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Chapter VI. Expendition to Kawhia, and Sudden Hegira of a Maori Swell.

It was rather a fortunate circumstance, after all, for the owners of the schooner ‘Jane,’ that the hazard of beaching her had been resorted to at the time in which it was, as the wind soon afterwards veered away to the west, and blew—why! if anything, with a still-increasing force, insomuch, indeed, that it was deemed absolutely necessary, in the cove in which she was embedded, to take the precaution of placing a protecting girdle around her, so as to rebut the encroachments of more than usually high tides. These phenomenal high flows, accompanied by squally weather, lasted throughout the greater portion of a week. Then the wind went gradually down, and, as it shifted on to land bringing with it fair weather. In a week following, with a cargo of spars, spuntlax and oil, the ‘Jane’ was gliding away on a smooth sea with a fair wind, quite as sound, to all appearance, as the hour in which she was first launched from the dock, her previous First Mate having temporary command.

At this Moturoa Whaling Station, not many days after the departure of the schooner ‘Jane,’ a rumour got up in some most unaccountable way, that the schooner ‘Flyingfish,’ which, it may be remembered, had been seen with the ‘Jane,’ in the offing, and in which Rawhinia was vaguely said to be, had been compelled, by the prevailing dirty weather, to seek safety in the Kawhia Harbour, and, should such be the case, the chances were that the lives of all in her would thereby be even much more imperiled than when she had been out in the offing at the very height of the storm, as the Natives any way about Kawhia were, as laconically remarked, “not up to much.” But the marvellously strange thing about this report lay in the fact that never a Maori or a Pakeha in the lot could explain from where this rumour came, or how it had originated! Such was all the talk, but, to elicit a verification of the hue and cry, none, apparently, took the trouble upon themselves of sodoing. It was like Brown's affianced, when Brown was trenching on matters connected with her, a little, as it were, beneath the surface—telling him “that if she were not taken on trust, he need not bother himself at all about carrying out the engagement.” Unauthenticated, page 37 however, as appeared this rumour, it, nevertheless, had the effect of creating an acutely felt anxiety at Moturoa. Even at the bare contemplation of such an untoward contingency, the Maori population put themselves into the wildest state of phrenzy. Their men hideously blasphemed, made grotesquely threatening gestures and ghastly grimaces: their womenfolk hoarsely bawled, wailed, screamed, and hysterically giggled, and ever and anon interluded “Rawhinia! Rawhinia! Te nui pai kotero, Rawhinia!” [the good girl.] Some were for proceeding all the way afoot to Mokau, and there chance the capturing of a Ngatimaniapoto's canoe. Others, again, were for, without any loss of time, launching their own large war-canoe, and paddling it all the distance!

This latter proposal was the one which seemed to receive by far the largest amount of support. Such was the case, it may be alleged, solely through the course submitted being advocated by their renowned fighting chief, Whara Pori, and, likewise, by their much-relied upon friend, Dickey Barrett. Each of these local magnates had promised to lead, no matter what befell them, as long as they were spared to wherever there was any possibility of releasing Rawhinia, should it fall out that she had been captured. The most daring spirits amongst their tribe were, there and then, with manifest circumspection, selected, in addition to Barrett and two of his whalers. These were speedily put in possession of the most approved weapons, such as tomahawks, spears, clubs, meres, and, of course, with the few tars, their cutlasses; and expeditiously the expedition was on the way.

Putting fanfaronading aside, it was a very pretty sight to survey the lengthy, twelve-paddled war-canoe, under the cerulean canopy, gliding swan-like through the tranquilly translucent waters of this particular patch of the great Pacific. The steersman's all but erect posture away in the widening distance, magnified to astonishingly gigantic proportions, by the convergence of light and shade: the stalwart operators sitting in a long line, file upon file, with nothing to cover their heads saving what Nature supplied—namely, that of their own dark clustering locks—their brownish glossy bare arms, necks, breasts, and shoulders appearing, with the noonday's almost perpendicular rays, as lustrous as polished bronze. Most agreeable to survey, was their well-timed movement.

Go it! onward, brave hearts! Know that you are now on the noble mission of love! It will be far on though in the passage of another day; the stars will come, and again will they vanish, ere that your progress—absolutely manual—over the endless lapping waves brings you to your wearisome journey's end. There are just yet fully seventy miles of waterway lying before you ere that your onward course may be discontinued. Aye! and then, what possibilities may have to be confronted? and what blatant wrath withstood?

