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The plea herewith set forth, by the writer of this little work, for submitting such to the currently literary-overdosed public, is this: that for several years past he has considered that something was needed to commemorate the rough old times which our sealers and whalers had in New Zealand, prior to anything at all approaching settlement had taken place. Indeed, were no literary effort towards that end made by someone who had had acquaintance with the latest of the survivors of these harbingers of civilization, evidently very soon now, through the total lapse of contemporaneous testimony, every detail of their interestingly realistic life would be confiscated to oblivion. Such would be a pity, as there is no phase of activity can be said to be altogether uninstructive, either as good to adopt, or as evil to eschew. Pray, let not the great blemish in our national character, in this particular instance, be perpetrated, of looking superciliously upon age!—for in that descending stage of life's round was the remnant of these mariners in question when, by successive immigrants, they became first known. Candidly, no one can state that, despite the rather uncouth mannerism of those old tars, that, generally, there were not, underlying the rugged surface, evidence of an upright and manly principle which, on extended intimacy, begat respect, if not a something almost akin to admiration. Well, forsooth! it should have been, for the honor, as well as, likewise, for the subsequent serenity of New Zealand, had that those transacting business afterwards with the Maori, treated them as honestly and as single-mindedly as, evidently, did those much less pretentious associates. The old Natives, even to this present day, are not unfrequently heard to make avowal, that their first dealings with the Pakehas have, with them, ever since remained to be regarded as a long way the most satisfactory, adding in their now corrupt vernacular—“Te wailler, him say, him too this; then him too it—him say he no too this, then him no too it. Hah! no humbug wit te wailler!”
No doubt but that there are many obliquely-sighted moralists, with no catholicity of view whatever, who may feel indisposed to accord the smallest modicum of credit to a class that which, by the most of them, lapses touching on canons of ethics were taken. To wit: such as carousing freely, or yielding, without the application
In a word, those old rollicking, seafaring blades served a necessary end. Without much doubt at all about it, they supplied a large share of that which was essential towards paving the way for the practical settlement of New Zealand by their fellow-countrymen. Thereupon, should what this brochure contains go any way in the direction of helping to bear those manful old salts in kind remembrance, its purpose will have been realised.
The performance of any drama, is but at best, very tame, without the accessory of artistic got-up scenery to give it adequate interpretation. So, likewise, is a tale told without some knowledge being conveyed of the locality wherein such transpired. To furnish such at the time events were taking place which constitute this history, a descriptive account of the neighbourhood of Moturoa has been availed of, written by a young gentleman of the name of George Shaw, when a passenger in the brig “Annie” while anchored off the Sugar Loaves, for a day or two in the year 1833, which description the writer of this work obtained a copy of through the courtesy of Mr. Charles Clarke, Diss, Norfolk, to whom the letter embodying the account, was addressed.
“Dear Cousin Charley,—What vacillating donkeys are not frequently animals inside of trousers and jackets! In the whole of the hundred and fifty-one days in which I was aboard the “Grampus,” on my way out
“On the morning of our ninth, or tenth day out, we sighted, what on our first survey gave us the idea of looking on a distant field at large cornstacks, darkened by penumbra. However, as we got nearer to them, lo! these imagined cornstacks of ours, turned out really to be a cluster of cone-shaped rocks, some of which were on the shore, and others were in the water, and approaching an altitude of, I should think, from about fifty to five hundred feet.
“I, after about an hour's steady gazing at these high peaks, was called down to breakfast; but, as soon as that was over, I came upon deck again, when, there were unfolded, as the morning advanced, a spectacle of physical beauty far transcending anything which I had ever seen, either for sweetness of aspect or for majesty of form. I continued peculiarly infatuated with the perspective. This, I ascertained at the time, was what Captain Cook gave the name to of Egmont. This mountain, Egmont, rivetted the eyes towards the direction in which it towered, with an unspeakable tenacity. Its summit, I was then told, had an altitude of between eight and nine thousand feet! and had, as we then observed it, a sort of aureole, as a crown: this, by and by, dissolved, and unfolded a deep tippet of snow, with a pinkish-looking tint upon the surface where the sun's rays fell. Carrying the vision further downward, stunted vegetation almost concealed the cone's surface: nearer to the base, gigantic trees seemed to crowd, and rise as if aspiring to attain a magnitude corresponding to that which supplied their own specific vigour! I was so deeply absorbed by the contemplation of this enchanting view, that, for hours, I stood with my breast pinned as it were against the rim of the bulwark in profound and silent thought. Several times was I called to put away things which, in reckless disorder, were strewn about my berth: but I continued deaf to all calls. From this point of observation, it seemed that the whole of the land, from the mountain to the sea, was occupied by nothing but trees—one mass of variegated foliage exquisitely tinged, and quite nnfamiliar in appearance, over an area of many miles! However, on more careful scrutiny, there could be distinctly noticed along the winding shore, at unequal intervals, what we supposed indicated groups of huts, with small patches of green vegetation around. Overlooking the sombre strand could be observed several abruptly-rising cliffs; but the greater part of the stretch upon the margin of the
“I can hardly name the regret which I felt, when, making for Cook's Straits, the good ship ‘Annie’ bore us away from this thoroughly enchanting spectacle. However, as though the gods had taken a fit of compunction at their severing us so soon from unsatiated delight, the wind from the south, which had been blowing only but moderately throughout the morning, turned, all at once, into quite a hurricane, inasmuch as we could not face the straits, and there remained, no help for us, but to put back and take shelter under the Sugar Loaves. Our Captain looked glumpy at this contretemps; but it was not so with the majority of the crew. Well, as far as I myself was concerned, I could not have asked for anything much better. My position in this brig, I may as well explain, was rather of an indefinable nature, a sort of non-descript one—a status betwixt a passenger and a sailor. When all was made secure, the anchor dropped, and darkness fell, I confess that I was in noway displeased, when asked by the skipper, to keep an eye for a time, outside the hull, so as to give seasonable warning in the event of any Native canoes coming stealthily about. At this special duty, truth compels me to state, that my eyes were much oftener directed to the neighbouring land than to the immediate environment of water. Then, regal Egmont, the lovliest spectacle imaginable, still boldly stood out, as a sublime glory under the far-fetched light of the stars! of the myriad constellations!
“Our supposition, by the by, about the huts, turned out to be a correct one. We could see the smoke ascending in the places at which they had, in the daytime, been distinguished. I got relieved of, my anything but, onorous duty, as the second watch came on, and quickly afterwards was below under the benign influence of the mythical heavy goddess.
“Just as daylight was beginning to show, towards five in the morning, I was hurridly aroused, to come upon deck, and look at a canoe close at hand, laden with Maoris! In a trice, I made my way upon deck, and peering with my eyes—not thoroughly as yet open—through the still imperfect light, at this object of concentrated interest. The occupants of the attenuated argos evinced alternately an expression of shyness and an eagerness to approach. Our Captain got a white flag out, and hoisted it on one of the yards, but such, with these Natives, did not somehow appear to be understood. Observing that they had spears, and some of them short green-coloured clubs in their possession, it was considered advisable to distribute muskets out to the crew. After a little delay, one of our hands aboard, bearing the soubriquet of ‘Portuguse Joe,’ hailed them with a smatter of words in their own tongue, which had the desired effect, for, directly, the chief came by himself, unarmed, amongst us, and, one by one, after one another, of his scantyclad retinue soon followed suit, till all that there remained in their canoe was but a blear-eyed, wrinkled old woman. After gorging themselves
“I was myself but a short time in getting ingrafted into the favour of this seaman, being anxious to learn as much as I possibly could about the place. From Grundy, I had this desire thoroughly gratified—in fine, as much, or more, than I could well retain in my mind: besides, I had quite used up all the white space in my notebook. Grundy regretfully informed me that his old mates had all left him, to pursue their avocation of whaling at places elsewhere. Poor old Joe seemed assiduously solicitous that I should learn all the Native names of every particular object presented to my sight. He commenced by imparting the known titles of the divers Sugar Loaves; and there was not one out of the whole bunch, but Joe attached, or said there was attached, some legend to. “See! look here! young sir,” said he, putting out his rheumy index finger. “That tallest cone you see on the land is Paritutu, where, its said, that once a Maori wench defended herself, single-handed, from a whole mob of Waikatos, who were after this girl in hot pursuit. Mikotahi, yonder one, nearest the land, with a flat crown, was where the skeletons of three Southern Sea pirates were found, supposed to have been entombed alive in a cave! Indeed,” added Joe, “that's nothing but correct. I've seen the bones of their skeletons with my own eyes. Moturoa, the one which we are now nearest to, was where the Ngatiawas, wives and daughters of those Natives round here, were put up for several weeks for security, during the late Waikato invasion which I was telling you about. That one, next in size, the centre a little depressed you'll see at the top, goes by us, as ‘Saddleback,’ but its Maori name is Motumahunga. Upon it, I am given to understand,” said Joe, “that, at one time, all the Maori refractory people were placed for punishment. The Lion Rock—we can just here get a glimpse of the corner of it—is where, at one time, a terrible struggle took place between a strange sea-monster and one of the Natives. The Seal Rock, further west,” Joe continued, “just barely seen out of the water, is where they tell that, once upon a time, one of their seal-calves suckled a human baby. The Maori,” remarked my interlocutor, “are a most extraordinary kind of people for bestowing distinctive names on every object, no matter what it be, which comes anyway near their range of
“Old Joe, at this stage, after after a fit of coughing, was about to proceed still further with his Maori lore, but, craving as I was to get at, as much as I could, of all that was known about the place, Joe had quite exhausted by this time, my not very meagre supply of patience, and so as to, meanwhile, finish, I called upon the steward to bring something, which I knew well Mr. Grundy should fully appreciate.
“In the course of the afternoon, I fell in again with old Joe, at a pah named Ngamotu, situate upon the first rising ground overlooking the bay. There was an open space, partially cultivated, on the declivity leading up to it; but everywhere else seemed to me to be lightly covered with forest scrub.
“I had, somehow, an irresistible yearning to penetrate for some distance into the bush. I supposed that the many adventurous stories which I had greedily perused in boyhood, of virgin bush life, furnished to me, at this moment, the odd impulse. I therefore, quietly slipped away without acquainting anyone with what I meant to be after. A small compass, which I had in my pocket, imbued me with the confidence that there was little to fear from losing my bearings, at any rate; and, here also, I ascertained for my further consolation, that there was not such a thing about as a wild beast. I succeeded, after about two hours' rough travelling, in finding a dominant elevation, where I could see a long distance over the tops of the trees. Such was near to four miles, I made it, south-west, from the shore I had started from.
“From the summit of this selected point of observation, I beheld everything I considered conducive for the transposition of this strange country into a rich and cultivated boundary. There were likewise a succession, no matter in what direction the eyes were cast, of singularly bewitching-like landscapes; and quite dissimilar, I noted, in contour and floral dressing, from any which I had ever looked upon, on the other side of the equinoxal line. Scattered far between, I discovered tiny spaces of clearings amidst the virgin forest trees. Then, also, came under my observation, irregular lines, straight and curved, of silvery-like effulgence, denoting, as I concluded, limpid rivers.
“It was now hard upon evening: nevertheless, culpably indiscrect, as justly may be considered my fixed resolution, taking into thought the peculiar lonesomeness of my position, I made my mind up to survey stately Egmont in one of its sunsetting phases, as I had done in one of its sunrising ones. I called to mind then, that there was a young moon, which would yield me rather better than an hour and a-half of her reflected light; and that, I calculated, would be sufficient to last until I was within a “Ship ahoy,” of the brig ‘Annie’: which, by the by, I had descried from this eminence, like a troubled spectre over-awed by formidable Titans. Most luckily, though, on this particular occasion, there was no cause given to make me regret at all my rash waywardness. A brief optical mensuration of the cone, co-eval, perhaps, with
“I seated myself for a short while upon a flat crowned rock: took out of my pocket, steel, flint, and tinder: procured with these a kindling, and enjoyed a comfortable smoke. Then, subsequently ruminated for a space of half-an-hour, or thereabouts, on the numerous incidents which had enlisted my attention throughout, what I regarded as being one of the most important days that I had experienced in life.
“Whilst continuing keeping my eyes directed upon Egmont, Old Sol, in all its majestic glory, began to dip in the western horizon, throwing upon the side of the mountain nearest to whereon I was placed, exquisitely beautiful shades of light on columns of vapour, which gradually split up into irregular images: again coalesced into highly-pleasing symetrical figures, constituting a vision of lovliness, which can, in mortal range, have but few parallels.
“Even when this unspeakably grand solar display was over, I was so transported with delight, as to feel reluctant to leave the vicinity. But a sense of the propriety of speedily migrating, urged me, after a brief whiles pondering, to retire.
“Through the less perfect light, on my way to the sea-shore again, for the most of the way, I kept constantly stumbling over obstructions—unscathed, however—I got ensconsed aboard by eight bells.”
Taranaki, the region where the Maori, all over the length and breadth of the islands of New Zealand, at one time specially lauded—loved to sing of its beauty and its fertility, its pure air and healthy clime, its sweet potatoes and succulent kumeras—had, it is said, solely from enviousness of these excellencies, twenty-thousand of the backbone of its inhabitants put to death, between the years 1818 and 1832, by the Ngatimanapota, of Waikato, in their frequent murderous raids in the south. The fertile imagination of even a Dante, in depicting grim and ghastly horror, would scarcely suffice to draw a sufficiently accurate sketch of the hellish atrocities perpetrated upon her people within these dates. Such unparalled carnage, converted into nothing more than an unpopulated waste this exceedingly fair land. Sometimes its people entombed alive in fulsome caves, under Mount Egmont, whereto they had fled for safety; seeking for security in perpetual and unutterable darkness, with the hounding hoardes at their heels, ready to bar their exit therefrom. Sometimes, also, seeking the “pale rider”—shorn of protracted horror—by closing with the billows of the Pacific Ocean: sometimes, again, by throwing themselves headlong off the summit of those crags, which cast their shadows on the black metallic beach. Mercy! No such thing as that ever had part in the contemplations of these most heartless forayers. They were absolutely obdurate to compunctior, or to pity, in its faintest form. The only immunity from their atrocious devilry lay in woman's charms. Such drew forth their gloated regard: such fired their sensual appetite; and such, alone, were spared to administer to their pruriency: similarly, though, as were the ancient Romans in their occupation of Britain, those vampires were occasionally called away north of the Mo au River, to assist in putting down internecine brawls; but, most unfortunately, again, came back south to Taranaki, the moment that these were settled. No unfrequent incident it was for a kianga [village] containing several hundred inhabitants to be, in one day—yea, in one single hour! almost totally destroyed, and the gory heads of all, save those reserved for the vanquishers' sanguine infamy, stuck up on every prominent position
These were the feats which win them name and fame; and are not such objects as name and fame—the attainment thereof—all over this planet, civilised or uncivilised, things which man will do and dare for? The Maori, as far back as is known of them, had an established code of morality, accentuated by Tapu; but, by all accounts, it bore a very slight likeness, by way of tenacity, to that of the ancient Medes. This more modern code with the Maori, was most ludicrously elastic: it yielded obviously to the pressure of concocted subterfuge and equivocation; and the Maori, be it told, is an adept in the framing of modifications. He is possessed of strong roligious scruples; but quite a m sterhand he is at clothing the transgressions of any of them with colourable quirks, so as to prevent their telling against him.
The following story has been told illustrative of the foregoing. A small party of Europeans one day came to the margin of a river, which they badly wanted to cross, but proved it to be too swollen to permit of their fording it. They accidentally perceived at some distance up the stream, a canoe, tied with a flax rope, fore and aft, on to stakes, on a small sandspit. Such was the eagerness of this party to get at the opposite bank, that they were about illegally to appropriate the canoe for that purpose, when, unexpectedly, a Native made his appearance on the scene—menacingly forbidding them to lay hands on the canoe. Thinking, among themselves, that it was merely a case of black-mail,
Moturoa, or Ngamotu, each close together at the Sugar Loaves—where this Mr. George Shaw, in the opening chapter, visited—and near to where now is erected the New Plymouth Breakwater, through some reason not clearly defined, for several years previous to 1831, seemed to enjoy an enviable immunity from the ravages of the Waikato. It possibly may have been that there were, for many years ere this time, a considerable whaling station therein established, with lots of Europeans always about. The cause of their keeping away may also be reasonably conjectured as arising from the peculiar situation of the place. There were always a strong fleet of canoes, ready to take the Natives, in occupation of Moturoa or Ngamotu, out to the seaward Sugar Loaves. At this time the bustle about Moturoa was much more, than now is, generally considered that there ever were there. Why, there were but very few weeks in the year round, without one or two Sydney traders paying it a visit. To have seen the smoke from the fires under boiling cauldrons, curling up to the heavens: the echoes of tools dressing spars: the rattling reverberations of coopering casks: and the lighter-boats plying from the beach to the offing, one should have taken it to be quite a marvel, in its way, of teeming, active life!
There were no Church established: no Judicial Bench; no Licensed Victuallers: still, for all that, there were, with both races, a sort of tacit regard for morality, law, and order. Did not, at this time, “Bill the Preacher,” daily, and sometimes oftener even than that, hold forth? Did not Mr. Richard Barrett, a grand type of a good old English yeoman stock, when among them, quite unknown to himself, act in a “judicial” capacity? Bill the Preacher, of a Puritanical school, with his sine quo non of perpetual torture in lakes of brimstone, if they did not acquit themselves with propriety, was, without demur, a very great restrainer of excess. Nobody, now does, or can, fully appreciate the civilising influence of these rough and unpretentious whalers among the Maori race. Their deeds are forgot, for this sufficient reason, that there were none to record them.
It augured well, in those days, the concord and good feeling which existed between the brown and white skins. How they heartily
paterfamilias for a passage thither. There was, in short, no place all throughout the purlieus of Sydney for several years more popularly spoken of than the Sugar Loaves, on the West Coast of the North Island of New Zealand. For, at the said place, there certainly was unstinted hospitality, agreeable intercourse, usually abundance of food—and grog—why, anything but inaccessible. Moreover, lots of lively-eyed women, with a particularly ungovernable prediliction for the Pakcha.
Albeit this goodly habitation of Te Puki, the chief, had been for years undisturbed by aggressive aliens. The old man had, nevertheless, most deeply suffered by the loss of many near kith and kin elsewhere. A daughter, who had been paying a visit to one of her relations in the north, most unfortunately, during an incursion of the Waikato to the village this relation lived in, was made a prisoner, and led into captivity, leaving Te Puki, at Moturoa, with but one child, a girl of fourteen years of age, at the time of the aforesaid cruel bereavement. This girl, spared to him, and named Rawhenia, consequently became to the afflicted father, as the phrase has it, “as dear as the apple of his eye.” Rawhenia was a girl liberally gifted with many sterling qualities, both of body and mind. She had a pleasing, statuesque-looking beauty, such as imagination might attribute to a Boadicea or an Eleanor! Also an acuteness of perception far beyond what could be reasonably imagined, considering the straitened area she had for acquiring any general knowledge. At this stage in the progress of this story, Rawhenia happens to be absent, on a protracted visit to a relation in the neighbourhood of Queen Charlotte's Sound. In truth, it has now been nearly two years since Te Puki set eyes upon his loveable daughter.
In order that the intellectually endowed reader may be better able to realize what has already been inferred about the gratifying unity which existed at this particular place and epoch between the two shades of epidermis, allow themselves for a brief interval to idealise a large shed, say, a little after a winter day's sunset, when supper is supposed to have been partaken of—when that relaxation which generally precedes rest all the world over, gives comfort to mankind—which seems to be a yearning instinctively implanted by nature to seek as a wholesome preparative for sleep. This shed referred to, is a low, oblong building, sixty by twenty ffeet, constructed almost entirely of wattles and reeds, with an open and very low-pitched roof: a passage up the centre thereof, on each side of which groups are lying or squattinng, of meagrely-vested
One of the groups spoken of may show the individuals composing it turning dice, entirely of home manufacture—“our own make,” as it were. Another, at a crudely improvised wheel-of-fortune, and two more groups at uncleanly daubed cards, the groundwork of which looks as though they consisted of old boot-linings, inartistically smeared with native ochre, to represent the various figures. But, never mind! dingy, and also inartistic as arc those playing cards, the players, evidently receive quite as much gratification from them as they would, perhaps, from one of the best packs obtainable away in more pretentious quarters.
