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Chapter XXIII I Reach the End of my Captivity

I soon found that Pepepe had chosen the spot for my attempt with judgment born of knowledge. At the point where I entered the water the strong current of the river, instead of sweeping with full force down its channel, ran at a wide angle from one bank to the other. Apart from my own efforts, it bore me in a few seconds out of sight of the canoe; and when at length I raised my head from the water, even the voices of its occupants, excitedly discussing my escape, sounded far away. No doubt their first impression was that I had overbalanced in my sleep, but the discovery of the severed cord must have quickly caused them to change their minds. I had no fears for Pepepe. What she had the wit to accomplish she would doubtless also find the wit to conceal, and, in any case, her action, if discovered, would rouse only admiration in the chivalrous and romantic minds of her countrymen.

After listening awhile to the hubbub, I again turned my face towards the shore, and despite the fact that I was encumbered with the weight of my clothes and my boots, I accomplished the distance in safety and threw myself, exhausted but happy, on the dry ground. A few minutes sufficed for recovery from my exertions, and, rising to my feet, I blundered upwards through the thick scrub until the darkness of the forest received me. Further travel was impossible till daylight, and, groping with hands page 341and feet, I accepted the first spot that seemed to offer a measure of comfort for the night. There, in my wet clothes, at the mercy of a swarm of mosquitoes, I slept the sleep of the blessed.

I awakened with the sound of birds' notes in my ears. Parson birds, high in the tree-tops, were welcoming the golden light of the sun. With rapture I gazed around me at the familiar bush scenery. A cluster of tree-ferns had sheltered me; their spent fronds formed my couch. Close at hand a hidden stream tinkled merrily on its way to the great river. Here and there a gleam of sunlight turned the greens to gold. My heart singing as a bird, I raised my cramped limbs from the ground and wandered away in search of the creek. A slender, pulsing thread led from pool to pool, losing itself momentarily in a rich growth of ferns.

I was in my own country at last, but where exactly remained to be discovered. We had travelled far enough up the Waikato to bring me, as I judged, within a score of miles of Matakiki. My route lay towards the east, but whether south or north of it was the point to be decided. Refreshing myself with a drink of water, I began to search about for a track which would lead me to higher ground. At first everything I found in the way of a trail ran more or less circuitously back to the river, and if I sought to retrace my steps and pursue it in the other direction, it died away in impenetrable thickets. There was, however, a well-defined track along the bank of the river itself, now running close to the water, now winding a short distance away from it, where some natural obstacle intervened, but always eventually returning to the waterside; and, after many futile efforts to break directly away, I decided to follow it in the hope that it would prove more propitious farther along.

I had little expectation that I should be allowed to reach page 342my destination without an effort being made to recapture me. If the others were indifferent, there was always the idiot to be reckoned with, and in such a juncture, and inspired to activity by his terror of Te Atua Mangu, he was perhaps more to be dreaded than a whole-witted man. With this thought in my mind, I was careful before crossing any open part of the trail to scan the water for signs of life. So far as I observed, the river was everywhere deserted, and it spoke volumes for the effect of the war upon the natives that not a single canoe laden with produce of field and orchard was visible that fair morning on its placid surface.

At length I came in sight of a spot I knew, though I had never before approached it from the same direction, and at once my topographical difficulties were solved. It was the landing-place at the end of an ancient way connecting the Waipa and Waikato rivers. A considerable native settlement existed at this point, and during the last half-dozen years several white men had commenced to carve out for themselves homes in the neighbourhood, Much traffic had brought about a clearing and widening of the track, so that now it had assumed the proportions rather of a road than a trail. Moreover, it led through the very centre of the cultivated district, the great granary I have spoken of in an early part of my story, from which the rebellious tribes now drew their supplies.

