Chapter VII The War of Light and Darkness

It was scarcely daylight the next morning when I awakened my sleeping companion and proposed that she should take me on a visit of exploration through the village. Pepepe was by no means willing to be aroused, and it was not until my repeated pinchings had brought her into a state of complete wakefulness that she yielded a half-wrathful, half-laughing assent to my desires.

We stepped over our still slumbering companions, and, making our way silently between the two rows of sleepers, were soon drawing the fresh air of the morning into our lungs. The first thing that attracted me, bringing me to a standstill, was Pirongia. There above me, brightening with the growing day, fully within reach at last, he stood. Nay, I was already on him. The great rounded summit of the pa was in fact a terrace on his mighty flank. I had but to descend a slope of some sixty or seventy feet and I was at the foot of a scarp which seemed to plunge uninterruptedly down from his towering pinnacles. With a sigh, I turned my eyes from the sight. The mountain bewitchment was on me. How I longed for freedom and the companionship of Rangiora! Together we would dash down the slope and plunge into the gloom of the forest, not to emerge again until the last peak was surmounted and Pirongia lay vanquished beneath us.

But it was not to be, and I turned my eyes elsewhere. To the westward, beautiful Kawhia glistened like a pearl page 86in the morning light. To the southward, league on league, over hill and valley and plain, stretched the ancient territories of the tribe; their fisheries and hunting-grounds, their villages and cultivations, their battlefields and burial-places; and there was not a hill or gully, a ridge or creek, scarce even a stone or mighty tree that was not named and consecrated in the poetry, romance, legends, or history of the descendants of the Tainui voyagers.

Although Te Huata's pa was not, as I have said, so populous as our own, its palisades probably enclosed a greater area. The marae was considerably larger and, while our houses were crowded together, so that the path-ways were narrow and tortuous, there was about Pahuata an air of spaciousness. The communal buildings were large and beautiful, with a wealth of splendid carvings inside and out; and though I was unable to obtain a glimpse of the interior of the great food-stores and armoury, I know from later observation that in the latter was a store of arms and ammunition, native and European, sufficient in the hands of resolute men to establish the prestige of the Great One in the farthest outposts of New Zealand.

For all the ariki's deep-seated hatred of the pakeha and the exclusiveness of his policy, he had nevertheless profited greatly by him in the matter of guns and ammunition. The musket was the one thing of pakeha manufacture which seemed entirely good and desirable in his eyes. He merely tolerated the axe and tomahawk, refusing to acknowledge that they possessed any advantages over the stone tools which had served the Maori nation so long. Admitted that their use resulted in a gain of time: until the arrival of the pakeha his people took no heed of time, for they belonged to eternity, and, moreover, quick work was bad work, as witness the slovenly output of the wood-carvers as contrasted with that of their forefathers.

Very picturesque and pleasant to me was the appearance of some of these houses, as they were glimpsed among the foliage of karaka and titoki, for in our pa there were no trees, nor could we have found room for them in our land-hungry village. There was, however, among so many things which seemed to me admirable, one unenviable characteristic. Death had evidently been busy. Time and again in our wanderings I would pause, and, with lowered voice, inquire the name of some chief, whose sealed cabin, painted with red ochre, denoted his departure to Te Reinga.

"Who dwelt here, Pepepe?"

"Tawari—an aged man; the uncle of the ariki."

"And here?"

"Ah! Go not so close. It is the whare of Te Ao-hiku-raki, the tohunga."

At length we came on the outskirts of the village and in view of a solitary hovel on the edge of a dense thicket. There was something in the appearance of the place which suggested that it was not entirely uninhabited, and I was on the point of putting a question to my companion, when from the doorway emerged a figure so startling that the words were struck unuttered from my lips. The creature was human in shape, and from its fiat dugs it was possible also to determine its gender; but there was little else of humanity to teach me that she was of the race and sex of the blooming creature beside me. Naked, but for a dirty rag round her loins, smeared with grease and red ochre, her iron-grey hair uncombed and tangled about her shoulders, emaciated, with fearful finger-nails on her claw-like hands, muttering and mowing to herself as one possessed—she formed altogether a sight so horrible that it needed not Pepepe's restraining hand on my arm, nor the threatening gestures of the creature as she caught sight of us, to cause me to turn and flee-frantically, as for my life. I page 88must have nearly crossed the village before I ceased running, and it was only on making the discovery that Pepepe was laughing that I did so.

