"War to the Knife;" or, Tangata Maori by Rolf Boldrewood (100 best novels of all time TXT) 📕

help from abroad, the whites would be something in the same position as they were in Hayti when the negroes revolted. But it will never come off."

"Why should it not?"

"Because, as in the Great Indian Mutiny, the tribes are divided. Some of the older chiefs, men of ability and forecast, have always been true to the whites, and will remain so—Waka Nene and Patuone, with others. Their tribes are powerful, and are, like most savage races, ready to join the whites against their hereditary enemies—such, by many a bitter blood-feud, that time has not weakened."

"I understood from your daughter—you will pardon me for referring to it—that you had personally assisted the British Government in the time of Heke's rebellion."

"Yes; I was the first and only white man who raised men, and held him and his force in check after he had sacked and burned the town of Kororareka. We were fighting almost every day for a month till the troops arrived. When I proposed to the chief, Waka Nene, to oppose Heke, he said he had not men enough, but that if I would join him with all I could raise, he would turn out. I saw that the fate [Pg 195] of the North depended on my answer; Heke was then on the march to Hokianga. I agreed. In twenty-four hours I had joined the chief, with twice as many men as he had, and, as I said before, we found the enemy in full employment till the troops came."

"What a glorious opportunity! And yet it is not every one who could have taken prompt advantage of it. I should have been delighted to have been in it."

Mannering looked with approval at the animated countenance of the speaker as he said—

"Waka Nene and I would have been only too glad to recruit you and a few more of the same stamp. It was very good fun while it lasted. My friend Waterton came on as soon as he could get across from Hokianga, and was in the thick of it. His right-hand man was shot dead within a foot of him."

Though ordinarily reserved, Massinger, when abroad, made a point of conversing with strangers of all callings and both sexes, in an unstudied fashion, which often produced unexpected gains.

He was wont to tell himself that this careless comradeship was like turning over the leaves of a new book. For is not the mind of any human creature, could one but catch sight of certain cabalistic characters, traced deep in the tablets of the inner soul, more exciting, more amazing, more comic, more terrible, more instructive than any book that ever left printer's hands? Yet never, at home or abroad, had he encountered a companion like to this one. A wonderful admixture of the heroic and social attributes! The reckless courage of a Berserker; [Pg 196] the air of born command which showed itself in every instinctive motion; the love of danger for its own sake, as yet unslaked by time, by dangerous adventures over land and sea; the iron constitution which could endure, even enjoy, the privations of savage life, joined to an intellect of the highest order; speculative, daring, fully instructed in the latest results of science and sociology, yet capable of presenting every subject upon which he touched in a new and original light; while around the most grave issues and important questions played a vein of humour, comic or cynical, but irresistibly attractive.

Massinger had heard of such personages, but had assuredly never met one in the flesh before. What might such a man not have become, with the favouring conditions which encircle some men's lives? A great general, an admiral, for he was equally at home on land or sea; a prime minister; an explorer; a pastoral magnate in the wide areas and desolate waste kingdoms of Australia, where a thousand square miles wave with luxuriant vegetation during one year, and in the second following are dust and ashes! To any eminence in the wide realms of Greater Britain might he not have ascended, surrounded by staunch friends and devoted admirers, had he chosen to select a career and follow it up with the unflinching determination for which he was proverbial! And, thought this Englishman, what had he done? what was he? A leader of men, certainly—a chief in a savage tribe in a scarce known island, at the very end of the world, content to live and die far from the centres of civilization, the home of his race, the refinements of art, and intellectual [Pg 197] contact with his peers. What an existence, what an end, for one who had doubtless started in life with high hopes of success and distinction in the full acceptation of the word, of honourable command and acknowledged eminence!

And what had been the clog upon the wheel, the fateful temptation, the enthralling lure potent to sway so strong, so swift a champion from the path sacred to his race, leaving him towards the close of life among shallows and quicksands? What, indeed? mused he, looking up. And, even as he turned, Erena, fresh from an exploration to the fords of a flooded stream which barred their path, presented a living answer to the query. As she stood in the uncertain light which struggled through the forest glades, her eyes bright with triumph and her form transfigured with the momentary gleam of the sun-rays, he could have imagined her a naiad of old Arcadian days, prompt to warn the hero of the approach of danger. Such must have been her mother in the springtime of her beauty, in the year when her father, a youthful Ulysses, appeared as a god newly arisen from the sea before the Nausicaa of the tribe. It was not given to man to resist the o'ermastering spell of such a maiden's love. "The oracle has spoken," he thought. "Is it a warning, or the knell of fate?"

"I have found the bridge," she said, her clear tones ringing out through the silent woods, joyous with girlish triumph. "It was made in the old wars, but is still strong. Westward lies the Hokianga."

She led the way by a well-worn path which turned at an angle from the ordinary track.

[Pg 198]

"Here is the bridge!" she said at length, pausing at the bank of a rushing stream, which, swollen by rain in the mountain ranges, had in twenty-four hours risen many feet above the ordinary ford. "It is old, as you can see, but strong and unbroken still. Over this passed the great tribe of the Ngatimaru when they were fleeing with their women and children in Hougi's time. I could almost fancy that I see traces of blood on these great beams still. But it will serve us as well as it served them. And now we have but to cross these wooded hills and we are at Maru-noki, my father's home. I welcome you to it in advance."

