War to the Knife 57

War to the Knife 57

"Who was it?" asked Hypatia, breathlessly.

 

"It was Winiata. He had heard of these Hau-Haus being on the march, and

that Ngarara had persuaded Kereopa to follow us up."

 

"And what aid did he give you?"

 

"Merely this--that a body of Ngatiporu were following up this _taua_,

led by the most dreaded warrior in all New Zealand, Ropata Waha Waha."

 

At the mention of this name, so well known throughout the length and

breadth of New Zealand--

 

"In close fight a champion grim,

In camps a leader sage"--

 

Hypatia could hardly repress a cry of joy.

 

"Then perhaps we may be saved, after all."

 

"If he comes in time; and God grant he may. He should be very close

now. And I know Winiata will travel without rest or food till he

strikes his trail. And yet I have a foreboding that one of us will die.

So said the tohunga, whose words never failed yet. I cannot shake off

the feeling."

 

"You have overworked yourself," said Hypatia. "You can have had little

rest, food, or sleep since you left yesterday. It is the result of

fatigue and anxiety."

 

"Anxiety has too often been my lot," said the girl, with a deep accent

of sadness. "But fatigue I never felt yet. These wretches are spinning

out their dance. They had better make the most of it. If all goes well,

it is the last some of them will ever join in. Now, listen! Do you hear

nothing?"

 

Hypatia bent her ear towards the forest, and listened with all the

eagerness which the situation demanded. A faint murmur once, and once

only, made itself audible.

 

"It is the sound of the breeze among the pines," said she at length.

 

"Listen again! Do you hear nothing?"

 

"Only a far-off sound like the rippling of the river. Once I thought I

heard the trampling of feet; but it must be a mistake."

 

"It is no mistake," said Erena. "I hear the steady tramp of a large

body of men; and so would these fools, if they were not too much

occupied with their absurd dance, which they intend to finish up with

blood. And so it will; but not as they think."

 

The war-dance, with its stamps and roars, its shuddering hisses and

accurate evolutions as if of one man, was drawing to a close. Already

one of the foremost warriors, at a sign from Kereopa, had placed a rope

round the neck of Cyril Summers, who had commenced in a final prayer to

commend his soul and his loved ones to the protection of their Maker,

when a shout from a number of unknown voices made the forest ring, and

caused the crowd of Hau-Haus to turn their faces in that direction. At

the same moment a close and well-directed volley was poured in, which

laid fully one-half of them low, and wounded a much larger number. Then

a man stalked calmly forward, sword in hand, whose sudden apparition

created as much consternation among the Hau-Haus as if he had been a

Destroying Angel specially commissioned for their extirpation. One

look at the stern features and martial form of him who stood calm and

unmoved amid the pattering hail of bullets, with which the Hau-Haus

strove to return the fire, was sufficient for most of the Pai Marire.

With a wild cry of "Ropata Waha Waha!" which came tremulously from

their lips, they fled in all directions in a state of the most abject

terror. And well might they or other rebels take panic at the sight of

him who stood exposed to danger, both from friends and foes, as though

the thick-flying bullets were thistledown.

 

The hostile tribes were fully of opinion that he bore a charmed life,

that no shot had power to harm him, probably in consequence of Satanic

influence. Hence his _sobriquet_ of Waha Waha was strangely suggestive

of an unholy alliance between the Prince of Darkness and the cool

strategist and remorseless warrior, to whom fear and mercy were alike

unknown. A target for the best marksmen in a hundred fights, himself

chiefly unarmed, he had never received a wound or spared an enemy. As

he stood there, with an __EXPRESSION__ of scorn and concentrated rage upon

his expressive features, with dripping sword and blazing eyes, he might

well have stood for a portrait of an avenging angel, or indeed Azrael,

the minister of Death, in all his lurid majesty.

 

Kereopa and his principal followers, who had fled at the first onset,

probably thought that they had a fair chance of escape. But Ropata,

with his usual astuteness, had formed a cordon around the Hau-Hau band,

into which the surprised natives ran, only to find themselves shot down

or captured. Among the latter were eleven members of his own tribe, the

Aowera. Of these he proceeded to make an example upon the spot. Calling

them out of the group of captives by name, he thus addressed them--

 

"You are about to die. I do not kill you because you are found in arms

against the pakehas. But I forbade you to join the Hau-Haus. You have

disobeyed me; you must now pay the penalty."

 

Having revolvers handed to him, he then shot every man with his own

hand.

 

"Bring forward the deserter."

