War to the Knife

Having questioned her kindly but closely as to her motives for leaving her friends, and taking up the hard, unlovely, possibly dangerous, vocation she had adopted, he warned her against mistaking a transient preference – the novelty of a mission to the heathen – for the Divine summons.

"I do you full justice, my dear child," said he; "you are devoting yourself to the noblest earthly duty, but I feel it right to warn you that, though the war must be nearing its close, there may be even greater dangers in store for isolated households such as this. Even after the collapse of the hostile tribes, there may be desperate bands roaming the country, seeking by plunder and outrage to avenge the downfall of their race. I have warned Cyril, and have counselled him, on the first rumour of such horrors, to remove his household to Auckland, and, even as I would do in the case of my own daughter, I have urged him to send you to the protection of any friends you may have in New Zealand 'until this tyranny be overpast.' Weigh my words well, and may God give you power to choose aright."

"I cannot fully express my deep gratitude, my lord, for the honour you have done me, and the interest you have taken in my welfare. That I did not devote myself to mission work without earnest and prayerful thought, your lordship may rest assured. I counted the cost beforehand, and now I cannot dream of deserting my colours, so to speak. You will not think that I am quite destitute of prudence. I shall accept the decision of my dear friend and her husband. If they think it imperative to retreat in the face of too evident danger, I shall accompany them. But as long as they remain, whatever may be the disquieting rumours, I shall be found at their side. 'Ake, ake, ake,' as the men at Orakau said. We must not let the Maoris have all the glory on their side."

The bishop smiled as she used the historical words of the unconquered garrison, but could not forbear gazing with admiration at the high-souled maiden, as she stood with upraised head and flashing eyes before him; a marvel of classic beauty, embodying all the nobility of form and feature which painters and sculptors have from the earliest ages loved to depict – an emblem of matchless womanhood devoted to a lofty ideal.

"We are all in God's hands," he said softly. "Let Him do what seemeth to Him good. May He bless and protect you, my child, and all who are of this household to-night."

Stars were contending with the rain-clouds of a stormy dawn as Hypatia drew back the curtain from the window of her bedroom and looked out. She saw the bishop come forth from the guest-room at the end of the verandah, wrapped in his cloak. He handed his valise to the Maori attendant, Koihua, who stood motionless at the foot of an English elm tree, and with staff in hand set forth on the Tauranga road with the free step and elastic stride of a trained pedestrian. Once, and once only, at the first turn in the winding path did he look back for an instant, and, noting Hypatia's face at the window, waved his hat in token of farewell, and disappeared in the woodland. There were tears in Hypatia's eyes, springing from a sentiment she could hardly analyze, as she turned from the casement.

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 softest accents said —

"You have awakened."

The loss of blood had been great, but by some styptic known to the natives, a people much acquainted with wounds of all degree of severity, it had been arrested. He tried to speak; a faint inarticulate murmur was all the reply he could furnish. He raised himself; but the effort was too painful, and again he became unconscious.

When he awoke once more he was aware that locomotion had ceased, and that he was lying upon a couch covered with mats. All was darkness, with the exception of flickering gleams thrown from a fire which was lighted at the entrance of the vault or cave in which he was lodged. Becoming more used to the dim uncertain light, he discerned the limestone walls and roof, which were festooned with stalactites in all sorts of fantastic, delicate shapes. There was a sound as of falling water, so that the difficulty of assuaging thirst would not be among the privations suffered by the inmates of this singular retreat. After a while he was relieved by the appearance of his good angel, as he felt impelled to call her.

"Tell me," he said, "how has all this come to pass? I am anxious to hear about the fall of the Gate Pah, and the way I have been removed to this place."

"I knew," she said, bending over him with the frank tenderness of a woman who loves passionately, and does not fear to disguise the fact, "that if you remained longer where you fell you would stand a chance of being tomahawked, if not worse treated. My father gave the order for you to be carried off, and at the same time signed to me that I and my cousin Riria were to accompany you. The cave in which you find yourself is only known to our hapu, and has always been regarded as being impenetrable to any one not acquainted with the secret approach."

"But it was evident to me," said he, "that I was shot through the body. How was the flow of blood stopped, and the wound found not to be dangerous?"

"We were told," she said, "that it was not mortal by a well-known tohunga of our tribe, who has been left a stage behind. He will be here tomorrow, and is a medicine-man of some repute, I can assure you. He applied a styptic, which was successful, and found that the bullet-wound, though it had grazed the lung, would not be dangerous, though hard to heal."

"I owe everything to you, dearest Erena," he said, pressing the hand which lay nearest to him; "and the life you have saved is yours for ever. If I come scatheless out of this war, you will have no reason to doubt my gratitude. How shall I ever repay you?"

"It is only too easy to do so," she said, as she gazed at him with eyes that glowed with all the intensity of a woman's love, for the first time awakened in that passionate nature. "But you must not talk of gratitude," she continued, with a smile, "or I shall begin to doubt whether you love me as we love – in life, in death, to the grave, and beyond it."

As she spoke, she wound her arms tenderly around him, and, kissing him upon the forehead, hastily left the cave.

When she reappeared, bringing such food as the natives had been able to secure, she said —

"Now you must eat all you can, and grow strong, as the sooner we leave this 'Lizard's Cave,' as it is called, and get back to my father, the better. I know that he will make for Rotorua as soon as the fighting is over."

"Tell me about the Gate Pah," he said. "Our men were falling fast, were they not?"

"Indeed, yes. Nearly all the officers were killed or mortally wounded in less than a quarter of an hour. Colonel Booth died next day; the captains of the 43rd were all killed, besides naval and volunteer officers. The natives had determined to retreat by the rear of the pah, but suddenly found themselves met by a detachment of the 43rd. They rushed back, and, mingling with the soldiers, were taken by them for a Maori reinforcement. Some one called out "Retreat!" and the troops, having no officers, were seized with a panic, made a runaway – what you call a rout of it."

Massinger groaned. "Who could have imagined it! Such a regiment as the 43rd! Think what they did in the Peninsular war! Such things will happen from time to time. Why didn't they starve them out?"

"That was what my father and Waka Nene said. They were surrounded. They had no water, and only raw potatoes to eat. In a few days they must have given in. In Heke's war Colonel Despard made just the same mistake. My father and Mr. Waterton were there."

"Tell me about it."

"Well, of course it was long, long ago – in 1845; but I heard my father 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 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 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."

"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 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.