhead. It is still light, but the day is ending, and a chill breeze, harbinger of night, rustles the dry stalks. The insects have ceased their clamour, and save for the rustling all is still. All? No. There is a sound in the air, slowly detaching itself from the silence; a booming, hollow sound, a rhythmic sound, swelling and failing, shuddering through the air, vibrating through the earth. Surely I have heard such a sound before, or why does it conjure up in my brain a definite picture that sets my teeth chattering and causes me to bury my face in the ground? I can see the war-party heartening itself for the attack, the rhythmic stamping of feet, the rolling eyes, the horrible grimaces; I can hear the threatening staccato of the war-song, the voice of the leader, the guttural response of the taua,¹ as a fire crackling from lip to lip, the fierce shout, the deep, blood-curdling gasp, filling the air with a whisper of death—"Hi! Hi! Ha-ah!"

After this an interval of silence. The breeze has died away, the very growth around me seems to stand expectant of fateful things to come. At length there is a stealthy rush of footsteps, setting the earth aquake. I hear the deep breathing of the warriors as they rush onward on every hand, scaling the steep slopes of the pa.² None comes near me, and God alone knows whence I derive the wit to lie still and make no sound. Presently the last of them has sped on his way, and I am left alone again with the silence and the falling night. But not for long is there silence. High up overhead breaks out the crack of a gun, then a volley. Shouts and screams pierce the air. A voice harsh and dominating rises at intervals above the din and is answered by the exultant, deep-chested "Ah! Ha-ah!" of the attacking warriors. With a whimper of

¹ Taua = war-party.

² Pa — a fortified village, usually on the summit of a hill.

page 3terror, I start from my hiding-place, toddle blindly through the fern, trip over the dense growth, and roll downwards into the arms of two men, making their way with great strides up the hill.

"Hulloa! What's this?"

"A pakeha¹ child, by the look of him, Mr. Wake."

"Then he must be Tregarthen's. What is your name, my boy?"

It is impossible I should remember all this, and I shall no longer make pretence of doing so: but what I have been told is so firmly bound up with what I do remember that it is hopeless to attempt to dissociate them.

The speaker's voice was masterful but kindly. He was a middle-aged man, with a pale face like my father's, and I remember that the circumstance that both men were white alarmed me and set me whimpering afresh. He carried his coat over his arm, and heavy drops of perspiration were running down his nose and trickling to the ground.

"What does he say, Purcell?" he asked.

"Ewic … Is it Eric, my little man?"

The other knelt down in front of me, brushed the hair from my eyes with a large hand, and told me not to cry. "Why, he's only a baby, Mr. Wake. Where's daddy, little man? What's that? Well, well, I can make nothing of it. Hark!" he broke off suddenly, lifting his face to the hill. "They're in."

All this time the firing of guns, the shouting and screaming had gone on undiminished in the sky overhead.

"We must go," said Mr. Wake anxiously; "but what is to be done with the child? Stay here, Mr. Purcell, and I will make the journey alone."

Purcell laughed and rose to his feet. "Yet," he said, regarding me with compunction, "we cannot leave the

¹ Pakeha – European.

page 4baby here for Te Waharoa's umu.¹ What is to become of you, my fine fellow?"

I looked up into his smiling eyes and, for answer, twined a chubby arm round his leg.

"The hand of the Almighty," said Mr. Wake, lifting the hat he had just replaced on his streaming head, "has led the child from the pit of death. Come, it will be night before we enter the pa."

Without more ado, Purcell picked me up, as a man plucks a leaf by the wayside, and, almost at a run, they continued the ascent of the hill.

But the way was steep and, when the fern was passed, slippery, and presently there were terraces, twice the height of a tall man, to be surmounted, and when these were overcome and, as the first stars began to twinkle forth, we came in sight of the shattered palisades, smoke and flame were issuing from the houses, and the sound of firing had ceased.

The men of the attacking party had discarded their guns, as though all concerted resistance were at an end, and, armed with tomahawk and mere,² were moving among the burning whares,³ shouting and laughing in the wild exhilaration of victory. On the farther side of the hill, against the sky, a dense crowd of warriors was assembled, their plumed heads and naked limbs showing black against the light beyond.

