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Hine-Ra, or The Maori Scout: A Romance of the New Zealand War.

Chapter XX. — Active Service

Chapter XX.
Active Service.

The red demon of war had expanded her blood-dropping wings, had waved her flaming torch over the land, and the whole of the middle portion of Te Ike o Maui was lighted by the lurid glow. Murder, rapine, desolation were on every hand and the wailing Tangi of the widow and the fatherless rose to high heaven mingled with the vengeful Ngeri of opposing tribes.

The thunder of artillery formed a solemn bass to the crackle and roll of musketry and the savage yells of infuriated savages. The smoke from scores of burning homesteads and erstwhile peaceful kaingas—sweet incense to Bellona and her handmaids, Blood, Fire, and Famine—darkened the sunlight, and the air was tainted with the rank fetor of carnage and death.

The fiat had gone forth, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Pakeha was pitted against Maori, Maori against Pakeha, and both were drunk with blood.

The god Tutewanawana had awakened from his sleep in the bowels of the earth, and his craving could only be satisfied with wholesale slaughter. The war-gong had been struck, the Tuahua had been erected, the Tutungarau had been danced, the Pitau had been launched, the Ngeri and Umere chanted, and, so far as the page 91 Maoris, and especially the Hau-Haus, were concerned, the war of extermination had begun. Death to the vanquished.

From the Western side of the island, where the war of Pai Marire commenced, it rapidly spread to the eastward and northward, and the natives of the vast territory between Taupo Moana and Tauranga, the Ngatipoaoa, Ngaiterangi, Ngatiwhaka-aue, Ngatiraukawa, Te Whakatohea, Ngatipouri, Ngatituwharetoa, and other tribes, speedily became involved, and were obliged to take up arms, either in self-defence, or on one side or the other.

The struggle, besides being one between the rival races, soon assumed all the horrors of internecine war, aggravated by the delirium of religious frenzy and the mad turbulence of an ever-excitable, jealous, and sanguinary people.

The records of that terrible time are indeed written in characters of blood, which will not be effaced for many generations The vacillation and hesitancy, not to call it by a stronger term, displayed by General Champion in connection with the Wereroa pah, led to many disasters, involving much unnecessary bloodshed, the crowning one being the terrible and undoubted defeat of the British forces by Rawiri and his warriors at the Pukahinehine or Gate pah, about three miles from Tauranga.

The Gate pah, so called because it served as the passage from European to Maori land, stood on a ridge of land sloping into a morass on either side, and here was fought by far the most disastrous of all the disastrous engagements in the whole history of Anglo-Maori warfare.

Early in the year the Chief Rawiri, with a party of hostile natives, constructed this strong pah, and fortified it according to the most approved Maori plan of defence. On the summit of the ridge, which was about thirty feet high, they built an oblong redoubt seventy yards long by thirty deep, of strong palisades, surrounded by a post-and-rail fence. In it were three tiers of rifle pits, roofed over with manuka scrub and fern, there being a space between the edge of the pits and the eaves of the roofs so as to afford loop-holes for the muskets of the garrison. In addition to this, the ground outside the redoubt where the hill falls off into swamp was further protected by lines of rifle-pits.

The British forces, under General Champion, consisting of some seventeen hundred men, with fifteen pieces of ordnance, were encamped at a place called Te Papa, about three miles from the pah, which is said to have been manned by not more than three hundred Maoris.

After reconnoitring the position of the enemy, General Champion advanced and invested the pah, placing detachments of regulars and 370 men of the Naval Brigade in front, the artillery being planted in four batteries at varying distances. The attack was commenced by a feigned advance in front, under cover of which Colonel Frère led a body of men skilfully along the edge of the swamp on page 92 the enemy's right, to the rear of the pah, so as to cut off from the Maoris all chance of escape.

At daybreak the British artillery began to play on the Maori position, but the wily savages, with wonderful astuteness, had planted a flag about a hundred yards in their rear, and the fire being directed at this, the shot flew over the pah, and only did damage to the British troops under Frère, who were behind. The storm of artillery lasted with little intermission until four in the afternoon, when, a breach having been made in the left angle of the redoubt large enough to tempt an assault, a rocket was sent up as a signal for attack. The storming party rushed at the double into the breach, the troops in rear simultaneously moving so as to cut off retreat. With but little loss the breach was gained and the main redoubt entered, and the fate of the Maoris seemed decided, for they retreated by the rear only to meet the bayonets of Frère's troops, when, with the courage of despair, finding themselves trapped, they rushed back into the redoubt, fighting like infuriated wild beasts. At this moment, when the pah appeared to be won, from some cause which has never been clearly explained, a panic seemed to seize the British troops, who retreated in headlong and terrible flight, yelling out, “There's thousands of them! there's thousands of them!”

Vainly did Captain Hazelton, with the Naval Brigade Reserve, endeavor to stem the tide. Just as he reached the breach, a bullet pierced his brain, and as he fell the entire force—storming party and reserve—retreated beyond reach of the enemy's fire.

It was, there is no use in denying it, an ignominious flight, and, deeming it unadvisable to renew the assault, General Champion erected a breastwork about one hundred yards in front of the pah, with the intention of again attacking it in the morning.

The Maoris, however, evacuated it during the night, stealing silently and unobserved through the lines of troops in the rear, and even carrying away many of their dead and wounded.

