War to the Knife 59
As the irrevocable words were spoken, and the clay-cold form, which had
held the fiery yet tender soul of Erena Mannering, was lowered into
the grave, a tempest of sobs, cries, and wailing lamentation, until
then repressed, burst forth from the Maoris in the great gathering.
Then Mannering slowly turned away, and after dismissing his following,
accompanied Mr. Summers. From him he learned the full particulars of
the Hau-Hau invasion--of their captivity, their fearful anticipation
of death by torture, the sudden appearance of Ropata and his warriors,
their miraculous escape, and the death of Erena in the very moment of
deliverance.
"She gave her life to save that of the man she loved," said Mannering.
"Her mother, long years since, did the same in my case. She is her
true daughter. It was her fate, and could not be evaded. She had the
foreknowledge, of which she spoke to me more than once."
Roland Massinger, on the way to recovery, but too weak for independent
action, still lay in the military hospital.
Mannering, as he stood beside his couch, and gazed on his wasted
features, looked, with his vast form and foreign air, like some fabled
genie of the Arabian tale.
"She is gone," said the sick man, as he raised himself and held out
the trembling fingers, which feebly grasped the iron hand of his
visitor--"she is gone; she died in shielding me. I feel ashamed to be
alive. I cannot ask your pardon. I was the cause of her death."
The rigid features of the father relaxed, as he watched the grief-worn
countenance of the younger man, and noted the sincerity and depth of
his despairing words.
"My boy," he said, "you have played your part nobly, as did she; and
you have, by a hair's breadth, escaped being buried beside her this
day. She died for the man she loved, as only a daughter of her race can
love. There must be no feeling but affection and respect between us. I
mourned her mother as do you her daughter. Poor darling Erena! Oh, my
child--my child!"
Mannering's freedom from ordinary human weakness deserted him here. He
threw himself on his knees by the side of Massinger's bed, who then
witnessed a sight unseen before by living eyes--the strong man's tears
as he abandoned himself to unrestrained grief. Sobs and muffled cries,
groans and lamentations of terrible intensity, shook his powerful
frame. Weakened by his wound, and compelled to thus relieve his
intolerable anguish, Roland Massinger's tears flowed fast in unison, as
for a brief interval they mingled their sorrow. Then raising himself,
and regaining the impassive __EXPRESSION__ which his features, save in
familiar converse, ordinarily wore, the war-chief of the Ngapuhi bade
adieu to the man whom he had looked forward to acknowledging with pride
as the husband of the darling of his heart, the idol of his latter
years.
"Fate has willed it otherwise," he said. "You may have happy years
before you in your own land, with perhaps a wife and children to
perpetuate your name and inherit your lands. I wish you such happiness
as I know _she_ would have done. Her generous heart would so will it,
if she could speak its promptings from 'the undiscovered country.'
In her name, and with her authority, knowing her inmost thoughts, I
say--May God bless you and prosper you in the future path! In this life
we shall meet no more."
* * * * *
Kereopa and Ngarara had escaped; but Ropata, who had started as soon
as he delivered up his Hau-Hau prisoners, was hot on their trail.
Kereopa, in spite of his keen and eager pursuit, fled to the Uriwera
country, where he found shelter for a time, but led the hunted life of
the outcast until it suited his protectors to betray him. Forwarded to
Auckland, he was duly tried, convicted, and hanged.
Ngarara had a shorter term of comparative freedom. One morning, shortly
after the attack on the mission, a small party of the Aowera appeared
at Whakarewarewa, the main body of the tribe being encamped on Lake
Rotorua. A bound prisoner was in their midst, on whose movements they
kept watchful guard. It was Ngarara! A sub-chief, having been apprised
of the capture, arrived with leading warriors. One glance at his stern
features assured the captive that he had no mercy to expect. Contrary
to Maori usage, he did not disdain to beg for it.
"I tried to kill the pakeha," he said. "What harm was there in that? He
stole the heart of the girl I loved; who, but for him and his cunning
ways, might have loved me. I would have given my life for her. Other
men have killed pakehas--Rewi, Rawiri, even Te Oriori; why should I be
the sacrifice?"
The chief listened with an air of disgust, but did not deign to reply.
Meanwhile an order had been given, and the party marched on, taking
the prisoner with them, preserving a strict silence, which evidently
impressed him more deeply than any other treatment. In about three
hours they arrived at the mission station of Ngae. Here a feeling of
misgiving appeared to arise in the captive's mind, and he muttered the
word "Tikitere" with an accent of inquiry. But no man answered or took
notice of his speech.
