War to the Knife 50

War to the Knife 50

CHAPTER XV

 

 

Orakau was abandoned. The Gate Pah had been lost and won. It had also

been avenged at Te Ranga, where a hundred and twenty Ngaiterangi

warriors lay dead in the trenches, and the 43rd had full _utu_ for the

slaughter of their officers and comrades. With few exceptions, all the

high chiefs were among the slain. The boastful Rawiri, the chivalrous

Te Oriori, the Christian convert Henare Taratoa, had fought their last

fight. On the body of the latter was found a letter in the native

language, and the text, "If thine enemy hunger, give him food; if he

thirst, give him water."

 

Orakau was the Flodden of the Maori nation. As the fugitives from the

blood-stained pah trooped across the fords of the Puniu on the night

succeeding the fight, the parallel may well have occurred to Sir Walter

Scott's countrymen, so many of whom have adopted New Zealand as their

home.

 

"Tweed's echoes heard the ceaseless splash,

While many a broken band,

Disordered through her currents dash,

To gain the Scottish land."

 

The war was practically over after the fall of Te Ranga. The turbulent

Waikato tribes had lost their high chiefs, their bravest young men. The

flower of the land of Maui lay low. The universal wail rose high in

a hundred kaingas. Taught by bitter experience, the more intelligent

natives had arrived at the conclusion that the resistless pakeha must

be obeyed. His soldiers and his sailors, his volunteers and his allies

(leading tribes of their own blood), his guns and his mortars, were all

too powerful. Their chiefs who had visited England and seen the might

of Britain had told them as much before. But, strong in the pride of

their own power and the oracles of the Tohungas, they did not believe

it. Now it was too plain to be disputed. Defeat was written in the

burned and disabled pahs, in the ruined farms, in the confiscated lands

of their ancestors, which they had no power to redeem. This, however,

was in strict accordance with Maori usage, with the law and custom of

Rauparaha, of Hongi Ika, of Te Waharoa, those ruthless conquerors and

their ancestors who had ravaged and annexed the lands of tribal foes

from time immemorial. _Væ Victis_ was one of the oldest of human laws.

It was theirs also. One grim feature of a returning and successful

expedition, the train of downcast or weeping slaves, driven along with

blows and shouts of derision, was wanting in this campaign. No heads of

chiefs or warriors were tossed out or stuck on poles as village after

village was passed. No bound captive was handed over to the relations

of the fallen for slow and dreadful torture. On the contrary, all the

combatants, save those convicted of murder or outrage, were dismissed

to their homes, while their wounded were tended in the hospitals of

these strangely constituted pakehas with the same care and skilfulness

as their own.

 

At Te Ranga was the last stand made by the Maori for the possession of

the lands of his forefathers. No more might he roam whither he would by

river and mountain, by lake, shore, or forest stream. The white man's

axe rang ceaselessly in his ancient woodlands; the white man's fields,

his crops and fences, raised barriers to free untrammelled wanderings

from sea to sea. Only in allotted districts, marked out by the white

surveyor, would he be permitted to live out his life. Even there, the

white man's school, the white man's church, the white man's policeman,

would be always with him. In the place of the chief who administered

justice and delivered sentence without remonstrance, without appeal,

there sat the white man's magistrate, hearing evidence which he did not

always understand, fining and imprisoning for offences against laws of

which they had neither experience nor comprehension.

 

This was the state of matters to which the Maori nation had come in the

opinion of the older men of the tribes, and not a few of the younger

warriors who had never quite given in their adhesion to the rule of

the stranger. Haughty and tameless as a race, showing by a thousand

instances their preference for death before dishonour, such was their

state of feeling at this time, that had there been any other land

available, they would probably have trooped away in one great migration

like the Moors out of Spain, there to learn to forget their hopes and

fears, their triumphs and their despair, far from the snow-crowned

ranges, the rushing rivers, the fertile valleys, and fire-breathing

mountains of their own loved land.

 

On the whole, perhaps, it was as well for them, and by no means to

the injury of the usurping pakeha, that the ever-girdling sea forbade

a national exodus. Stern foe as the Briton has ever been while the

fighting lasts, he is the most just and merciful of the world's

conquerors. Of the great Roman, when the sandals of his legions trod

over the prostrate peoples of the inhabited earth, it is recorded that

he permitted them such personal and civic liberty as they had rarely

enjoyed under their own rulers. Still, the privilege and boast of

uttering the magical words, _Civis Romanus sum_, had to be paid for

largely, as in the Apostle Paul's case. More liberal still, the Briton

presents his beaten foe with the priceless gift of his equal laws,

his equal suffrage. The ægis is thenceforth held over him, as of a

blood-brother and a peer, a citizen of that world-wide empire scarce

arrested by the poles, which rules and guards by its laws so large a

proportion of the inhabitants of our planet.