The sight of the village and the consequent illumination as to my whereabouts brought me to a standstill. For the first time it occurred to me to doubt whether I could anywhere be in a friendly country outside the British lines. My own feelings of affection for the friends and playmates of my youth had suffered no diminution from the treatment I had received from their fellow-countrymen; but could I be sure that this was also true of them? Was it not more likely that the tribe, embittered by its reverses, was no page 343longer disposed to discriminate between one white man and another? Should I put the matter to the test by marching openly into the village? The longer I hesitated and reflected the more difficult the problem became.

Gazing from the shadow of the trees, I was presently struck by the complete stillness of the scene. Nowhere could I detect a sign of life or movement. The house doors were shut and no smoke went up from the spot where I recollected having seen the cooking fires in bygone times. Following the discovery of the desertion of the village came the reason why it should be so. Having broken down the resistance of the Waikatos, what would be General Cameron's next objective but the possession of the fertile soil and teeming storehouses which had so long sustained his enemies in the field? Hither, then, he presumably was, or shortly would be, marching, and either the villagers, in anticipation of his coming, had fled far off into the fastnesses of the ranges, or somewhere, possibly not far away, they were preparing to resist him.

By this time the delicious air—at first a feast in itself—had given me an appetite for more solid viands, and, thinking that I might possibly find something eatable left behind by the villagers, I stepped out of my covert with the intention of making a search. Scarcely had I done so ere I was aware of a solitary figure moving among the huts. One glimpse sufficed to disclose his identity, and in an instant I was back under cover. The idiot—for it was he—carried a tomahawk in one hand and a coil of rope in the other. As usual he was bareheaded, his long, tangled hair falling almost to his shoulders, and adding not a little to the wildness of his appearance. His movements showed that he was searching the empty whares, and I could not doubt but that I myself was the object of his search. Fortunately he had been too deeply engrossed by the numerous hiding-places provided by the village to look page 344afield; otherwise, as he was scarce fifty yards distant when I first perceived him, he could hardly have failed to detect me.

Of an ordinary sane individual I can safely say I would have stood in no fear whatever; but the mystery in which the creature's imbecility enveloped him, so that his actions and moods were not to be foreseen or calculated upon in any terms of human experience, added greatly to the dread which his apparently superhuman strength and agility, combined with a cold-blooded indifference to the infliction of pain, were calculated to arouse in the mind. At one moment he was standing still in the attitude of one who listened attentively, at another he was darting swiftly round a building or peering through a partly opened doorway, or crawling between the piles of a storehouse. There was a horrible fascination in the thought that he was hunting me as a dog hunts a rat, so that for many minutes I could not take my eyes or my mind from him.

Yet what to do now I could not determine. By a detour through the bush I might gain the track beyond the village, but once upon it, with the open country on every hand, I should have little chance of escaping him should he decide to proceed in that direction, and his presence in the village seemed to indicate that he had a knowledge of my probable destination. On the whole it seemed wiser to wait his departure and follow in his footsteps than to endeavour to outstrip him on the road. My mind made up on this point, I retired further into the thickets, burrowing my way through the dense growth until at length I came in sight of the road. A clump of bracken gave me the shelter I sought, and here I lay, my eyes on the trail, the hot sun beating down on my covert, until drowsiness supervened. My hunter was a long while making his appearance. Was his search of the buildings not yet completed, or had he gone off in some other direction?

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Despite my efforts at wakefulness, I had lapsed more than once into a doze before at last I caught sight of him, not half-a-dozen yards away, standing motionless on the edge of the road. His back was towards me when I first saw him, but presently he turned and gazed directly into the thicket where I lay concealed. For an instant I made certain that I was discovered; his wild eyes seemed to look straight into mine, and I was in momentary expectation that he would leap upon me; but even as I braced myself for his coming, he turned his head and, looking towards the east, ran off at full speed along the road. With a deep breath of relief I lifted my head from the brake and watched him till the winding trail concealed him from view. Then, quitting my retreat, I set off in his wake.

