Hauhau ScoutA HAUHAU SCOUT, TUTANGÉ WAIONUI, OF PATEA.
A HAUHAU SCOUT, TUTANGÉ WAIONUI, OF PATEA.
Out scouting one day, Bryce took a party of his men boldly up to the front of the stockade on a reconnaissance. The place was unusually quiet, and a white flag was flying on the flagstaff in front of thepa. One of the cavalrymen, Sergeant Maxwell, leaping a ditch and hedge that intervened between the farm lands and thepa, raced right up close to the stockade, and fired at it. Trooper Lingard, also leaping the obstacles, with the rest of the detachment, rode up past thepa. Lingard, though he could see nothing of the Maoris, raised his carbine and fired a shot. The next instant the whole palisade front—just above the ground, where the interstices were left for musketry—was a blaze of fire, and a storm of lead sang over the little troop. The Hauhaus, hidden in their trenches, and preserving complete silence, had waited till the patrol was within murderously close range. Maxwell was mortally wounded; but he sat his horse till it carried him out of range. Several horses were shot, and fell. One trooper, H. Wright, was pinned to the ground by his horse falling on his leg, and was unable to extricate himself, but, nevertheless, drew his revolver, and kept popping away at the palisades.
The wholepawas now in a roar of battle-excitement. The Maoris, as they fired, raised their fearful yells and war-shouts, an infernal din that almost drowned the cracks of the firearms. Kimble Bent was there, sitting on the parapet inside the stockade, and watching the encounter. A burly framed Hauhau, a herculean savage known as Big Kereopa—one of those who had shared in the cannibal feast at Papa-tihakehake—dashed out from the rear of the stockade, armed with a long-handled tomahawk, and rushed at the helplesspakeha. Trooper Lingard instantly put his plunging horse at the Hauhau, and cut at him with his sword. Another trooper, Tom D. Cummins (now of Wanganui) took a hand in the combat, and with a shot from his carbine stopped the charging Hauhau. He put a bullet into Kereopa, and the big fellow clapping a hand to his wound—which was in his posterior parts—bolted back into thepanearly as quickly as he had come, yelling "I'm shot! I'm shot!" Lingard, leaning over, got Wright by the hand, and, though almost dismounted himself, succeeded in dragging his comrade from under the fallen horse. Then, noticing a white horse—which was usually ridden by one of the Maori scouts—tethered to atutu-bush a short distance from the palisades, Lingard galloped at it, cut the tether-line with his sword, and soon had Wright mounted again and riding down the hill out of range, withthe Hauhau bullets whistling close around their heads. Lingard's rescue of his comrade was a remarkably plucky bit of work.
An incident of Hauhau life at this period, illustrative of the pitilessly savage character of the olden Maori, is told thus by Kimble Bent:
"While we were living in thepaat Tauranga-ika, a Hauhau fighting-man named Taketake quarrelled with his sister. She threatened that she would run away to thepakehas, and tell them of the cannibal practices of the rebels. He warned her that if she did he would shoot her. That evening she left thepa, and started for the white soldiers' camp. Taketake loaded his gun and followed her. Overtaking her on the road, he shot her through the back and killed her. He returned to thepaand reported what he had done. A party of men went out and brought back the murdered woman's body, and that was all there was about it. No one interfered with Taketake, or considered what he had done was a crime. All they said was 'Kaitoa!' ('Serve her right')."
While thepakehaattack was awaited, Bent and his companions spent much of their time in the forest at the rear of the fort, catching eels in the creeks, hunting wild pigs, and gathering wild honey for the garrison food-supplies.
A SCOUTING ADVENTURE
The passage of the Okehu—A night's vigil—Mackenzie the scout—"Maoris in the bush!"—The watchers in the fern—A race for life.
A clear, bright, moonlight night of summer; a moon that silvered the sharp hill-tops of the broken Maori country, but left black mysterious shadows in the gorges and river valleys that every few miles cut deeply into the rolling fern lands; valleys full of danger and death, for in their depths crept the war-parties of the savage, laying ambushes, planning murder and mutilation. On a gently sloping rise on the open fern lands a hundred white tents, the camp of thepakehatroops, glittered in the full moonlight. The sweet bugle-calls of "Lights out" and the "Last post" rang out for miles across the wilderness, and except for the piquets and sentries the camp was soon asleep. But away on the forest edge, a mile from the safely entrenched camp, a little band of men, half a dozen scouts, crouched hiding in the fern, carbines in their hands, watching, listening. They were the eyes of the army. Theirwits, their keenness of vision and hearing, were pitted this night against the savage men of the forest, born bushmen, with the cunning of the Indian.
It was the 17th of January, 1869, nearly three months after the repulse of the Colonial troops at the Moturoa stockade. All this time Titokowaru and his victoriousTekau-ma-ruahad everything their own way on the West Coast, scouring the country-side, burning settlers' houses, killing cattle, and strengthening their palisaded position at Tauranga-ika. The East Coast campaign following on the Poverty Bay massacre had necessitated the diversion of nearly all the Constabulary from the West Coast, until the storming and capture of Te Kooti's hill-fort Ngatapa and the flight of the rebel chief to the forests of the Urewera Country enabled attention to be again given to the Taranaki and Waitotara Hauhaus. Now, well on in the month of January, 1869, Colonel Whitmore, with Colonel Lyon—a brave one-armed soldier, veteran of the Crimea—as his second in command, advanced from Wanganui with a strong force of Armed Constabulary, about eight hundred in number, besides a large body ofKupapas, or friendly Maoris, mostly of the Whanganui tribe, under Kepa te Rangihiwinui. The force encamped at the end of the first day's march near the right bank of the Kai-iwi stream, about ten miles from Wanganui, and prepared tomarch the next day through the Okehu Gorge and on to Nukumaru and Tauranga-ika.