"What was it, Pepepe?" I asked, when I had found sufficient breath.

"Te kai tango atua (the village undertaker)," replied Butterfly. "If you had stayed awhile, we would have thrown earth at her, and then, indeed, she would have been a sight to remember. But have you no undertakers in your kainga?"

"We have one," I assented, "but he is sometimes tapu and sometimes noa.¹ Why don't your tohungas make her clean?"

"Of what use?" asked the blooming Pepepe, indifferently. "There are still many old people to die, and soon she would be tapu again."

By this time the village had begun to stir. Women were blowing up the cooking fires. A band of slaves, carrying utensils, mostly of European manufacture, set forth to replenish the store of water from a spring far down the hill-side. One of the company—a fair-skinned, copper-haired girl of seventeen—smiled pleasantly at me as she went by with her laughing and chattering companions. I was to remember her pretty, pathetic face for a dreadful reason.

Pepepe left me presently, in response to a shrill call from the cook-houses, her place being taken by a number of boys, whose faces as they regarded me expressed a mingling of racial antipathy and curiosity. I write "racial antipathy," but how much is it, in truth, a matter of difference in language? No sooner did they discover that my Maori was as fluent as their own than they accepted me joyously into their merry company. It might have been expected that the youth of a race of warlike cannibals, capable of

¹ Tapu = sacred, not to be touched; noa = cleansed from tapu.

page 89acts of ferocity and treachery, would themselves be of a fierce and intractable disposition. But this was very far from being the case. So far, indeed, that I cannot in all my memories of them recall one instance of a blow struck in anger. Gentle, affectionate, and good-tempered, they stand in strange contrast to the boyhood of Anglo-Saxon-dom, and in still more anomalous relation to their own manhood, as exemplified in many a fierce intertribal raid.

With eager delight, they led me on a second round of the pa. This time my attention was called to the lofty angle towers, and fighting platforms, with their heaps of boulders ready to be hurled on besiegers; to the huge drum, a slab of matai wood, between twenty and thirty feet in length, hung between two trees; to the weather-worn heads, many with the white skull showing through the tattered scalp, crowning the posts of the palisade. Quick-witted, bubbling with sly humour, my merry escort haled me hither and thither, until at last I had seen everything, and we stood together in the lofty gateway by which I had entered the pa the previous night. A party of about a dozen men was coming slowly up the steep track in single file.

"Nga tohunga, pea,"¹ said a boy of my own age, who stood beside me. "They are coming to bewitch the Little Finger."

Though this suggestion was received with mirth, I noticed that the merrymakers drew back as the procession began to file through the gateway; but, desiring to show that I was not afraid, I stood my ground, and probably for a similar reason, or because he saw that I did so, the boy who had spoken stood with me. The priests filed by in silence, looking neither to right nor left, their dew-wet cloaks drawn closely around them. The last of them

¹ "The witch doctors, I expect."

page 90walked several paces behind the others, and, muffled as he was, I recognised him at once for Te Atua Mangu.

Now in my allusions to this man I have omitted so far to mention that, either from prenatal malformation or the severing of some sinew, his left foot was deformed. The toes appeared to be contracted and drawn in beneath the instep, so that he moved with a peculiar limp. As he approached, so strong was my instinctive dread of the man, that I had to call to my aid all the pride I possessed to enable me to hold my ground. What then was my horror when I heard my companion, to whom the tohunga was evidently quite unknown, say, "Here comes Hoppy, with the bird's claw!"

The words were not loudly spoken, being intended for my ear alone, but any hope I may have entertained that they had failed to reach the consciousness of the wizard was dispelled in one flash of his black and glittering eyes. Drawing back the maligned foot, he spurned towards us a cloud of dust. A strange paralysis came over my limbs. With all the will in the world to fly, I stood rooted to the ground. The dust arose, and, as though influenced by some sharp air current, flicked past me, sending a violent shock through my body. For a moment all around me was dim; then, with restored vision, I saw the back of the tohunga as he limped calmly on his way, and at my feet, foam issuing from his mouth, the rash boy whose insulting words had met with such instant and terrible retribution. Not I, but he, had fallen under the makutu¹ of the tohunga.