If the grief of a Maori is not any more profound than the rest of their genera occupying this particular orb, it most unquestionably has a great deal more of demonstration with it. Here, on the ridges of page 38 abrupt cliffs, and on lower, though nearer, sand-dunes, marking the great ocean's boundary, there were men and women of this Malay-sprung race, squatting, each rigidly separated—rigorously motionless—swathed in blankets and flax-rugs, looking, at a distance, like as many tombstones in an urban Necropolis. They sit as though they had been struck speechless in this attitude, as long as ever the boat is the least perceptible: then, when it fades away into imperceptibility, a vociferous and loud inexpressible sort of bleat is raised, sufficiently melancholy —elsewhere heard—to put down forever the natural vivacity of even a costermonger or a Merry Andrew!

There chanced, at this epoch, to be a stranger, the guest of the Ngatiawas. Such was, in the person of a rotund visaged, big-boned, minor-chief of the Ngateranui—a tribe on the southern coast—whose proper appellation was Toko, but whom, some missionary, at this early date, down the coast somewhere, had dubbed—no, that's not it—christened him “Absolom.” This Absolom, as he may just as well now be nominated, appeared on the momentous occasion which has been briefly referred to, to be the only one among the whole crowd apparently not disposed to jeremiading. Manifestly, the temperament of our new friend Absolom was fitter for being a follower of Comus than Momus. Absolom kept almost incessantly moving to and fro as though he were some superveying marshal. He kept strutting about, drolly inflated, with a stately measured pace and crect bearing, and seldom failed, whenever he was in juxtaposition with a passable-looking wahine [lass], to show that he knew a little of that which polite society exacts from its professed votaries. However, by what has now been said, it must not be inferred that Absolom raised his hat to those ladies. No such thing: that he really could not do, for this very good reason—he had not got the like to raise! But this is what Absolom really did do: he took a grip of his maro, or flax-kilt at his sides, independently with each hand, spread it out like an open topsy-turvy fan, gave a few quick sidling steps, followed by a gyration or two, not at all unlike the preliminary attitudinising proceedings made by a well-known plumaged biped. Doubtlessly, in a way, the said Absolom thought no small ashes of himself, as, when an opportunity availed, he would splore magniloquently of things which he had never seen, and over feats which he had never done, and seemed too, as if quite hurt by anyone evincing any ignorance of his self-considered superlativeness! If Absolom's notoriety was confined to a very limited sphere, the fault certainly was not with Absolom, but with those who would not bother themselves in making researches, by way of discovering this world's narrowly circumscribed illustrious men.

Absolom, like most others of his kind, possessed a constitutional aversion to being anywhere abroad after sundown, apprehensive, of course, of encountering that universal bugbear of mankind on this globe of several thousand years' standing. However, at this station, Absolom so far overcame this constitutional frailty as to, in process of time, venture as far down as the beach to the whalers' caboose. Such, page 39 indeed, was quite an excusable—quite a natural predilection on the part of the said Absolom; for where could he, throughout the universe, have gone to put in an hour more consonant with a hilarious disposition. They were a jolly lot, these whalers, generally, and more especially at an hour or two before retiring for the night, when they had their sing-song and Jamaica import. Some of their songs were coarse, it is true, and others, again, were really very much above mediocrity in either the composition of the words or of the music. The following may be given as a tolerably fair sample.

Karamoa.
Far o'er the sea, at Moturoa,
Where tides set in,
The Maori maiden, Karamoa,
My love did win.

Her form bore Nature's finest traces,
Surpassing rare!
I cannot name the many graces:
Still, such were there.

I only know she was beguiling,
In every way—
The light athwart her face whilst smiling—
A heavenly ray!

That frame in which her soul wouldn't settle,
Died in my arm!
Through her I learn'd mere hue has little
To do with charm!

Whatever eulogy Absolom was pleased to bestow on the singing may, without doing him any very serious injustice, be put down as merely feigned and artificial; but whatever he expressed in praise of the potent West India stuff, it may, beyond all manner of doubt be here set down, as thoroughly genuine. No question about it that, for a number of times, these lively sea-dogs, the whalers, heartily appreciated the honour thus paid them by Absolom's evening visits, and showed, too, their due appreciation thereof by many instances of openhanded unstinted liberality, as well as cordial affability. But, liberal to a fault even, as is well known, are sailors, such a constant drain as Absolom made on their restricted resources, must, by some way or other, inevitably be brought to a termination. The modus operandi of bringing about such a devoutly to be wished for consummation began to be a “speculative problem.”