This country around the Kai-iwi was mostly open fern land, but some of the river gullies were filled with a dense growth of forest. A short distance to the north of the camp there was a deep gorge, the valley of the Okehu stream. Through this gorge a road had been cut some years before, and the river had been bridged, giving access to Nukumaru and the Waitotara, and this was the route by which Colonel Whitmore intended to approach the Hauhau stronghold. It was, however, plainly a dangerous place, where the Maoris might easily lay an ambush. The little colonel was too old a soldier to run risks of this sort, and he determined to have the gorge carefully scouted before he took his column into it.
That afternoon he selected half a dozen of his most active men, some of them Constabulary, some volunteers, and as soon as night fell despatched them to the Okehu, with orders to spend the night on the fern-covered right bank of the gorge, and find out if the Maoris were laying an ambuscade in the bush below. Trooper William Lingard, of Bryce's Kai-iwi Cavalry—the young trooper who had distinguished himself at the Tauranga-ika skirmish described in the last chapter—was placed in charge of the scouts. With him were Chris. Maling, a young surveyor—his father had been killed by theMaoris years before, and he often declared that he would never rest until he had killed a Maori with his own hands in revenge; a Frenchman called Peter the Guide; three men named Herri, Powell, and Williamson; and an old Indian soldier named Mackenzie. It is with this Mackenzie that this story of a night's scouting expedition is chiefly concerned.
It was the calmest of nights, a still night when sounds travelled far, and in silence the little squad of armed scouts set out from the tented camp in single file towards the dark gorge of the Okehu. They marched as silently as Indians, for they were shod exactly like Indians, in moccasins that felt the ground as soundlessly as a wild cat's pad.
The making and wearing of those moccasins was Mackenzie's idea. This veteran soldier was a man who had been brought out from India by Sir Henry Cracroft Wilson, when that gentleman settled in Canterbury. He was, as one of his scouting comrades says, a fine-looking, resolute man, something over forty years of age, with hair beginning to turn grizzly, and a bold, fearless eye. He was partly of Gurkha blood, and his senses were wonderfully keen. He had marvellous escapes from death, and had even been partly scalped. Once when he was overpowered and felled in a mêlée, a savage had passed his knife around his head and underneath the scalp, and was about to "lift his hair" when atimely bullet from one of Mackenzie's comrades knocked his assailant over, and the soldier was rescued. His companion ran to his aid, pressed down the torn scalp into its place, and bound it firmly with bandages. Mackenzie saved his hair, but to his last day bore the scar of the scalping-knife running round his head. He carried besides his carbine a remarkable weapon, a two-ended steel knife, or dagger, of Afghan make, which he wore in a sheath at his back with a flap of skin over the top. One end of the dagger was a stiletto and the other was a double-edged cutting and thrusting blade, ground as sharp as a razor. It had the handle in the middle. With this knife he would perform some wonderfully dexterous feats. He would throw it up into the air thirty or forty feet and catch it by the middle as cleverly as a juggler as it came whizzing down. He would stick a piece of paper on a post and, retiring twenty or thirty yards, hurl the shining weapon at it and transfix the target in the exact centre, the knife quivering several inches deep in the post.
The moccasins the scouts wore were made by Mackenzie from the skin of a horse. Immediately the party had been organised the old soldier went out with his carbine and shot one of the numerous ownerless horses that roamed the hills. Cutting out suitable pieces of the skin, he fitted them while still warm to his comrades' feet, with the hair inside;then cut thongs and laced the horse-skin shoe firmly to the foot. In a few hours these moccasins took perfect shape, and made the most suitable foot-gear for bush-work that could have been devised. "If we wear ordinary boots out scouting we're sure to lose our lives," said Mackenzie; "we can't scout noiselessly in them, or run fast enough when it comes to running."
An old Maori war-track wound through the high fern above the Okehu Gorge. Along this the scouts marched to take up their night's vigil. Two were posted at the end of the gorge nearest the camp, two more about two hundred yards away, and the third couple about the same distance farther on, above the middle of the gorge. The men made themselves nests in the fern alongside the track, and close to the edge of the slope that fell to the impenetrable blackness of the bush below. The leader, as he posted the men, told them to keep a sharp watch and listen for any sounds, and to give a signal if any of them heard Maoris in the gorge. The signal was to be the thrice-repeated sharp cry of theweka, the night-roving wingless bird that haunted these forests and gulches.
After posting his comrades in their several positions, young Lingard rejoined his companion Maling in a little nook in the thick fern just on the gorge side of the narrow foot-track, and stayed a while with him conversing in whispers. In half anhour's time he cautiously patrolled the track again to visit the others. When he came to Mackenzie, the old soldier was sitting up reading a pocket Bible by the bright moonlight.
"What are you reading?" asked Lingard, as he squatted down quietly in the fern by Mackenzie's side.
"Look and see," said the soldier, and Lingard saw, and wondered, for not many a rough old soldier like Mackenzie was seen with such a book. And he wondered still more when Mackenzie, closing the book, asked him to look at it again. There was a clean-cut hole in it, right through one of the covers and penetrating many of the leaves.
"That book saved my life," said the veteran. And he told the story. It was the comrade who had bowled over the Indian who was about to scalp him that gave Mackenzie the little Bible. "'You say you will always be grateful to me for saving your life,' he said. 'Well, I want you to do just one thing for me; it's a little thing. I won't ask much.'
