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Chapter XI. Making Preparations to Meet the Enemy.

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. page 68 widening and deepening ditches around Ngamotu fighting pah. Scores more also were connecting, by an enclosed covered way, Ngamotu to Moutoro and Moutoro to Paratutu, in order to prevent the enemy from passing westward to their boats and canoes. By night, mostly all the non-combatants, were safely rowed across to Moturoa. The lame and the sick were left at Mikotahi, protected by severe whalers, who thereupon mounted an old earroaide, which had done duty, perhaps, during the Commonwealth Government of England. There were other three iron guns, without carriages, one eighteen, one twelve, and one nine-pounder, which, through some hitch or other, had, at some by-gone time, been cast ashore here, and which now were going to be utilised. These obsolete pieces of ordnance, by order of the Graff—Barrett—were to be parbuckled up the hill, from the beach to Ngamotu. So, all things duly taken into consideration, it must be allowed, there was work enough about the neighbourhood of the Sugar Loaves during the absence of the chiefs.

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 page 69 for him to do! There he was, the intrepid soldier, at all hours, zealously watching the strengthening of Ngamotu war-pah, drilling and haranguing the men, who, all told, with the thirty whalers included, amounted to two-hundred and thirty able to bear arms. These he had—exclusive of the Britons—on the southern beach, on the other side of Paratutu, practising six hours daily at morning, and delivering, at imaginary objects, thrusts and blows. Out of those whom he tested as possessing the most serviceable wind-pipes, he selected one hundred as the advanced body. This hundred he armed with nothing but heavy méres [stone clubs], instructing them, when they overtook the enemy, to stoop well under and inside the points of their weapons, and, with all the might they could wield, strike them nervously with their short méres on the knee-caps! “That, if well-directed,” Whara asservated, “should bring them to the ground, and make them as harmless ever afterwards, as halfstuck hogs. Then, whatever life that they might leave in them, in their, the Ngatiawas', hurry for farther pursuit, the next hundred coming on immediately at their heels could easily finish the work which they had well begun. Always stick together, O, Tangitas” [O, men], urged further, this intrepid warrior, “and never, on any account, delay or turn aside to get at solitary stragglers on the flank. Strive to get ahead of those as they are perfectly harmless—aim at overtaking the most formidable and the most foremost body. Those who straggle, remember, are as good as dead men: ultimately they are caught. All this, O! Ngatia was, that I am now talking to you about, can, and, therefore, must and shall be done. The way to do it, and the most easily and efficient when driven to it, is to carry it frequently out when at freedom. You cannot practice,” Whara continued, “O, Tangitas! sufficiently often at some set-up stake, the delivery of this trenchant under-blow on the knee-cap! It will make them turn somersault for your amusement; but, ghosts of immortals! certainly not for their own! Victory, infallibly, is the product of judicious preconception, followed up by audacity in action.”

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 page 70 their guns would take in, was 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 page 71 Motumahunga [Saddleback], and swiftly made its way to the adjacent island of Moturoa. It had in it, besides the four rowers and the steersman, provisions for the next day's allowance of the people living thereupon. Great crowds of demi-nude women and children came to the rough, rocky landing-place of that isolated asylum to hungrily receive their supplies, and, soon, the cargo was all discharged This relieving boat on leaving, as circling a little way round the base of the large cone, was speeding past a small rocky cusp, with a surface, perhaps little more than a foot or so square, whereupon the figure of a woman draped in sculptural-like costume, stood upright! with the hands interlaced around the back of the head, and the eyes, as appeared, slightly turned upwards. Proverbially, all the world over, sailors are known as superstitious. This wierd-looking and statue-like object, which they had a glimpse of in the lurid light of gloaming, brought out silhouette form in full relief from the main tapering rock of upwards of a hundred and fifty feet in altitude, incited a wave of nervous tremour to pass through the observers, and incontinently, considerably quickened, for a few strokes, the move ments of the oars. Hardly, it seemed though, had they covered more than four or five chains of divergency from the spot whereupon their eyes had encountered that which had moved them to dismay, when, conveyed by the fitful zephyrs, there fell upon their ears, a soft, melodious voice, tremulously intonating “Mr. Barrett—why is it that you have not spoken?” At this quite unexpected imbroglio, a transitory pause, occupied in deliberation, was made by the boatmen: then, the head of the cobble was swiftly veered round, and brought back to the tiny ledge, which the form that had wrought in them a temporary qualm, occupied. A bare and exquisitely moulded arm, with hand dilated, straightway was then held out to he who had been accosted, which, cordially, in a trice, was reciprocated from the bow of the boat. Neither of them at this paramount instant gave utterance to so much as even the faintest monosyllable: their hands, for a considerable time, remained as though magnetized in each others' grasp. Sympathetically, and also steadfastly, they regarded one another's obviously embarrassed countenance, and read thereby, no doubt, easily enough, without any words, the communication which was meant to be conveyed by each other's mind. Anon, the boat departed through the deepening gloom, and a low, stifled exclamation of joy incidentally came over the waves from she whom they had just parted from. And this was no other than Rawhinia! Ah! the virus which the malignant Tongan wretch had so adroitly in her mind inserted was apparently now absolutely gone. The “still small voice” within Rawhinia—Rawhinia it had reprehended—not only that, but it had also counselled making due reparation for her recently enacted shrewishness. Thus it was that the proud Rawhinia besought, at considerable hazard to herself, this out-of-the-way point, to accomplish what her soul now told her was most expedient to do: and the low, stifled exclamation she had inadvertently allowed to escape, was proof special, that the dictates of her more superior intelligence had been obeyed, and page 72 her peace of mind thoroughly reestablished. Yes! Rawhinia was immanently subdued, insomuch as the Great Adversary of mankind advising her at this moment to swerve the least from her conseerated passion, must have been told by her, “to get behind.”

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.

A justly appeased mind, such a beatitude grants,
That in all life's experience, its equal there's none.
Whoe'er pique, gain or shame, from so having, ‘twixt plants,
Is nobody's enemy so much as their own.
Like sufferers, who physical pain would endure,
Rather than essay to around bring a cure.