But when they reached that desolate and awful valley, and saw the mud
volcanoes and steaming springs in furious motion, his courage failed
him. He saw the hissing, bubbling lakes separated by a narrow ridge,
aptly named the Gate of Hell, standing on which the traveller shudders,
while breathing sulphuretted hydrogen and beholding the turbid waves on
either side--the while the tremulous soil suggests the enormous power
of the central fires, which at any time might rend and ruin all around
with earthquake shock and suddenness.
He knew also, none better, of the dread blackness of the inferno, in
which the sombre billows of a tormented sea of boiling mud are heaving
and seething continually.
As with careful steps his guards half dragged, half carried him across
the treacherous flat, seamed with fissures, where death lay in wait for
the heedless stranger, he appeared to comprehend fully the fate that
awaited him. He yelled aloud and struggled so wildly, even despite his
bonds, that, at a motion of Ropata's arm, two stalwart natives stepped
forward to the aid of their comrades as he neared the fatal abyss.
"Dog of a murderer, coward and slave besides," said the chief, as,
halting on the brink, the guards awaited his signal--"a disgrace to
the tribe which never was known to flee! Did Erena show fear when the
bullet pierced her breast? Did the pakeha soldier shriek like the night
owl when thy traitor's bullet struck his back--his back, I say, and he
with thee in the same battle against the Ngaiterangi at Peke-hina? Did
the pakeha girl, the white Rangatira, or the Mikonaree cry for mercy
when Kereopa was ready to commence the torture? It is not fitting for
thee to die the death of a warrior or a soldier. A coward's death, a
slave's, a cur's, is thy only fitting end. Such, and no other, shalt
thou have." He motioned with his hand.
A yell which made the deeps and hollows resound came from the unhappy
wretch, as his captors lifted him on high and raised him for a moment
above the Dantean abyss. As the miserable traitor fell from their
grasp, he seized in his teeth the mat (_purere_) of the nearest man,
who, but for the prompt action of his comrade, might have been dragged
with him into the inferno. But that wary warrior, with lightning
quickness, struck such a blow on the nape of his neck with the back of
the tomahawk hanging to his wrist with a leather thong, that he fell
forward, nerveless and quivering, into the hell cauldron beneath. For
one moment he emerged, with a face expressive of unutterable anguish,
madness, and despair, then raising his fettered arms to the level of
his head, fell backward into the depths of the raging and impure weaves.
* * * * *
"_Tutua-kuri-mokai!_" said the chief, as he gave the signal for return,
and sauntered carelessly homeward. "He will cost nothing for burial.
There are others that are fitting themselves for the same place."
* * * * *
Cyril Summers with his family returned to England, rightly judging
that, in the present state of Maori feeling, it was unfair to expose
his wife to the risk of a repetition of the horrors from which they had
escaped. Hypatia accompanied them, unwilling to forsake her friend,
whose state of health, weakened by their terrible experiences, rendered
her companionship indispensable. On reaching England the Reverend Cyril
was offered an incumbency in the diocese of his beloved bishop, now of
Lichfield, in the peaceful performance of the duties of which he has
found rest for his troubled spirit. His wife's health was completely
re-established. Without in any way derogating from the importance of
his work among the heathen, which, after having reached so encouraging
a stage, had been ruthlessly arrested, he arrived at the conclusion
that he had a worthy and hardly less difficult task to perform in the
conversion of the heathen in the Black Country. His bishop acknowledged
privately with regret that their savages, though not less truculent,
were devoid of many of the redeeming qualities of the Maori heathen.
Roland Massinger remained in New Zealand until his health was
thoroughly re-established, when, having received the welcome
intelligence that Mr. Hamon de Massinger, an old bachelor and a distant
relation, had left him a very large fortune, he so far modified his
thirst for adventure and heroic colonization as to take his passage to
England, where his lawyers advised that his presence was absolutely
necessary.
Upon his arrival, he lost no time in visiting his county and looking
up his friends, who made a tremendous hero of him, and would by no
means allow him to deny astonishing feats of valour performed during
the Maori war. He also discovered that his Australian successor, though
most popular in the county, had become tired of the unrelieved comfort
and too pronounced absence of adventure in English country life. The
sport, the society, the farming even, so restricted as to be minute
in his eyes, all had become uninteresting to the ex-pioneer, not
yet old enough to fall out of the ranks of England's empire-makers.
These considerations, coupled with a fall in wool, and the rumour
of a drought, widespread and unprecedented in severity, decided Mr.
Lexington to return to the land of his birth.
His elder daughter had married satisfactorily, and settled in the
county. "She had," she averred, "no ultra-patriotic longings. England,
with an annual trip to the Continent, was good enough for her. She
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