As I shall again have occasion to refer to this incident, I will only say now that the boy did not die. After lying for many hours unconscious, he regained the use of his limbs, but not that of his mind. Little better than an idiot, he lived for many years to evidence the powers of

¹ Makutu = witchcraft.

page 91the magician, to whose spell he had fallen a victim in his boyhood.

Sobered and frightened by what had occurred, I began to bethink me of my promise to Puhi-Huia and how little regard I had paid to it. Since my arrival in the pa I had seen nothing of my father or the missionary, and I reflected that, for all I knew to the contrary, they might be at that very moment roasting for the chief's breakfast. Looking about for a fellow-villager, I soon learned enough to set this fear at rest. The Thumb and the missionary were royally housed in a whare adjoining that of the Great One. Yonder was the house. They had been courteously and hospitably received, and though the ariki had as yet refused to discuss the object of their visit, the speaker was in high hopes that consent would be given to the establishment of Christianity as the tribal faith, and that the interrupted feasting would go forward.

Repairing to the whare indicated, I found my father and Mr. Hall straightening their toilet after a night's repose in their clothes.

"Stay with us now, Cedric," said my father, after listening to an account of my doings. "It may be that you will carry away with you from to-day memories that will be of deep interest to other men in days to come."

"Yes," agreed Mr. Hall. "Though the end is assured, and New Zealand will come to God as surely as the sun will rise on the morrow, yet the passing of heathendom in any part of it marks an historic moment. Listen and watch, and it may chance that some day you will record your memories for the improvement of men in less strenuous times, and to the glorifying of God's goodness."

Well, he was a true prophet in one respect at least.

The day had opened cloudily, but by eleven o'clock the sun was shining, with but an occasional passing cloud to temper his beams. The Council was accordingly held in page 92the open square, a few steps outside the door of the chief's house. A party of armed warriors first took up their position in a great square, and into this the high chiefs walked, seating themselves in a double row. It was some time before they and the priest-tohungas were assembled, for everything was done in a grave, leisurely fashion; but at length my father, keeping watch at the door of the whare, decided that we might appear without loss of dignity, and we accordingly took the places reserved for us at the end of the row, where also was seated our own chief and sponsor, Te Moanaroa. There was a low murmur as we appeared and, as many eyes were bent on me, I took it, rightly or wrongly, to allude, probably with disapproval, to my inclusion in the party. Scarcely were we seated when figures appeared in the doorway of the ariki's whare, and at once the splendid bronze statues that surrounded us sprang to life. Whirling up their weapons as one man, they proclaimed the Great One with cries of—"I te taniwha! I te taniwha!"¹ subsiding immediately afterwards into their previous rigidity.

Te Huata, when I thus first set eyes upon him, was a man little past the prime of life. Though his skin was fairer than that of the generality of his race, his face was so heavily lined with the scrolls of the tohunga-ta's chisel as to appear at a distance almost blue-black. His thick hair was drawn through a ring and, being again caught thereunder, formed a large knot or pad on the crown of his head. His eyes were small, fierce, and rat-like, and there was something also of the rat in the fang-like character of his eye-teeth, which gleamed forth on any quick movement of his mouth. For the rest, he was a man of great stature and apparently huge strength. As he seated himself, and his eye, falling down the length of the row,

¹ The taniwha was a greatly-to-be-feared fabulous monster. By this title the guard proclaims the arrival of the dread son of the gods.

page 93lighted and lingered on my person, I was aware of a quickening in my heart-beats. Would those terrible teeth ever meet in the tender flesh of my body?

A moment later my pulse quickened again, but this time from a very different cause. A fresh figure had appeared from the chief's whare, and, with a careless glance round, cast itself on the grass at the feet of the ariki. It was Rangiora, my comrade. Behind him walked a woman, whom I regarded with interest, for in her person I had little doubt I saw the famous Tuku-tuku or Spider's Web, the mother of Rangiora, and the equal by birth of the proudest chief in New Zealand. She was not a good-looking woman; her high features, thin cheeks, and heavy brows gave her, indeed, an aspect of the grimmest, yet there was something in her appearance that pleased me. Perhaps it was the breadth and serenity of her forehead; perhaps, and more probably, it was her eyes—clear, wide, and full of intelligence. She stood awhile, her eye roving meditatively from face to face down one rank, dwelling a moment on our little group at the bottom, and returning with the same thoroughness along the other: then she crouched slightly behind her lord, her lips convenient to his ear.