For the remainder of the journey I saw no more of him. Now and then I caught sight of a few natives—mostly women—among the cultivations, and once a party of horsemen crossed the trail, riding northwards; but I had no difficulty in avoiding their notice, and late in the afternoon, having had nothing to eat but a handful of green corn plucked by the wayside, I reached the Waipa river, within a mile of my destination.

The rest of the journey lay along the river bank, through bush with every tree of which I was familiar; yet I judged that it was here, if anywhere, I should again encounter the idiot. Having satisfied himself—as he might easily do—that I had not already reached the house, what more likely than that he would return thus far to wait my arrival? Full of this idea, I advanced with the utmost circumspection, now on the track itself, now, when the nature of the growth permitted, making a fresh path for myself and pausing every few yards to listen for any sound that might indicate his presence. But a deep quiet held the woods; even the whirr and tick-tack of the cicada, a sound which had filled my ears throughout the day, was page 346not to be heard here. If there were any birds in the trees, they uttered no note, and only at long intervals the foliage high overhead stirred softly with a sound as of a sigh.

Now at length, as I was on the point of realising the desire which for so many long months had occupied my mind almost to the exclusion of every other thought and wish—the desire for home—a great depression fell on me. Nothing I had overheard or elicited in response to question threw any light on my foster-father's movements. Of what part he had taken in the war I had no idea. I knew not even if he were alive or dead. And the same was true also of Puhi-Huia. Was it likely that during all these months they had remained quietly at Matakiki and that I should find them there now, as though nothing had occurred in the meantime to disturb the equanimity of their lives?

These two currents of thought—one of fear that on the eve of achievement my journey might be arrested, the other that it was probably, in any case, of no avail—ran side by side in my mind as I traversed the remaining distance, and from a place of concealment peered out across the river at the familiar scene. One glance sufficed to lift my spirits from despondency to exultation. The house was still inhabited. Door and windows stood wide as I had always pictured them, and though no smoke came from the chimney, there was nothing in that circumstance to inspire doubt. The store, indeed, was closed and padlocked, and I could see no sign of movement in the village or among the dishevelled huts that crowned the pa; nor was sight or sound of life noticeable anywhere during the few minutes I spent in surveying the scene.

Yet these facts aroused no suspicion. I had expected trade to be at a standstill, both from a depletion of goods on the one side and of money or produce on the other. As for the absence of movement in the village, it was not an unusual thing at that hour of a summer's day, ere the page 347land breeze gave place to cooling airs from the ocean. And even if I had been inclined to doubt, the lounge chair in the veranda, with something which I took to be a book in the seat, spoke so clearly of Puhi-Huia that my suspicions must have been dispelled.

One circumstance and only one gave me a moment's surprise. The little canoe which was used to ferry passengers across the river lay on my side of the water. It was knotted to a broken sapling, and, with its paddle in it, had such an air of appropriation to my needs that it was impossible to escape the suggestion of design in its presence. However, the thought was too fleeting to make much impression on my mind, and, satisfied that the idiot, even if he were lurking in the vicinity, could not prevent my reaching the house, I slipped down the bank into the canoe and, paddling across the river, ran up through the orchard.

The door, as I have said, was open, but so also were the glass windows of the sitting-room, and it was towards these I made my way, passing the lounge chair as I did so. It was not a book but a bunch of flowers that lay on the seat, and, though I took but one glance at it, it sufficed to tell me that Puhi-Huia was not in the house, for the flowers were dried and withered. Giving myself no time for reflection on this circumstance, I stepped from the sunlight into the semi-darkness and gazed about me.

For a moment my eyes saw only the familiar room with its chairs and tables and its book-lined walls; then a pair of glittering objects in an obscure corner attracted me, and gradually the eyes and face of Te Atua Mangu resolved themselves from the gloom. He was squatting on a rug on the floor. In his hands was a gun, which needed but the slightest deflection to be pointing directly at me. Scarcely had I perceived these details when I was aware of a shadow behind me, and, turning quickly, saw the idiot with his tomahawk and coil of rope standing in the window page 348A trap had been set for me and, simpleton as I was, I had walked straight into it. For a while not a word was spoken; the pair fixed their eyes on me from opposite directions, and waited; while, for my part, racked by disappointment and rage, I needed all my strength to control the mad passions that urged me towards violence and certain death.