On entering the pah next morning, a terrible sight presented itself. Friend and foe, white and brown, lay in confusion, weltering in their commingled gore. Four captains of one regiment lay dead within as many square yards. Two brothers, a lieutenant and a captain, belonging to a family of heroes, were shot, the former in attempting to recover the body of his brother. An officer, one of the very few who had escaped the wreck of the Orpheus on the Manakau Bar, had been shot in the neck and through both cheeks, and had lived long enough to bind up his face with his handker-chief over his wounds. Colonel Routh, the gallant leader of the storming party, was mortally wounded in the spine. The general went to him, but the poor fellow felt the repulse too keenly, and turned away his face, saying—“General, I cannot look at you. I tried to carry out your orders, but we failed.” The loss on both sides was fearful, and it is said that one regiment lost, on this occasion, more officers than did any English regiment at Waterloo.

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To the everlasting honor of Rawiri and his Maoris, let it be recorded that, in direct variance to Maori custom, in this terribly sanguinary engagement, when their angriest passions must have been aroused almost to madness, no mutilation of the dead took place. Not only were the bodies neither stripped nor injured, but the watches, rings and money of the dead were left untouched.

Let the name of a Maori brave, Henare Taratoa, be inscribed in letters of gold on the scroll of chivalric fame. Henare Taratoa, who, ignorant half-savage as he was, when one of the English wounded lay a dying, and thirsted for a drop of water to soothe his agony, stole, in the dark, with the tender courtesy of a Christian gentleman, at the risk of his own life, through the English sentries, and returned with water to quench his enemy's thirst.

Such was the disastrous state of affairs shortly before the arrival of Frank Burnett and the Maori scout at Tauranga. The soldiers and the sailors who had fallen at the Pukahinehine pah had been buried in the little cemetery on the tongue of land that faces the mount at Tauranga, by their shamed and grieving comrades, who burned to wipe off the disgrace of their unreasoning panic and flight.

Nor did they have to wait long for the opportunity, for scarcely two months had elapsed since the engagement at the Gate pah, than Rawiri, who had collected his scattered forces and reinforcements from other rebel tribes, in all numbering about six hundred men, entrenched himself in another strong position at Te Ranga, a place some four miles from the “Gate.”

Owing to the terrible slaughter of officers, Frank was duly appointed to a small command, and even Jack Hall, who, as a rule, avoided active fighting, for once took up arms in aid of the whites, and donned an uniform. The British made one determined dash at the pah, and took it at the point of the bayonet. The company to which Frank was attached greatly distinguished itself, and the young officer, by his coolness and bravery in action, attracted the notice of General Champion himself, and was honorably mentioned by him in the orders of the day, and had his commission immediately confirmed.

The struggle was a very short one. The Maoris fled with a loss of over 120 men, leaving their leader, the brave Rawiri, dead, with 67 of his companions, in their rifle-pits—graves which they themselves had dug.

But terrible news came from the south-west. The ferocious Hau-Haus were mustering at a place about seventy miles up the Wanganui river with the intention of descending on the flourishing and insufficiently protected settlement of Wanganui, near the mouth of the river, and of slaughtering the inhabitants.

In hot haste, Lieutenant Frank Burnett was despatched, with his chosen companion, Jack Hall, to make his way across the country to the Wanganui river, there to discover what he could of the movements of the enemy, and to proceed to the settlement, and there page 94 confer with the military and civil authorities as to what should be done.

This was a task far more difficult and dangerous than the previous one, inasmuch as not only were the rebels more numerous, but because, in order to render his mission of any special value, he must needs pass through a part of the country which was the very hotbed of the fanatic and barbarous Hau-Hauism itself. In truth, it was a perilous undertaking. But, equipped for the journey, they cheerfully set out amidst the hearty good wishes of their comrades, officers and men.

Not an hour passed during that long and wearisome tramp that they were not in danger, frequently in deadly peril. The hardships they had to undergo were simply terrible. For days they did not dare to make a fire, for fear it should attract the attention of some prowling parties of natives, and bring their vindictive foes down on them. Having no fires, they could not cook their food, and the wekas, on which they, to a great extent, subsisted, bad enough to eat when cooked, were, when raw, simply disgusting.

Added to this, the weather was unfavorable, and camping out, night after night, or day after day, beneath the ever-dripping foliage and soaked undergrowth of a New Zealand forest in a wet Autumn, is an experience which few indeed would be anxious to repeat.

Cautious, yet venturesome, daring, yet not rash, they often, after reaching the Hau-Hau country, lay hidden within ear-shot of their ruthless enemies, overhearing their plans and listening to their blood-curdling schemes for the torture and death of the detested Pakehas.

At length, after numerous escapes from detection, and weary, footsore, haggard, and well nigh exhausted from hunger and exposure, they gained the settlement and reported themselves. They had no written documents, their orders and instructions had been merely verbal, but their information was so precise and detailed as to leave no doubt of its authenticity.

They reported that there was no doubt that the Hau-Haus intended in a very few days at the latest to surprise the settlement and slay every man, woman, and child they could find. This information was conveyed to the friendly natives who lived in and about the place, and these, with a heroism and loyalty which did them infinite honor, determined to oppose the aggression, and sent a challenge to the Hau-Hau fanatics proposing that they should meet them in battle next day at the Island of Moutoa.

This challenge the Hau-Haus accepted, and, sweeping down the river in their canoes, they landed on the shingle spit of the island, where they found the friendlies waiting for them. For two hours they chanted their horrible incantations, barking like dogs, yelling Hau! Hau! and making mystic passes with their hands, believing that they were thus destroying the strength of their enemies. At length they joined in a hand-to-hand combat. At first, the friendlies page 95 seemed inclined to waver, and had, in fact, begun to retreat, when a gallant chief, named Haimona Hiroti, shouting “I will go no further,” rallied his men, and drove the savages into the water, whence but few of them escaped.

For the part the young lieutenant and scout had taken in this affair they were publicly thanked, and in recognition of the value of their arduous services they were rewarded, the one by promotion, the other pecuniarily. Wanganui was saved, and the Hau-Hau strength was, for the time, broken.