Here, nearest to the door, please observe! squats a young girl, who, for the nonce, may be designated Hena. A swarthy buxom lass is Hena, sans doute, with wicked-like furtive dark eyes, and ebony-shaded rolling locks irregularly sweeping down her broad-set shoulders and back—with winning smiles and amusing gesticulations—trying to rehearse a task in prosody, which Jack Wright, one of the whalers, reclining lazily by her side, has submitted for her to get off by heart. Every time which Jack deems it fitting to correct Hena's pronunciation she manifests, in a diverting way, her contrition, by a sort of lugubrious smirk.
“Try it again, Hena, my girl,” requests Jack, with quite exemplary patience, gravely turning round a quid of pigtail in his mouth, and looking as erudite as “Domine Samson.”
“O! tee-el whati le mattah pe, Honi tay long ata fair.”
“Say the words, Hena,” says Jack, “as I say them—slow and distinct. Now, just you listen! ‘O—dear—what—can—the—matter be—Johnny—stays—long—at—the—fair.’”
“You make peaky to me to next words Ehak, then you see me go on all right,” entreated Hena, with a curtly-utterd obscenity.
And Jack Wright, her preceptor, proceeds: “He—promised—to—buy—me—a—bunch—of—blue—ribbon—to—tie—uup—my—bonnie—brown—hair.”
“O Ehak!” returned Hena, with a look of pleading concern: “Me no try all much this! Me make tupit plunder—then efry white-fello make the laff, and makey me purn all over check.”
“Your own way be 't,” says Jack, complacently. “You hand the pannikin this way then, and charge here this ‘cutty.’ I'll hear you at your lessons, Hena, somewhere where your blunders wont make you blush.”
“What does you odd sort o' people say for, ‘Can you sleep at
Joe was the old seaman mentioned in the introductory chapter. The brown moon-faced girl whom Joe's address was made to, cocked her one ear, saying.
“Aha te korero” [What do you say?]
But, after Joe again putting the interrogation, it is relegated by her unlettered ladyship to get elucidated by more tutored and comprehensive brains. These words, “Can you sleep at night?” thus becoming common property, were taken up, and repeated from mouth to mouth to mouth, glecfashion, all over the place, until they got to Horo Ito, who had at one time served fifteen months in a trader, and were by him construed, much to the edification of his compeers, into, “Ka moe koe i te po?” [Can you sleep at night?] And these words were articulated by all the Maoris, and, shortly after this query, which Grundy had carelessly put, it invaded no doubt many of their dreams!
Both the naval and mercantile service of Great Britain, from early records, had one notable sanitary point in their favour, which was, in the institution of a clean-shirt day! Such an excellent system may possibly have got introduced (who knows?) under the puritanical and gallant Admiral, old Robert Blake, so as to bring, as it were, into fuller amplification, what was, owing to the sabbath, practically realising the old proverb, “of cleanliness taking the next position in the ethical gamut to Godliness.” The two canons in combination, constituting upon the high seas more strengthened support for the observance of what is enjoined in the Fourth Commandment. Why, really, had it not been for this most excellent custom of keeping up clean-shirt day, in many a vessel where masters were culpably lax, especially in matters pertaining to religion, it is just very likely that the sacred day would never have been so much as even thought of. Yea, it is all very well for conventional landsmen to screw up their noses and sneer at the bare idea of such an absurd-like aberration ever taking place, who are themselves well provided with such a convenience as sextons, to remind them of stated periods by jingling of bells, along with many indications besides that something is proceeding entirely different from any of the other days of the week. But, sooth, anyone with the least inkling of what it is like on the vast “briny,” knows full well that, barring fitfulness of weather, one day there—why, is just as like another as are two peas! It is only when the regulated time has been thought of, for appearing in a clean shirt, that the sanctity of the day is really recalled to mind. Putting here, Bill the Preacher aside—an old whaler who, may-be, had sat at the foot of John Wesley himself—it is strongly probable that, had it not been for this prescribed clean-shirt day, often, at Moturoa, at this particular epoch, Sunday would have glided away without a single thought being taken of what day it actually had been which had passed over them! But to a man here, at this time, be it said to their credit, whalers, sealers, and remnants of ships' crews, all knew when Sunday came round by their calling back the time at which they had last put on a
Formerly, Bill, Jack, Joe, and Ned, by reason of their lot in life, had the heavy infliction cast upon them, of having, and often in awkward situations
But this, which has been told, is nothing mind, beyond an illustrative case. Some such similar scene may have occurred between Jerry Towser, A.B., and Toitu, the youngest daughter of old Piko, a sort of cousin germane to Te Puki, the head chief here. As at this juncture everyone became aware, by reason of certain unusual preparations, that a marriage between these two, Jerry and Toitu, was upon the tapis; but so far as to positive date, with a tantalizing uncertainty. However, at length, the momentous intelligence did come out, to the very great relief of all concerned, that this projected wedding was actually going to be consummated upon the ensuing Sunday. It is not an infrequent occurrence, more especially in the very best society, when contracts of this nature are first heard of, that all the antecedents of the respective engaged are diligently raked up, so that base scandal may be eliminated therefrom. But, towards this pair, there was no such thing put into practice. All seemed unmixed joy. In fine, there was not much else considered, to speak the truth, but the pleasure that everyone anticipated to share at the forthcoming important ceremony.
In the progress of time, this important and anxiously awaited for Sunday intervened. It had been arranged, should the weather be wet and unfavourable, to have the marriage rites gone through within the whari-nui [big shed]; but, if otherwise, then under the shades of the beautiful nikau trees, growing at the bottom of the hill beneath. The weather, as it auspiciously happened, turned out serene and cloudless. Verily, it was a pretty sight to witness, in this early balmy morning, small bands of men, women and children, even in this early era, many of the Pakehas and Natives garbed in their cleanest and most presentable habiliments, proceeding with cheerful faces to the appointed
To Bill the Preacher was given the honour of tying the hymenal knot, by reason of his very great oratorical ability, and, also, his better acquaintance with matters pertaining to such ordinances. Bill, with all the staid gravity of a freshly-ordained Ecclesiastic, opened the proceedings with rather a prolixsome supplication, delivered in a measured and stentorian voice. Then oddly, and rather irrelevant—it must be admitted—commenced an harangue from the text in Genesis, “And Cain dwelt in the land of Nod, to the east of Eden, and knew his wife.” In the course of his dissertation, the Preacher got a little way beyond his depth in the matter of the pedigree of Mrs. Cain; but, for all that, succeeded marvellously well afterwards in surmounting the obvious difficulty of such a formidable stumbling-block, which he himself had inadvertently raised—which was, by his explaining, that there was a strong probability of Mrs. Cain's descent from the first man Adam—being purposely suppressed as a thing altogether unfitting to reveal to the children of the flesh. However, at the next cardinal point of this semi-extemporaneous ritual—namely, what is vulgarly phrased “the tying of the knot itself!” well, as if some malignant fiend or another had been determined to lead Bill a sorry dance, and operated for that purpose on the Preacher's brain, mischievousness could not have been more pronounced. In short, Bill, at this paramount juncture, got into a more intricate muddle than he had even done before, by commencing the acmeal section of the service, in quoting a passage from the service specially for the burial of the dead, instead of that for the quick about to be given away in marriage! But really, after all, there evidently was quite a marvellous aptitude in the said William for creditably recovering himself out of rather ticklish embarrassments. A most phenominal ready resource indeed, which many public speakers might well have much envied. Such a complete blunder, anyone should certainly have thought, could not well be rectified without going over the whole thing de noro. But, Bill had a spirit in him, which declined such detraction as a going-back of this kind was calculated to produce. He raked his thin locks composedly for a minute or two, with his fingers, and scraped therefrom an idea which he must have calculated would reputably get him triumphantly out of the awkward dilemma, which was by his directing each of the candidates to seize hold of one-another's hands, separate them, and each stoop down and lift a handful of sand: then, as he, the Preacher, repeated “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” they were to let fall, first the one and then the other, on the ground between them, in one heap, that which they had picked up. As soon as these instrnctions had been faithfully carried out, a self-complacent look, denoting the operating of inner satisfaction, came over the officiator's full rubicund face: then announced he, with a soaring voice, “Now, henceforth. He that can now separate these two handfuls of sand which you have, before living witnesses, dropped the one on the top of
The Preacher would have liked well to have closed the proceedings by some appropriate kind of exhortation, but, seeing that his memory so far had led him twice already into what is phrased a pickle, he judiciously concluded that it would now he more advisable to leave well alone, and abruptly bring the function to a speedy close by bestowing on the “Matrimones” a benediction, and after such, the usual doxology.
The happy pair—as such pairs all the world over are invariably assumed to be—were the first to leave the ground under the sheltering nikaus. Such seemed to be an arrangement quite en regle, as none of the others attempted to move until once those referred to took the initiative. Irregular, and everyway unorthodox, as this wedding indisputably had been, all, nathless, seemed full of it, and took it unquestioningly as having been the real, correct thing. They did not, care much about accuracy of form: well, and supposing that they did how were they to know whether it was proper or otherwise, who were as little conversant with these kinds of conventionalisms as they were with the mechanism of Spinning Jennies?
Later on in the day, in honour of the occasion, a general feast was provided and held just immediately outside of the whari-nui, when florid, grandiloquent speeches were made by several of the Native Chiefs, and all apparently were as sociable and courteous to one another as Aldermen are supposed to be at a city banquet! The brunt of all the aforesaid orations, it may as well herewith be noted, was the denouncing, with all the strength their voluble language yielded, the wily, inexorable, and cruel Waikato!
It is unthought-of, and hardly believable even when it is thought of, the civilizing influence which these sea-bred denizens exercised with the Maoris in those by-gone days. However, the indisputable Leader, in short, the master-mind, it may be asserted, of the combined races, here brought together, was he who must be regarded as the principal character in this story—the far, and long-popularly known, Mr. Richard Barrett, who was master-mariner, surveyor, land negotiator, and agent for the Australian Whaling Companies. Just at this spell, he was away in New South Wales, on mercantile duties. Many and frequent were wistful eyes, of both Europeans and Maoris, directed to the northern horizon, to see if they could catch a glimpse of any sail which, perchance, might be drifting their popular leader thither—the man indubitably after their own heart, and whom they familiarly styled Dickey Barrett! What a mighty motor in the concourse of mankind is—Tact!
A Week or so, after that which has been already told in these preceding pages, there came upon this part of the New Zealand coast, from the direction of the north, an unusually violent gale, such as was a vouched to be, by the oldest dwellers thereupon, as one of the most appalling tempests that any one of them had ever seen. The great angry waves came hurrying on shoreward with a force so impetuous, as to create grave apprehensions that some of them might possibly sweep far beyond tha natural boundaries of the strand, and overwhelm every existing thing upon the bordering land. Over these tumultuously seething billows there thickly loomed a dense pall-like fog, which, at fitful intervals, became partially dispelled by intermitting beating gusts of wind, affording to the appalled and anxious observer brief glimpses of the havoe the turbulent tornado was working. As the sport of the agitated breakers, great trunks of giant pines from the virgin forest, the growth, perhaps, of many centuries, which the swollen rivers had brought down, were fossed about like as many shuttlecocks. Ever and anon, the loftiest of the seaward Sugar Loaves were scoured, nearly to their summits, by the lashing up against their sides of these tremendous waves! Depressing, weird, and melancholy, to the utmost degree, was the peculiar noise which these formidable undulations gave out: dismal and foreboding was the aspect within the muggy curtailed prospect: in a word, almost sufficiently depressing as to chill with tremour all the springs of sentient life. Indeed, nothing could much exceed it in awesomeness and oppressive virulency!
The whole of the Ngamotu hapu—men, women, and children—under Te Puki, their chief, as well as the whalers, were down upon the beach, struggling with all their might and main, to rescue their fleet of boats, which had been sheltered beyond ordinary spring tides, but which were, meanwhile, in imminent jeopardy by this unprecedently encroaching flood. Divers packages belonging to the whalers, which had been carefully caved a good way up the breast of Mikotahi—the most shoreward of the Sugar Loaves—were perceived to be distracted-like tumbling here and there adrift on the surge.
“Confound the 'dogont measly thing: almost as sure as guns, the cask of that ‘randandelicia’ is in the wake,” ruefully remarked Gregory Dyson [abbreviated “Groggy,”] from his rather abnormal craving for the much-hankered-after potion, designated grog. “But, by the Great Pluto! wild as it now is, and dangerous as it may seem, for two pins I would satisfy myself as to its security.” Greggy, as customary with him wound up his soliloquial deliberations by humming away to himself,—
“Aye! Its nought else,” on also ruefully speculating on the probable loss of the grog, exclaimed Bill the Preacher, “but your well-earned and righteous desert. I gave seasonable warning—didn't I, now?—over and over again, long, indeed, before the Gaff took himself off, that the properest thing to be done with these indispensables, was to remove them for better security, to Paritutu! O ye stubborn and stiff-necked people! You—you are all perverse in your ways, and will not give ear, no never 'er a one of you, to the voice of reason.”
“Crashing thunderbolts! Belay, there! your preaching humour for the present, Bill, and bear a hand, do, to fix this whale-launch,” spoke Gideon Polton, the deputy in immediate command. “Now, where in the name of all that's good, can Groggy have all at once taken himself too?” here irritably added the Dep.—“This is no time for skulking, surely!”
“Oi'll just lay my ould tinder-box, fith, that's now atween mot fingers, that Groggy's all right enough somewhere,” put in Towser—Toitu's husband—Towser appending, “The fairless young devil-mot-care-rhascal, is, may-be, thirs no telling, devil a-bit, at-all at-all, intendin to spring a bit o a suproise on us all—troth, an its naither fire nor whater that'll quicken the hart-beat a single grin, o' the faireless, fun-liking bachul. Wur a tot o the chrature known to be on the topo the Mountain. Groggy wud hive it! he wnd.”
“Who, you man of witless speech, with your talk now of fearlessness, can hope to resist the anger of an incensed over-seeing Power?” reproved the Preacher—continuing, “Idle words are a proof of wicked wantonness.”
A great uproar arose, at this very instant, as William was speaking, among the Natives, from a girl having fallen flat on the ground, and remaining thereupon, motionless, even as though she were dead. A whole concourse of undo Natives crowded with actionless helplessness around the asphyxiated object, which drew their intense compassion.
“Mate moe!” [Death sleep] was articulated all round, by the weeping relatives. Gideon Polton, the Dep., with some difficulty, managed to get alongside of this supposed defunct maiden, when he at once became convinced, in his own mind, of the true nature of the
There! where every eye towards now was directed, at short intervals, could be discovered the round, hardened craninm which had conceived, and also dared to put into execution, one of the very maddest and wildest freaks which almost possibly could be devised. As Grossy's soaking head was occasionally seen to rise on the crest of the ascending wave, a piece of rope was subsequently detected to be held in his mouth; and, of course, with such a suggestive item, the idea at once flashed into the minds of those who had seen it, that this utterly reckless youth had had the astounding temerity, even despite of all the raging elements around, to have crossed to Mikotahi, at every hazard, so as to take stock of certain vessels placed thereupon, and, if at all practicable, to abduct one of them. Anon, Dyson got tossed by the bil ow which had borne him on unto a fordable depth, as gently as the mother would the child upon her lap whilst weary with it dangling. In perfect abandonment he had relinquished himself, in order to be transferred to where he listed on the breast of the shore-trending wave! and howbeit, such an intrepid confidence, under the perilous circumstances, failed him not.
“Goodzooks!” quoth Groggy, as he stood again upright on the uncovered ironsand, streaking the water that still descended down upon his face from his drenched matted locks. “Here, boys, hist! Look! here's a fool at one end of this rope, and quite as much as will readi'y make a half-score more fools, you'll find, at the other. Bear a hand to haul away, my true blues, until such time as the rum cask's at our feet.” Then, quite imperturbably, Groggy went on with—
This behest of Groggy's, doubtlessly, was a labour of sheer love, and but a short while sufficed for its due execution, for his comrades, by this time, were thoroughly played out, as it were, with their late exertions
“Losh guidness a' the day! Noo, noo, what a striking coinseedence,” began Jimmie Ling. “When I was in the brig ‘Annabell,’ in the year —let me see— o' Waterloo, lying at one o' the Canaries, one o' the third watch dropped overboard, and he returned to the ship again with—–”
Here James was rudely interrupted by the Dep. ordering him to be off, at once, and fetch his telescope from the back of the rafters, inside the door of the caboose. “I fancy,” the Dep. went on, as if talking to himself, “that something's just now showed up, like a sail in the offing; but one can't be sure of anything with such a miserable and abominable atmosphere. However, if this man Jimmie Ling makes haste, we'll soon see.”
“Ay, ay! It's a fore-and-aft, by Jove!” communicated the Dep., to the by-standers around, as soon as the telescope had left his eyes. “Here, you, Jerry—see what you can fetch: two are better than one at this work.”
“O, throth, yes, Dep.! There's no mistaking it at all, at all: it's a fore-and-aft,” said Jerry, still retaining the glass to his optics. “But, thunder and turf, Dep.—fith an' there's just a couple of them, or may I, Jeremiah Towser, never see bliss!—and, 'gad; the more's the mystery too, within aisy hail o' wan-an-other, ilse I'm a Dutchman! But, the Lord save us all, the niver of an attimpt can any af them make for vintering thir dripping noses anyway near here this next three days, inyhow.”
“Losh, guidness a' the day!” again essayed to expatiate Jimmie Ling, “Noo, I jist call that, I do, a'most merveelous—a most striking coinseedence.”
“Coinseedence, you bladder-ma-skite,” bawled, snappishly, the Dep., evidently, by this time, getting short of Job's virtue. “Is this a time, do you think, to go on a-palavering, when you know as well as I do that that cable there wants instant overhauling? Goodness! some men's got as little real ‘savie’ in them as a croaking morepork. Hy, here! Right off, look slippy in the paying of that line out.”
The Dep.'s risibility was not inexcusable, for this reason, as he had immediately before that tested with the telescope the accuracy of Towser's report, and had it now by himself confirmed. But, not only that, one of the brigs gave out clear indications of tacking away from the windward, as if it were going to attempt coming in before the boisterous wind and beaching.
“It must,” the Dep. thoughtfully remarked, “be a case of water-log desperation, with a vengeance, or the profoundest type ever I knew of sheer lunacy!”
Soon, sure enough, it was proven to be that the Dep. was right in his calculations, as far as one of the brigs making for the shore went.
For, lo! almost in a twinkling—in short, ere the Dep. had well done speaking—Dickey Barrett, as they were accustomed familiarly to name him, and who had been sometime now expected, was seen, with his brig, by the naked eye, westing a little of Mikotahi, and apparently standingin for the Horseshoe Beach, on the seaward side of Paritutu!
Then, in a clap, as it were, the whole crowd of men, women, and children, of both shades, went flying and scouring towards the sea-base of Paritutu, the most prominent of all the Sugar Loaves. In such breathless haste, too, that no sound, saving from the piccaninnies the women humped on their backs, escaped from them. The motley flying column had hardly reached the struggled-for destination, ere the pluckily and skilfully-guided sloop had been driven into a safe berth on the yielding black sand which deeply selvages this coast here for many miles along.