"Tene koe, pakena,"¹ said the voice of the wizard at length. "You have put yourself to much trouble to visit me. Now what is your wish?"

"Where is the Thumb?" I asked, swallowing my rage.

"I know not," he replied indifferently. "Perhaps he is at the pa of the Great One. Why does the pakeha inquire concerning his enemies?"

"Your words are false, Black One," I answered, "There is no enmity between me and my foster-father, nor between me and the Ngatimaniapoto. You alone are my enemy. Moreover, if you are responsible for the continuance of the war, then I say that you are also an enemy of the tribe. The Waikatos are broken, and many brave men of the Ngatimaniapoto sleep far from their ancient burial-grounds. It is no well-wisher of the Maori people who would encourage them to further resistance. Make peace with the white men before your territories are invaded, or they will pass from you. The pakeha will listen; he is merciful. He is sick of a war which brings him no glory, but is but as a mustering of sheep."

"You speak well for your race, white man," replied the tohunga with a cold smile, "but General Cameron shall find that he musters not sheep but wolves in the country of the Ngatimaniapoto. As for your other saying, I answer that the peace of the white man is more to be dreaded than his war. What will it advantage us that his soldiers retire? While they are here we are at least free from the rats who devour our substance and whose gnawings have thrown page 349the pillars of the Maori house askew. Will they not advance again as the soldier withdraws, and overrun us as they did in the past? Enough. Now listen, Little Finger. You are troublesome, and I am tired of you. Make then your choice from two things quickly—either to seek the war-parties of General Cameron or to die here and now."

As he ceased speaking, he shifted the muzzle of his gun, so that it pointed directly at my breast. If I had followed the deepest desire of my heart I should have thrown myself upon him and thus, no doubt, chosen the latter of his alternatives, but there was still in my brain a group of cells that retained their sanity and, in the end, directed my submission. They told me that escape was next door to impossible; that even if I succeeded in reaching my father I could now do no good; that I might easily be of more service to the cause of the natives inside the British lines than out of them; and finally they threw me the douceur that if I was bent on taking vengeance on the person of the tohunga I might find a more favourable opportunity and could not easily discover a worse.

"I will go to the British lines," I said.

"Good," he responded, rising. "Then our talk is at an end. This man shall be your guide. Go with him. He is an idiot, yet beware how you attempt to deceive him. He lives but to do my will. You will go, not by the water, but by unfrequented ways through the forest. See that your bones be not left to moulder on the trail."

My destined companion stood, his eyes fixed on his master's face, drinking in his words. I did not doubt that though my own speech found and left his mind a blank, he understood every syllable that was uttered by the wizard.

"Do I go free or a prisoner?" I asked.

"What matter," he replied. "You are free to go to page 350the camp of the English; the moment you turn aside from that path he will kill you; therefore it matters not to bind you. Go now, both of you."

I took a last look round the room. Usually books cumbered every convenient resting-place, but there was a tidiness about the place now which spoke of an ordered and deliberate departure. The dust on the furniture might have been the accumulation of a week or many weeks. No sacrilegious hands had been at work on the property of the white chief of the Ngatimaniapoto. Evidently the house had been opened merely to trap me, and would be closed again immediately on my departure.

