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

Matters went on calmly and peacefully in this lodge in the wilderness, disturbed but from time to time with war rumours and tidings of siege or skirmish. Occasionally a burst of weeping and dolorous long-drawn lamentation in the Maori camp told that a friend or kinsman had been added to the death-roll. Then a former convert or pupil would stagger in, wounded almost to the death, to be tended, and cured, if such were possible, for no slightly wounded combatant ever taxed the warm welcome of the Mikonaree and his household. They were either sent away rejoicing in their new-found strength and ability to level a musket once more at the marauding pakeha, or, in other case, were laid to rest in the mission graveyard, comforted by the thought that the Burial Service would be read over them by the good pakeha whom they had learned to trust and revere.

Sometimes, when hope had departed, and they began to count their remaining hours, they returned to the lessons which had been with such care instilled into them in the old peaceful days of the earlier missions. They placed their trust in the mediation of Him whom they connected with their conversion, and recalled the weekly services and baptismal vows, happy in the unshaken faith of youth, and passing away to spirit-land without doubt or fear.

At other times, the warrior, roused to frenzy by pain or despair, would solemnly renounce the stranger's God and all His ways, and quit this life, so incomprehensible to him, chanting the ancient war-song of [Pg 312] his ancestors, and electing to follow them to the Maori heaven by the stormy path of the reinga.

A chance newspaper—for, of course, all mail-carrying had been stopped, as well as their irregular intelligence department—brought them the news of the greater and the lesser world from time to time. In one of these latter distributors of hopes and fears they came across these alarming head-lines:—

"The Gate Pah! Captured after a Stubborn Resistance! Panic among the 43rd Regiment! Loss of Officers unprecedented! Names of the Killed and Wounded!"

The list was long, and eagerly scanned. Many were names of European reputation; others, again, of colonial fame, well known to all New Zealand residents. With their heads close together, the names were read out first by one, then another, as different degrees of knowledge or acquaintance prevailed. Mrs. Summers was repeating the last two or three names, when she came to Lieutenant Massinger of the Forest Rangers, "Reported missing!"

"Whom did you say?" cried Hypatia, almost with a shriek. "Not Roland Massinger? Oh, don't say he is dead!"

"He is not dead, my dear," said Mrs. Summers, "only missing. That means, I suppose, that he has not rejoined his regiment. There is nothing so very alarming about that."

"Not alarming—not alarming!" answered Hypatia, in low anguished tones. "Do you know what it means? It may be worse than dead—far worse. He may be in the hands of the enemy—given over to torture. Who can tell? And it is I who am to [Pg 313] blame for his presence in this country, for his taking part in this dreadful war. His blood is upon my head, wretched girl that I am!"

"My dear Hypatia," said Mrs. Summers, gently taking her hand, "why rush to such extreme conclusions? In the first place, the poor fellow is not known to be dead, or even a prisoner. In the next, you cannot be held responsible for the rash resolve of a man whom you felt you could not marry. It is most unfortunate, I grant you, but surely you are not to be held accountable."

"No, no! it was all my doing. My heedlessness and vanity must have encouraged him, or he would never have thought of me in that way. Then a foolish ambition stifled any natural liking. I did like and respect him far more than any other man I had ever met. And now, this is the end of it! He is dead, and I am the unhappy cause. I shall never recover it."

Words were of no avail. In vain Cyril Summers and his wife tried to moderate her passionate remorse. She could see nothing but the darkest fate and endless sorrow before her. She had destroyed his happiness, his career, and now his life had been sacrificed to her insane desire to travel out of the sphere which Providence had assigned to her.

Comparatively soothed by Mr. Summers' promise to send a trusty messenger to procure reliable information as to his disappearance and probable fate, she at length consented to retire with her friend and comforter. To retire, but not to rest. If she slept, troubled visions of pale corpses and blood-stained victims mingled with her dreams, and the dawn had appeared before the slumbers which soothe alike the young [Pg 314] and old, the innocent and the guilty, brought transient rest and peace to her troubled spirit.

Mr. Summers tranquillized her somewhat by sending away a native convert, long associated with the mission, and at her request his wife went also. They were a trustworthy and devoted pair, whose loyalty had been well tried since the outbreak of hostilities. Known by the rebels as Mikonaree natives, they were enabled to pass and repass unharmed. Indeed, they were always welcomed by the insurgents, who never charged them with bad faith. It was rather the other way, inasmuch as the friendly natives were more than suspected of giving information of probable movements by the troops to their countrymen. But, if it were so, their apologists replied that it was, after all, merely in accordance with the ancient Maori custom, which was to send notice to the enemy that they were coming to attack them. The famous Hongi did so in the case of his next-door neighbour, Hinaki, Chief of the Ngatimaru tribe, when they met in Sydney, at Mr. Marsden's dinner-table, after the former's return from England, saying, "Get your tribe ready as soon as you return, for I am going to attack you when I get back to Te Hauraki." He was as bad as his word, and with the aid of civilization (muskets and powder), succeeded in taking the famous Totara pah, slaughtering a thousand Ngatimaru, then killing (and eating) a large proportion of his compatriot's tribe.

Ponui and Awariki did not lose time, but started away in light marching order for the seat of war, secretly pleased and excited by the prospect of hearing all about the bloody engagement and its attendant [Pg 315] horrors, while manifesting a decent show of sorrow for the pakeha's early fate.