"He was so insistent," said Mackenzie, "that I gave him the promise he asked. 'Well,' said my friend, 'just take this little book of mine and read something in it every night; or, if you won't read it, take it out and look at it and open it. And always carry it with you. It will save your life.'
"I did so, and I read it, more to please my oldfriend than anything else. I carried it in my jumper pocket, for it was small and light. And in those dangerous days I carried something else night and day—this dagger that I wear at my belt. About midnight one night I was lying alone in my tent, half-asleep, when I heard something—no, smelt it! It was pitch dark, but I knew there was something or some one close to me. As quietly as I knew how, I loosened my dagger and gripped it firmly. The next moment I felt a terrible thud on the chest, and a figure hurled itself on me. I brought round the knife with a swift sweep, and nearly ripped the side out of the fellow—killed him dead. It was a native who wanted to kill and rob me. He had jumped at me with a knife, but the point of his blade struck the Bible in my breast pocket as I lay on my back, and that saved my life. See! It's the sort of thing you used to read about in little Sunday-school books, isn't it? I wonder how many people would believe it? But it's absolutely true. That old comrade of mine saved my life twice. And it's these two I put my trust in, my Bible and my dagger. That knife's the best weapon I've ever had. It's more to me than carbine or revolver."
Then Mackenzie put his hand on his fellow-scout's arm, and spoke in an earnest whisper of a presentiment that filled his mind.
"I feel," he said, looking straight into his friend'seyes, "that this is my last night on earth. I have a conviction that I won't see another sun rise."
"Nonsense!" said young Lingard, beginning to feel creepy. "Don't talk like that, old man; you'll unnerve me. You're not going to die."
"Why should I unnerve you, my boy?" asked Mackenzie very quietly and gently. "There's nothing to be afraid of in dying. I can face death with perfect calmness; and I know I'm to die very soon."
There was silence for some moments. Suddenly Mackenzie started, turned in a listening attitude, and put up a hand in warning.
"Don't you hear them?" he whispered. "Don't you hear them? There are Maoris moving in the bush below. I heard the pat of a naked foot just now and the breaking of a twig."
The young leader of the scouts listened with utmost intentness for the next few minutes. The two comrades could hear each other's hearts thumping, so still they crouched. But not another sound came except the occasional call of the melancholy morepork.
After a little while Lingard bade Mackenzie good-bye for the time, and, with his carbine at the "ready," crept back along the track and visited the other men. Joining Maling, he told him of his strange conversation with Mackenzie.
"He's a real good fellow," said Maling, "a goodcomrade. I hope that presentiment of his is all bunkum. But if he says there are Maoris moving in the bush, we'll have work before morning."
In half an hour's time Lingard went the rounds again, stopping every now and then to listen for sounds of the enemy. He found Mackenzie still reading, bare-headed, by the clear moonlight in his little nook in the fern. Mackenzie's mate was sound asleep.
The old soldier's senses were wonderfully acute. Quietly as Lingard stole up on his moccasined feet, he had heard him. He was listening while he read.
"Lingard," he said, "I've been reading for the last time. I know it's my last night of life. To-day I was so sure of this that I settled my account at the canteen, and paid my last instalment on a horse I bought from John Handley, and I've written to my wife. I won't see to-morrow's sun rise. This came to me yesterday morning.
"Lingard," he went on again, in a whisper, "there are Maoris about! Can't you smell them? They're in the bush below, waiting. But you'll stay, I suppose, till daylight, unless something happens before then."
In a few minutes Lingard, after vainly listening for sounds in the bush, cautiously rose and walked back along the track. He left Mackenzie sitting there, with the moonlight streaming down on his earnest face, still reading his little book. Returningto Maling, Lingard sat with his companion listening, until it was within perhaps half an hour of full daylight.
Then, all at once, they heard a fearful sound. A rifle shot, followed instantly by a terrific yell, the war-yell of the Maoris from the bush behind them. The bush flashed fire, the flashes of many guns, accompanied by reverberating bangs; then the pattering and thudding of many naked feet along the track.
The ambuscade had been unmasked. One of the scouts—so it was learned afterwards—had cautiously worked his way down the valley, far enough down to see that the bridge over the Okehu had been set on fire, and by its light he saw a large party of armed Hauhaus. He hurried back to give his comrades warning, but before he could reach them some of the prowling natives discovered Mackenzie and Williamson and fired on them, wounding Williamson in the back when he started to run.
The scouts had done their work, but would they ever reach the camp alive?
The whole of the war-party were on the white men's heels, racing through the fern and along the narrow track and firing as they ran. The moon had gone down, and it was too dim to see very far, but the dawn was spreading over the eastern sky.
"They're on us!—they're on us!" exclaimedMaling. "It's no use to run now; we wouldn't have a show. Let's hide here in the fern."
The scouts were crouching in the fern within a yard or so of the Maori track. The fern was very high here, over a tall man's head in height, and was very thick and matted, and lying in a slanting direction. The two men, knowing that it was certain death to venture out, for the Maoris were rushing along the track in force, crept underneath the thick masses of ferns, and pushed it up over them so that they had room to move and were perfectly screened from the enemy's eyes in that early morning light. They made ready their Terry carbines, bit their cartridges ready for reloading, and put their percussion-caps in their mouths for instant use. Just before they did so, Maling turned to his companion and said:
"Lingard, old man, promise me if it comes to the worst you won't leave me, and I'll do the same by you. Don't let us leave each other," and he put out his hand.
The young leader of the scouts gripped Maling's hand. "We'll stick by each other," he said.
The next moment there was a thundering rush of feet past the very muzzles of their carbines. A mob of Hauhaus, yelling and shouting, raced past them, following up the leaders who had been fired on by the scout, and who had come dashing after the white men.