With the consent of the tohunga, I went—the idiot in attendance—to my own room, where I collected together the clothes of which I stood so badly in need. I changed my apparel on the river bank, after a bathe in the water, during which I disported myself under the muzzle of the priest's gun. Even outside the house the tapu which clothes the property of a high chief had preserved garden and orchard undespoiled. Puhi-Huia's flower-beds were a blaze of midsummer splendour, and beneath the trees peach and nectarine lay rotting on the ground. There was nothing else ready to eat in the place, though I secured a portion of a bag of flour and some tea and sugar from Roma's stores to help us along the road. These, together with a billy, I gave into the charge of the idiot, and picking the withered nosegay from the seat as a memento of my foster-sister, I followed him down to the boat.

The priest had told me that food would be available at our first halting-place, but beyond that point we would have to forage for ourselves. Accordingly, at about seven o'clock in the evening we came on an opening in the bush where we found a solitary couple, man and woman, engaged in preparing us a meal. They were an ancient and morose pair, not to be drawn into conversation on any page 351topic, and, having set our supper of potatoes, kumara, and tea before us, they departed without more ado.

From that moment until when, a week later, I responded to the challenge of a sentry outside the British lines, the idiot was my only companion. Whether if he had afforded me an opportunity I should again have attempted to escape I cannot say, but he gave me no such chance. Day and night his watch never relaxed, and, greatly as I flattered myself on my powers of endurance, they were no match for his. With a petty malice for which I am afraid my own sufferings afforded but a poor excuse, I kept the creature continually on the rack. At night-time, when he gave signs of falling into a dose, I would rise to my feet and feign to seek for a more comfortable sleeping-place. When he was for hurrying forward I lagged behind, and, on the contrary, when for any reason his movements seemed to bespeak the necessity for caution, I would become possessed of a feverish anxiety to push forward. Half mad with hunger and the fatigues of a trail which for the greater part of its length could be followed only by main force, it may be that the seeds of mental disorder were already at work in my brain.

The idiot had many habits which displeased me, but the most irritating was his joy in his paltry treasures. The shattered gourd was his antidote to myself. As soon as the day's march was over and my fastidiousness was satisfied with a lodging for the night, he would undo his dirty package and set its contents out before him. He seemed to have a method of numbering them, or perhaps it merely was that he named them. Sometimes, when my better nature was in the ascendant—the idiot's foraging had perhaps been more successful than usual—I would watch him and endeavour to follow the workings of his broken mind; but far more often I was scheming to get his treasures into my possession, that I might destroy page 352them. They were an incongruous lot of rubbish, such as a child might collect. Scraps of broken pottery, old and evil-smelling pieces of bone, the half of a child's leaden soldier; but the object on which he appeared to set the highest value was the withered talon of a hawk. Perhaps it recalled that other talon which had been his undoing, for he treated it differently from the rest, arranging the other objects around it and handling and regarding it with a mingling of veneration and terror.

For a time I watched and schemed in vain, but at length my opportunity arrived. The rustling of swine in the scrub for a moment distracted his attention from his treasures, and, leaning forward, I picked up the withered talon and cast it into the heart of the fire. I can recall no honourable action of my life which brought with it such a glow of delighted satisfaction as this evil deed. Verily I was as mad as he was. His despair when he discovered his loss passed all bounds. For some reason he never suspected me, but seemed to see in the disappearance of his fetish the working of that malignant power whose thrall he was. But enough of this. Had he possessed but one grain more of intelligence he must have dashed out my brains long before we came to our journey's end, and richly I deserved it.

Many years afterwards I endeavoured, but with small success, to trace out the trail of that dreadful journey. The whole country was altered; forests had given place to cultivations, and potatoes grew luxuriantly on the dreary swamps, the passage of which rose before me in all its dismal horror. My guide obeyed his master to the letter. If we skirted the edge of a plantation it was but to snatch food to keep us alive, and not once did we come face to face with a human being. He shunned the dry sidings, along which run all the ancient Maori paths from one end of the island to the other, descending into bottomless page 353gullies and morasses, skirting the hills, and making of one summer's day journey the arduous toil of seven.

And so at last he pushed me forward on the sentry and, turning on his heel, dived again into the untamed country from which we had emerged.