The first glimpse of Dickey Barrett, standing by himself upright near the bow, drenched, aye, saturated from sole to crown, was the signal for a hearty cheer from everyone of the by-standars, each race apparently rivalling the other for who could give out the greatest volume of voice, plainly denoting the estimation of he who now stood confronting them was held in.
“Well, and how fares it by this time, Polton, with yourself and all the boys, young and old?” wore the first words he spoke. As soon as the Gaff (as he was frequently styled) got his answer, with a higher voice, he sung out in the Maori tongue, “Friend Te Puki, salutations!”
At this time, Te Puki was told that he, Mr. Barrett, had a suspicion that his daughter (Rawhinia) was aboard of the other schooner, but he was not altogether quite sure. All that he could make out clearly from the Captain of the ‘Flyingfish’ was that he was a stranger to these parts, and would do his best to hang out as long as he could.
“Ah!” pursued Dickey, with a concealed chuckle, “he wasn't like myself, He cared less about luffing, may be, than beaching.
Then, when it was spread about that Rawhinia was unable to come ashore, such a tangi [wailing] got up, and of such a dolorous kind, as well might throw anyone, however stout nerved, into the ‘dismals,’ without further hope of any future amelioration. Nevertheless, it was not a very great while before that these jeremiads were over. Such was brought about by the Dep., Mr. Polton, calling for three hearty cheers for Dickey Barrett! coupled with that of the Mates and crew of the ‘Jane.’ The Maori then evinced his mercurial tendency by going, at once, from one extreme to another, a manifestation, by the way, be it acknowledged in this instance, not altogether exclusively Maori, as their Pakeha friends were no less effusive in their welcoming demonstrations. Not a single thorax, it may be said, in the whole ‘jang-bang’ lot of them but freely gave ventilation to internal ecstasy.
“Oil's gone up to ten pound sterling the tun, lads,” encouragingly communicated Dickey to his mates ashore; and, remarked after, with appreciative preconsideration, “If the next mind turns out anything
This news caused another uproarious cheer from the whalers, which, dumbfounded at its going off, the intermixing aboriginals, but their ignorance did not deter them long from joining with the whalers, taking, of course, the cause of their hilarity on trust.
“Lush, guidness a' the day”—but, too bad; Jimmie Ling was again arrested from proceeding with his coinseedence, as Dickey at the moment had set his foot on shore, and was forthwith being triumphantly carried shoulder-high to his private quarters, amid the din of such a medley of voices as drowned at the moment even the bellowings of the maddened storm gods!
In Maoiland, chieftainship does not go by entil. Wisley, fighting chiefs are selected from the youths who evince the greatest amount of intrepidity or finesse in the exercise of their various undertakings. It may be in the matter of cultivating, in constructing, in hunting, in fishing; but, perhaps, from more than any other of these pursuits—athletic pastimes. The most showy plant, it is remarked among them, does not always throw of the most vigorous seed. Nature produces the stuff, but the quickening power itself solely comes from Atua [God]. Whara Pori, of whom much will hercafter be said in this story, was the fourth son of the minor chief Tiwhiti, living at Pukeariki [Mount of the Lord], now styled Mount Elliot, New Plymouth, known as where the flagstaff stands. A chief was Whara Pori, admitted on all sides, even to this day, to have been one of the most sagacious of warriors that ever the Maori produced. Yea, at the present time the bare mention of his name still brings always a gleam of pride into the dark, vivid eye of a Ngatiawa, which the memory of no other of their distinguished leaders can, apparently, call forth. In conversation with any of Whara's contemporaries [now, there are few living], or with the progeny of any of those, they are heard to hold him up as having been gifted with a most remarkable thinking power—far beyond the ordinary allowance of any of their kind, and ruefully observe that, had Whara only been their leader twenty years sooner, it would have saved to them quite as many as twenty thousand valuable lives! If it is a garrulous Native, one should get into colloquy with, as many bon-mots and interesting anecdotes will be told of Whara as are, perhaps, in the biographies of any of the most renowned of civilisation. From these stories it has been gathered that Pori was a very great stickler for bodily exercise, and, of course, conversely hostile to inactivity. Despising games wherein neither physical nor brain power was required, and strenuously
It was yet ere Whara Pori had arrived at puberty: it was yet, in sooth, ere he was punctured by the cunning artist's tattooing needle; ere that he was admitted to a voice in the staid councils of men, that an understanding was manifested by him which baffled the wisest in their runangi. This is what has been said Whara had done. A carved canoe, which great store had been set upon—thought to have been scuttled while out at sea by a sword-fish, its occupants, whilst hurrying to land for safety, ran into a gut on the west side of Mikotahi Sugar Loaf, where the punctured craft went, afterwards, suddenly down. Unavailing efforts, year after year, had been made to raise this esteemed trophy, and get it once more alloat All they had for their pains was but a sight of her beautifully-carved mouldings and symmetrical contour lying at the bottom of the still blue water, as if derisively taunting their incompetence to recover it from its submerged bed. Finally, everyone got impressed around Moturoa that no run of luck would attend them for as long as ever they were unable to recover their highly-esteemed canoe from where she had, for such an extended period, apparently been most mysteriously protected, behind a high transverse rock.
As time went on, it transpired that the juvenile, Pori, became to be looked upon by his kindred and acquaintances as having gone quite clean porangi [mad]. For days together, it has been said, he betook himself entirely away from the intercourse of any of his fellowkind. It was then, by his kinsfolk, many a time remarked, in low-voiced puzzled consternation, that, on leaving home, upon taking to his secluded haunts, the principal food he carried away with him was nothing more than merely the entrails of the pig! The Maoris, as a rule, deal rather philosophically with any person known to be what is phrased a little bit out, a little bit “touched.” That is—that as long as they are deemed safe—they allow them to have pretty well their own wayward way: therefore, upon this account, Whara's steps in his secluded wanderings were positively never shadowed by anyone curious to ascertain how that it was he passed away the time. “He was like the birds of the forest,” said they, “entirely under the protection of overseeing spirits.”
But, as the time proceeded, what a wonderful surprise? What a veritable eye-opener Whara had in store for them all? which, one morning, made them every bit as thunderstruck-like as though Mount Egmont had been clean bodily shifted down to the bed of the Pacific-Ocean! This was on beholding Whara paddling, by himself, on the tranquil bay in front of them, the very boat which had baffled all their skill: all their ingennity for so many years to raise! Thus it was, as it were, that tables were completely turned, for, in place of Whara proving deficient in judgment, it was with themselves that they began to see the actual deficiency lay: theirs was the distemper, and Whara's complement of that precious endowment, to wit, sound judgment, was relatively much in excess of any of their own. Thus, from that time onward, Whara, it is said, was tapued as the coming leader of all the hapus of the Taranaki tribe: the fighting chief whom one and all should delight to follow! That no time should be lost in effecting the indispensable preliminaries suitable to the exalted functions destined for him to exercise, the artistic tattooers forthwith went to work, pencilling with their needles the exquisite traceries particularly observable on certain sea-shells, over the consecrated juvenile's face, his trunk, and his limbs. The priests giving exhortations to the practice of insensibility to painful endurance, when he, Pori, was all the while undergoing tortures which simply made what was exhorted to be done, impossible. It was while these ghostly officials were essaying to instil the young probationer with the mysterious work that, through himself, the gods had effected, that, irreverently, came this solution of the resusitation of the canoe:
“The boat was raised through no other cause,” he flippantly protested, “than by simply fixing on it a numerous quantity of air-blown bladders.”
What a commentary was this on the much-vaunted advanced engineering skill of civilization? Aye! and no one, in any degree conversant with the stratagems the Maori evinced in the wars of the “sixties,” would be likely either to treat such a feat as being altogether apocryphal. It is generally acknowledged that no primitive race that has as yet been discovered, has been known to come up to the Natives of New Zealand for intelligence; and Whara Pori was, to speak rhetorically, a head and shoulders higher than any in intellectual capacity, together with a somewhat nameless dignity in his bearing.
As an illustration of Whara's mental ability, in the passage of time, at the early age of fourteen, Whara's only son passed away, and the following poetical lament over the departed has been accredited as a fair translation of Whara's pathetic threnody.
Rakau—tree.
paerau—abode of departed.
Tapuna—forefathers.
Pu—fire-arms.
Ngatimaniapoto—Tribe of Waikato.
Papa—earth.
Heinga—abode of spirits.
Shortly following the death of Tahanatoua, when Whara had signalled himself as being the astutest warrior in New Zealand, from Mokau River southward in the North Island, his well, it may he said, became paramount, and, sooth, it may be attributed to Whara's immediate presence, in conjunction with that of Mr Richard Barrett, the altogether unexpected case with which Colonel Wakefield effected a footing so satisfactory at Port Nicholson with the passengers of the ship ‘Tory’ —eight years subsequently, late in 1839.
From time to time, ever since there have been chronicled the experiences of mankind on this lively planet of ours, proletarian offshoots have, in a manner, paralysed with wonder, the diffused peoples, by their overwhelming audacity towards all opposition, with a startling impetuosity, crushing regardlessly under them, old-established principalities and powers, as if, by such periodical onslaughts, Nature were showing disapproval of mismanaged continuity of dominion. Had Whara Pori had scope, he might have even exceeded Tamerlane in extent of subjugation. As it was he did marvels with that which, in a limited sphere, was given for him to do. The part which Whara Pori subsequently takes in this drama, possibly, may atone for thus exclusively here devoting a chapter to a few of the salient points in his earlier and later career.
It was rather a fortunate circumstance, after all, for the owners of the schooner ‘Jane,’ that the hazard of beaching her had been resorted to at the time in which it was, as the wind soon afterwards veered away to the west, and blew—why! if anything, with a still-increasing force, insomuch, indeed, that it was deemed absolutely necessary, in the cove in which she was embedded, to take the precaution of placing a protecting girdle around her, so as to rebut the encroachments of more than usually high tides. These phenomenal high flows, accompanied by squally weather, lasted throughout the greater portion of a week. Then the wind went gradually down, and, as it shifted on to land bringing with it fair weather. In a week following, with a cargo of spars, spuntlax and oil, the ‘Jane’ was gliding away on a smooth sea with a fair wind, quite as sound, to all appearance, as the hour in which she was first launched from the dock, her previous First Mate having temporary command.
At this Moturoa Whaling Station, not many days after the departure of the schooner ‘Jane,’ a rumour got up in some most unaccountable way, that the schooner ‘Flyingfish,’ which, it may be remembered, had been seen with the ‘Jane,’ in the offing, and in which Rawhinia was vaguely said to be, had been compelled, by the prevailing dirty weather, to seek safety in the Kawhia Harbour, and, should such be the case, the chances were that the lives of all in her would thereby be even much more imperiled than when she had been out in the offing at the very height of the storm, as the Natives any way about Kawhia were, as laconically remarked, “not up to much.” But the marvellously strange thing about this report lay in the fact that never a Maori or a Pakeha in the lot could explain from where this rumour came, or how it had originated! Such was all the talk, but, to elicit a verification of the hue and cry, none, apparently, took the trouble upon themselves of sodoing. It was like Brown's affianced, when Brown was trenching on matters connected with her, a little, as it were, beneath the surface—telling him “that if she were not taken on trust, he need not bother himself at all about carrying out the engagement.” Unauthenticated,
This latter proposal was the one which seemed to receive by far the largest amount of support. Such was the case, it may be alleged, solely through the course submitted being advocated by their renowned fighting chief, Whara Pori, and, likewise, by their much-relied upon friend, Dickey Barrett. Each of these local magnates had promised to lead, no matter what befell them, as long as they were spared to wherever there was any possibility of releasing Rawhinia, should it fall out that she had been captured. The most daring spirits amongst their tribe were, there and then, with manifest circumspection, selected, in addition to Barrett and two of his whalers. These were speedily put in possession of the most approved weapons, such as tomahawks, spears, clubs, meres, and, of course, with the few tars, their cutlasses; and expeditiously the expedition was on the way.
Putting fanfaronading aside, it was a very pretty sight to survey the lengthy, twelve-paddled war-canoe, under the cerulean canopy, gliding swan-like through the tranquilly translucent waters of this particular patch of the great Pacific. The steersman's all but erect posture away in the widening distance, magnified to astonishingly gigantic proportions, by the convergence of light and shade: the stalwart operators sitting in a long line, file upon file, with nothing to cover their heads saving what Nature supplied—namely, that of their own dark clustering locks—their brownish glossy bare arms, necks, breasts, and shoulders appearing, with the noonday's almost perpendicular rays, as lustrous as polished bronze. Most agreeable to survey, was their well-timed movement.
Go it! onward, brave hearts! Know that you are now on the noble mission of love! It will be far on though in the passage of another day; the stars will come, and again will they vanish, ere that your progress—absolutely manual—over the endless lapping waves brings you to your wearisome journey's end. There are just yet fully seventy miles of waterway lying before you ere that your onward course may be discontinued. Aye! and then, what possibilities may have to be confronted? and what blatant wrath withstood?
If the grief of a Maori is not any more profound than the rest of their genera occupying this particular orb, it most unquestionably has a great deal more of demonstration with it. Here, on the ridges of
There chanced, at this epoch, to be a stranger, the guest of the Ngatiawas. Such was, in the person of a rotund visaged, big-boned, minor-chief of the Ngateranui—a tribe on the southern coast—whose proper appellation was Toko, but whom, some missionary, at this early date, down the coast somewhere, had dubbed—no, that's not it—christened him “Absolom.” This Absolom, as he may just as well now be nominated, appeared on the momentous occasion which has been briefly referred to, to be the only one among the whole crowd apparently not disposed to jeremiading. Manifestly, the temperament of our new friend Absolom was fitter for being a follower of Comus than Momus. Absolom kept almost incessantly moving to and fro as though he were some superveying marshal. He kept strutting about, drolly inflated, with a stately measured pace and crect bearing, and seldom failed, whenever he was in juxtaposition with a passable-looking wahine [lass], to show that he knew a little of that which polite society exacts from its professed votaries. However, by what has now been said, it must not be inferred that Absolom raised his hat to those ladies. No such thing: that he really could not do, for this very good reason—he had not got the like to raise! But this is what Absolom really did do: he took a grip of his maro, or flax-kilt at his sides, independently with each hand, spread it out like an open topsy-turvy fan, gave a few quick sidling steps, followed by a gyration or two, not at all unlike the preliminary attitudinising proceedings made by a well-known plumaged biped. Doubtlessly, in a way, the said Absolom thought no small ashes of himself, as, when an opportunity availed, he would splore magniloquently of things which he had never seen, and over feats which he had never done, and seemed too, as if quite hurt by anyone evincing any ignorance of his self-considered superlativeness! If Absolom's notoriety was confined to a very limited sphere, the fault certainly was not with Absolom, but with those who would not bother themselves in making researches, by way of discovering this world's narrowly circumscribed illustrious men.
Absolom, like most others of his kind, possessed a constitutional aversion to being anywhere abroad after sundown, apprehensive, of course, of encountering that universal bugbear of mankind on this globe of several thousand years' standing. However, at this station, Absolom so far overcame this constitutional frailty as to, in process of time, venture as far down as the beach to the whalers' caboose. Such,
Whatever eulogy Absolom was pleased to bestow on the singing may, without doing him any very serious injustice, be put down as merely feigned and artificial; but whatever he expressed in praise of the potent West India stuff, it may, beyond all manner of doubt be here set down, as thoroughly genuine. No question about it that, for a number of times, these lively sea-dogs, the whalers, heartily appreciated the honour thus paid them by Absolom's evening visits, and showed, too, their due appreciation thereof by many instances of openhanded unstinted liberality, as well as cordial affability. But, liberal to a fault even, as is well known, are sailors, such a constant drain as Absolom made on their restricted resources, must, by some way or other, inevitably be brought to a termination. The modus operandi of bringing about such a devoutly to be wished for consummation began to be a “speculative problem.”
“Now, by all there remains of Good King Stephen!” exclaimed
Then Jack, casting, at the close of this preamble, his off eye in the direction of Jerry Towser's stalwart frame, who must have stood close upon six feet high, said, “Jerry, my gleaming trout! I must have you in co-partnership. If I have my tractile Jerry lad, the game I mean, is just as good as won.”
Jerry, as it might have been anticipated, with alacrity, gave unconditional compliance. Jerry's words were, “Jack, you limb of dhiversion, yae, I'll just sarve you, in fith an' I will, just to the verge of thraison! Now, my worthy, just now be afther, wid ye, giving out the progroom.”
“Many thanks, Jerry,” politely rejoined Chips. “All that I stand in need of is a trustworthy steady-back, to allow me to stand for a little while upright upon. Then, for better security, Jerry, I would like you to take a grip around my ankles. That stay, don't you see, will be necessary to make me keep the balance, even although that it may be necessary for you to stalk slowly about underneath my individual gravity. I shouldn't wonder, Towser, my boy, but you'll find the position—well—a wee-bit awkward just at first! For that very reason, it would be no harm, anyway, to practice the gymnastics by ourselves together, quietly, for a night or two. What do you think!”
“But begorrah, di 've ye mind, now?” blurted out the allotted bottom story of this projected structure. “If that's all, my grand mhiaster af ciremonies, the niver of that wud e'r a bit frighten Absolom.”
“No; you're right there, Jerry: that wouldn't do it, I know,” acknowledged, without any hesitation, Chips, to Jerry's correct strictures. “But that which I've named, with this added—namely, four clls, good measure, of some sort of white fabric hanging from the back of my head, down to your heels, Jerry, and at the same time brought as much round to the front of our united bodies as 'twill admit of, will most certainly produce the effect wanted! What do you think? What do you say to it yourself, aye Jerry?”
Ideally, in a flash, Jerry took in the ludricous grotesqueness which such a figure was calculated to impose, and was so thoroughly satisfied with the degree of ghostly outline which it should present, that, with sheer gratification, he commenced to wriggle and toss his body about as of one having vertigo or St. Vitus's dance. When this volatile fit of Jerry's had subsided, he was constrained by Chips, in the most forcible language, not, for goodness' sake, to go and spoil the pudding on the eve of its being cooked.
All that Jerry said to such seasonable advice was, “Jack, begorrah! sure as the sintiments are that's in Holy Writ, ye can intirely depind on me—ye dhivil, ye—ye know ye can!”
As customary, just as the shades of night's-raven-wing began to deepen, the pompously rum-enamoured Absolom was discerned stealthily making his way in the direction of the jolly whalers' quarters, unquestionably, in the sure and certain trust of speedily being a participator in the cheer of the “Warrah, warrah kute Pakeha,” as the whalers were deferentially termed by him. No foreboding: no, not the slightest, in his untutored mind of the dire upshot which, in a manner, he was rushing to have consummated. “Fate, Fate!” might well this preordained victim have exclaimed—“Why keep the path a-head so much obscured?”
Absolom, Absolom! O, Absolom! Stealthily, likewise, was this thrice ell long hoary figure: this spectral-looking object towards thee cruelly advancing to confront! The tall, double-storied goblin was spared, however, the trouble of coming in to near contiguity. The moment that Absolom's eyes caught a blink of the stupendous moving superstructure, he quickly turned, and retired through space suggestive of a ground-operating whirlwind. Where Absolom ran to has never yet been heard: but no more his pompous, portly-frame was seen anywhere in these parts near the whalers' caboose.
Nearly a week now it was since their war-canoe had left, and the people hereabouts commenced to entertain the very gloomiest of forebodings as to the result of the expedition.
“When the gods are silent,” muttered Te Puki, “is it not rash for mortals to speak?”
The Maoris are volatile, and their demonstrations of exhilaration are, if anything, even more elamorous than are those of their grief. It does not in the least resemble the boisterous Britons' “Hip. hip, hurrah!” and yet the intonation of the voice decidedly conveys exuberant enthusiasm. The following may be taken as a sample.