The two hidden scouts could hear nothing of their comrades, but they well knew the odds were greatly against any of them reaching the camp.
Presently they heard firing from the direction of the camp. The troops had turned out on hearing the shots at the bush edge, and were covering the retreat of the scouts.
Then another thing happened. Maling and his companion heard and felt something now and then swishing and cutting through the fern just above their heads. They were under the fire of their own comrades.
"Maling," said Lingard, "this is getting too warm! It's not good enough to stay here and be shot by our own men. Let's make a run for it."
Creeping out from their place of concealment, and giving a quick look backwards to make sure that no more Hauhaus were coming, the two scouts ran along the track in the direction of the camp. Close by on their left they could hear the enemy yelling and firing.
Just as they turned a bend in the path they came upon a terrible sight. Mackenzie lay on the ground, face downwards; his head smashed in and his brains spattering the ground. His carbine and ammunition and Afghan sheath-dagger were gone.
This they saw at one horrified glance, then they dashed on, taking a short cut across the fern to thecamp. They could see the white tents now in the morning light. They ran towards the troops shouting, "Don't fire!—don't fire!"
The two scouts reached camp safely, and Lingard immediately reported the result of the night's work to the colonel. All the others excepting poor Mackenzie turned up. One of them had fallen shot, wounded in the back, close to the camp, but was rescued by the surgeon, Dr. Walker, who pluckily ran out and carried him in.
Mackenzie, one of the survivors said, was running well, and would have escaped, but he suddenly fell prone on his face without any apparent cause. A Hauhau came running along next moment, and, putting his gun close to Mackenzie's head, blew his brains out.
Then came another strange development of the morning's adventure. Surgeon Walker, on examining Mackenzie's body, said he believed the scout had died suddenly of heart disease, and that he was quite dead before even the Hauhau shot him.
The brave old Gurkha soldier's presentiment of speedy death was only too true a foreword from the Unknown.
It was fortunate that this Hauhau ambuscade had been unmasked. The camp was already astir, and the troops were having their early morning coffee, and in another half-hour would have begun the march by the Okehu Gorge route, when the firstshots were fired. Once down in the narrow gorge and the presence of the enemy undetected, they would have been practically at the mercy of their active and well-concealed foes in the thick bush above and on either side of them.
After this little morning skirmish the Hauhaus, numbering probably a hundred and fifty, quickly retired through the bush to the Tauranga-ikapa, taking with them as trophies the dead soldier's arms. The white troops were soon on the move. Four divisions of Armed Constabulary, the Volunteer Cavalry, and theKupapaMaoris marched through the Gorge unmolested, and took up a position near the great Hauhaupa, which Whitmore now prepared to storm. First he tried artillery in an endeavour to breach the stockade, and Kimble Bent and his Maori comrades in the crowded fort now stood target for cannon-fire.
THE FALL OF TAURANGA-IKA
Shot and shell—The fort abandoned—Flight of the Hauhaus—The chase—The fight at Karaka Flat—Mutilation of the dead—The ambuscade at the peach-grove—The sergeant's leg—Rewards for Hauhau heads.
Skirmishingup over the fern slopes of Tauranga-ika came Whitmore's Armed Constabulary and Kepa's kilted guerillas from the Wanganui. Some of the A.C.'s advanced to within about two hundred yards of the stockade, and took cover in a ditch which ran parallel with the front palisading; here they opened fire. The main body had pitched camp about half a mile from thepafront. At the same time Armstrong guns were brought up and posted on the left front of the stockade, and shell-fire was opened on the rebel position at a range of five hundred yards.
But most of the Hauhaus were safe in their trenches and their covered ways, and the shells and bullets passed harmlessly over them. A few of the young bloods danced and yelled defiance from above-ground. On the stockade was the Hauhautekoteko, the dummy figure which they worked in marionette-fashionby means of ropes that led into the trench below. This dummy was intended to draw thepakehafire, but it had hardly deceived the veteran A.C.'s and Kepa'sKupapas, versed in all Hauhau ways that were dark and tricks that were vain. Bent was underground, listening to the bang of the Armstrongs and the whistle of the shells, and now and again squinting through the palisades at his adversaries.
One Maori, who was standing in an angle of thepa, was wounded in the head by a splinter knocked off one of the palisade-posts by a shot from an Armstrong gun. The same shell, whizzing through thepa, ripped a hole in Titokowaru's tent.
When night fell, no appreciable breach had been made by the shell-fire. It was now decided to storm thepaat daybreak. Some of the A.C.'s crept up with their entrenching tools to within fifty yards of the stockade, and dug out shelter-trenches.
The fort was remarkably quiet during the night. It was reconnoitred when daybreak came, and found—empty. The Hauhaus had for some mysterious reason deserted it under cover of darkness, and taken to the bush. So fell to thepakehathe very strong Tauranga-ikapa.
Bent explains this unexpected abandonment of Titokowaru's most formidable entrenchment.
The eternal feminine was at the bottom of it all.
The chief of blood and fire, with all hismana-tapu, was vulnerable to the artillery of a darkwahiné'seyes and softwahinéblandishments. He was detected in a liaison with another man's wife. This misdemeanour was, in Maori eyes, fatal to his prestige as anarikiand a war-leader. He had trampled on histapu, and his Hauhau angel, who had so long successfully guided his fortunes, now deserted him. His run of luck had turned.