Mr. Wake led the way with a firm step into the pa, followed by my protector, bearing me lightly in his great arms. Probably it was due to the confident movements of the two men that their approach was at first unnoticed by the triumphant war-party. Between us and the second line of defence was a ditch and a bank, and another between

¹ Umu = the Maori stone oven.

² Mere, pronounced "merreh" = a stone club.

³ Whare = the native house.

page 5that and the kiritangata or innermost barricades. A low doorway in front of us stood open, and we crept through and stood among the huddled houses of the village. No doubt it was a scene to inspire horror at which my two companions gazed so intently, but for my part I saw only men and women and children lying asleep in the gathering light of the burning huts.

"Pitty, pitty!" said I, extending a hand to the leaping flames.

"Pitty indeed," said my bearer, looking gravely about him.

Mr. Wake's mouth trembled and set itself momentarily. His pale face looked whiter than ever, save where the flames tinged it with a ghastly yellow. He moved forward almost at a run and, gathering me closer in his arms, Purcell followed.

"Steady, Mr. Wake. Steady, sir," he cautioned. "Keep your shoulder against mine. We are too late in any case."

From somewhere close at hand came a shrill scream, followed by the laughter of men.

"We may yet be in time," said Mr. Wake, darting round the corner of a building.

Did I understand the scene that burst on our sight a moment later? At least it lives clearly in my memory to this day, and definite memories, even when they seem pointless and immaterial, are the reflex of strong emotions. A large whare was burning merrily to one side, and in the lurid light stood three figures. The central was that of a young girl of fifteen, her slim figure swaying in the grasp of two warriors. She had ceased to cry out, and was speaking rapidly and thickly, her dark, terror-stricken eyes turning eagerly from one to the other, seeking some sign of relenting in the fierce yet amused faces.

"Puna!" I cried suddenly. "Puna!" and stretched my arms out towards her.

The girl's face, beaded with the fine sweat of terror, was turned quickly to us at the sound, and in a moment she had slipped from the grasp of her captors and was running fleetly towards us. So sudden had been our advent that surprise for a moment held the warriors spellbound. But only for a moment. In the next instant one had poised and thrown his tomahawk, and the girl, with her skull split asunder, lay dead and motionless at our feet.

My protector started, took a step forward, then restrained himself, looking at the still body of the young girl with a shake of the head. "Steady, Mr. Wake," he said sadly under his breath. "We are too late."

The pale face of the missionary was set in stern lines, and his eyes flashed with a fierceness almost fanatical in its intensity as he approached the warriors. "Shame on you, men of Ngatihaua," he cried in Maori. "God will demand utu¹ for the blood of this young girl."

The eyes of the two men shifted uneasily at this speech, and for a moment there was silence.

"Why are the pakehas here?" asked one of them coldly at length. "Do they desire to join cause with the Ngatimaru, the enemies of Te Waharoa?"

"We champion no cause save that of the God of Humanity," replied Wake sternly, looking at the slayer of the girl; "the God who has said He who spills man's blood, by man shall his blood be spilled."

The young brave's eyes swerved from the unflinching gaze of the missionary, but an instant later, with a laugh of bravado, he strode to the corpse of his latest victim, and, smiting the head from the body with one blow of his sharp tomahawk, whirled it by its long hair into the centre of the blazing whare; then, slinging the trunk, warm and

¹ Utu = payment in compensation, vengeance.

page 7gouting blood, over his shoulder, he moved off through the village.

"Take me to your chief," said Wake, shuddering, addressing the other warrior, who had stood by in complete indifference while this savage act was performed.

With a lift of the eyebrows that seemed intended to absolve him from all responsibility in the result, the young warrior turned on his heel and guided us through the alternating glare and shadows of the pa.

From the storehouses slaves were busy removing the stores of food accumulated by the slaughtered villagers, and more ghastly burdens were also borne past us in the direction in which we were moving. Now and then our guide paused to exchange a few words with a comrade, and some of these came and stared us in the face or fell in behind, laughing and chattering to one another. One hideous, tattooed face was, I remember, thrust into mine and inspired me with a terror that still returns in nightmare. It was an ancient, evil countenance, with an eye that smouldered and gloated and menaced unutterable things.