They were several days absent, during the lingering hours of which Hypatia held herself to be a prey to the fabled Furies. She was fully impressed with the idea that an evil fate had befallen the missing soldier, on account of which the messengers hesitated to return, awaiting fuller information.

Thus, daily becoming more and more deeply depressed and remorseful, she pondered upon the mysterious workings of Providence, disposed to question its justice in permitting so bitter a blow to be dealt to her—to her, who had always acted in undoubting faith! Upon what trifling events do the great evils and misfortunes of life appear to depend! Like the extra allowance of sunshine in the Alpine world, which sets free the tiny ice stream, which again unlooses the blind and devastating avalanche, what a tragedy had her heedless action set in motion! And the end was not yet. Of what gruesome, bloodcurdling tidings might not the messengers be the bearers!

After a night of miserable imaginings, Hypatia arose to find that the messengers had returned, and furnished a report of their inquiries to Mr. Summers, who, condensing it for her information, hastened to relieve her worst apprehensions.

"Before entering into detail, let me assure you, my dear Miss Tollemache," he said, "that we have good grounds for believing that Sir Roland is alive, and, if not unwounded, most likely in good hands."

"What do they say?" asked she, with tremulous lips. "Were they able to see any one who knew? [Pg 316] His friends—Mr. Slyde, I mean. I have heard they were comrades."

"They joined the Forest Rangers at the same time, I heard; and there was also the half-caste guide, Warwick, a very fine fellow, who has attached himself to our friend. Ponui saw both of them."

"Surely they would know. They did not desert him?"

"There was no hint of desertion. Every officer of note was killed or wounded within the first twenty minutes of the assault of the storming party—they among the number. Warwick was severely wounded. Mr. Slyde was unconscious, and it was thought mortally wounded; but after Warwick had staggered to the place where he had seen Lieutenant Massinger fall, he found that he had disappeared."

"Then they know nothing—absolutely nothing!" said Hypatia. "I thought you said there were grounds for believing——"

"Allow me to continue," said the Reverend Cyril. "Awariki went among the women of the camp, of whom there were many. There she found a cousin who had married a Ngapuhi. She seemed to have been under fire also, as she had a bullet through her upper arm."

"I should like to have been there," said Hypatia, her eyes lighting up with a gathering intensity, as she gazed before her towards the dark-hued mountains which bounded their landscape. "What did she see?"

"As she rushed forward through the m�l�e—for her husband was badly wounded—she saw the 'pakeha rangatira,' as she called him, fall, apparently dead. [Pg 317] A Maori was just about to tomahawk him, when Mr. Mannering (Tao-roa, as they call him) dashed him aside, knocking him down, and calling aloud to his people, two of whom lifted up the pakeha, and commenced to carry him to the rear. Immediately afterwards several women joined them, one of whom she was confident was Erena Mannering, his daughter, who, of course, was well known to the tribe. After this ensued the extraordinary panic of the 43rd, and all trace of him was lost."

"Then they did not succeed in getting him back to the Ngapuhi camp (isn't that the name?), and they do not know what has become of him, after all?"

"Merely this, that Awariki says she is certain that if Erena had been taken prisoner, she is a person of such importance that the whole hapu would have been sent in pursuit. She is confident that she and the others are in safety, or else Mr. Mannering would not be at ease and with his people."

"But why did she not ask him?"

"He is a war chief of the Ngapuhi, and she, a common person, did not dare to address him on such a subject. It would not be tika, or etiquette, breaches of which are severely punished."

"But what do you think yourself? All this is very slender evidence—mere hearsay, in fact."

"I fully believe that he is in some secure retreat, watched over by this extraordinary girl, Erena Mannering, whose courage and devotion have, under Providence, saved his life."

"May she find His mercy in her hour of need!" said Hypatia, with clasped hands and streaming eyes. "If it be so, my soul will be freed from a [Pg 318] burden almost too heavy to bear. It may be hoping against hope, but I really begin to believe that his life will be spared. That granted by Heaven, I shall have nothing—positively nothing—to wish for in the future."

The remaining incidents in the capture of the memorable Gate Pah were duly recorded by Awariki for the benefit of the household—how the sailors, the sea-warriors of the pakeha, whose raiment was of a blue colour, they who sprang over the palisades as if they were ships' rigging, and the men in red who fought madly and cursed always, had been bewitched by the spell of the Tohunga of the Ngaiterangi, and had fled. The men in big hats (the Forest Rangers), who walked through the bush, the flax, and the fern by night and day; the Ngapuhi, who rushed on like a breaking wave, were all in vain against the rifle-pits of the Ngaiterangi, whereby men were killed without seeing who fired at them.

Passing from one mood to the other, as is wont with women whose highly strung nervous system seems impatient of continuous action, Hypatia at length made up her mind that Massinger was alive, and safely bestowed in some sylvan retreat, under the care of this mysterious, fascinating Maori girl, of whom she had already heard much.

The natural jealousy, invariably felt by the average woman during the appropriation by another one of an erstwhile, probable, or even possible lover, had no place in Hypatia's generous mind. "If only he is alive and well, I care nothing," thought she. "That she risked her life to save his, I can well believe. [Pg 319] All honour to her. I am at least guiltless of his blood. I shall always feel grateful to her, for lifting that load from my soul."

Thus, when she arose next morning and commenced to busy herself about the indispensable duties of the household, she experienced a feeling of relief to which she had been long a stranger. The day was fine, the clouds of heaven had disappeared, it would seem, simultaneously with those of