It was on the morning of the sixth day of weary watching and waiting at Moturoa, that a red flag was waved by the hand of the watchman on the top of Paritutu, signifying that something had been seen on the water away northward—Mokau way; but as to what it was, there was, as yet, no certainty. However, vague as admitted was the communication, it had the effect of instantly getting up a wild and boisterous uproar among the people. Soon was seen a great hurrying of men, women, and children, eager to select the best points of observation upon the several eminences around. There, while squatting together, a great amount of good-natured chaff and bantering goes on—such as this:
“Now, how ever came you, Hori, to bring those eyes of yours here with you? They're sure to lead you some stupid contrary topsy turvy way.”
Hori has a ready wit, and tells Ona, this wench bent upon plaguing him, that he didn't mind very much what mischief his eyes brought upon himself, so long as they served him to guide in a right direction such giddy things as she.
“You, Hori! How big you talk!” retorted Ona. “Hah, you! thinking you can guide anything well that don't really know a pretty
“What you speak of me, Ona, may, or may not, be true: it's not for me to say which,” rejoined Hori, meekly, but with a faintly visible touch of acerbity: “Still, this much you know, Ona, just as well, perhaps, as I do, that these things you allude to, when separated from the body, are something, after all your jesting, not very unlike one another.”
Ona, evidently pouts at Hori's irrelevant and indelicate analogy, and went as far even as to designate him a nasty old bull-seal, that couldn't for the life of him distinguish—well—smoke from fog, stare at either for as long as ever he might.
Hori gets suddenly absorbed, and treats Ona's rude and unkind words, apparently, with stoical indifference. The fact is his eyes had just at that moment caught a glimpse of something on the water away northward. After a maturer survey, Hori triumphantly perks his face derisively towards his reckless persecutor, and says, exultingly,—
“Girl: you now have nothing more to say to me about blindness. You talk about the like! You! a pretty one you are, indeed, to do anything of the kind—that can't tell a bank of clouds from a war-canoe! Look! see if you've got any sight left at all in your eyes, Ona—you'll behold that. Yonder speeds hitherward the toas.” [braves.]
Honi, here, at any rate, proved to the satisfaction of himself, that he was gifted with a farer-reaching sight than any of them, despite all Ona's saucy and quite uncalled for most aggravating taunts about the imperfection of his vision: for it really turned out to be, after all, no other than their own, thrice-welcome, war-canoe, and rapidly speeding hitherward too.
“See, now, Hori,” quoth Ona, with a most marvellous placative change in the expression of her rather winsome features and the inflexion of her deep-toned melodious voice, “who can tell whether or no they've got Rawhinia with them. Should you be the first to say they have, Hori—that is, knowing, mind! that it's no fraud—I'll never say No, Hori, to your Will you!”
Eager enough as Hori was to execute the behest of Ona—for the truth was, despite all the banter, he liked her not a little, and more so now as she had, at last, spoken so sweet and softly. He found, however, after a painstaking trial, that he was unable to succeed in giving the assurance which so great a reward was held out for. Something he had discovered, it is true, but, so far, it could not be determined upon with any certainty what the something really was. It might be only Dickey Barrett and the two, whalers who went with him, standing on the bow. Hah! This object for'rd perplexed ardent Hori—well—no small bit. It hindered him from singling out Rawhinia even should she be there. However, the reason for Hori's difficulty in this matter was, afterwards, satisfactorily explained. Rawhinia had been, all this while that Hori was straining almost, his eyes out, to individualise her, half-reclining
After the hearty salutations of welcoming were finished, it became known that the expedition, in a way, had been a success; and, but for a certain eontretemps, all but a bloodless one. When the ‘Flyingfish’ schooner, Captain Philip Marett, master, and subsequently, as it was ascertained, bound to Moturoa, with provisions, was driven, through actual stress of weather, to seek shelter in the harbour of Kawhia, and therein had slipped anchor a good way off shore, it was getting late on in the day, and no one from the land bothered themselves to look anyway near. At early grey dawn, however, on the following morning, there came leisurely and quictly paddling alongside, in a canoe, an infirm-looking aged man, along with a youth and two small boys. When this patriarch got on board, he, the hoary aborigince, gave a faint smile of injured susceptibility, when the Captain, without delay, put to him, through an Interpreter, the question, “If his tribe on shore, these times, was friendly with the Pakeha?”
This “ancient-of-days” replied to the query with a droll sort of grimace on his spare, shrivelled, and pinched countenance, accompanied with a fin-like backward movement of his open hands, and thus delivered himself: “Wouldn't the shark, if it could, not like to be friendly with the swordfish?”
This hoary head and his present retinue evinced such an innocent and amusing curiosity at everything they saw, touched, tasted or handled, that gradually, they drew the favour, despite of themselves, of all aboard, and thereupon begat unreserved confidence. One most strange thing, however, with them at the time was this: that when Rawhinia came upon deck, they paid no more heed to her—no; not a bit more—than one they were accustomed rubbing up against every hour in the day. 'Tis true, eventually, the old man had the courtesy to stoop for a moment or two and press upon her facial protuberance the corresponding prominent organ of his face; but this, obviously, ended any further regard—any additional recognition.
Later on in the morning, two grown-up young men and three merry young koteros [girls] joined the other Natives aboard: and they, likewise, in no less marked a manner, displayed a naive, engaging demeanour—so far, in fine, as to arouse a yearning in the seamen's breasts to take a short run ashore, just for the purpose of seeing for themselves what sort of homes such very nice civil people lived in. The Captain and his stevedore, together and alone, were about to accompany these engaging visitors on their return to shore in the gig, under the plea of providing fresh provisions, when, over the rail, just as they were about to glide away from under, Rawhinia eagerly pled to be taken along with them. She sadly wanted, she told them, “To try and find out, if she possibly could, where her sister was then.”
Now then: What could the skipper do? A point-blank refusal was quite out of the question to give to the captivating pleadings of such an
“No harm should befall Rawhinia: no; none whatever, as long as she was with them.”
When the sea on the bar, at length, went down, after a few days favourable weather, Rawhinia's person on board, as a matter of course, was urgently besought; but, those urged, returned this dissatisfactory reply—that their guest was, meanwhile, very unwell, and hoped the Captain would excuse her going aboard on that day. Another day and again another day was delay still entreated, until the Captain was quite beside himself, as well too he might, with downright vexation. Just at this time, as the afflicated skipper was in a torture of indecision about how, in such an exigency, properly to act, lo! the Taranaki war-canoe, as unexpected as it was highly acceptable, came alongside, to his infinite relief.
As soon as friendly parlance between the new arrivals and the officers of the ‘Flyingfish’ was got through, Mr. Barrett explained to Captain Marett the nature of his mission thither. It was then, there and then arranged, that the first mate, Barrett, and the two English whalers, should go in company ashore, in order, as Dickey Barrett jocosely put it, “To see how the land lay.”
This small band was received by the Natives, apparently, with the utmost cordiality. Rawhinia, they frankly avowed to be with them; but was, just at the moment, on a visit of friendship at a kainga not many, only a few miles away. Had any of the Pakehas any desire then to go and see her?
This gracious-like affability of these unsophisticated people had with it, such a semblance of the true ring of sincerity and pure bonhommism that, eventually, it had the effect of removing all suspicion of anything like in the nature of double-dealing which, most probably, ere this, must have been entertained. Just while about to leave with such a favourable impression, the quick ear of Mr. Barrett, quite easually, from an adjoining apartment, caught this suppressedly-uttered sentence: “Kia hohoro ta tatou haere,” meaning, “Let us travel quickly;” and, momentary, he concluded within himself, that here treachery was evidently at work! Wilily, without, without his ever communicating his altered sentiments to anyone, he entered into a cheerful conversation apart with the old man who had first boarded the ‘Flyingfish.’
“Come with me aboard again,” said he in Maori, “Tupare, and have some acknowledgment for all the kindness you have shown. I know you like many good things which I could readily supply, such as nice tobacco, brandy and gin, and, better than all, too, spicy-flavoured German saveloys. 'Gad friend, Tupare! these fine dainties make one's
Tupare was elated to almost overpowering transport at the thought of having so many good things put into his possession: “Wouldn't he now be enabled to satisfy himself and astonish too, all his friends after, by the recital of how graciously he had been treated!” This was how old Tupare got inveigled once more aboard; and the said Tupare, Barrett knew full well, was no mean chief. Thus, so far, so good. Directly, they weighed anchor, and got their vessel outside the Heads. There they lay-to, and contrived to get this message conveyed ashore: “That unless Rawhinia was restored by the day but one after to-morrow, promptly at sunrise, off, without any further nonsense, at once, should go Tupare's head.”
To-morrow's sunrise came, and no communication: next morning's, and yet no sight of Rawhinia. Another morning's sunrise, and, without further consideration, the threat would most certainly be executed. There was no help for it: the Native duplicity had driven them, most unwillingly, to this extreme recourse.
Rawiri, one of the paddlers, a minor fighting chief, a lieutenant of Whara Pori's, had conferred upon him the distinguished privilege, if rendered necessary, of performing the sanguinary office of decapitation. This Rawiri distinctly proved himself to have had an inordinate relish for the enacting of any such a truculent job, insomuch, in fact, that long before the time of the stars leaving the overarching firmament, he had planted himself on watch on the pinnacle of the ship's forecastle, patiently awaiting for the first glimpse of the golden rim. As such, when barely perceptible, showed itself above the eastern horizon, Rawiri, without ever as much as casting his eyes to the right or to the left, in all haste betook himself to where the unconscious Tupare was quartered, and, with a blow or two of his well-whetted tomahawk, noiselessly severed the head. But, lo! What must have been Rawiri's dismay, on his being told, almost as soon as he had accomplished this decapitation business, that his services as executioner, happily, would not be required, as, Rawhinia, at that very moment, had just popped aboard! She, inauspiciously, had slipped quietly in at the opposite end to that in which Rawiri had been so zealously engaged!
There was one matter of consolation, however, in connection with this inadvertent tragtedy, which was this: that those who had conveyed Rawhinia to the side of the vesse, had paddled straightway back again, without their ever having left their skiff. Had they been less auxious to return ashore, Mr. Rawiri's services might have been further called into requisitions for despatching a few more additional victims.
“It is certainly jolly awkward, this beheading business,” quoth Barrett, east down-like, to Captain Marrett. “I myself,” he said, “wouldn't the like had taken place—no! not for almost the price of anything I could name. But, tush! after all, mistakes, it is said, will
“I can't make out at all the object of Rawiri's unwarrantable haste,” said Captain Marett, moodily. “Beggar it! he might as well have looked around him, to have seen whether or no the necessity had arisen.”
“There is one thing,” rejoined Mr. Barrett, with perceptible feeling in his tone, “that, hadn't I seen the absolute and, consequently, unavoidably urgent necessity for decoying the unfortunate wretch, at the time I did, my kind and most excellent friend, Te Puki, would never more have had the pleasing gratification of laying eye-sight again upon his only child Rawhinia. Nay; he would henceforth have had to mourn the captivity of two daughters instead of that of the one. Phill!” Mr. Barrett added, jocosely, “I am glad now that we are bound for the same port; and, allow me to tell you, we make a mistake—we certainly do, indeed—if either stays a moment beyond what can be avoided here. So, Good by, old man, for the present: we are now off back to the Sugar Loaves, at Moturoa, as speedily as stout arms can make the timbers fly through the briny.”
And, in a trice, almost, Barrett, Whara Pori, and their men, bore away from the “Flyingfish,” Barrett, with inner satisfaction at having Rawhinia safe by his side, and Rawiri with, perhaps, quite as much satisfaction at being instrumental in sending to the realms of the avenging spirits, one of his hated enemies, and one of their leaders too. No apprehension whatever was entertained by anyone at this time of the bloodshed which would eventually follow from their recent tragical performance.
In all times, in the great human family, quite irrespective of any ethnological distinction, the daughters of the primary she, at the age of sixteen, have borne an ascendency of attraction. It boots little where they may be regarded: in palaces, in hovels, in urban crowds, in desert wastes; in torrid, temperate, or arctic or antarctic zones; go where one lists, mix with whoever one may—the nymph of sixteen, plump or spare, is rarely other than engaging! In some, indeed, it may be embarrassing to point out what special trait about them most pleases, and, in others again, quite a puzzle to fix on where any specially alluring outline lies at all. There are, in the form Divine, fashioned graces which even the sense of vision cannot arbitrate upon.
Rawhinia, as has been related, being providentially restored to her sire, after nearly two years of absence, became, naturally thereby, an object of very great solicitude and affection; and every day she proved herself not an unworthy one. Rawhinia, at this instant, assuredly was an opening bud of very rare and gratifying promise—with her gracefully chiselled oval face, her peerless teeth—like two rows of blocked pearls; dark, full, coruscating eyes, expressive of dominion; a tiara of glossy ebony locks, the fringes of which, falling with graceful freedom half down her well-developed, shapely body. Her stature could not be said to be much, if anything, in excess of the general standard of womankind; yet, for all that, it gave forth the impression somehow of statuesqueness: undeniably the pose was allusively regal.
It would be nonsense, notwithstanding all that has been favourably said of Rawhinia, to imply that she was altogether perfect, as, such an attribute, none created can lay claim to. No! no, dear; no! not that! She was simply a kindly, handsome, good girl, and in keeping too, with the majority of her sex—that is, a little perverse when her sympathies got in anyway thwarted, which a trifling touch of, anon, here will follow.
See her on the morning following her return to the old home, outside the palisading of the Ngamotu war-pah, and seen, merely speculatively, will go a good way to get endorsed what has already been said of
It is not to be supposed though, that either Rawhinia's sire, Te Puki, or, as far as that goes, any of her lineally dark hue, cared very much for the peculiar proclivity which, a few days after getting back, Rawhinia evinced, which was in reservedly sitting by herself on a sanddune on the beach, watching the boats as they plied to and fro on the water from the shore and the ‘Flying Fish,’ with freight and cargo. Why, one minutely observing the practice which was followed by Rawhinia at this period, of squatting so constantly apart by herself, at the place heretofore described, might readily have taken her, if differently endued, as some Customs house tidewaiter, who had to keep a sharp unabstracted eye on every package going out or coming in; and that it was quite as much as any single person, either, could well attend to, the taking stock of all the flour barrels, pease barrels, liquor barrels, soap boxes, bales of blankets, cotton goods, and different nicknacks which were strewed on the black ironsand beach. There is not a question about it, but Te Puki inwardly did fret at this uncommon tendency, which he put down to his daughter's odd way, after being so long away from him, not to give himself, his friends, and his distinguished visitors more of her very much hankered after society; but, what was he to do? Chide her—for his very life he could not do so. His love was much too strong for that!
Rawhinia might have longer sustained the reputation she had
coupd' oeil obtained from the cooking galley. But, for all that, Ambrozia seemed to have deemed this furtive acquaintance ample and good enough to justify himself on the sand-dune to “plant” himself in a half-reclining attitude right before this eccentrically retiring maiden. Following a few “know-yon-knows!” and “this-was-thats,” and “thats-were-so-and-sos!” Rawhinia, more for the sake of keeping the conversation up at the moment than from any ulterior motive, dreamily-like asked Ambrozia if he had known Mr. Barrett at any time in Sydney?
“O, yah, me know hum ter wery wal, Messie,” replied Ambrozia, with affable frank celerity. “Yah, an me too, know wery wal oom Messor Barrett ter like,” supplemented he, with an inimitable exasperating chuckle, yea, just as though wanting to convey an impression that he was cursorily the depository of the secret of numerous of Mr. Barrett's covert irregularities.
“Why!” said Rawhinia, irate, “Mr. Barrett, I am sure, likes everybody, and everybody likes Mr. Barrett.” Then she artfully, as if desirous to remove from Ambrozia's mind any impression of partizanship in what had been talked of between them, said, “Ambrozia, what you've missed knowing and seeing in your travels here and there about the world can't, I should think, be worth much. But, what really did you mean—tell me, Ambrozia, do, when you chuckled so? I say again, and with what I say, I know I am not a great way out—there's not many that Mr. Barrett doesn't like.”
Then this Mr. Whorumkumloo-ng-lookumwhor, otherwise Ambrozia, said, in intently studious response, “Al lat wary wal, but no what um want to mean, Messie Hinia.”
“What do you want to mean, then?” enquired Rawhinia, testily, betraying, again, what she desired above all things to conceal.
“Tez way,” ingeniously Ambrozia made response. “Un like un dog: un like petter un dogs, Maitah: un like petter-ha!—ever much jolly petter more, al te same as you, te piccaninnie of te Maitah—you now savy, Messie? Oh—hu-ha-ah! Oh—hu-ha-ah! Wary, wary, knte! O! ez no meeka um wink te eye now: ez know now, Messie: ez know, wal! O—hu-ha-ah!”
“Get you away from here, at once, you do,” jerked out Rawhinia, with unrestrained perturbation. I call you a good for nothing, nasty, vile, lying Tonga cobra.”
However, Rawhinia might every bit as well have been talking to the gusty wind around. Her objurgations were rendered, at this instant, nugatory, by Ambrozia being called away suddenly to the boat, to bear a hand with a heavy lift. But thither, as this prince of mischief-making sped, he threw backward, while on his way hastening, a hideous glance; and also repeated a still more exasperating aggravating chuckle.
Rawhinia, after this Tongan had thus abruptly been called away, kept on, with a purchase round her knees with her two hands, moodily rocking back and fore, her body. The outcome of this osculating process seemed this: that her mind, she imagined, was fully made up, come of it whatever now would. She would not: no, never, never more, for as long as ever she lived—that too, soon, everybody should see—throw herself in the way of Mr. Barrett. She well knew, she owned to herself, this would be very hard; aye, and difficult to do: however, do it she most certainly would. But, singularly, after all such solemn protestations, in a minute or two following, what should be this ill-at-ease maiden's next step—why, she removed herself to a place where the very individual protested so strenuously against must inevitably, in a short time pass! Then, in process of time, when she was well aware that his eyes were directed straight upon her, she deflected, bringing her back vice versa style to be regarded in lien of that of her face!
“Gracious me, my fresh blown tulip!” exclaimed Dick, as he stopped to contemplate the ridiculousness of her inverted posture, “What's now the humour, lass? Tell me! whatever does this hidingseek kind of manoeuvre mean?”
Rawhinia once more deflected, and looked with a sickly wan smile the puzzled Richard openly in the face, the quickly rouged, and afterwards—O! what a fatuous attempt!—tried to pass her queer conduct off as nothing more than a simple joke. Failing, signally, in the vain attempt, which she might have considered she should do, she resorted upon something not very unlike a specious fabrication, by telling Dick that she could not possibly stay a moment just then, as there was an appointment made between her and a young visiting chief—she was even, just then, she was behind the time of meeting.
“Oh! that's all right, my pick of water-lilies,” affably acquiesced Dick. “It's just as well, too, when, now I give it a thought, not to be detained, for it's just as much as I have time now to quietly take a bit snack of lunch. Toll-loll, my cupsy-wupsy: lots of time when work's over,” and, at the instant, each of them silently diverged along their own way.
This disconcerted maiden, when left again by herself, went into perfect paroxyisms of anguish. She wished she had never let on that she had understood what the nasty Tongan had said, or that she had been able to control her feelings a little better. “The dwarfish wretch,” she said, with great warmth, “will be almost sure to crack nasty filthy jokes about my childishness here on the beach, all over the ‘Flyingfish.’ She wished to goodness, she exclaimed, that she had told Dick
The day of the first full moon, among the divers hapus of the Taranaki tribe, was the day that was agreed upon as the most appropriate one for making a great feast, as a compliment to Te Puki, on the most fortunate restoration of his long absent daughter; and, assuredly, most wonderful preparations went on to make it a rejoicing which would throw, most likely, all former efforts of this kind completely into shade. All sorts of supplies were now every day coming in; loads of mealy potatoes, invigorating taro, sweet kumeros; birds, fish, and bivalves; barrels of flour, kegs of Jamaica and molasses were supplied by the whalers from what they had newly received from the ‘Flyingfish’ Strange, though, to relate, the very person that all these contributions were made on behalf of—as a compliment to—seemed to be the only one about, who went with a distraught look, a stooped head, and a clonded brow. Yes: Te Puki, in the midst of all these bustling preparations, evidently seemed to have a mind ill, ill at ease. Te Puki, try as much as he would, could not shake off the depression which was wel-nigh consuming him, foreboding trouble in the near future, from Rawiri's hurtful and injudicious impulsiveness. Too, too well he knew, was his frequent asservation, the vindictive nature of the Waikato, who, for the loss of one of their revered old chiefs, would athirst for hundreds of their enemies' lives by way of vengeance. However, he appended, let these preparations be uninterruptedly prosecuted: such can do no harm, and possibly good, who knows, may arise there-from, by bringing together the divers chiefs of Taranaki to a more wholesome unity; and, moreover, there is this, he mentally concluded, it may be the means of my daughter, in the extra comings and goings, obtaining a suitable protector for herself.