Presently we came in sight of several fires, differing from those we had already seen by the circumstance that they did not roar up to a tremendous height, but burned fiercely close to the ground. Dark figures were busy about them thrusting the burning wood more closely together with long sticks. In the red light other groups were at work, bending and chopping at things in their midst.

Our guide threaded his way through these groups with more appearance of haste and uneasiness than he had yet shown, moving in the direction of a somewhat larger fire, around which the main force of the war-party appeared to be assembled. As we neared the outskirts of the ring of warriors, Mr. Wake, apparently unable any longer to control his horror and aversion at the scene, pushed past page 8the guide and made his way rapidly among the seated figures, with Purcell close at his heels; until, rounding the huge fire, whose heat demanded the respect of a wide distance, we came on the leaders of the taua, seated together on a slight mound.

I have no actual recollection of the moment when these two intrepid white men, the one sustained by his religious belief, the other by a sense of comradeship and pride of race, thrust themselves unarmed on one of the most ruthless savages the Maori race has known. Indeed, from the moment the hideous face glared at me I doubt if aught else of the happenings of that night impressed itself on my consciousness.

Te Waharoa, though he was not destined to live long after this event, was, at the moment of which I write, at the prime of his manhood and full of bloody honours. He had held back the mighty Te Rauparaha and had been the means of driving him and the Ngatiraukawas to migrate to Cook's Strait. He had cast down the pride of the Waikatos and the Ngatimaru, and even those most inveterate of sportsmen, the Ngapuhi, who for long years never missed their annual shooting season in the Thames or Waikato, had gone away disgusted, leaving five of their braves crucified to the posts of his pa. In the flush of victory it is conceivable that even a savage may show forbearance in the discussion of a matter wherein opinions are likely to differ, but it must be remembered that at the moment his unexpected visitors made their appearance Te Waharoa had no longer any interest to distract his attention from the fact that he had not eaten since morning; moreover, his ovens were—or shortly would be—full of a delicacy which, so far from appealing to the pakeha palate, was likely to prove a bone of contention between him and them.

The chief was seated on the ground, a great cloak of page 9dog-skin, fastened at his right shoulder, completely concealing the whole of his person and protecting him from the night air, which now, in the fall of the year and on the hill summit, breathed keenly. He gave no greeting to the missionary, who paused, breathless with the haste he had made, in front of him; nor for the space of several minutes did he cease the low-toned conversation he had been carrying on with those around him.

"Be it so," he said at last, and bent his eyes on his visitors.

"Tena korua, pakeha,"¹ said he. "You have come far. These are times when a man does well to stay where he belongs."

"And these people," retorted the missionary, waving his hand in the direction of the burning whares, "does the chief say that they did well to remain where they belong?"

Te Waharoa nodded appreciation of the retort. "They offended me," he said shortly. "They have ceased to offend. It is enough. What is the pakeha's business with me?"

"I come on God's business, Te Waharoa," said Wake. "I know nothing of the cause of your enmity towards this people, or of its justice. I came to warn them of your approach, and, failing that, to intercede with you in their behalf. Surely the power to show mercy is the greatest privilege of the conqueror."

"The words of the pakeha are good," said Te Waharoa stolidly, "but his actions have lagged behind. The day is done. Let us now speak of other things."

"I can well see that I am too late, chief," Wake agreed, with more moderation in his tone, "but there is surely something I can yet do for my Master. Give me the slaves you have taken. The dead are past our help, nor do they need it; but suffer the living to go free."

"I have heard that the pakeha is averse to the making of slaves," replied Te Waharoa, grimly: "I have remembered his aversion and made none."

"Then your prisoners, chief, let them be brought to me here and we will lead them from the pa, that the sight of their faces may not reawaken your vengeance. The day is done, as you remind me; let its deeds suffice, and peace be established between you and those who remain."