 

The soldier, a man of the 57th, bound and helpless, was then led up.

 

"You," he said, addressing the renegade, "are a disgrace to your

regiment and to your country. You are said to have shot two of your

own officers in battle. You have helped these natives to commit crimes

which are a thousand times worse than open war. You will kill no

pakehas or natives after today."

 

With the instinct of a born leader, Ropata had taken in the various

points of the situation at a glance, and issued his orders with the

promptitude which the crucial moment demanded.

 

"Release the pakehas. Kill that Hau-Hau dog holding the rope, and hang

up the deserter with it; he is not worthy of a soldier's death. Bind

that Ngapuhi; he shall answer to his own chief."

 

These orders, coming from a man who rarely had occasion to speak twice,

were obeyed on the instant. The amateur executioner was tomahawked

before his surprise permitted him to drop the rope. Cyril Summers

was freed, and the deserter was run up to the branch of the willow

tree destined for his martyrdom. The cords which bound Erena and her

attendants were loosed by willing hands, the men and even the women

promptly possessing themselves of weapons from their dead captors.

 

Ngarara's countenance, when he saw himself at once baulked of his

revenge and cheated of his prey, was a study of all the evil passions

which degrade the human race to the level of the brute. Such is the

phrase, unfair indeed to the animal creation, which, however unsparing

in its allotted course of action, is never guilty of the calculated

cruelty of _la bête humaine_. For one moment he stood indifferent

to his coming fate as Ropata himself; then, drawing his revolver,

fired point-blank at Massinger, who had raised himself to a sitting

posture with Erena's assistance, and was watching the conflict with an

eagerness which betokened a partial renewal of strength. As he raised

the weapon Erena flung herself before her lover, with an instinctive

movement of protection. Passing her right arm around his neck, she

lowered him to his pillow, with all the heroic tenderness which from

time immemorial has characterized the woman as nurse and ministering

angel. With a grin of fiendish malice Ngarara parried the tomahawk blow

aimed at him by a blood-bespattered Aowera, and, eluding his clutch,

dashed into the forest and disappeared.

 

* * * * *

 

The fray was over. The Hau-Hau prisoners were securely bound. Sullen

and despairing, they stood in a circle on the spot where their

war-dance and the Pai Marire rites had been performed. The derision of

their captors was openly expressed. The bodies of their comrades and

relations lay around in all the hideous abandon of the death-agony.

From the tall pole the head of the ill-fated soldier still stared with

eyeless sockets and bared teeth on the ghastly scene--it might have

been fancied with grim triumph and exultation; while from the willow

tree dangled the corpse of the deserter, an unconscious witness, where

he had so lately posed as an actor.

 

As if the dreadful spectacle had a fascination which they could

not resist, or that their miraculous deliverance had rendered them

incapable of connected thought, the destined victims had remained

almost in their positions taken up previous to the arrival of Ropata

and his contingent.

 

Mrs. Summers had sunk down on a sofa which had been dislodged from its

position, with her children, wondering and tearful, beside her. The

female attendants of Erena were clustered around their mistress. Cyril

Summers, over whom the bitterness of death had passed, stood by his

wife, gazing with awe-struck eyes into the distance, while his moving

lips from time to time gave token that he was returning thanks to that

Almighty Being to whom he had appealed in his darkest hour. While

Hypatia, wrapped in a world of strange and awful phantasy, still stood

by the outer entrance of the porch, looking straight in front of her,

at this weird melodrama of human life, in which the reality so often

transcends the unrealities of the "fantastic realm."

 

Erena and Roland Massinger had preserved their position unaltered,

except that, from one of support, the girl gradually sank forward,

until her head rested on her lover's breast. A cry from one of the

Maori girls arrested the attention of all. Hypatia, roused from

her trance, rushed over to find two of them raising Erena from her

reclining position, with looks of alarm, while the arterial blood which

welled up from her bosom told of a mortal wound. Massinger's death-pale

countenance, stained with blood, as were the coverings of his couch,

seemed to denote that these lovers, thrown together by such fortuitous

circumstances in life, were fated to be undivided in death.

 

Though Massinger was unwounded by the bullet which, aimed with fatal

accuracy, had pierced the bosom of Erena, his situation was most

critical. For her there was no hope. The lung had been perforated; the

laboured breathing showed but too truly that death was imminent. In

Massinger's case the appearances were hardly more promising. The rude

treatment to which he had been subjected after his capture had caused

the partly healed wound to break out afresh. He was rapidly approaching