Conforming to the promise made, Mr. Richard Barrett, as soon as the work of tendering the schooner ‘Flyingfish’ was over for the day, made his way up the hillside towards the pah, to have an hour or two's pleasant dalliance with her he entertained more than chivalrous feelings towards, and whom he had retrieved by diplomacy from durable captivity. But, just then, he was fated to further considerable chagrin and disappointment, for, lo! in place of finding Rawhinia, where it was
etourderie as the French would call it, with a set of young chiefs, in the middle of the whare-nui [big house], who each strived with the other, stimulated by Rawhinia's presence, for who should give utterance to the most taking pleasantry, so as to improve their chance, as was individually thought, of being the accepted suitor.
The exclamation greeted Dick's ears, from a corner of the dwelling, of “Four knaves. Golly! in one hand;” and the incensed retort of, “You have been edging them,” came from old Jack Grundy.
Opposite from this, again, in another corner, wheezingly emanated from Jemmie Ling, “Losh, guidness a' the day, noo, what a singular coinseedence.” But the run of the play was inimical to Jemmie's recounting his reminiscenses, as he and his collaborator were on the losing tack, and he was, consequently, through irritation, impolitely told to “You shut up, will you, for an old jabbering Macaw.”
This much Mr. Barrett derived from this untoward visit—that there was certainly some very mysterious underground swell of unfamiliar range, unaccountably existing between himself and Rawhinia. Then, lo! he, yea, even he, the dauntless Dickey, for the first time throughout the course of his whole life, felt indubitably influenced by the sorry green-eyed monster which was leading him will ye, nill ye, wheresoever it might list. Richard, at this consummately tantalizing juncture, devoutly invoked that the Waikato would speedily be with them, and then should be seen, in their true colours, he said, who were worthy and who were unworthy of favourable consideration. In sooth, Dick, in his sleep that night, dreamed that he was dictating terms to all the Maori Chiefs in New Zealand!
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
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
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!”
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
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,
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.
Mr. Edward Stelsan, the whaler that Rawhinia saluted along with Bill the Preacher, on her taking leave of the banquetting party, bore the character, among his comrade whalers, of being what they termed an “odd man.” Ned's odduess lay in his possessing a rather crude, philosophical turn of mind, and at no time joining in the frivolous talk or light foibles of most of the other whalers. He was one of them, but not with them, it may be said, in all matters disconnected with duty. This said Ned Stelsan had a sadly battered old book—a sorry, thumb worn, antiquated tome in short, the only library that he actually possessed, treating on geological distinctive delineation and formations, which served, in spare hours, to engross his utmost attention. The continuous application to the study of this frayed volume may be partly accounted for in this way: that Ned had to contend with very many difficulties are the treatise, could be sufficiently reduced to suit, as it were, his mental chyle. With Ned there was, in the first place, the orthography, bit by bit, to master: the syllables, too, to be joined: then the accent had also to be arbitrarily considered: the sense tediously conveyed in clauses and sentences, without ever taking into any account that which is a stumbling block to those who are considered pretty fair scholars—that is in the surmounting, in a limited way, the perpetually bristling technicalities. Someone is said to have stated that “the one-book individual, if the choice is judicious, surpasses in well-grounded knowledge, even that of the thousandth-book individual, whose reading is perfunctionary, superficial, and likewise, generally frivolously selected.” If such an observation is not wholly true, no one can state positively that it is entirely groundless. Groundless? Why, no: anything but that; but, on the contrary, a considerable modicum of truth in it, that, such obviously becomes whilst reflecting on the galaxy of intellectual first-class writers of the Elizabethan era, when a book was regarded almost in the light of a prodigy.
What in this far away region considerably exercised this whale's philosophical turn of mind was the prolific abundance of bituminous shale and black igneous sand, which linod the neighbourhood, for many miles,
But, without positively knowing it, Mr. Stelsan made, if anything, a much more important disclosure at this remarkable test than that which he was in a difficulty about how best to deal with! which was nothing more than this. The black sand, which had considerably impregnated the oil which he had collected, and now consumed, had, in the process, undergone a startling modification, by forming at the bottom of the old go-ashore castiron pot a constituent of an analagous nature—though infinitely richer—than the pot itself. A small ingot, apparently of steel, and about the size of a farthing, Ned scraped, not without difficulty, with his knife, off the bottom of the rusty vessel. “Marvels
From his recent researches, Mr. Ned formed the idea that everyone of the rocks forming the Sugar Loaf peaks were of igneous origin, unstratified—eminently fluxable, and principally of the primary series, consisting of trachyte breccia, embedded and surrounded with porus tufa. One day, as this enterprising tar had scrambled rather better than halfway to the summit of Paratutu, on a flat-crowned spur, trending nearly a chain eastward, he discovered, much to his surprise, that he was not alone by himself in the matter of retiring to facilitate the acquirement of knowledge. There—who indeed should ever have thought of it?—reclined Rawhinia, diligently poring over an illuminated “Joseph and his Brethren,” transcribed into the English and also into the Maori tongue!
Calypso could not have evinced more astonishment at the advent of Telemache and Mentor on her island than here, Rawhinia showed at the presence of Ned Stelsan! The young maiden's confusion at being so suddenly and unexpectedly “dropped upon,” could only be equalled but by the extreme sheepishness of the party who had her so surprised. However, it seldom takes very long, when two well-disposed persons meet in such-like remote nooks, to doff all diffidence, and make overtures of an amicable sort. It should not have looked in either Edward or Rawhinia's case, at this particular crisis, anything like well to have shunned one another close company with baker-and-sweep like aversion. No: nor did they!
Afterwards, as they went on talking together, Mr. Stelsan congratulated Rawhinia on her close shave from captivity, expressed his
“Oh, the Maori knew,” replied Rawhinia succinctly.
“The Maori knew, you say?” the least thing perplexedly reiterated Ned. “How could they do that without somebody bringing them word?”
“A spirit told them of it,” rejoined the maiden, inconsequently.
“A spirit told them of it!” Ned again reiterated. “Can spirits speak?”
“Speak—yes—they must can speak, or how can they tell what they mean?” returned Rawhinia, torpidly.
“Then, by that, spirits must have tongues,” suggested Mr. Stelsan, with a touch of sarcasm.
“That's not for me to say,” answered, rather touchily, the young damsel; “but this I know, and can say, that when four or five of the priests squat down in a ring, and keep touching one another, what they may after divulge is never very far out.”
“Judging from that, then,” said Ned, with ironical intonation, “they will know, should the Waikato come this far, who'll beat and who'll get beaten!”
“I think that that's what they would think improper to reveal,” Rawhinia replied, studiously. “It would make the people careless about what is right and also what is proper to do.”
“It's all downright rubbish and nonsense. Take you my word for it Miss Te Puki,” declared the amateur geologist, authoritatively—appending, parenthetically, “You'll know differently, that, indeed, you will, by and by.”
“Of course, you know better than I do,” acknowledged the maiden, “but that,” she went on, “does not say that you know everything!” Then, as if tired of a subject which did not yield hsr very much gratication, she insidiously asked him, if he knew in Sydney about a dozen of different people of whom she, one after the other, supplied the names of—the last ingeniously she named, was one they both well knew, in common, Richard Barrett! The affirmative was frankly acknowledged by Mr. Stelsan, who perorated by remarking that Mr. Richard Barrett was quite as great a favorite in that big place as he was in this out of the way nook of the world.
“Had lots of nice sweethearts there, no doubt;” quietly suggested the gentle enquirer, with quite an unconcerned, its-all-one-to-me, air, seeming otherwise absorbed in removing off her picture-book an importunate spider.
“Hah! They don't ‘tapu’ the very pick of young ladies there as they do here. They're not so selfish as that,” remarked Ned, with a knowing cock of his one eye and, of course, an equal depression of the
“Hoh! the tapu is not a very great thing,” quoth Rawhinia, “not a great mountain which cannot be removed.” The young girl all the while kept on carelessly whisking the persistent spider off the illuminated representations of “Joseph and his Brethren.”
“As long as the whaler regards the tapu,” said Ned, “in the light he has been led to believe it is, he'll be apt to give it a wide berth, I should say.”
“But, botheration, with all this talk you haven't yet told me if Mr. Barrett has a sweetheart in Sydney,” carelessly reminded Te Puki's dearly beloved and only begotten—quickly checking herself by the thought having struck her that she had let out rather more than she wished to, and for a loop hole, created a figment, by a peculiar sort of raticionation, by saying, if it was true that he had, she would never let on that it was so, no—not to so much as a single word, she wouldn't—to Narri, the daughter of the Ngateruanui chief, as it might cause her, quite unnecessary, a little sorrow. Then, she further added the hackneyed maxim of “What one don't know, does one no harm you know,” does it?
“If Mr. Barrett,” the gruff seaman immediately responded, “has a lady-love in Sydney, you bet your eye-balls Miss, that he has none at all here; and if the same gentleman happens to have such an article as you name anywhere hereabout, you may bet, equally as much, I assure you, that he has nothing of the like left in Sydney. He may laugh, of course, and have his little joke—we all do that, with scores—but to one, that's to say, if he has one, I would take my oath to it, he's as true as steel!”
It is not known exactly, for a certainty, how far, if any, of this eulogium on Dickey Barrett moved Rawhinia, at this instant, all at once, to accelerated exertion. With a mantling countenance, betokening inner satisfaction, she hastily arose, excused herself for abruptness, and bade the philosophical seaman a “good morning.” When a few paces down the steep declivity, she turned round, casting her eyes upwards for a second, and with a sweet smile, rapidly uttered, “What ever will my people be thinking about me, all this time away from home?”
“She can't hoodwink I: that, indeed, she can't,” said Mr. Stelsan, to himself, as soon as his recent interlocutor had descended out of his hearing. “My certes! though! wouldn't just a casting of her in plaster o' Paris make a stunning fine model for a tidy ship's figure-head? She is, certainlee, without a ghost of a doubt about it, a fine—aye, a very fine girl: ay, and just as good as buxom too, as far as I hear, which puts a hundred per cent, on her real solid stock value. I don't think that our Gaff, by what the lassie let drop, has any occasion to scare himself about this customary and trumpery tapu. ‘Gad, never a word I'll let on though, good, bad, or indifferent of all that's passed ‘twixt she and myself this most eventful forenoon: no, not I.” ‘A shut mouth catches
Had anyone cast eyes on Rawhinia that bright early afternoon tripping lightsomely back to the Ngamotu Pah, they would not have been other than amusedly impressed with the illuminated glow of susceptibility and pleasedness diffused o'er every feature of her winning face. Ah! proud girl! she carried then an unguent yielding great peace in her breast, more precious to her than gold—more dear to her at that moment than any other consideration in the universe. The only fly in her ointment now, she cogitated, which might not, after all, be very difficult to extract, lay in her own late coquettish behaviour. But that, on her part acknowledged she, was entirely from a defect somehow in her way of thinking—from the want of proper understanding—and, no doubt, would be soon condoned, when everything was truthfully explained. All the punishment that there would be would be just a little self-abasement and—afterwards, untroubled joy. Rawhinia wound up her soliloquy on this occasion, by lilting “I love my Maori Maid,” being an extract from the following song.
On this ever restless ball one momentous sensation frequently follows hard upon the fag end of another. Still, strikingly singular, nevertheless, it was that but barely a month had rolled over ere the event so much the subject of conversation at the feast had actually had an existence. “The Waikato is coming,” was loudly hallooed out from the crest of Paratutu! “The Waikato is coming!” all but simultaneously was piped on conches from the ocean tors of Moturoa and Motumahunga. “The Waikato is on the way!” two hours following was bellowed out from a flying foot-messenger who had taken up the relay of running at Waiwakaiho, to communicate the dire tidings. Hundreds of eyes, ere that day's sun-down, saw for themselves, from the top of Mangaroa and Moutoro—the chief inland eminences—what convinced, them, beyond any uncertainty, of the truth of the alarming report! Smoke from fires they, the advancing host, was raising, was observed, intermittedly, from the land of Mokau right on to Waihi. That dreadful night succeeding, the heavy goddess declined to strew her accustomary soothing poppies on the troubled temples of the people about Moturoa. By virtue of a summons orally delivered by the first messenger, the chiefs of the Ngamotu had already left to hold a council of war at Mahoetahi, along with their fraternal shiefs farther north. The whalers, under Dickey Barrett, as soon as the following day dawned, went, “like hatters,” at once, to work, flitting all the women and children to Moturoa Sugar Loaf, and the principal stock of provisions to Motumahunga [Saddleback]. Let the very worst occur, which possibly may, they are all safe there, Mr. Barrett kept on impressing them—that is, he continued, for as long as the provisions would hold out and the boats secured from the hands of the enemy; and that may be done, he also added, by henceforth docking them westward of the Seal Rock. Several scores of the muscular Natives were arduously employed on the top of Paratutu. Thereon they collected great stacks of weighty stones, to be hurled adrift from the edge of its summit, down the five-hundred feet precipice, on the very moment any hostile band should venture placing themselves underneath! Scores were busy mending palisading.
These chiefs returned to Ngamotu at about ten o'clock on the day but one after that they had departed. Something there was that conveyed the impression, before any one of them had given utterance to a syllable anent their mission, that the council, which they had been on, had not been entirely one of accord. Whara Pori, he looked like a sickly mule which had been kept too long on short commons in the breechings: the others, sullenly silent. It was not, however, a very long time ere it leaked out that there had been a split and great dissention in the deliberations at ahoetahi among their leaders. Whara Pori had vehemently and strenuously recommended a retreat of the whole force, which could be mustered, to the Sugar Loaves, burning and destroying everything in the several pahs and kaingas that could not readily be brought away. On the other side, Reretawhangawhanga (the Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Division of Taranaki), and his subalterns, urged quite as strongly, that they should all tight it out at Waihi, and, if necessary, fall back upon Pukerangioro, one of their strongest fortified pahs, overlooking the Waitara River.
“Such was like a whale's pap,” Reretawhangawhanga asservated: “nothing but what it itself sustained could ever possibly get at it.”
Whara Pori, as stubbornly contended, “That Pukerangioro was like a calabash, brimming full of water: anything thrown into it must dash a portion of its contents over the side; whereas, at the Sugar Loaves, let even the very worst come upon them, some means or other could always be found of escaping to those small sea-girt bulwarks—the Sugar Loaves.”
The result was that, with a force of seven-hundred of the Taranakians, Reretawhangawhanga took up a defiant position at Waihi, three miles from the fortified pah on the banks of the Waitara River; and Whara Pori, with his subordinate chiefs, returned, to prepare for the worst or best, whichever it might be, which could befall them at Ngamotu!
It was really perfectly astounding to witness what amount of energy, at this momentous period, Whara Pori put into the work assigned
Dickey Barrett and his corps of hairy-faced whalers, were no less indefatigable. All the day-long, they were busy in making preparations, the best way that they possibly could, for a staunch and vigorous defence. By dint of “Chips,” and whoever else could handle an adze, plane, or saw, to render Chips any assistance, rough carriages were made for the three rusty old cannon, which they had parbuckled up to Nga-motu—out of green timber, newly felled, and brought from the neighbouring bush. They had a very fair supply of coarse-grained blasting powder; but, much to their discomfiture, there were neither shot nor shell of any description about the place. “Need's must, when the devil drives,” is a trite proverb which, surely, never was more conspicuously illustrated than upon this special occasion, for, as the next best substitute to that which they were minus of, they collected all the rusty nails, bolts, nuts, chains, hoops and pieces of scrap-iron procurable, to serve as missles: in short, any substance of a hard nature which the calibre of
admitted into their peculiar and rather primitive arsenal! Great, deep tunnels were cut on the brow of the hill underneath the war-pah, which looked, at a certain distance off, not unlike a section of the Great Coliseum of Rome. These deep tunnels communicated from within the war-pah, by trap ladders, and at their office were erected rough platforms, composed of simply-hewn slabs, whereon the carriages with their guns were mounted; and, without any offensive detraction being meant—in rather a queer style. But, besides all this labour which has already herewith been enumerated, these whalers had, once a day, the duty devolved upon them of distributing water and provisions, the former from the lake under the pah, at Ngamotu, and the latter from the magazine for provisions, at Motumahunga, to the women and children, the sick and the lame, at the islands of Moturoa and Mikotahi, the occupants of which numbered in the aggregate two hundred and twenty individuals. Therefore, it must, without the least doubt, be obvious that no such thing as idleness had any footing at all in those calamitous days, at any rate, with any of the able-bodied male adults, in or around Ngamotu; and every day, at this time, messengers were arriving from the north telling of the progress made towards them of the obdurate and blood-lustful Waikato.
There was one particular circumstance which may as well here be alluded to, which greatly puzzled, at this uneasy epoch, the minds of the unsophisticated Natives—such was, the constant and irrepressible joviality of their white collaborators. There they were, in the middle of all their labour, in the middle of all the anxiety around, conducting themselves in the most free-and-easy hilari us manner possible! Dancing hornpipes, humming inspiriting airs, telling amusing stories, and cracking jokes—goodness gracious!—just by all the world as if that they had been making preparations for a king's coronation in place of arranging matters so as best to encounter a hand-to-hand struggle with a most ferocious and a most implacable foe. But this singular light-heartedness with British tars, in the very focus of paramount and appalling danger, has been a subject of astounding speculation with a great many more than the Vaori, for a score, at least, of past generations, in whatever region the services of British tars have been required, either in defending the honor of their otherland, or upholding the name which their profession regards as an inviolable bond, and not to be handed over to their successors the least tarnished through any pusillanimity of theirs. But why this digression? when so many interest-bearing incidents have yet to be told? Why go tortuously aside when the straight is the most interesting and secure?
Whilst all this turmoil of preparing to meet the anticipated dire crisis was going on, little side-acts of a more pleasurable nature were being enacted. As the grave and the gay, in this life, are frequently intermingled, no less so may also be the bellicose and the tranquil.
One evening, between the two lights, during this momentous epoch in reference, a boat quietly glided out from the deepening shadows of
The essence of all bliss in human experience, and that which conveys most forcibly the impression of an enduring rapture, is, doubtlessly, a justifiably appeased conscience. Relatively, all other felicitíes may be regarded as inconsiderate.
The Waikato made an unaccountably protracted stay in the valley of Onairo, a most beautiful and highly picturesque locality, not more than eight miles, in a bee line, from the considered impregnable stronghold of the Ngatiawa, at Pukerangioro, overlooking the Waitara River, and only a few miles off the confluence of that stream with the billows of the mighty Pacific. Beyond but a few desultory skirmishes, wherein each side was about equally successful, and in which it was also recorded that most horrible tortures by both parties were ruthlessly perpetrated on the helplessly wounded, nothing amounting to any marked result was effected. For several weeks subsequent to the northern invasion, Tukaraihu, the Waikato commander, during this inexplicable halt, may have, possibly, been waiting for further reinforcements, or otherwise protracting active operations with a view, perhaps, of getting better acquainted with the configuration of the country. Whatever may have been his object in remaining for weeks comparatively idle, the reason which was freely circulated then was certainly not the correct one. Such was, that Tukaraihu had a retreat at this time in contemplation; and what was thought to give some degree of colour to this alleged rumour was the fact that, at first, the Waikato had actually advanced as far south as the mouth of the Waitara, and then, without any ostensible reason, fell suddenly back on Onairo. However, very possibly it may have been the invader's diplomacy, if not to originate such a tattle, at least, to tacitly lend it countenance in purpose to derive advantage from that delusive recklessness which an unseeming likelihood of danger naturally engenders.