A council of the people was held to discuss thecause célèbre, and many an angry speech was made. Some of the chiefs went so far as to threaten Titokowaru with death. At length a chieftainess of considerable influence rose and quelled the storm of violent words. She appealed to the aggrieved husband's people not to attempt Titoko's life; but urged that the garrison should leave thepa—it would be disastrous to make a stand there after theirtohunga, their spiritual head and their war-leader, had lost hismana-tapu. This met with general approval, and on the night of the attack the people packed their few belongings on their backs and struck quietly into the forest for the Waitotara. Titokowaru, with forty warriors, covered the retreat. "Afterwards," says Bent, "when we had taken safe shelter in the Upper Waitara, Titokowaru regained histapuby means of incantations and ceremonies performed by anothertohunga. But by that time the war was over."
So to the forest fled Titokowaru and all his people, and hard on their trail, when thepawas found deserted, came the A.C. scouts and Kepa's Maoris, in lightest marching order for the chase.
The Government troops overtook the Hauhau rear-guard at Te Karaka flat, on the descent to the Waitotara River. At Te Karaka Major Kepa, the fighting chief of the Whanganuis, was leading the advance-guard of the pursuing force, when he was hotly attacked by the Hauhaus who had planted an ambush in the bush. Kepa was closely pressed. Captain T. Porter, who commanded No. 8 Division of Armed Constabulary—consisting of Arawa and Ngapuhi Maoris, with a few good European bushmen—was close up when Kepa was fired on, and he promptly extended the supports across the flat. Kepa, after a sharp hand-to-hand fight with the enemy, burst through them and fell back on Captain Porter. TheKupapasand their white comrades fought the Hauhaus till dark, and had to leave them dead and wounded on the field. Next morning they found the mutilated bodies minus hearts and livers, which the cannibal enemy had cut out and taken away. The Hauhaus had also beheaded one of the slain, a Whanganui soldier named Hori Raukawa.
The grief of the friendly Maoris at this mutilation of their dead was intense, and was given vent to in weeping and furious threats. Kepa wasin a terrible rage, and determined on retaliation in kind.
This feeling was intensified a few days later, when a strong force of Hauhaus ambuscaded and slaughtered seven out of a party of ten white Constabulary men at the Papatupu peach-grove on the banks of the Waitotara River. The Constabulary detachment was in charge of Sergeant Menzies of No. 2 Division. The men, who belonged to Colonel McDonnell's force at Te Karaka, had obtained leave to forage for peaches in a grove at Papatupu, on the opposite (north) bank of the Waitotara, and crossed the river in a canoe. They were gathering the fruit when a volley was suddenly poured into them by a large body of Hauhaus, who were lying close by waiting forpakehagame. They at once seized their arms and rushed for their canoe, pursued by two or three score of Maoris, led by Big Kereopa. The rest of the story was told the author lately by Tutangé Waionui, of Patea, he who had distinguished himself in the repulse of the white troops at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu the previous year. This is Tutangé's account:
"I was one of the Hauhaus who ambushed the Constabulary men, under Sergeant Menzies, at the peach-grove at Papatupu. Some of them had got into their canoe, and would have escaped, but the others held on to it in an attempt to board it, and so we caught and killed seven of them. Thesergeant was a big, tall man, and stout. I killed him. He was stooping down at the time. I slew him with no other weapon than a canoe paddle ofmanukawood. I snatched up a paddle from the canoe and struck him a slanting blow on the side of the temple with it, the fatal blow calledtipi, as delivered in sideways fashion with the edge of a stonemere. The white sergeant fell, and a Maori named Toawairere slashed off one of his legs with a tomahawk. This was done for the sake of getting the boot on thepakeha'sfoot for one of our men, a one-legged fellow named Paramena, who wanted the boot. The leg was taken away into the bush."
Next day Colonel Whitmore sent theKupapas—the Maoris of No. 8 Division under Captain Porter and the Whanganui under Kepa—across the river in pursuit of the enemy, and Colonel McDonnell's division of Constabulary followed them in support. Porter and his men, during the skirmish which followed, came across the fire in which Sergeant Menzies' leg had been roasted. The remains of the bone of the leg were there, and it was evident that Big Kereopa[12]and his fellow-savages had once more feasted on the flesh of thepakeha.
It was now that Colonel Whitmore agreed to a request made by Kepa and offered rewards forHauhau heads. He said he would give £5 a head for ordinary men and £10 for chiefs killed. This gave a fillip to the bush-whacking chase, into which the Government Maoris entered with ferocious zest.
THE FOREST FORAGERS
Fugitive Hauhaus—Hard times in the bush—The eaters ofmamaku—Bent's adventure—Lost in the woods—Rupé to the rescue—Thetapu'd eels.
"Afterwe deserted Tauranga-ika," says my oldpakeha-Maori, "we led a miserably rough life in the bush. We were as near starvation sometimes as we could well be. Kepa'sKupapasand the white scouts were hunting for us, stalking us like wild beasts, and we were hiding in the forest and living on what we could pick up. We scattered in parties. I and some of the Hauhaus selected a safe spot in the deep bush, builtwharésto shelter ourselves, and then went out to the edge of the forest digging up fern-root for food. We scoured the bush for themamakufern-tree,[13]and cut out the white pith ofthe tree; it was one of our principal foods at that time. It has a peculiar effect on any one who eats much of it—it makes him strangely drowsy and sleepy. Sometimes, too, we had to eatwhara-wharaand similar mosses, and the mushroom-likeharoréthat grew on thetawa-trees, andhakeke, or wood-fungus. We became very weak and feeble for want of food. We did not dare to light a fire in the daytime, for fear the smoke rising above the forest trees would betray us. At night we would kindle a small fire, just enough to keep the pipes going as we sat round and smoked and talked in low voices."