It seemed to me that her coming gave satisfaction. A breath of relief swept down the rows, and the grave faces of the chiefs relaxed something, yet only a little, of their gravity. Well known was the power of Tuku-tuku over the fierce nature of her husband, yet it might be that on this occasion the Web of the Spider would be all too frail to restrain him; therefore all men waited with furrowed brows the opening of the proceedings.

At length Te Moanaroa raised his heavy bulk from the ground and, taking a few steps forward, a gentle smile on his wily countenance, began his address. Honeyed and flattering words fell from his lips, but, watching the dark page 94face of Te Huata, I saw that on this occasion they failed of their effect. The body of the ariki swayed impatiently, and at last, losing that restraint which courtesy dictated, he raised his closed hand.

"Chief," he cried bitterly, "pleasant are your words as the rustling of leaves, but afterwards comes the south-west gale."

"Alas!" responded Te Moanaroa, "the words of the Great One are just, yet lay not on your friend the responsibility of those things which are, in truth, the acts of the gods. Our religion teaches us that in the beginning were Chaos and Night. In the Void was Darkness. Darkness of the Heights, Darkness of the Depths, Darkness of the Right Hand and the Left Hand, Darkness Palpable and Darkness Drawn Out—unnumbered Ages of Darkness. Then, as the dawn creeps upward on to the earth, so came the Light. The Light Above, the Light Below, the Light on the Right Hand, the Light on the Left Hand, Light Palpable and Light Drawn Out—uncounted ages of Light. And as it was in the beginning, so is it also to-day. Higher and higher, deeper and deeper spreads the Light; and higher and higher, deeper and deeper retires the darkness. Bend the tree to the earth, and its point will turn upwards to the light. Is man less sensitive than the tree? Can we command the light, that it come no further? Shall we say to it—Enough, we prefer the darkness? Now this is the meaning of the coming of the white men, of the coming of the new religion—not in disdain of the ancient gods, but a brightening and enhancing of the light. Here stand we, in the land of the shadows, the place that divides: shall we go back into the regions of Darkness, or forward with our pakeha brothers into the realm of Eternal Light?"

A murmur of delighted admiration followed this noble speech. Stern faces relaxed, and cries of "True, true, O Te Moanaroa!" were audible on every hand. But page 95there came no softening to the countenance of the ariki. Darker and fiercer it grew, as he read in the faces of his tribesmen the doom of his policy of exclusion. As a thunder-cloud he brooded over the scene—a cloud from which the bolt might flash to burn and destroy. There was, however, one party of some dozen individuals whose faces had remained unmoved by the eloquence of Te Moanaroa. Seated close together on the right hand of the ariki, beneath a withered tree, whose decaying branches and few sere leaves might be regarded as typical of their own fallen estate, the priests of the ancient religion observed the scene in silence. Now, as the countenance of Te Huata grew momentarily more ominous, I saw one of the tohunga lean forward and speak a few words into the ear of the chief. Instantly the Great One's features relaxed and his eye-teeth gleamed in a slow and cruel smile.

"Beautiful are your words, O Te Moanaroa," he said; "yet beauty may mislead us. What of this Light? Is it a safe thing? True that the tree lifts its arms to the sun and the sun forbids it not. The moth flies also into the flame. The flame endures, but where is the moth?"

The speaker paused, and a movement of uneasiness showed that the telling point had gone home.

"You speak of the religion of our fathers, O chief: let us continue to speak of it. Tane created his creatures in many likenesses. For some the light, for some the darkness. Well may it be that for the white man the light is good, and for the Maori, evil. What of the bat and the owl, the things that move by nignt? So has he made the Maori for the shadows. Well have you said—Go not back into the darkness. That is a wise saying. But go not forward also into the light, lest as the moth you be consumed, and it is asked of the Maori, Where is he?"

The result of this speech was to place the discussion in page 96a position of "as you were." Metaphor struck against metaphor, and both fell pointless to the ground. Nevertheless, it was already evident in which direction lay the desires of the majority, and, as speech followed speech, this was rendered still more manifest. Speaker after speaker concluded with the suggestion that the pakeha should be heard: so far they had been as birds beating the air; let the flight now begin. But Te Huata, the thunder-cloud back on his face, maintained a sullen silence.