Here they were joined by Mr. Mannering and Warwick, who had been talking earnestly for some time, probably about the war, and the more pressing and now inevitable consequences.

"I could wish that you had made your appearance last year," said the former, "when I could have acted as cicerone with leisure and effect. After being a foe to hurry and bustle all my life, I think it most unkind of fate to let me in for what I plainly foresee will be a period of disturbance most unsatisfactory to all concerned."

"There is nothing which I should have enjoyed so much," replied Massinger; "but you will agree with me that this is no time for dilettante work. I shall always be thankful for the experience I have had so far, with its unfading memories."

"And may I ask what you propose to do when you reach Auckland?"

"They were talking of raising a volunteer corps when I left, and——"

[Pg 199]

"They have already raised one," interposed Mannering. "More than that, the militia have been called out, and proclamation of martial law made. Te Rangitake's pah was burnt on the 6th; the boundaries of the Waitara block were surveyed the week after under military protection. Te Rangitake built another pah on the disputed land, and pulled up the surveyors' pegs. On the 17th, Colonel Gold attacked the pah with howitzers, after sending a note by Parris, which the Maoris refused to read. They returned fire, and wounded three men. Next morning a breach was made, by which the troops entered, to find the pah empty. They were two days destroying a fortification put up in one night, and garrisoned by seventy Maoris!"

"A bad start, surely?"

"Yes, as tending to give the tribes confidence in their ability to fight white troops—a dangerous lesson, as the Governor and his advisers will find out."

"Has further fighting followed?"

"Unfortunately, yes. Two pahs have been built at Omata, and three settlers killed south of Taranaki. Te Rangitaka, to do him justice, warned his men not to make war on unarmed people. A combined force of militia volunteers, soldiers, and sailors stormed the pah at Omatu. So it is a very pretty quarrel as it stands."

"You have heard this 'from a sure hand,' as they used to say before post-offices were invented?"

"My tidings are only too true, I am sorry to say. And, in spite of the success of the troops, my opinion is that the war has only commenced. If the Waikato tribes join, others will be drawn in. It will take years [Pg 200] to subdue them thoroughly—years of vast expenditure of blood and treasure."

"Speaking from your experience of both sides, what would you suggest as an alternative policy?"

"Withdrawing from Waitara promptly. Justice would be done, and a lasting peace might be secured. The Maoris are now the Queen's subjects, and should be treated as such. Just now each side has secured a temporary advantage. With a consistent and impartial policy, disaffection would cease. By-and-by the natives will sell their land readily enough; with a minimum price established by the Crown and proper titles decided by a Land Court, all things would find their level. No one will object except land speculators and their allies."

"Would not the Government act even now upon your representations?"

"Hardly. I am afraid that I am in the position of Wisdom crying in the streets. But, to quit 'the arts of war and peace,' wildly exciting as the subject is becoming, here is Maru-noki, our lodge in the wilderness, to which I beg to welcome you heartily."

They had been pursuing a winding woodland path, which at last conducted them to an eminence below which the view, opening out, disclosed a noble river. Immediately below where they stood, and near a rude but massive wharf, was a cottage, built bungalow-fashion, with broad verandahs, surrounded by a palisaded garden, and shaded by those typically British trees, the "oak, the ash, and the bonny elm tree." Leafy memorials of the fatherland, they are rarely absent from the humblest cottage, the lordliest mansion, in Britain's colonies, and in none do they [Pg 201] flourish more luxuriantly than in these isles of the farthest South.

The present home of the Hokianga tribe was on the lower levels, which, since the cessation of the chronic warfare which desolated each district from time to time, they had adopted as more convenient. None the less, however, on a lofty hill-top within easy reach was the primeval fortress, to which for generations they had been wont nightly to repair for security, and from which issued to their daily duties the long trains of chiefs, warriors, women, and slaves. On the opposite bank of the river were low hills and dunes of drifted sand, while to the eastward rose two promontories, cloud-like in the misty azure, between which rose and fell the tides of the unbounded main.

Warwick and Erena had gone forward to the cottage, whence a hospitable smoke presently ascended. Willing handmaids from the kainga were also in evidence. No time was wasted. The keen air, the day's march, all tended to superior appetites. In half an hour after Massinger had been refreshed with a glass of excellent Hollands, and inducted into a bedroom, furnished chiefly with books, he found himself in the dining-room before a luncheon-table exceedingly well appointed. The fish and game, with vegetables and corned pork, were truly excellent. The bread was extemporized, but, in the shape of hot griddle cakes, was only too appetizing. Tea, of course, concluded the repast, than which, Massinger confessed, he never remembered enjoying one more heartily.

"In an hour or so," said Mr. Mannering, "we will stroll down to the kainga. The head chief of our [Pg 202] tribe, the celebrated Waka Nene, whom you met on your way over to the Terraces, has returned. You will hear what he says on the present state of things. No man in the island can speak with more knowledge or authority. Warwick and I have a few arrangements to make; meanwhile I dare say you can find something to interest you among my old books. Erena will keep you company till I return."

Massinger found ample pabulum mentis among the varied collection of books and papers, which not only filled the shelves around three sides of the room, but won place