Another consideration of some weight, which has not been by any tradition hinted at, for Tukaraihu's delay, might have been this, that he was a confirmed valetudinarian, and subject to intermittent attacks of pleurisy. Notwithstanding, Tukaraihu was of an astounding height and girth, weighing over a score of stones, and had to be carried all the way hitherward in a sort of palanquin, through quite the opposite of an even country, by four relays of bearers. His son, Waitanui, here accompanying him, had over and over again urged strenuously upon his sire to
Les gens toujours occupé. However, notwithstanding the multiplex infirmities of age which Tukaraihu laboured under, he must have been, after all is said, of rather a philosophical disposition, inasmuch as he adopted the most effectual way to assuage pain that possibly could be hit upon—that was, by his giving abundance of attractions to the mind. It is just quite possible, savage and all as Tukaraihu was, that he might have had thought, as many more erudite had thought long before him, that there is nothing aggravates suffering so much as perpetually brooding over its poignancy!… Every morning during his lingering thus at Onairo, Tukaraihu caused himself to be removed in his litter to a conveniently situated rising ground, where he watched, with great interest and gratified delight, his merry men all go through their martial evolutions. These may be enumerated as thus: practising the scaling of dizzy elevations, climbing of trees, breasting rapids, and extricating themselves from intricate entanglements of most pertinaceous undergrowths. Then again, during the afternoon, this most celebrated generalissimo would take up some other formidable position, in order to criticise feats of skill and strength with lance, pike, tomahawk and meré. But all these things belong entirely to the practical. By way of diversity, the puissant Tukaraihu engaged himself in more pleasant pastimes, such as would in the French tongue be termed, rather bizarrerie. It was, without a doubt, immensely droll, and therefore, intensely diverting too, to observe this old pursyvisaged reprobate, with his enormously large and square-set, pugnaceous jaws, bolstered carefully up under an awning with sheaves of dried grass and plaits of flax, of a summer evening, with as many as a score of slave girls around him, all studiously affecting tender fondness and abjectly pandering, with enforced geniality, to his carnal weaknesses—his obnoxiously dissolute caprices—doing every one their very utmost to yield this horrible grim tyrant prurient gratification, romping and carrolling, running madly hither and thither about, in order to procure for the capacious glutton, all sorts of toothsome tit-bits,
Wearied, in time, even with such titillations, such hollow endearments—meet enjoyments of the old time gods—the temporary satiated roué would put himself in a position for the purpose of courting sleep, then, three of these ministering bondswomen on each side of him, would tranquilly fan him with sprays of plantain and laurel. However, the fact that all their caresses a d blandishments were but simply “put on,” may have been gathered from their sudden change of front on the moment that they were fully assured, by the noisy breathing of the unctuous Titan, that Morpheus had taken fast hold, then it was that they freely indulged in all sorts of contemptuous and derisive epithets: apostrophising “the sleeping beauty” as a selfish, gluttonous, old pig, and scores of more hastily-chosen designations, expressive of their
One morning, at length, merely to break the monotony, Tukaraihu sent one half of his force, split up into three divisions, as a reconnoitreing expedition, in the direction of the hostile position of the Ngatiawas, at Pukerangioro. However, the said force, in the latter part of the day, were driven back to their head-quarters' encampment, as the phrase has it, “with their tails between their legs.” Four of their leaders had been put hors de combat, besides close upon four-score men. This disaster instantly aroused Tukaraihu from his unaccountable spell of lethargy into vigilant action. It was, indeed, almost beyond belief to see a man with such marked Sybarite tendencies so immediately changed to energy and active life He, as a matter of course, on the first tidings of this loss, stamped, foamed, and raged with vexation: in short, his countenance became so livid and distorted that he scarcely could be taken for any of his kindred species. Oaths, he vehemently swore, unlimited! declaring, by all that was held sacred by the Maori, by all their titular deities, that he would, before many days more were over, pay the Ngatiawa out dearly for their uncalculated upon temerity. But, after his fury had exhausted itself, he reasoned and directed, yea, even like a Cæsar! On the following day, the whole force of the Waikato, upwards of four thousand men, sat down immediately in front of Puke-rangioro, and ere night, all their food and movables had been industriously shifted from Onairo, by their substitutes for beasts of burden—poor women.
For several days then, these two confronting hostile forces tried their very utmost each to outrival the other in the most obscene and licentious epithets: the most gross and the most humiliating mockeries, which language, most happily, has no power to describe. The Waikato gibed and jeered at the Ngatiawa for being guilty of all sorts of cowardly perfidy: told them of the far-back time when they were known to be the most numerous and the most powerful tribe in all Eaheinomawe [North Island] or Tavaipoenamu [South Island]; but now, by their miserable greed, they had become the most degraded and the most despised. The Ngatiawa retorted, telling the Waikato that their impudence was certainly very great, by imputing greediness to anyone, as it was known from one end of the island to the other, they lived upon nothing else but that which they thieved from their neighbours all around them: they were nothing but the swordfish of Eaheinomawe, yet they should find that they had their work all before them, if they thought to drive the Ngatiawa into the sea, let them try it on as soon as ever they had a mind to. Chief after chief of the Waikato advanced to almost within a stone throw of the fortified position, exasperating them with the most aggravating taunts to come out and fight, if not in a body, then by ones and ones. The Ngatiawas never responded, although it took Reretawhangawhanga, their, generalissimo, all he could possibly do to keep several of the fiery spirits under him from rushing out to close with the insolently haughty challengers.
“What is the good,” instilled this chief of chiefs, “of single bees bumming at each other when the object is to remove the whole swarm? Wait upon a good opportunity, and then use all your strength, without exhausting it with kicking, as it may be called, against shadowy smoke!”
Tired out, at length, Tukaraihu thought it high time to try on a little bit of strategy practice, a little cunning finesse, just as a sort of break to the tiresome monotony that had now for too long a time prevailed. He, therefore, betook himself, with all his force, from the view of those, he facetiously said, who did not fully appreciate their near neighbourly presence. “They might be anxious,” he added sarcastically, “to see how the taros, kumeras, and food which they had planted around were thriving this unusually dry season. We shall certainly not debar them from having a good look around: whether they will reap them or not, is quite a different matter: that,” he chucklingly added, “I would not be inclined to become surety for.”
O, foolish Ngatiawa! Thrice foolish Ngatiawa! Why, sharp-set by hunger and thirst as, undoubtedly, by this time you must have been, was it not better for a little while longer to suffer, than, so fatuitously to play into the hands of your crafty, scheming foe? Did not they, the Waikato, more than four times outnumber you? Had not they, the Waikato, while you were pent up and getting emaciated with insufficient nourishment, been living on the very juice of the land? O, foolish Ngatiawa, to rush into open space into the very jaws of perdition! to be confronted by such overpowering advantages held over you by your implacable enemies! your lynx-eyed despoilers!
The Ngatiawas, it needs not to be told, immediately they imagined that the coast was all clear, unrestrainedly rushed from their defences like mad bulls, in troops of twenties and thirties, to pick up, as best they were able, sufficient food to keep the wolf, as it is phrased, away a little longer from their doors. At the first—the old story—they were a little circumspect and chary; but, good fortune invariably begets increased confidence. They extended, indiscreetly, the radius from their works: the more they gathered in the more they wished to gather in. But really, after all, they must not be condemned too severely None know well the force of hunger save those who have poignantly suffered its knawing pangs. It will make its appeal be attended to, whenever or wherever the slightest shadow of a chance presents itself to have its cravings stifled. The Ngatiawas had now been, be it remembered, on short commons for a protracted time: yea! so much so, that the limb of a half-starved rat constituted a choice morsel: many had gone days without having oven so much as that by way of aliment!
Like that of the first cloud of dust raised by a rising sirocco, like that of a fresh in the valley from a mountain torrent, the Waikato was suddenly perceived by the above too-eagerly employed out-foragers, sweeping swiftly on towards them. Heavily-weighted with the provisions they had gathered, and, naturally, tardy in relinquishing them,
One hundred and seventy, all told, was the number of the Taranaki tribe, which made the escape from Pukerangioro to the neighbourhood of the Sugar Loaves. Indescribable, beyond any effort to depict, was the wailing and the consternation which the terrible news created amongst the people in this present truly unfortunate place. However, there was no time to indulge in unavoidable strokes and in protracted unavailing grief. Time must be taken by the forelock, by those living so close to such a cruel and, meanwhile, highly flushed enemy, for, who could tell the moment when, in full force, this dreaded, truculent foe would, in a manner, be at their very doors? Barrett and Whara, with their followers, began, more arduously than ever, to busy themselves by making what, till now, was deemed—to use an idiom—security doubly secure! An old, time-worn, battered telescope, which Mr. Barrett had lost the run of for many a day, just at this particular time unexpectedly turned up, and was placed in the hands of an expert whaler, of the name of Oliver, to use, as occasion required, on the top of Paratutu, the said Oliver having had long practice in the application of such an instrument. Thereupon, unless in a heavy fog, an unusual thing at this season in this region, or on an extra dark night, the Waikato could certainly be sighted a good number of miles away. Further providing for this special contingency, Whara Pori placed vedettes on each prominence for four miles out in the direction that their enemy must necessarily come, who, thereupon, were instructed to light a fire and retreat hurriedly in at the moment in which they observed the advance of the Waikato in any force. Moreover, Whara Pori went diligently and most vigorously on with the drilling of what force was under him, which now had been recently reinforced by the refugees from Pukerangioro. It was, to be sure, alike surprising and gratifying to take note of the manifest improvement that there was in Pori's army. Why!, who would unwitnessed have ever believed it? The most of them could positively run quite double the distance, ay! and with more ease too, than they could when first Pori took them in hand, and at the same time, also, have plenty of wind to spare! Moreover, they could knock down
that one only which Rawiri chopped off at Kawhia in the ‘Flyingfish!’ Let wail and whimper who may at what befel us at Pukerangioro, whimpering will avail nothing now; but striving to catch them with their own nets possibly may. ‘It's a bad season when no fish will take the bite.’” was the sanguine warrior's saw, and, radiant with enthusiasm, the intrepid Pori, at this juncture, sprung nimbly off his toes, with his arms pendulously swinging like a skittish young maid learning the accomplishment of the skipping-rope. Are not the varied aspirations of the erect biped, civilised or barbarian, altogether incomprehensible?
At the same time, Richard Barrett and his company of sturdy whalers, were nothing behind their swarthy collaborators for intrepidity in the work which they had set themselves to do. In short, Jack could not have entered into the spirit of the requirements of the position with much more enthusiasm had the stake been for some mighty Empire. Verily, one would have thought on regarding his fervent countenance whilst at harassing toil, that the impression of some such high stake was guiding alone his every action. It was very evident though, that Dickey Barrett, their much-beloved leader, was placed here at a very great disadvantage by reason of most miserably inadequate supplies. The Great Duke, in the old Peninsular war, whom we are told was sadly aggravated with the alike defect, could never have gone on doing without the requisite, by substituting what was required out of such heterogeneous material as did that of Dickey Barrett at Moturoa! There was no shot and shell about—that has already been notified. To take the place of these required missiles, as has been already told, every nail, bolt, and scrap of rusty iron which was in the locality, was called immediately into requisition in order to supply this momentous and pressing want, and these were all heaped together, after collection, in front of the Ngamotu war-pah. But, forsooth! shot and shell were not alone what had
this and that that must be done, and there is no help for them either but to do it! Old England, most unquestionably, owes the most of her greatness to numbers of her progeny who have persistently refused to see difficulties: such is a fact. Remember Nelson's telescope at his sightless eye.
In such arduously bustling war-like operations as has been above, after all, but meagrely described, a little melody, either good or bad, it matters not much, frequently has a very good effect in either driving away the feeling of exhaustion or otherwise imparting a more comfortable sensation of elasticity, or rather, volatileness, to the system, considerably mitigating gloomy forebodings. A few days following the almost blood-curdling tidings from the north, curiously, a most inspiriting sort of carol, less or more adapted to every voice, started as with spontaneity among the whalers whilst at their work, and soon afterwards too the chorus of which was glibly conned by the past-masters in mimicry—the Natives. It, perhaps, was equally popular for a season, as “Jump, Jim Crow,” became in the crowded three Kingdoms a few
Barring the few hours close, either way, upon midnight, wherever the ear was directed to, at this exciting period, around Moturoa, infallibly it would hear trilled out, “Pull all together well.” It got a footing, as it were, into the asylum of refuge where the Maori wahines [women] were, at the Sugar Loaves of Moturoa. It penetrated on to Mikotahi even, among the sick and infirm invalids! Dusky Maori mothers lullabyed their suckling infants with its exhilarating refrain, and Maori fathers animated their muscular progeny with its incitements. In verity, there were neither boat-rowing nor canoe-paddling upon the adjacent billows but took up, with extreme gusto, this all-the-rage of a canticle. These sort of currently popular lays are, one might think, not dissimilar to many individuals in the great human family: their special merits cannot be satisfactorily designated. Still, notwithstanding this obfuscation of definition, they are acknowledged for a time as transcendent luminaries, without ever the question being straight put—why? Possibly they may be foremost gulped through their affinity for floating on the surface, like as to froth off a pewterful of freshly-tapped beer!
On one occasion early in the evening, during these anxious days with the inhabitants around the Sugar Loaves, the last echo of “Pull all together well,” had, for a time, died entirely out. The young moon of a little over four days' growth was westerly declining and threw its reflected rays horizontally on to a strip of narrow channel which lies between the Lion Rock and Moturoa. In a short while this reflected effulgence partially edged off the lapping wavelets on to a threshold-like, small, projecting rock, at the base of this, the largest of the ocean cones, wherewith, by this shifting of the light, were vividly descried the clear outlines of two forms belonging to what has been termed the cerebrum endowed species, standing face to face with each other, the four hands in one anothers' hold: eftsoons the hands are disunited and raised slowly until they fall flat on the opposing shoulders, the upper portions of the figures in juxtaposition decline a little-the faces project, the lips meet,… and lo! in a few seconds more, over the silverytinted expanse a boat is seen stealthily and fleetingly moving shoreward!
A man is moving back and forward, with a pipe stuck in his mouth in front of the whalers' caboose, before lying down for the night. He winces suddenly: then, as suddenly, is composed, as, out of the deep shadow thrown upon the shore-bank a night-stalker comes to his side, saying, “Jack, lend me a hand, a minute, to get this cobble out of the way of the rising tide…. That'll do: thanks.” And then again Jack's left by himself, and thus apostrophises: “He's a brick, he be; and she, for look and gras, sutainly, bae a rar'un!”
Perhaps, for the matter of lucidness, it may he as well to explain that, in addition to all the work that these whalers had on hand in connection with the defence, they had, at the same time, a great deal to attend to in connection with the special calling which they were following. Moreover, they were enforced to remove, for better security, from the quarters which they hitherto had occupied. A rough log hut, of portly dimensions, so as to accommodate the lot of them, was fitted up on the beach, southward of Paratutu, convenient to where they had already re-docked their boats. This new station, it is true, was farther away from the seat of their militant operations. However, the war-pah of Ngamotu could be reached with more safety than from where they were housed formerly, as there was a covered-way from the new site to what may be termed the citadel, almost right along. Out of the thirty whalers, as many as eleven of that number were the acknowledged husbands of Native women. These women, as already has been notified, were compelled to live in undesired singleness away from their spouses, uncomfortably cooped up on the island of Moturoa: thereon, by this time, these wives were in a state bordering on open rebellion, estranged from everything they held dear, transported on this bleak sea-girt tor. Not only, poor disconsolates, were they separated from their connubial complements, but also separated from their customary pastimes and pursuits: from the erstwhile much enjoyed wanderings in gossiping groups at low tides among the boulders on the beach, hunting shellfish, or from their excursions through the old forest glades gathering wild fruit. The exasperation which they were in at their protracted restraint can be fully understood when it is hereby made known that nearly everyone of the wives belonging to whalers, together with several others, and also two or three young unmarried girls, actually went as far as to have ventured one calm, moonlight night, to swim the distance of over thirty chain to the shore! invading the whalers' quarters just while they, the whalers, were about to turn-in for the night. What was now to be done? The tars, of course, could
“I wish to gad,” irreverently broke in Jerry Towser, sitting with one of his arms around the neck of his good-natured spouse Toitu, she streaming wet whilst squatting contentedly between his knees, “that the Powers-that-be, had av chosen some other place for a whaling station than this wretchedly heaven-desharted hole, whir niver a wan, the niver a blissed minunt at all at all, gits ever any pace o' mind!”
“The place is as right as ninepence, Towser,” rebuked Jack Love, the carpenter, alias Chips: continuing, “Well, well boys! aint it comical, too, to see some people so glaringly stoopid, so absurdly dense, that they even pay ugly compliment without noticing it, to those they have, whilst doing so, squatting comfortably between their very knees! I don't see, myself,” Jack proceeded deliberating, “how that any place should be run down like to stinking fish, just because a pack of darned rapacious burglars have set their greedy eyes upon it. Taking a proper view of these things, don't now it behove the neighbours round to render whatever assistance lies in their power to those so beset by such ugly, covetous customers? Well, that is nothing more than what I consider we are now doing. An ounce of hot lead in the gizzards of each of the heads of these Waikato pests, who wont allow people to live quietly in their own homes, would just be their proper deserts.”
“Well spoken, Jack: bully, Jack,” as soon as he had wound up came from a choir of voices.
“Ay! and so think all of us; and so think all of us,” was drawlingly
One of the Maori wives, designated Tirri, it may be supposed, guided by old Joe's supplementary remark, gave what she must have considered in her ruminations to be the due compliment to Joe's “All of us,” by her starting up, vociferously, “O ees, a olly kute wello: o ees, a olly kute wello.” Tirri had, some years' back, been as far as Hobart, and therein, most likely, acquired that popular refrain. However, Tirri's acquirements were not going to be permitted by her sisterhood to “waste their sweetness in the desert air,” as' the entire company of them loudly took it up, and again and again gave out discordantly, “O ces a olly kute wello: O ees a olly kute wello; and so say all of us,” and went on until that once they saw Bill the Preacher shaping so as to fulminate.
“Men!” interluded Bill, “you've all heard Jack Love's sentiments, haven't ye? Them er sentiments likewise be mine. Them are the sentiments of all that be endowed with proper grace. Them are the sentiments, I say, that be worthy of an abiding place in every man and mother's son who has aught of regard for his condition when the, hull of the stately craft is buried in the sands of a lee shore. Them be the sentiments which every man-jack of us here around should zealously maintain towards our Maori brethren, who are now in sore travail — sore travail, I say! under woeful affliction, not knowing the day nor the hour e'en when there may enter into their inheritance, famished scorpions and ravenous wolves, and, without a grain of ceremony, cut them off from all earthly things: yea, consume them like that unto which fire consumeth dry flax; and them who have known them once shall rever, henceforth nevermore know them again. ‘Awake, awake Deborah; let all thine enemies perish.’ ‘Tell it not in Gath: publish it not in Askelon.’ That we shall stand with our loins ungird and be living witnesses of such cruelty and utterly base abominations—tell it, I say, never, that the place that we are now in, is a ‘heaven-forsaken hole.’ We be living, men, why, in nothing o the sort, as there ben't a single spot in the habitable universe forsaken by He beyond the clouds, above the firmament. So you all, my fellow brethren, swarths and whites conjointly, now in sore tribulation, let us prepare to fight in a good cause—the cause of humanity—the cause of justice! and, last of all—the weightiest cause of all—that be self -preservation! ‘Who will go with me this day to fight the battles of the Lord?”