“Now, by all there remains of Good King Stephen!” exclaimed page 40 Jack Love, familiarly called Chips, “I'll work Mr. Absolom such a rattling rig, that this quite unapproachable guzzler—I'll lay every tool in my chest, I will!—wont care to show his skittlepin-nose again down this way, for as long's he lives.”

Then Jack, casting, at the close of this preamble, his off eye in the direction of Jerry Towser's stalwart frame, who must have stood close upon six feet high, said, “Jerry, my gleaming trout! I must have you in co-partnership. If I have my tractile Jerry lad, the game I mean, is just as good as won.”

Jerry, as it might have been anticipated, with alacrity, gave unconditional compliance. Jerry's words were, “Jack, you limb of dhiversion, yae, I'll just sarve you, in fith an' I will, just to the verge of thraison! Now, my worthy, just now be afther, wid ye, giving out the progroom.”

“Many thanks, Jerry,” politely rejoined Chips. “All that I stand in need of is a trustworthy steady-back, to allow me to stand for a little while upright upon. Then, for better security, Jerry, I would like you to take a grip around my ankles. That stay, don't you see, will be necessary to make me keep the balance, even although that it may be necessary for you to stalk slowly about underneath my individual gravity. I shouldn't wonder, Towser, my boy, but you'll find the position—well—a wee-bit awkward just at first! For that very reason, it would be no harm, anyway, to practice the gymnastics by ourselves together, quietly, for a night or two. What do you think!”

“But begorrah, di 've ye mind, now?” blurted out the allotted bottom story of this projected structure. “If that's all, my grand mhiaster af ciremonies, the niver of that wud e'r a bit frighten Absolom.”

“No; you're right there, Jerry: that wouldn't do it, I know,” acknowledged, without any hesitation, Chips, to Jerry's correct strictures. “But that which I've named, with this added—namely, four clls, good measure, of some sort of white fabric hanging from the back of my head, down to your heels, Jerry, and at the same time brought as much round to the front of our united bodies as 'twill admit of, will most certainly produce the effect wanted! What do you think? What do you say to it yourself, aye Jerry?”

Ideally, in a flash, Jerry took in the ludricous grotesqueness which such a figure was calculated to impose, and was so thoroughly satisfied with the degree of ghostly outline which it should present, that, with sheer gratification, he commenced to wriggle and toss his body about as of one having vertigo or St. Vitus's dance. When this volatile fit of Jerry's had subsided, he was constrained by Chips, in the most forcible language, not, for goodness' sake, to go and spoil the pudding on the eve of its being cooked.

All that Jerry said to such seasonable advice was, “Jack, begorrah! sure as the sintiments are that's in Holy Writ, ye can intirely depind on me—ye dhivil, ye—ye know ye can!”

page 41

As customary, just as the shades of night's-raven-wing began to deepen, the pompously rum-enamoured Absolom was discerned stealthily making his way in the direction of the jolly whalers' quarters, unquestionably, in the sure and certain trust of speedily being a participator in the cheer of the “Warrah, warrah kute Pakeha,” as the whalers were deferentially termed by him. No foreboding: no, not the slightest, in his untutored mind of the dire upshot which, in a manner, he was rushing to have consummated. “Fate, Fate!” might well this preordained victim have exclaimed—“Why keep the path a-head so much obscured?”

Absolom, Absolom! O, Absolom! Stealthily, likewise, was this thrice ell long hoary figure: this spectral-looking object towards thee cruelly advancing to confront! The tall, double-storied goblin was spared, however, the trouble of coming in to near contiguity. The moment that Absolom's eyes caught a blink of the stupendous moving superstructure, he quickly turned, and retired through space suggestive of a ground-operating whirlwind. Where Absolom ran to has never yet been heard: but no more his pompous, portly-frame was seen anywhere in these parts near the whalers' caboose.

Nearly a week now it was since their war-canoe had left, and the people hereabouts commenced to entertain the very gloomiest of forebodings as to the result of the expedition.

“When the gods are silent,” muttered Te Puki, “is it not rash for mortals to speak?”