 

* * * * *

 

While the high contracting parties were settling important points to be

observed in the treaty, now necessary after the unconditional surrender

made in person by, and signed by, Wirimu Tamehana Te Waharoa, the

interests of private persons had their opportunity of consideration. In

the ranks of the Forest Rangers doubts were still expressed respecting

the fate of one Roland Massinger, reported missing since the affair of

the Gate Pah.

 

Slyde and Warwick were lying in hospital, severely wounded, still too

weak to undertake personal search. Warwick, who was near him when he

fell, had information to give which, if it accounted for his wounds,

was calculated to inspire doubts concerning his safety.

 

"He was shot from behind," he said. "I am as certain of it as that I

lie here; it was the act of that skulking scoundrel Ngarara. I was near

him at the time. Von Tempsky himself was hardly a foot in front of

him as he was trying to spring on to the parapet, when I heard a shot

behind us on the right flank. Mind, the troops were standing forward

for a bayonet charge, and the covering volleys were on the left flank.

It surprised me, so that I looked round; there I saw a band of the

Ngapuhi that had dashed up in advance of the main body. Sheltering

himself behind a tree, I saw Ngarara. He had missed the first time, but

had reloaded. I caught sight of his face for a moment as the second

report came, and Mr. Massinger fell forward on his face. Before I could

turn towards him I was knocked over by a bullet from a rifle-pit, and

knew no more. But a ranger who was close to me at the time, and helped

to carry me to the rear, heard Mannering shout out an order, upon which

several of the Maketu men closed round Massinger and carried him off.

Following them up, he was sure that he saw two women. These he didn't

recognize."

 

"Shouldn't wonder if one of them was the girl he was philandering with

at the Terraces. Heard she was with her father's _hapu_. Princess and

wounded knight business. Turn up all safe by-and-by."

 

"I'm not so sure," mused Warwick. "He's a treacherous dog, that

Ngarara. He'll have another try before he gives in--unless the chief

shoots him, which he's very likely to do, on sight."

 

"Summary justice," said Mr. Slyde. "Points in savage life, after all.

Come to think."

 

"I _saw_ him do it once," said Warwick. "I was a boy then. He shot a

Maori dead who had helped to murder a white man before the fellow's

friends."

 

"What did the tribe say?"

 

"Nothing--though there were many of the man's relations present. They

knew he was in the wrong. Besides, the act was that of a _chief_. That

means a good deal in this country."

 

"Seems it does. Power in the land. Must look up one with an eligible

daughter. A hundred thousand acres of the Waikato land would be a snug

dowry. Live like a baron of the Middle Ages. No more beastly reports to

write. Tell my directors to go to the reinga."

 

"How long is it before the doctor says we shall be fit to travel?" said

Warwick, wandering from the point.

 

"Three weeks at farthest. I vote we go on the scout for Massinger.

Can't leave him in the tents of the whatsynames--Amorites or something.

Dance at his wedding if we can do nothing else."

 

"I'll see it out," said Warwick.

 

"So we will, dear boy," said Mr. Slyde. "Have Ngarara's scalp. Revival

of ancient customs. Must have rational amusement now the war's over."

 

What did really happen to Massinger was this. He felt himself struck

under the right shoulder from behind by a hard blow as from a stone,

such being the sensation of a bullet-wound from undoubted personal

evidence. Before he had turned round to see who had given him such a

hurt, he felt a queer faintness, and noticed a stream of blood running

down his breast, while the evil face of Ngarara, lit up with revengeful

triumph, glared at him, partly covered by a huge kawaka tree.

 

Before he could combine the concrete and the abstract sufficiently to

formulate a theory, "darkness covered his eyes," and a sudden death

rehearsal was in full operation.

 

When he recovered his senses, the night was so far advanced that he

glanced upward to the stars with a half-conscious, wondering doubt

as to his condition and circumstances. On a rude litter, formed of

branches and twisted flax, the bed of grass and fern-leaves beneath him

being by no means uncomfortable, he was moving slowly along a forest

path, on which four bearers were trying to carry him as smoothly as

circumstances would admit of. Two women in native dress walked in

front, in one of whom, as she stopped to speak a word to the bearers,

he had no difficulty in recognizing Erena.

 

After an answering sentence from the bearer nearest him, she held up

her hand, and the little party halted. Coming close to his head, which

he was as yet unable to raise, she looked anxiously in his face, and in