Te Waharoa sat for a while in silence, as though debating what reply he should make to this request. Around him the principal men of the war-party murmured to one another with looks of amusement in their faces, and presently one leaned forward and said a few words in his chief's ear.

"Good," said the latter, a cruel smile flickering for a moment at the corners of his lips. "Let those who have taken prisoners bring them here, that we may see if the pakeha's wish can be granted. Go!"

A number of young men sprang up from the ranks below and hurried off around the circle of warriors. Some passed through the lines into the shadows beyond, and for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour the two white men stood waiting while Te Waharoa, his iron visage unvisited by any sign of emotion, preserved an inflexible silence.

At length, one by one, the young men began to return, until the whole of them were assembled, and seeing them thus, without an addition to their number, a mocking laugh broke softly from the lips of the spectators.

"It is well," said Te Waharoa, calmly. "The lot of the prisoner is often less desirable than that of the slave."

"Then of all these people," said Wake, in tones that faltered with emotion, "no man, woman, or child remains. For this deed, Te Waharoa"—his voice hardened and his page 11eyes flashed denunciation—"you shall yet answer, if not on earth, then at the dread day of judgment, when every soul you have sent in blood to its doom shall cry out for vengeance upon you."

A murmur of wrath, even of horror at words which, to their minds, spelt sacrilege as used against their chief, ran through the group on the hill, but Te Waharoa preserved his calm unruffled.

"Pakeha," he said, "your words are as those of a child, who babbles of he knows not what, and therefore I take no heed of them. Yet if children persist in wrong-doing it becomes necessary to punish them; therefore I say to you, Go now, while the road is open. I am tired of your talk."

The missionary, undaunted by a speech which, with its cold threat, might have brought fear to the bravest heart, was on the point of an impulsive reply, when Purcell laid his hand on his sleeve.

"Remember, Mr. Wake," he said in a low voice, and not without a tinge of humour in his tones, "that God is a long way off, while the lives of the three of us are in your very hands."

The missionary paused and seemed, in obedience to the warning of the other, to change what he had been on the point of saying.

"There is one more word I must say to you, Te Waharoa," he said, "The dead are at peace, and against their souls you can do no further harm; but what of their bodies? What is the meaning of these fires, the preparing of these great ovens, the sights of horror we have seen as we drew near? Will the great chief, forgetting the word of his pakeha friends, descend to a level lower than that of the beasts, become the perpetuator of a practice which disfigures his noble race and rouses the abhorrence of mankind?"

Hitherto the missionary's words, but for the one exception I have noted, had been received with indifference or half-scornful amusement, but at this bold indictment of an immemorial custom of the race their brows contracted, and every trace of good-humour vanished from their countenances.

At this period the practice of cannibalism, though still invariably followed by the successful war-party, had already received its death-blow. The disgust of the white man, evidencing itself on the lips of the missionary and the escaped convict alike, had eaten its way less to the conscience than the pride of the Maori, and just as the modern wave of temperance, sweeping irresistibly forward, influences those who are not conscientiously in accord with it to a certain furtiveness in the taking of drink, so was cannibalism becoming a rite to be practised, if not actually in secret, at all events out of the sight of the white man. From this infection (so to call it) of shame to a natural soul-growth of distaste was a matter of very few years, and at the time of which I write every act of cannibalism, so far from confirming and prolonging the monstrous custom, brought it nearer to its end. Shame, however, is an emotion more likely at the offset to inspire anger than repentance, and as my protector looked round the scowling faces of the warriors and heard the mutterings as of a gathering storm, he knew that the lives of all three hung on a thread.

But no change came over Te Waharoa's face, nor did he appear influenced by the anger of those about him. Only in the depths of his eyes a light burned ominously. "Pakeha," he said, "you have said to me three things. I say to you only one—Go!"

Whether the missionary would have obeyed this mandate without a further attempt to drive home to the chief the horror with which his deeds had inspired him must always page 13remain a matter of doubt; for at that critical moment, while Purcell stretched out his hand to again touch the sleeve of his companion, a warrior sprang suddenly to his feet, and stepping out from amongst the others, confronted my protector.

"Wait!" he said, and lifted a monitory forefinger.