Titokowaru's warriors, too, ran short of ammunition. For his cartridges, Bent sometimes had to use small pieces of hard wood cut to the proper size instead of lead bullets. The natives were also often short of percussion-caps; they used to save the exploded ones, and cut off match-heads and insert them. A box of caps was a great prize to a Hauhau in those days. This ingenious use of match-heads was a common practice in the later days of the war, and many a box ofpakehamatches found its way through supposedly "friendly" Maori hands into the rebel camps.
For three or four weeks the Hauhaus concealed themselves in the forests between the Waitotara and the Patea Rivers, their warriors making occasional sorties and laying ambuscades for straggling whites.
Not only was Bent in daily and nightly danger of death at the hands of his enemies, the Government men, during this period of hiding and starving in the bush, but in one of his adventures he narrowly escaped the tomahawks of his own companions, the Hauhaus.
Bent and a party of about twenty Maoris set out one day from their camp at Oteka, away inland of the Weraroa, on a food-hunting expedition into the great trackless forests in the rear of their hiding-place. They travelled half a day's journey into the rugged bush-country, a lone region where no booted foot had ever trod. They fished for eels in the creeks, and climbed for wild honey wherever they saw the bees buzzing round their hives in the hollow trees. They carried with themtaha(calabashes made from thehué, or vegetable gourd); these they filled with the honey. When they had collected as much as they could carry, they started on their return tramp to thekainga. Bent'spikau, or back-load, consisted of about thirty pounds weight of honey intahaand two large eels, all in a flax basket.
When the party left their camping-place the white man went on ahead, and was soon out of sight of his companions. After a while he found that he had missed the route by which he had come the previous day.
He pushed on and on, hoping every moment tocatch sight of a broken branch or a footprint or a tomahawk blaze on a tree that would indicate the trail. He wandered about, up and down hill, crossing creeks, and tearing what little clothes he wore in the tangled bush, until he had not the least idea where he was.
He was lost in the forest.
Night came on while the lonely white man was still toiling bewildered through the dense woods. He spent the hours of darkness crouched up under a tree, sleeping little, and shivering with the cold, for he was thinly clothed and had no blanket, and no matches or flint and steel with which to light a fire for warmth and cooking.
Early next morning Bent climbed a tallrata-tree near his bivouac and scanned the wild country round. Nothing but forest, forest everywhere—vast waves of deep verdure sweeping away and away as far as the eye could see. No sign of human life—no guiding landmark. Somewhere beneath that impenetrable pall of green that clothed everything were his people. But where?
Ah! What is that blue, thin coil rising slowly out of the forest far ahead, westward?
A curl of smoke! A Hauhau camp; perhaps some hunting-party cooking their morning meal.
The white man joyfully descended from his tree-perch, and quickly getting into hispikaustraps again, set out at as fast a pace as his loadwould allow him, steering in the direction of the smoke.
He toiled on and on, breaking through jungles of undergrowth and clinging vines, over logs and through watercourses, until suddenly he found himself at the foot of a rocky wall which rose perpendicularly above him for about thirty feet.
He endeavoured to clamber up the precipice, assisting himself by the forest roots and creepers which hung in trailing coils down its face, but they gave way under his weight when he had ascended but a few feet, and he found himself at the base of the cliff again, debating whether to try the climb again, or make a long detour, and perhaps lose the run of the point for which he was heading.
Suddenly, high above him, a voice cried, "Who's there?"
The startled white man, peering through the tangle of foliage and creepers, saw a man standing on the cliff-top—a Maori girt with a flax mat, a gun in his hand. It was Rupé, his chief and owner.
The Maori was gazing intently down the cliff. With him was a woman, the old chief's daughter Rihi, who was Bent's wife. He had heard the noise made by Bent in his attempt to scale the cliff, and he noticed the shaking of the bush-vines and leaves that screened the lower part of the wall, but the white man was so far hidden from his vision,Bent called to him: "Don't fire, Rupé! It is I, yourpakeha—Tu-nui-a-moa!"
"E tama!" cried the old chief. "I am glad indeed! I came out searching for you, for your life is in great danger."
Thepakeha, changing his position so that Rupé could see him, explained his predicament.
"Remain where you are," said Rupé, "and I will lower a rope to you."
In a few minutes a line, made of split leaves of theharakekeflax, knotted together, and strengthened withaka, or bush-vines, was thrown down the cliff to Bent. The upper end of the hastily made bush rope the old man had made fast to a tree on the cliff-top.
"Send yourpikauup first, and you can follow," ordered Rupé.
Bent tied his flax basket of eels and honey to the line. Rupé hauled it up, lowered the line again, and Bent tied it round his body below the arms. Then the chief and his stalwart daughter hauled the light-weightpakehasafely to the summit of the wall.
Rihi and her father both wept as they took Bent's hands, so great was their relief at finding theirpakehasafe and sound. Rupé told the white man that he had feared he was dead.
"Why?" asked Bent.
"Why? There are a score of armed Hauhaussearching the forest for you, and had they found you before I did they would have killed you."
The old chief explained, further, that when Bent did not return to the bush-village the previous night, his fellow-eelers had come to the conclusion that he had given them the slip on the journey home, and had made off to the white men's camp. So at daylight a party set out to scour the forest round thekainga, fully intending, if they found the deserter in hiding, to summarily execute him. Old Rupé, too, had taken to the forest with his daughter—before daylight—but for a different reason: he did not believe hispakehawould desert him, and as he concluded Bent had lost himself in the bush, he had kindled a fire on the most prominent hillside in the forest, in the hope that the wanderer would see it and make his way towards it. His bush-craft was successful, and no doubt it saved Bent's life, for had he gone wandering on he would most probably have run into the arms of his hunters.