Meantime Mr. Hall, never, I should imagine, a man capable of the exercise of much patience, had been kept in his place with difficulty. Mystical and elusive as was much of his own language, he had no sympathy for like qualities in the oratory of the heathen. Their allusions to Light and Darkness as spiritual beings seemed to him so much meaningless jargon; nor could he appreciate their indirect method of arriving at reasoned conclusions by a system of values in allegory and metaphor. I could hear him pishing and pshawing under his breath for a long time before the inevitable happened.

"Let us be practical," he said, not for the first time, to my father, who was humming softly to himself, as was his way when things troubled him. "A few plain words will clear away this mental muddle."

"Wait," repeated my father. "Your battle is being fought for you. They have their own methods, and 'muddle,' I can assure you, is very far from being descriptive of their state of mind. More than a mere religious belief turns on the outcome of this meeting. If they break Te Huata now, he is broken for good and all."

But at length the limit of Mr. Hall's endurance was reached. Taking advantage of a temporary lull in the discussion, he sprang to his feet, and, regardless of the malign gaze and closed, upraised hand of the ariki, launched his barque on that sea of talk.

It would have been better had he spoken in English, for I am bound to say that he had but a plain, Anglo-Saxon knowledge of the vernacular. The beautiful native speech fell crippled from his blast, as I have seen the gay finches of Australia fall before the shot-gun. Surprise, disappointment were manifest in the faces of his adherents, and a corresponding triumph gathered in those of his opponents. It had one good effect, however; Te Huata, after a moment of hesitation, lowered his hand, and thenceforward he sat in grim and scornful silence. So far as the gist of the missionary's speech went, it could probably not have been bettered. He confined himself to the truths of Christ's teaching, which appeal inevitably and at once to all human kind. He gave them that message of love which has captured the imaginations and may yet, in some far-off future, control the actions of man; and so glorious was his theme, that even his broken and often absurd speech could not entirely destroy, however much it detracted from, its beauty. Alas! He closed with a grammatical blunder so comical that even those who had best caught the inwardness of his meaning could scarce forbear to smile. And, as was to be expected of a nation of practised orators, it was this defect in his speech of which his opponents took advantage.

Rising from his seat among the tohunga, Te Atua Mangu limped into the arena.

"So much for the Light," said he. "Now let us return to the Darkness."

This tremendous irony, coming on the suppressed mirth of the previous moment, proved irresistible. The gravity of the gathering was upset, and it abandoned itself to merriment.

"Well have the gods of Darkness served the Maori nation," continued Te Atua Mangu, when peace was restored, "and carefully should we look and examine ere page 98we abandon them and take to ourselves others that are new. And in this matter it is simple for the pakeha to help us. Living eyes have seen the wonders wrought by our gods through their mediums, the tohunga. Have any seen the wonders of Christ through his pakeha priest?"

"I do not profess to work miracles," said the missionary. "The day for miracles has passed."

"Not so," was the answer." We are still close to the gods of our fathers. But I have heard of your Kraiti (Christ). Is it not said of Him that He walked upon the sea, and that He changed the water into wai-piro?"¹

Mr. Hall made a gesture of assent, smiling, though uneasily, the while, for there was a methodical forward movement in the reasoning of the Black Spirit which compelled attention.

"We have water," said the tohunga, easily; "will the pakeha oblige us?"

"I have already said that I am no worker of miracles," responded the missionary, impatiently. "In the days of Our Lord, darkness covered the earth, and it was necessary that He should reveal His deity to the few in some special and faith-compelling manner."

"We are told that here also is darkness," persisted Te Atua Mangu. "If Kraiti be indeed God, let Him show us a sign. It is said of Him that He raised up the dead. We have no dead at this time, but Death is a spirit who comes at call. If the pakeha will it so, a slave shall be killed, that he may show the power of his god over Death. Or—should that be too troublesome a proceeding—behold this tree, withered and decayed, all but leafless; it would be a simple thing for his God to give back to it the vigour of its youth. Command it, then, that it be restored."

"Enough," said Mr. Hall. "Neither to me nor any man is such power given."

"Say you so, pakeha?" returned the wizard. "Speak of your own gods, for you shall learn that Tane is yet a living Spirit, who hears the prayers of his children."

As I write these lines, I can see now, what escaped me at the time, that the discussion had been carefully manœuvred to the point which it had now reached. The priest of the Light had confessed his inability to work miracles: he of the Darkness was now to show his powers. On the issue hung for the moment the fate of the new faith.