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

tell it once, and never forgot it. You heard of the Ohaieawa Pah, and how the troops were repulsed then?"

"Yes; I read some account of it."

"It was like this fight. The pah was strongly defended, and the colonel said he would take it by assault. My father and Mr. Waterton were fighting along with the Ngapuhi under the chief Waka Nene. They came to the colonel, and my father said, 'Colonel Despard, if you are going to try to take the [Pg 352] pah by assault before you make a breach—and you have no artillery heavy enough—I consider it amounts to the murder of your men, and it is my duty to tell you so. The chief Waka Nene is of the same opinion.'

"'What does he know of the science of war?' said the colonel, angrily.

"'More than you do—that is, of Maori war,' said my father.

"'How dare you talk to me like that?' said the colonel, now very angry. 'I have a great mind to have you arrested.'

"'What does the pakeha rangatira say?' inquired Nene of Mr. Waterton, as he saw that something serious was likely to happen.

"'He says he will arrest us,' said Mr. Waterton.

"Upon this the chief walked forward, and, looking in the colonel's face, placed an arm on either of their shoulders. Then he said quietly—

"'These are my pakehas. You must not touch them;' and he looked round to his tribe, drawn up rank by rank at the foot of the hill."

"Well, and what happened?"

"The colonel turned away and said no more. The Ngapuhi tribe were loyal to the English, and have been ever since. They would never have conquered Heke without them."

"So he did attack the pah?"

"Yes—by bad fortune. The old chief drew his men off, and would not join in the assault. The soldiers and sailors, also the volunteers, tried to storm the pah, but were beaten back with dreadful loss. Many were killed, and some taken prisoners. The natives left the pah the next night, but it was a boast [Pg 353] of Heke's tribe for years after that they had beaten back a pakeha regiment of renown, and that some day, if all the tribes would unite, they would drive the whites into the sea."

"It was well for us that they did not unite, by all accounts," said Massinger; "for their numbers were greater than ours then by many thousands. Now it is the other way, and unless they make peace their doom is sealed."

"You must not talk any more," said Erena, with playful authority. "Old Tiro-hanga will come up tomorrow, and then he will say if you can be moved. You had better try and go to sleep."

The war was now virtually over. The Waikato tribes and their allies, the Ngatiawa and the Ngatihaua, had surrendered unconditionally. The wounded warriors, Slyde and Warwick, were in a condition to be moved to Auckland, where rest and comfort awaited them. The military surgeon, in releasing them from camp quarters and fare, advised them to take advantage of all the comforts of civilization, which he believed would effect a more speedy cure than any of the resources of his profession.

"You've had a narrow shave, both of you," he said—"particularly Warwick. When I saw him first, I hardly thought he was worth carrying to the rear. We were short of bearers, too; not like those infernal natives who have so many women about, full of pluck, and handier than the men for that matter. By-the-by, what's become of that young friend of yours? It's rumoured that the Ngapuhi carried him off. Beautiful daughter, and so on. Romantic—very."

[Pg 354]

"Odd thing. Don't know where he is," said Mr. Slyde. "Warwick here means to go on the scout as soon as his blessed wound heals. We're getting anxious."

"I'm not," said Warwick. "Depend on it, if Erena Mannering has him in charge, no harm will come to him. Not a man of the Ngapuhi but would die in his defence, always excepting that brute Ngarara. We don't know who were killed at Orakau and who got away yet. As long as he's above ground neither Massinger nor Erena are safe."

"Seems badly managed, don't it," yawned Mr. Slyde, "when so many a good fellow has gone down, that reptile should escape? Hope for the best, however. Feel inclined to help Providence the next time we meet. Awful sleepy work this recovery business. I must turn in."

Some anxiety might have been spared to his friends if they could have beheld Mr. Massinger at the moment of their solicitude. The sun was declining; the shimmering plain of Rotorua lake lay calm and still, save for a lazy ripple on the beach below the room wherein the wounded man lay, on a couch covered with mats of the finest texture. Beside him sat Erena, regarding him from time to time with that rapt and earnest gaze which a woman only bestows on the man she loves or the child of her bosom. He had rallied since the first days of his wound, but the pallor of his countenance, and his evident weakness, told those of experience in gunshot wounds that the progress of recovery had been arrested. In such a case the danger is worse, say the authorities, than in the first loss of blood and organic injury. The patient [Pg 355] moved as if to raise himself, but desisted, as if such effort were beyond him.

"I cannot think," he said, "why I do not gain strength. I do not seem to have improved in the least; rather the other way. I wonder if there is any injury we don't know of."

"Pray God there is not!" she said, bending over him, and bathing his forehead. "My father says he never knew old Tiro-hanga's medical knowledge to fail. He says you only want time to be as well as ever. How many wounds has he not recovered from?"

"I should be more than willing to believe him," said the sick man. "But why am I so wretchedly weak? I feel as if I would like to die and be done with it, if I am to lie here for weeks and months. But I am a beast to complain, after all your goodness, child," he went on to say, as the girl's eyes filled with tears. "Please forgive me; I am weak in mind as well as body."

"Is my love nothing to you?" she cried, with sudden passion. "My life, my life—for it hangs on yours? If you die, I die also. I swear I will follow you to the reinga, as my mother would have said. I will not remain behind. Do not doubt of that."