So the three of them—therangatiraand his "tame white man" and the Maori girl—travelled homeward as quickly and as quietly as they could, seldom speaking to one another for fear some prowling Hauhau should hear them. "Even now, if they find you out in the forest," said Rupé, "I may not be able to save you. Be cautious, for this may be your last day!"
Late in the afternoon the camp of the fugitive rebels was reached, and Bent was safe.
Titokowaru, just back from a scouting expedition to the forest-edge, was in the village. The grim war-chief was genuinely pleased to see the white man back again, and safe.
"E tu!" said he; "it was fortunate indeed that Rupé met you in the forest. Had any of the others found you—my young men of theTekau-ma-rua—then you had been a dead man!"
Now came an illustration of that many-sided law, thetapu. Titokowaru took the two eels which Bent had carried home on his back and hung them up as an offering to theatua, the heathen gods. They were under the ban because they had been borne on the white man's back, which was temporarilytapu; therefore they could not be eaten.
The honey, however, was not wasted. Titokowaru, having no doubt a sweet tooth, sagely decided that it would be sufficient to hang up the eels for the gods; hewhakanoa'd the honey, that is, he repeatedkarakia, or incantations, over it, by which the maleficent powers of thetapuwere nullified or averted and the food made fit for consumption.
A BATTLE IN THE FOG
The surprise of Otautu—An early morning attack—Kimble Bent's dream—"Kia tupato!"—A gallant defence—Brave old Hakopa—Flight of the Hauhaus.
A mistymorning in the forest. A little Maori hamlet, just a collection of thatched huts, in a small clearing enclosed on all sides by the dense woods. In the rear a deep ravine, jungly with thick undergrowth, then the winding snag-strewn Patea River. This was Otautu, Titokowaru's refuge-camp. It stood on a plateau—now a richly grassed farm; scattered over the clearing were potato-gardens. There was a frail stockade of stakes, but there were no trenches or rifle pits; it was an ordinary residentialkainga; the fugitive Hauhaus trusted to the tangled forest as their best defence.
Grey dawn. The raw morning fog hung low on the sleeping village—a mist so thick that it shrouded from the view objects even a few yards distant. It lay like the winding bank of smoky mist that marks the course of a forest stream early on asummer morning; the black tree-tops stood out clear above the white pall of damp, cold vapour.
Not a sound from the slumberingkainga, where some three or four hundred Hauhaus—Kimble Bent amongst them—lay packed in theirnikau-roofed huts.
At the edge of the clearing a solitary Maori sentry, a man armed with a revolver, sat, keeping a semi-somnolent guard.
Suddenly, out of the dark forest, appeared a body of armed men. They came in Indian file; they broke into a stealthy run as they left the shadow of the trees; their bodies were bent eagerly forward; they carried their rifles at the trail; they uttered not a sound.
They were the Maori advance-guard of Colonel Whitmore's expeditionary force of four hundred A.C.'s andKupapas. After weeks of bush-scouting a Government column had at last happened on the Hauhau hiding-place.
The Maori sentinel—he was a man of the Puketapu tribe named Te Wareo—was all in an instant wide-awake. The moment he jumped up he was fired on by the advance-guard. Leaping into cover he raced for the village, firing his revolver as he ran.
The discharge of the rifles rolled crashing through the forest. Startledkakaparrots flew from their tree-perches, screaming discordantly at their rude awakening. The clear notes of a bugle rang out—it was the "Advance" and "Double!" The active little colonel rushed his men up at top speed, extended them, and advanced on the hidden camp, and a strange combat began.
At the first crack of the firearms thekaingawas awake; and what a scurry there was! The Maoris poured out of theirwharésjust as they leaped from their sleeping-mats—some wearing only a shawl or ragged mat; others entirely naked. Some of the women rushed out of their huts without a shred of clothing on, screaming and shouting, and running for their lives. The men snatched up their guns and tomahawks, and their cartouche-belts; and quickly took post to defend their position, and give time for their women and children to retreat in safety.
According to Kimble Bent the attack was not entirely unexpected. At any rate, it had been foreshadowed in Maori fashion by one of the Hauhau "medicine-men."
"The day before this attack," says Bent, "I had a strange dream, which Titokowaru's priest and reader of dreams interpreted as an omen of misfortune. I dreamt that I saw a strange Maori village in which each house was cut in two length-ways, leaving only half the dwelling standing, in the shape of a shed or lean-to, such as we calledtiheré. I described this vision to the Hauhau seer. He gathered the people in the meeting-house that night, and after speaking of the dream I had had,he cried in a loud voice to them these words of caution and warning:
"Kia tupato! He po kino te po; he ra kino te ra!" ("Be on your guard! This is a night of evil and danger, and the morrow also will be a day of evil!")
"The prophet then said to me: 'Be ready for flight in the morning! Get your belongings ready packed in your kit, and, if you hear a suspicious sound, fly from thepaat once.'
"So, when the first shots were heard in the early morning, I was ready to make a bolt for it. The moment the alarm was given I jumped up from my sleeping-place in one of the huts, grabbed my kit, and bare-footed and with nothing on but my shirt and an old piece of a tent-fly girt round my middle, I ran to the bank at our rear, and jumped down the cliff. I went tumbling and scrambling down to the river, and then travelled up along the banks for a considerable distance as fast as I could go. All I had saved from Otautu was what I had in my kit—some papers, a little money, needles and thread, and so forth. As I ran up along the river banks I fell in with some of our people. We went on until we found a canoe tied up on the bank, and we crossed the Patea in her, ferrying four across at a time until all were safely over. Those who were with me were non-combatants, like myself, mostly women."