Here, Bill the Preacher concluded, wiped the reeking perspiration off his face with his shirt-cuffs, and sunk his head for support on the palms of his capacious hands, suggestive of wrestling severely with inwardly conflicting emotions.
The pause following the discourse was broken by the dark, though comely daughters of the Maori again striking up, “O ees a olly kute wello! O ees a olly kute wello!” But, instantly, all was quashed, excepting
“Why why-cat-toes!” as Hena finished, “don't you come at once, and have done with it” Groggy Dyson punningly exclaimed, “and settle the job either the one way or the other? I am sick, even almost to death, with this confounded shilly-shallying. Surely they're not begrudging to leave the seagulls a little of the putrid carrion to pick at! I'm thinking that we'll not fare much better ourselves if they don't soon make haste. Goodness gracious! there mayn't be a craft here this next six weeks!”
“It's the bit drain, Groggy, ai' mon, and nae the food that's jist noo your hale conseederation,” remarked Jimmie Ling; “but noo, seriously speaking, if so be that we're jammed up this way tae a the supplies become absorbed, it'll nae doot be raither a rackin kind of poseession. Lod! I jist noo mind a seemlar coinseedence hap'nin when I was in my 'prenticeship in the bark ‘Billy-go-along,’ when we were lying one time in Madras roadstead—–”
“Bah! Billy-go-along wid yer old grandmother's spinning-wheel, Jimmie,” unpolitely interrupted Jerry Towser. “Sowl! wan wid be apt to suppose that you could spin out coincidences as readily as that owld lady, I've jist spoke aff, could spin hanks of yarn! Go to! Jimmie, I've never the least of patience wid ye: that, indade, is what I hiv'nt!”
As the Dep. was about to speak, David Evans [alias Taffy] got his word out first, despite, ere doing so, having had to shake off his knees his dusky rib. “I woot suggest,” began Taffy, “that any man making himsel so riticulas wit old yarns shoot pe punished first and then foint after. Efrey one must haf heart Jimmie Ling's coinsitences as many often as pe days in te year, so help me pop! Folk might think on something else than stupit coinsitences when they tont know the precise moment that might sen them to somewhere that's nefer seen, to my knowledge, on any ship's chart.”
“Tawy, Tawy, me say me like a one more tot o krok!” This modest solicitation was ingenuously communicated by Mrs. Taffy, as Mr. Taffy resumed his former supine position on his lair. “Me, Tawy, me tell oo what it is, me tampt try! My mout, tes minout, all te same as te stones of Maori ov'n.”
“We hal, we ewery one tampt try,” shouted, in concert, half-dozen other wahines. “Tawy, oo, kute man; kute man, oo, Tawy.”
Then, here again, cutely, these sharp, tawny wenches discovered a connecting link with the words “good man,” and “good fellow,” in their former refrain, inasmuch as they lustily rang out this time, in splendid conformity, “Oh! ees, a olly kute wello.” But, most discouragingly, the Dep. was relentless to the plead
There were, to their credit be it said, no recalcitrant airs whatever with these thirsty Nymphs: no standing on their dignity at all, with these children of the wild-wastes. Prone they all went, higgledepiggledy on the ground convenient to the blazing logs, with the whalers' hammocks right over their heads.
Swinging away, the seamen were in the sort of couch they had been for a long time accustomed to: accustomed to on the tranquil and on the tumultuous main: the couch, in sooth, which they had been educated to have a liking for. Now, in these hammocks, some, peradventure, may be dreaming of the far-away ever-cherished isle in another hemisphere; dreaming of the many incidents there connected with their giddy youthful career. Some may be revisiting, at this moment, the haunts of their boyhood days and vividly see, once more, the old nooks and crannies where they risked life and limb to get at, in pursuit of birds' nests. Again, they may animatedly enter in the games which they were wont to contest on their native village green. Possibly they review the past actions which met with an approving conscience: possibly, also, review those which met with self-condemnation, which may cause them, even now, in their oscillating couches, to evoke an inaudible murmur. Moreover, they may, too, in their reverie, have a clear outline before them of the ship lying down the stream which they first left their home in: yes; a clear panoramic scroll of such may come into their vision! Consecutively they behold again their relations and old associates coming upon deck a little while before the anchor was weighed, their fond mother bringing with her a couple of pair of warm stockings—her own knitting! the father, a full box of tobacco, and a small pocket Bible with selected, marked paragraphs: the sweetheart, a neat, cambric handkerchief, with the letters nicely embroidered on it with her own deft hands—“Forget me not.” … Sleep, sleep on you worthy tars, you shall have, as you all have had, many is hte time before, a rude awakening.
A short time before day-dawn, one of the occupants of the hammocks awakes to see through the chinks of the roughly-jointed logs, a red, lurid light: undressed, jumps down on the floor, and passes his head through the half-open door.
“Show leg all! Show leg all!” he immediately cries. “Oliver's got a bonfire ablaze on Paratutu!”
In an instant afterwards the gongs and conches were heard in the pah. The drowsy-eyed sleepers were at once upon their feet, groping hastily in the dark for their clothes.
“Fall-in, quickly, men: do now, ‘look slippy’!” excitedly ordered the Dep. “Now you, you women,” he next proceeded, “this is just the very thing which has bothered my head this whole blessed night—blessed if it isn't!”
“Ah, you don't bother your head then any more with us,” spoke the round moon-faced Mrs. Towser, who was most up in English, “for we hal makey te swim here, and why not for hal of us makey the swim back again? Come, all of you wahines, efery one of you, before te men leafs—you follow me!”
Then, then! “Bravo, bravo! plucky wahines!” in a trice, every one of these hardy, fearless women breasted the bellowing surf on their way back to their undesirable quarters! and upon the whalers' beholding their matchless daringness, whilst they were mustering, with irrepressible admiration, they gave them a suppressed cheer, which, being heard, several of the swimmers swayed around their heads on the water, shouting lustily out, “Kif it: kif it: kif it, pakeha; make it like te kute rum grog, hot and strong, mo te pluty Waikato! Ka nui pai, Ehak te wailler!”
The voice of Hena, while she rested for a spell on an intervening rock, was after heard on the shore, trilling out,—
Ngamotu—signifying abode of separate branches of the family—perhaps it may as well be explained, besides being the name of the Ngatiawa hapu's war-pah, is also the name of the surrounding district in Taranaki, about the size of an ordinary-sized parish, and which comprises the present town of New Plymouth…. The Waikato, of which the approach of was signalled by bonfire, gong, and conch on the morning referred to at the close of the preceding chapter, came no nearer, on this occasion, than Te Hua, which is nearly five miles distant from Moturoa, the Sugar Loaves. In the course of the day, Waitanui forwarded a message by one of the Ngatiawas, who had been taken prisoner, of a very placative nature, stating that the only object which he had in moving farther south, was simply, and nothing more, but to enable him to try to carry out the very great desire of his heart—make a durable peace with all the hapus of the tribe of Taranaki. He further stated that he, Waitanui, could not be held responsible for the late massacre—that was, as everybody knew, the work of Tukaraihu, his father. He had, in that case, only to do what was commanded for him to execute: such was his evident position. In the event of the Ngatiawa, at Ngamotu, not looking on what he had then advanced in a proper light, and unwisely refusing to respond to his entreaty by not receiving he, Waitanui, in goodfellowship, according to his request—according to the extreme desire of his heart—then, there was nothing left further to be done than that of endeavouring to open their door by sheer compulsion, or starving them into a ready compliance. They all knew what that meant. As a proof that it was not agreeable to his wishes to do either of these things, he should advance next day or the day following, with but an inconsiderate force, altogether unfitted to undertake any aggression. As an earnest that Tukaraihu, his father, had no thought of further fighting, he had already turned his face to the north, taking as many men with him as could guard the prisoners—prisoners, let it be borne in mind, who would be restored to their tribe the moment in which it became known that the Ngatiawa had acted reasonably, and had received the Waikato, as would be their best policy so to do, with open
Wander to and fro, wheresoever one lists, all over the face of this ever-moving, ever-spinning earth, the clothed individual designated “man,” will be found readily accessible to gullibility!—that is, should the designing operator thereupon subtly use the necessary excogitation to carry out the desired effect. Let anyone desirous of trying on their hand at this less dignified than generally profitable sort of proceeding, discover in individual or in mass, it matters not which, any particular fatuousness, any very tenacious partizanship, any viscid clinging to cult—religious, political, or social—procure the “tip,” as best they may be able, of who is locally the most considerable magaate, land which is locally the most influential body, and then go to work at once, by planting such snares as must inevitably redound to your besought advantage. Should your position be that of a stranger, then, use your utmost artifice of winning for yourself the good graces of local notability. Probe such in a polite manner, so as to procure a thorough knowledge of whoever-it-may-be's most cherished conceptions: these acquiesce in, with an eager readiness; with a natural-put-on enthusiasm; I then, such is sure to exude. If an erratic caterer for public amusements, skilfully introduce into your advertised manifestations what you have before-hand ascertained will go readily down best, with whatever is therein much the most numerous set. If religion, adopt an austere moral vein; if political, denounce vehemently, with a lofty indignation, what the insignificant minority upholds; if social, admire their many beneficial institutions and their aptitude in framing constitutional bylaws. But, in the matter of gullibility, the strangest thing of all is this: that generally those who, for selfish motives, are most given to dispensing bunkum to others, are the very ones who are themselves the most easily duped. Take, for example, the Maori: he is generally put down to be an out and out “crack-hand” in the practise of misleading cajollery; yet, notwithstanding all that, a perfect baby he is by way of imbibing, incontinently, any sop of a saccharine nature which may be
A pitiful instance in point, of what is above remarked upon, was, at this time, the Taranakian tribe swallowing, with the utmost avidity, the this time, captions and ingenuously prescribed message of Waitanui in toto, childlike, with speculative enthusiasm, enumerating the prodigious benefits which the Waikato's friendship would confer upon them, and, how good indeed it really was of Waitanui to advonce such favourable concessions, at the time, too, when he was strong and they were weak, for, how could now they hope to cope with the Waikato when successful they were when their number was more than twice as great? The matter was in every way so obviously benetical to them that, hesitation how to act there really, they admitted, ought none to exist: therefore they would, without further delay, put things into ship-shape, in order to confer on Waitanui and his followers a befittingly hearty greeting. How, too, it would cheer the hearts of the prisoners in captivity when they learned what had been so wisely done, so as to ensure their speedy release? “Ha! Waitanui,” they jocundly exclaimed, “is as different from the old man, Tukaraihu, as are pebbles to baked clay marbles—not at all like father and son, No, that indeed they evidently are not!”
When this tide of craven sentiment which had set in among the Ngatiawa got to the ear of Dickey Barrett, be plunged and reared his well-knit, sturdy frame like to a curbed, high-spirited charger refusing to unclench its molars for the snaffle, and vehemently, declared that, if such was the correct state of feeling among those he had so long reposed implicit trust in, he would remove himself, his whalers, his boats, and the whole of his gear right away from the place—ay! in less than twenty-four hours, he would. He had ventured Cook's Straits before in an open coggle, and that he could readily do again. “Hang it all!” vociferated Dickey, appending a pardonable round English anathema, “Let them go, if they like, and join force with the scabby Waikato—with my men well in hand, I'll fight the whole deuced box and dice of them, although numbering thousands! By heaven's I will! Waitanui means treachery just as sure as a mule means mischief when it lets go in the air its hind heels. This is what it is—he is thirsting for a repetition here of what his brutal old father caused at Pukerangioro! He no more means peace—the skunk—not he, than I mean to be dumb. diddled by him. No: by all that's sacred! I never, never will be that.”
At these brave, out-spoken sentiments of the Gaff, as the whalers generally named him, the face of every man amongst the squad irradiated with the utmost satisfaction, they, the whalers, being one and all in the one mind of not showing the white feather, let come whatever would—ay! if needs be they would fight like “Roundheads.”
“Quite right, chief,” said Jack Love, alias Chips, “:Gad, we'll just fight under any circumstances.”
“Quite right,” next followed Bill the Freacher. “By heaven's
“Quite right, chief,” followed Jimmie Ling; “if the worst comes to the worst, it will be just a predicament to which weel enough I remember, a remarkable com—–”
“Coincidence,” taking the words from Jimmie's mouth, abruptly, as if as to do was the design, began old crippled Joe Grundy, “The coincidence, Gaff, lies in you having every man and mother's son of us here, well in hand, to pull with you while a shred of the rope sticks together, like that 'ere coon in the old ballad, ‘in doleful dumps: if I can't fight on my feet, I'll fight on my stumps.’ I'll hitch them, I will: do you mind now?—may be just as good as the best!”
When the Maori got to hear of these inexorable sentiments entertained by Mr. Barrett and his men, one by one of them began to recognise their characteristic proneness of initially getting captivated by hollow and artful representations; then gradually made their minds up, after further carefully deliberating, that they would now stick to Dickey Barrett, whatever might be the consequences of such adhesion. In due course, the messenger, on parole, was sent back with this anything but polite answer: “Come Waitanui; come ye hitherward, and we'll serve you in the like fashion that a buck-whale would that had you in its muzzle. We'll gobble you up—rump, stump, and stomach! Have a care! Have a care!”
Whara Pori, on meeting Mr. Barrett soon after this uncourteous message had been despatched, abased his head abashedly, as that of a dog which had given its master grievous offence, and showed the utmost abject contrition for his recent too confiding simplicity—his ill-considered compliance—promising the chief of the whalers that, come benceforth whatever would—ah, he, Mr. Barrett, need not alarm himself any more about his ever consenting to welcome, what now he called, the “No kute pluty Waikato,” saving with the edge of his tomahawk, the flat of his mere, or the point of his spear! “Maori,” Pori subjoined, “you know, Mr. Barrett, always te same: them take nui nui [plenty] te puison if ronnt and roum covered wit te honey! You, te kute man Barrett, and no all te same as te pluty Maori, who tont know notink at all, not so much as te decoy bird from a snare.”
Rawhinia's father, Te Puki, next paid his tribute of maudlin thankfulness to the manly whaler chief, making all sorts of mortifying regrets for his entertaining for an instant Waitanui's sincerity, and further went on by calling himself all sorts of derogatory names Eraugi, the superintendent over the wahines, was not a whit behind the others in self-reprehensiveness upon his own conduct; and chief after chief, of more or less importance, came to Mr. Richard Barrett precisely on the same “lay.” Mr. Richard Barrett, like many other sturdy Englishmen and the most of his vocation, was not wanting in humour, and sarcastically put the question to those bumptious and pretentious
But forsooth! the climax of shame of these Maori vacillating magnates was still held in reserve…. When their women, upon the island of
On further in the afternoon, all the scattered Natives in the neighbourhood were peremptory called inside the pah, in order to be marshalled and assigned distiuct posts, to be prepared for defence should an attack be made upon them either during the night or early in the morning. Whara Pori was himself again, and, as is vulgarly termed, “up to his eye-brows” in incessant training. All the non-inflammatory material, such as skins of beasts and fishes, which anywhere around could at all be picked up, was got to spread over the combustible rapou which roofed and lined their whares, as a precautionary measure, should the enemy take to throwing thereto red hot stones. The big gong at the gate leading to a sort of rude drawbridge across the inner ditch would be struck three times on their observing the approach of any reconnoitreing party; and thrice-three if that they should be in full force. Each principal chief would then sound the conch to gather around him him his own hapu. No such thing was in the slightest degree to be tolerated as that of the pernicious practice which was too frequently indeed adopted, of everyone trying to drown others' voices, for the mere gratification of listening to their self-considered captivating own: the different chiefs' directions to their companies were the only voices
Simultaneously, the unshaven-faced sea-faring men were no less arduous in their preparations for the parts, in the great struggle in the game of war, laid down for them to play. The rude-fashioned cartridges, and the much ruder charges of netfilled-up pieces of old iron, bolts, nuts, and nails, were already home to the sadly honey-combed chambers of their obsolete ordnance: a-light, the slow-match of nitre-saturated rope, kept dangling from the improvised lint-stocks; and the vents were even now primed. Their cutlasses were edged nearly as sharp as Sheffield razors, and slung by pieces of spun-yarn to their sides. After everything appeared in proper “fettle,” they prepared to restore from exhaustion renewed vigor to their bodies by lying down for the night on the cold ground, sheltered from the beat of the elements by the roof of the excavated tunnels which they occupied.
Groggy Dyson, in an embarrassed-looking pose, with rather a woebegone, grave, pleading face, in impassioned language represented to the Gaff, the obvious impropriety of leaving the liquor-tub at such an awkward distance from the field of operation.
“Ah! you are quite right, Groggy,” frankly replied the good-natured chief, tickled with the fellows naiveté, and struggling to suppress a guffaw, which would persistently keep rising in his throat, “but before you ever reminded me, Groggy, of this serious embarrassment, let me tell you, it was my full intention, it was, to send you round as much French cognac as would serve you all with a judicious ‘nightcap.’”
“You're nothing short of a pure ruby, Gaff,” rejoined the highly-elated Groggy. “Long life to you, Gaff, and a crown-knot splice to you soon!” The Groggy went about humming—
Waitanui, unexpectedly, did not put in appearance next morning, but on that of the one following, towards midday, he sat down on the shore-bank of Moturoa, just a few chains under Ngamotu. pah, on the hill above, with a force variously computed to consist of between three and four thousand men. Then, in a surprisingly brief space of time, that is, judging the sort of rude tools-wooden scoops and flax baskets ? -which, necessarily, were used, surrounded his force with a formidable entrenehment, as if that he meant a prolonged occupancy. Quietness reigned on the completion of these fortifying works for about a week. Then, one morning there were observed from the big permanent warpah, some unusual stir going on, “some portentous movement-like in the wind.” By and by, there were readily perceived from the same point of observation, three, which were supposed to be chiefs, emanate slowly from the enceinte and make their way upwards in the direction of the pah wherein crowds of observers lined the parapets. These supposed chiefs make, suddenly, a halt, when within bailing distance of the Ngatiawas who were inside the pah, and all of them in faultless concord, as though they had, in fact, for awhile been practising something of the kind, cry out, loudly, “Haere unai! Haere unai !” -I No sooner does this doughty trio of gladiators become aware that their call has been noticed within the precincts of the lofty palisading, than they set up an altogether indescribable roar-an altogether unapproachable vociferation -followed by the most grotesque and hideous-looking, mocking contortions that ever entered into the head of man to execute or that possibly could be conceived. They wriggle and writhe their bodies together out of human semblance. First their trunks, heads and limbs are swayed rigidly, not unlike to huge paste-board puppets drawn by strings. Then they squirm their trunks rapidly, with their limbs closed, suggestive of agitated anacondas. Little of their dark, tattooed faces are seen, saving what is shown by prodigiously expanded eye-lids, nostrils, and mouths. They then walk around each other in a circumsscribed form, brandishing and flourishing defiantly aloft, their weapons in the air. They halt, once more facing their intended exasperated foe, mocking
modus operandi in which they would sever them, the Ngatiawa, limb from limb, joint from joint, cartilage from cartilage, erc that they, the Ngatiawa, had basked for very many more days their cowardly carcases in the sun! They started up, erect upon their feet again and trilled forth contemptnous brava lo, in a sort of canzonet. At length they challenge any to single combat, that is any who may yet haves a heart left them bigger than what's contained within a tui's tiny ribs.
“No: Just as I thought,” speaks derisively, with a loud voice, so as to be distinctly heard, the grossest of the challengers, standing inches over six feet high “They are now,” said he, “so utterly subdued and crest-fallen that, even as little as the abrupt hum of a blow-fly, would make them to pale, shake, and quiver from heel to crown.”