As she spoke she moved nearer to his couch, and, throwing herself on her knees at his side, took his hand in both of hers, and, bowing her face upon his breast, burst into a tempest of sobs, which shook every portion of her frame.

Massinger, touched and partly alarmed by her grief, tried by all the means in his power to soothe her, smoothing her abundant hair the while, as it flowed over him in a cascade of rippling wavelets.

[Pg 356]

"My darling, my darling!" he said, "I owe my life to you, and it shall be spent in proving my love and devotion. You must not despair, you who are so brave. I am afraid you are not an Ariki, after all, but only a woman—the best, the bravest, the dearest, in the world. This is only a passing faintness. We shall live to spend many a glad year together."

"It is I who am weak," she said, lifting her tear-stained face, and essaying to smile as she drew back the long silken tresses from her brow. "Something seemed at that moment to warn me that I should never live to claim your love. I have often felt it. But, if your life is spared for long years to come, I shall not mourn. No, no! But you will never forget your poor Erena, who loved you—loved, yes, you will never know how much!"

As she spoke her last words, she rose to her feet, pressed one lingering, passionate kiss upon his forehead, and was gone.

With the dawn the tohunga arrived. This important and mysterious personage, of which one was always to be found in the larger sections of a tribe, combined the offices of priest and sorcerer with the more practical profession of the physician. Unquestionably, his knowledge of simples and general surgery was far from despicable. By incantations and spells, it was thought in the tribe that he had foreknowledge of the death or otherwise of his patients. As a soothsayer he had now used the powerful spell of the "withered twigs." Chanting a karakia, with a sudden jerk he broke off from the tree two of equal size and length. The piece he held in his left hand [Pg 357] snapped off short. The longer twig remained in his right.

"The pakeha will not die," he exclaimed. "My art has saved him. It will be good for the Ngapuhi tribe, and for the maiden Erena, whose mother I so much loved."

Arriving at the couch of the stricken pakeha, he looked upon him with solemn and mysterious regard. He felt his pulse, and minutely scrutinized the cicatrice of the newly healed wound. Meanwhile the eyes of the girl, dilated with terror and anxiety, watched his inscrutable countenance, as the mother of the sick child in more conventional abodes fixes her gaze on the physician, whose words contain the issues of life or death.

"Speak, O Tiro-hanga! Say whether he will die—and I also. One word will serve for both."

The tohunga placed his hand upon the shoulder of the excited girl, whose every nerve seemed quivering, as if the tension of mind and body had exhausted the limit of human endurance.

"As you are, so was your mother in her youth," he said, speaking with deep though restrained feeling in the Maori tongue; "in those days when the tall pakeha rangatira came to Hokianga from Maketu—he whose arm was strong as the lancewood of the hillside, and whose counsel was wise in the day of battle. I would have killed him, though my own life was forfeit, had I not seen that she would follow him to the reinga. But I could not cause a hair of her head to be harmed, such was my bondage to her mana. And you, O pakeha, will I save, likewise, for her sake. Comfort yourself, O Erena; the pakeha will not die."

[Pg 358]

"Is it so? Truly do you say it?" almost gasped the frenzied maid. "Is there anything more that we can do? Have you the healing medicine for him?"

"I will prepare the bitter draught for him—that draught which will bring a man back to life, though the jaws of death were closing over him," said the tohunga. "When the sun is high, a change will come upon him."

"Are you sure? Are you indeed aware that he will begin to gain strength?" she asked eagerly. "He has been so terribly weak, and was beginning to lose heart."

"Did the daughter of the Toa-rangatira ever know my saying to prove false?" asked the priest, haughtily.

"Oh, no—no!" she rejoined hastily. "But tell me more. Shall we be able to carry him to the homes of his people? And shall we be happy afterwards?"

"I see," said the sage—"I see the pakeha standing among his people; he is well; he is happy; joy is in his face—in his voice. But there is blood—blood through it. I can see no more. There is a mist—a darkness. The future is hidden from me."

"A bad omen," said the girl, sadly. "You saw blood, O Tiro-hanga! But I care not for myself, so that he be safe and unharmed."

"Such is the woman who loves," mused the tohunga, as he stalked moodily towards the shore of the lake—"of whatever colour or race, in the old days as well as in this present time, when chiefs are falling like withered leaves, and the pakeha drives the tribes to their death, as the wildfowl on the warm lakes. And what cares she if the whole island is delivered to the stranger, and we become his slaves? All her thought [Pg 359] is for the recovery of this pakeha, whom, till ten moons since, she never set eyes upon."

With this moral reflection concerning the "eternal feminine," the substance of which has been stated by less recent philosophers, the magician of the period betook himself to the raupo whare set apart for him, where he remained long in deepest meditation, none of the humbler members of the tribe daring to disturb him.

He stayed till the close of the following day, to watch the effect of his potion, and finding that Massinger professed himself unaccountably improved in mind and body, directed that in three days the patient should commence his journey to the Oropi missionary settlement, and departed mysteriously as he had arrived.

The day was drawing to a close when a cry from one of the Maori converts at the mission station of Oropi informed the inmates