While the unarmed people of the camp were makinggood their escape, the Otautu clearing was the scene of severe fighting. The Hauhau warriors took post just at the edge of the little plateau where the thickly timbered ground suddenly fell away to the ravine at the rear. Sheltered by the fall of the ground, they swept the clearing with their rifles and smooth-bores. Some of them climbed into the branches of therata-trees and delivered their fire; some extended in bush-skirmishing order on either flank; and both sides—pakehaand Maori—peppered away briskly at each other for half an hour or more.
It was a singular skirmish, for the dense fog still shrouded the hill-top; and the Government men, who were being punished severely by the Hauhau fire, could for a long time see nothing of their enemies. Many A.C.'s dropped, some shot dead.
The Government Maoris, theKupapas, under the celebrated Kepa, advancing from tree to tree round the edge of the clearing, came to close quarters with the Hauhaus. One of Titokowaru's veteran warriors performed a deed here which is still told and retold with loving admiration by the old Taranaki Hauhaus.
He was the old man Hakopa (Jacob) te Matauawa, the Maori who had taken a friendly interest in Kimble Bent at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu, and saved the white man from the two savages who stalked him there, as narrated in a previous chapter. Hakopawas a tall, athletic man, of spare frame, and well tattooed. He was about seventy years of age, a true type of the olden Maoritoa—the hero of the war-trail, the brave. He was a curious figure, in his military cap, tunic, and trousers—stripped from a dead Constabulary man after the fight at Papa-tihakehake.
Hakopa dodged from tree to tree out on the flanks of the clearing, making good use of a recently captured carbine. In the uncertain light it was difficult for the Government men to tell friend from foe, and Hakopa'spakehauniform seems to have completely deceived some of theKupapas. As he leaped from tree to tree and stump to stump, he shouted "Raunatia! Raunatia!" ("Surround it!") to induce the belief that he was one of the Government force.
At last all Hakopa's cartridges but two were gone. A prudent warrior would have retired at this stage—but not Hakopa. He did not like the idea of retreat while he had a shot in his locker, and he determined to bag something in the way of aKupapaor apakehawith his last charges. He waited until the leading men of Kepa's party were within close "potting" distance, and, as one of them unsuspectingly approached him, he quickly threw up his gun and put a bullet into his enemy, then turned and bounded into cover, and rejoined his comrades in the defile, unhurt, hugely delighted with his exploit.
"You young men waste your cartridges," he said reprovingly, after the fight, to some of the youthful braves of Ngati-Ruanui. "Look at me! I know the worth of good powder and lead too well to fire them away for nothing. For every cartridge I used I hit a man!"
It was a determined, plucky stand, that defence of the Otautu clearing by Titokowaru's warriors. Every minute they held out, they knew, was giving their women and children and old people a better chance of safety.
At last the fog lifted, swept away from the clearing by the morning breeze, and the sun shone out.
Now for the first time the Government soldiers saw the village. The bugle sounded the "Advance" again, and at the double the A.C.'s swarmed into the emptykainga, to find, to their astonishment, that it was neither rifle-pitted nor parapeted.
The Hauhaus, their resistance broken, took to the forest, racing down the steep gully in rear of the village and up along the banks of the Patea. Kepa's Maoris went in hot pursuit, and shot two or three of the fugitives. The main body crossed the Patea safely, and rejoined their womenfolk and children, camping, hungry, weary, and with limbs and body torn and bruised in their flight, in a well-hidden nook deep in the forest on the north bank of the river.
THE HEAD-HUNTERS
The skirmish at Whakamara—Hauhaus on the run—Government head-hunters—Major Kemp's white scout—Sharp work in the bush—Barbarism of the Whanganui—Kupapas—Smoke-drying the heads—A present for Whitmore—The heads on the tent floor—End of the war.
Thedeep and roadless forest was now the scene of sharp, barbaric war. The Hauhaus, after the abandonment of Tauranga-ika, built no stockades, but trusted to their most ancient of refuges, thenehenehe-nui, the great woody wilderness. From one hiding-place to another they fled, with the Government bush-fighters on their heels.
"After our surprise and defeat at Otautu," to continue Kimble Bent's narrative, "we were safe neither night nor day. Even when far in the depths of the bush we were always on the look-out for danger, for we never knew when we might have a sudden volley poured into our midst. Kepa and his friendlies were continually scouring the country for us. We retreated north and west through the forest till we reached a settlement called Whakamara. Two nights we were on the track; all wehad to eat was a couple of potatoes each. At Whakamara we found many pigs, and were able to fill our stomachs once more.
"But early one morning the soldiers were on us again. Two of our men, young Tutangé and the warrior Kātené Tu-Whakaruru, who were out scouting on horseback, discovered the troops lying in ambush just outside, waiting to attack the village. They turned and galloped back to us, Tutangé waving his sword and whacking his horse along with the flat of the blade.
"So off we went again, running for our lives, with Whitmore's troops close behind us, firing as they ran. Titokowaru and all his men fled, after a very short fight. We took to the bush just like wild pigs racing before the hunters. I and a few others kept together, running for all we were worth, half-naked, foodless, tumbling over logs, scrambling in and out of creeks, and made no halt until we found ourselves once more at Rimatoto, my old home of 1866."
From Whakamara village the Maoris fell back on a little fortifiedpain the rear of the camp. This position they abandoned after a brief skirmish, and then the forest chase began. Whitmore ordered an immediate pursuit, and a flying column of sixty white Armed Constabulary, under Captains Northcroft and Watt, and about one hundred and forty MaoriKupapas, under Major Kepa and CaptainThomas Porter, all in light marching order, took to the bush after the retreating enemy.