A voice, as the last derisive sentence was uttered, came from an elevation within the enclosure, saying, “Stay, you dreaming, devouring mud-rats. I come ! I come singly! yea, to fight singly, with who-ever you may select to try on force with me. Two out of the three then retire, leaving the most herculean to wait upon the acceptor's approach.”
A stiff young fellow, of the tribe of Taranaki, named Roho, speedily comes up close, face to face with the modern Goliath. Without much loss of time about preliminaries, they close in deadly conflict, and albeit, unequally weighted as they are, the fight continues long with undetermined result. But, alas! alas! O, ill-fated youth! his right foot somehow slips from under him-supposed to have been through some sea pulse on the ground. In a trice, his severed head is held up in haughty, insolent triumph by his stalwart adversary, and tremendously deafening cheers at once burst forth from the exultant Waikato host in the encampment underneath. Ngamotu, however, on the hill above, continues to be almost death-like still. The poignant emotions therein can at best but be imagined—never described.
Casually, had there been, at this time, any intelligent spectators of this mortal combat about, whatever may have been their nicety of refinement, could not, even if they would, have resisted admiring the forms -while undistorted-which acted upon this neutral ground. Saving a narrow girdle of roughly textiled flax fixed tightly around their loins, they were otherwise entirely naked, But, lo! what may be judged somewhat odd to aver, this sparcity of garb immeasurably added to rather than detracted from the eminently imposing appearance of the combatants, with their manifestly well-curved outlines of person. Hah! boast as we may over the immense superiority in habiliments and what not which civilisation imparts, this much, for a dead certainty, it does not do-render more noble-like-more truly imposing, that of the mould of the representatives of humanity! A sound, well-nourished frame-drapery,
Whether it was that immediately after the above-described set-to the Waikato were merely resting on their freshly acquired laurels or, restrained by the oracular findings of their priests, be it as it might, there were no active proceedings taken for four days after their champion's complete and decisive victory. On the fifth day, however, there issued out of their entrenchments, the very same three chal engers as those who, on the former occasion, issued out, to go through once more the like aggravating preamble as of that they had previously done, with this additional reminder of how soon they had made frigid pulp and small bones of their, the Ngatiawas', former formidable warrior, and how they were still quite prepared to serve as many as could be brought against them-it was all one to them how many-in precisely the same manner. Most certainly Kaha [meaning strength] the name of their Fatricole, owing to his vast longitudinal and latitudinal proportions, was, by himself, quite sufficient to intimidate even the stoutest hearts, and taking into consideration the length of time in which these three provocators were unmolestedly permitted to continue their inciting language and
“Ten thousand deaths before such insufferable, such ignominious dis-honour ! before such a signal crush to all hope! Come death! Come glory for either now I throw!”
“I come! I come! to avenge my tribe!” Such declaration was made in a high octave voice, and emanated from a slight but well-knit figure standing upon a platform overlooking the fence nearest the Waikato; and ere numbers up to fifty could be consecutively repeated, around came Whara Pori upon the fighting arena! “You are whom I chose to deal with,” said Whara, the Taranaki, to Kaha, the Waikato. “Go: bid the others retire!”
Lo! now observe the marked disparity between these two aspirants for such honour and fame as may be got from the shedding of generic blood! The one seems as if he were barely ten stone in weight, and the other as if as much as even seventeen stone should not raise on the beam his portly, muscular body! the one showing a compact, lithe. nervous temperament, and the other almost totally under sanguine control. “Pori,” it may be put, “is it commendable though on your part this extremely hazardous step? You, the acknowledged Commander-in-Chief of all the Taranaki tribe, to risk so much—in fine, to risk all! on this single issue?” Well; all that can now be said is that the die is cast. You are now in a position intensely critical, which, out from, unless as vanquisher, you can never, never expect to come! See to it. Pori, that that short tomahawk that you now hold between your bare skin and fillet is ready to your hand. See to it also now, that that short club you now heedlessly-like grasp in your hand, at the supreme moment has no relaxing grasp. The stake, indeed, is heavy!
Pori walks with stately, measured tread up to Kaha, as a slight young spark might walk up to his sire to display himself in some new rig-out. When about ten paces distant he calmly gives his bulky adversary a designedly sarcastic salute. This serves Pori's purpose well, as, forthwith, it enrages the fervent giant, making him raise his massive, tattooed arms as if he meant to sink his puny adversary with one blow of his heavy weapon, like a stake right through the surface of the ground! Pori, as agile as a duck diving for a sprat, swiftly inflects his frame beneath the giant's uplifted swinging arms, and, also, inside the point of the giant's lengthy weapon too-then delivers with freedom his own much-advocated “Knee-cap blow!” Kaha reels and topples a bit, and tries hard to recover himself, but, sharp as a famished tiger upon its prey, Pori springs upon him, and down prone the portly braggart falls! Then, like a lightning-flash, the Taranaki chief wrests his short weapon from his side, and, with wondrous celerity cleaves it inches
They clamoured loudly to receive Pori inside the pale, with jubilant acclamations. Pori told them he would have none of it. “Was he a child did they think to crow and brag at the starting of a game or at mere babbles ?” All that he wished was for the tribe to profit from what their eyes had seen, to learn that strength was not all which was wanted in battle, but good judgment along with it to know how and when a thing should be done, and how and when it likewise should be let alone.
After this almost unprecedented feat of Pori's, unaccountably, the Waikato sat sullenly in their entrenched position at Moturoa for the greater portion of five weeks, making no demonstration of activity perceptible beyond, now and then, desultory foraging round about in quest of food. To effect such an indispensable duty, a small party of their number had the temerity to swim to Mikotahi and Moturoa islands. They had nothing for their pains, however, as, no sooner did they attempt to place feet on either of these places than they were forcibly pushed-reeling back into the water, by the occupants thereon using long-shafted and sharp-pointed iron-wood prongs, prepared for such a contingency. Jack Wright, the whaler longest on the station, in charge of the antiquated ordnance upon Mikotahi, quite unauthorized, be it stated, discharged the old, rusty carronade at them, by way of a parting salute, sinking, it is said, several swimmers lifeless in the flood. Jack, noting with great gusto and gratification his gunnery success, loaded again with all the despatch possible and repeated its discharge at a few picking up shellfish at low water. However, Jack, despite of his immortal service, was desired to resist his inborn proclivity for unrequisite zeal.
“Lo! What's up now?” was the exclamation of the defenders as soon as the dawn one morning enabled them to peer at the enemies' position. Not a 'soul in all their entrenchments could be seen: no; nor the faintest sound from even a dog's bark All as still as a grave-yard at midnight! Speculation at this ran rife. However, the general idea entertained was that they had been starved out, and that they had given up the game in utter despair, and were now on their way again to their own native haunts. They, the Ngatiawa, should now be at liberty to go to oturoa and see what odds and ends, as trophies, they could pick up. Infatuated fools! They were just on the very eve of rushing in mas to put into execution their much too husty resolves-to repeat what had been done before Pukerangioro, when, who should they accidentally descry rushing to the position where they were, running as for her very life, sadly out of breath, but Te Puki's daughter—Rawhinia-with her long, raven locks dancing about her face with the wind!
“Rawhinia! Rawhinia! What is it? Speak, daughter of mine,” called out her, naturally, much-agitated father.
Rawhinia staid not until that once she was close under the palisading, where she could be more distinctly heard, and, in broken accents-her most beautiful, white, pearly teeth chattering with unrecovered breath-told them that the Waikato continued still nigh, in ambush, on the back of the hills beyond! “Ere the moon left the sky,” the intrepid girl related, “had been wakeful, and, to court sleep, I thought I should do best by taking a little fresh air and exercise. I commenced to climb, step by step, till, much to my surprise, the top of the rock was reached ere I had given how far I meant to go consideration. Casting my eyes towards the northern beach, towards Waitara, a crowd of dogs plainly I saw were dragged in that direction. I turned around towards the Mountain, and lo! indistinctly saw next, moving bodies beyond the ridges of yonder low-lying hills! E matau ana ranei koe ki te tikanga O tenei? [Do you understand the meaning of this?”] uttered the agitated maiden, and was making to take her departure.
“Come round and get inside the pah,” invited her sire.
“No, no; I may not join you just now. Although I swam to land, Mr. Barrett will, perhaps, take me back again in his light boat.”
Away Rawhinia sped towards the beach again, and left the whole tribe almost paralysed with mystery! with what had just come to their ears.
The veritable position of events at Moturoa, which the intrepid maiden Rawhinia had so opportunely unfolded, viewed from any point whatever, most assuredly was one in the highest degree perplexing to the chiefs of the tribe. They generally, however, agreed to this line of management that, not on any account should they suffer themselves to be so miserably ensnared as they, to their poignant sorrow, had been lately at Pukerangioro, by too many of them at a time rushing indiscriminately out from the works. Fortunately, by means of their good neighbours, the whalers, they were sure of getting provisions supplied, so as to relieve them, as far as that went from any very grave apprehensions of being starved into abject submission. True it was, however, that the Waikato, unfortunately, had now the full run of the country all to themselves, and thereby so having, they, the Waikato, would not be pressed to raise the seige in any great hurry. Still, after all, who knew? something wholly now unforeseen to their advantage might, incidentally, crop up! The gods, surely, were not going totally to forsake them, or be against them for ever! No, no! not likely that! When the gods are altogether relentless, they at once totally annihilate!
Meanwhile, Dickey Barrett had deliberated upon an altogether opposite line of action to that of the foregoing, entertained by the bulk of the chiefs. He, Barrett, persistently and most strenuously urged upon them, with all the force of his persuasion, to essay a feint with a large body at Moturoa, the place, as now understood, but temporary abandoned. Speedily retreat on the near approach of the Ngatimania-poto's return thereto around by the foot of the hill, towards the covered-way leading from Moutoro, on the west of the pah. Such effected, he, Barrett, would answer for it, by all that he held sacred or that he was worth, that not a single man of the enemy would set feet inside Nga-motu pah. “Supposing,” vehemently continued Dickey, “they, whilst close-passing the tunnels, come to overpower the whalers at the cannon, then, as a final resort, the supports of the roofs shall be withdrawn, burying alike both friend and foe under the heaps of falling earth.
This much there was no gainsaying, no repudiating whatever: that, ever since their most appaling reversal at Pukerangioro, the Ngatiawas were timorous, disconsolate, and crest-fallen to a most pitiful degree, and therefore ready at any moment to be swayed by anyone whomsoever, outside of themselves. Consequently, Barrett really experienced but very little difficulty in getting carried out, in its integrity, the plan of his proposition.
A little before noon, on that very day, about two-thirds of all that were in the pah, amounting, all told, to three hundred and thirty men, under the intrepid Pori, sallied out to the Waikato's recently vacated position, away at Moturoa. down by the foreshore. There, as shrewdly had been anticipated, they were not permitted to loiter any very long time undisturbed, as but barely an hour had went past ere that, iu full force, formidable and compact together, the Waikato exultantly were descried bearing rapidly down upon them. Whara Pori, on the first alarm being given of this eagerly looked-for upshot, had quite as much as he could well do to prevent the force which he led for this ruse from, at once, rushing helter-skelter, in a scramble, back again to their pah. However, by dint of threats of the severest drastic punishment, he enforced them, after much trouble, to keep their ground until such time as he felt disposed to order a retreat; but not till then, he added, not till then, if he knew it, should they move an inch!
The formidable van of the Waikato advancing force could not have been above a couple of chains, perhaps, from their confidently relied-upon prey, when Pori gave the significant command “Whakamuri eahua,” [backwards hasten]. Then such a tumultuous havoc in a brief while ensued, which must, doubtlesly, for sanguinary desperation, have exceeded anything of the kind that had ever before taken place on the shores of these southern seas. It was in this way: the Ngatiawas, as nimbly as ever they could get over the ground in a body together, made direct to the foot of the hill which their fighting pah stood upon: then made a sharp turn to the right across to the covered-way at Moutoro on the west, thus leaving their pursuers, who ran after them in hot haste, at barely a chain behind, suddenly exposed to the point-blank range of! the three old guns. In a sudden-clap! these three pieces of ordnance! went “slap-bang” off in a lively salvo! The assailants' progress, there-upon, was then as instantaneously arrested as if each and all had been simultaneously paralysed, confounding them into fits with the noise of the concussion. Aye, and much worse still appaling was their deadly; execution! Apace they turned their stark, copper-hued backs upon their now ascendant foes, and fled like wild steeds startled to maddened fury towards the neighbouring shore. On retiring, however, right into their very midst, they receive another discharge-another strong dose of trajecting, pieces of old scrap iron, from the antiquated, heterogenious cannon placed in the tunnels, scattering them here and there and everywhere
“Signal for her to call,” Commanded Dickey Barrett. “If they
The sex of Pyrrha upon Moturoa Island, seeing that the head of the Medusa, long before them, was removed, all excepting a few of the aged among them, joyfully breasted the lapping waves, and ceremoniousless, at once took occupation of the emptied war-pah, which had been vacated a few hours before by the sex of Deuealion in the pursuit of their deeply mortified foe. Strange, beyond, all expression are changes occasionally effected. Here, the occupants of this stronghold-well, on the night previously, were strong, strong muscular men, yet utterly acowed and broken down in spirit by Fate's sustainedly unkin hand. Now, the whirlygig of a few hours had most surprisingly commuted their position, by converting them, the Ngatiawas, absolutely into swaggering conquerors! Then, the place which these freshly installed conquerors had lodged but the night preceding, when in sore tribulation, was loudly now resounding with the unrestrained revelry of their delightedly emancipated dames, accompanied by several of the whalers. At the first interval betwixt the din, the voice of Hena could be easily distinguished, singing—
Old Joe Grundy is next heard, with a voice as if coming through a funnel. ‘Tis something new for Joe to sing! Joe's selected lyre, one would imagine, is not at all in keeping with the occasion. It is one of those odd comical snatches heard from seamen at work, of which the boisterous chorus suits their particular kind of labour. The words of Joe's song, being unique, may possiblyfexcuse herewith there being reproduced.
Those in the ship, which the white sails had been wafting south, had observed the signal, as, at the early dawn, she was laying-to. It proved to be the “Gipsey Lass,” from Kororaiki, and bound direct to Queen Charlotte's Sound.
Close upon noon, desultory parties of the pursuers returned from the human chase, and amongst them Te Puki, Rawhinia's sire, Te Puki, on first meeting Dickey Barrett since the victory, was inordinately profuse with eulogiums for what the sturdy Englishman had done, keeping on repeating
“Well! so far, so good, friend,” quoth Dickey, with a humourons twinkle in his grey eyes. “If what you now say of me has the least grain of truth in it, and you mean to keep the promise you mind making at the feast, I think I may venture to lay claim to the very article which I am sure you set greatest store on, old man.”
“He aha to hiahia ra tenei? [What is it you wish by that?]
“Rawhinia, to be sure!”
“Great chief of the Pakeha-have her now, at once, together with all my lands from Ratapipi, right down straight to the sea.”
“Te Puki: generous you are, even to a marvel,” Dickey replied, “still, that's not everything. You know well, old friend of mine, that you can never look for a dog to have you merely by saying to it, ‘Doggy, have me you must! It is necessary first to make much of the creature, or, otherwise, for a while to force it by fear into submission!
“He aha to hiahia ra tenei?”
“To get Rawhinia's own consent. That's required !”
“Rawhinia's own consent. To korero [the saying]—how droll; oh, how droll! of you, pakeha, as if that a girl meant anything against what her parent choses to dispose of! Here, at this juncture, Te Puki found it as much as ever he could do to restrain the force of his inward titillations from bursting into unrestrained laughter at what, obviously appeared to him, his pakeha friend's ridiculous absurdity. He stified alone his risibility by reiterating. “Oh! How droll of you, pakeha!”
Still, for all that, the headstrong pakeha would, in this particular matter, have his own sweet way, and insisted on an instant interview with the object of their deliberations, privately, for a brief period. The compass which he meant to steer by, he put it thus figuratively, in its own binnacle, which, of course, was at once frankly acceded to.
“Well, my pearl of Peru!” preluded the bantering master mariner, as in her retirement, he accosted his blythe inamorato. “Three guesses for what now brings me here!”
“Oh ! I can't guess.”
“Try.”
“O, you've come to chide for the noisy way those people went on in the whare-nui last night!”
“No; that's not it!”
“Perhaps to ask me how the parrot you made me a present of got loose?”
“No; that's not it, either !”
“Oh! I've got it now. You want to know if I know the skipper of the ‘Gipsey Lass’!”
“Out you are again, my Pink; and now, since you're so bad at guessing-you really don't deserve to be told. I really wish though, my Star, that you were a better thought-reader: it would simplify my case.”
“You tell me, do: do, oh, Mr. Barrett, do-I am distressed to know!”
“My precious seventh-heaven Houri, I can't, if I would, keep it from you any longer. Now or never, I mean, I must have a ‘Yea’ or a ‘Nay’ to this most woefully racking sort o question-Will you have me?-now say: boots, brogs, brass-buttons and all, for-for-for-your-long-time mess-mate. Ugh! hang it all!-for your husband, I Mean!!”
At this supreme instant, Rawhinia was, in reality, either incapable of speech, or admirably feigned tongue-tiedness. But really, what after all did it matter if, at this crisis, the noisy member refused office! Why ! did not every informing inflexion of her face arrogate, as it were, the chattering organ's function! The sweep of her beautifully arched forehead unmistakably said “ay:” the curve of her lip said “Ay:” the glow on her cheeks said “Ay:” and, more foreibly still, her eyes proclaimed “Ay:” and, lastly, oh, lastly! the close embrace of her flexible, shaperly arms, ratified beyond the ghost of a doubt, the decision!
“Now busy yourself, my limed dove,” urged the accepted one, “to go with me this afternoon in the ‘Gipsey Lass’!”
“This afternoon with you, really, in the ‘Gipsey Lass!’ Is it true? So nice: oh, what joy!—But what for?”
“To get spliced. To get tied to one another: regularly married, do you know? in the Sound, according to the time-honoured custom of my fathers, by the rites of an orthodox Church, and by none of your shilly-shally sham make-shift parsons!”
“Daughter of a Race whose gods are not the same, I should so like that too,” replied Rawhinia, with a pretty expression of approval.
Again it was drawing on towards evening. Grey shades began to intermingle with the erst clear ether, when a boat from Moturoa foreshore put off, bearing, along with a few select friends, the engaged couple, towards the “Gipsey Lass.” There were, likewise, several boats followed hard in this one's wake, chokeful of people, desirous of having the last moment with the favourite pair ere they started on their journey.
Weary and sore, the greater portion of the Ngatiawas had returned from the sanguine pursuit. However, jaded and oppressed as they were, such did not keep them from instantly repairing to the beach, as soon's they became aware of what was thereto going on. They even encroached upon the bed of the Pacific, so as better to evince their ardour. That is many, somewhat to abridge the hailing distance, went up to the shoulders in the sweeping billows, and baled out as loud as
“Welcome back soon again,” in the Maori tongue, kept sustainedly echoing over the crests of the liquid undulations! “Welcome back soon again.” preluded by “Ship-a-hoy!” was again and again given with the scamen's hoarse voices. The stars came out, and still the noisy hails of hearts brimming with jubilancy and praises of Dickey Barrett went on. It was pleasant to notify the comradeship which, during this episode, there was evinced by the dark and white races.
Apace, the sails of the ‘Gipsey Lass’ were unfurled: the anchor got weighed; and, straightway, the inflated sheets bore away the Hero and the Heroine of that particular hour; they, contemplating to return when welded by Hymen into-well, what by law in some cases is recognised as one!
To serve as an Epilogue to this story, the rough, old, rhythmical and popular tribute to Mr. Barrett, may be fittingly appended, together with the presage accredited to Te Puki, as being the sentiments he expounded.
The End