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Chapter VII. Mr. Barrett's Diplomacy in Rawhinia's Rescue.

The Maoris are volatile, and their demonstrations of exhilaration are, if anything, even more elamorous than are those of their grief. It does not in the least resemble the boisterous Britons' “Hip. hip, hurrah!” and yet the intonation of the voice decidedly conveys exuberant enthusiasm. The following may be taken as a sample.

Come ye hither all ye people!
Make no delay!
This is the day of our senses delighting—
Hoh! Hoh! hither quickly come—
Hoh! Hoh! hither quickly come.
Hoh! Hoh! Hoh! Ho—ah! Ho—ah!

It was on the morning of the sixth day of weary watching and waiting at Moturoa, that a red flag was waved by the hand of the watchman on the top of Paritutu, signifying that something had been seen on the water away northward—Mokau way; but as to what it was, there was, as yet, no certainty. However, vague as admitted was the communication, it had the effect of instantly getting up a wild and boisterous uproar among the people. Soon was seen a great hurrying of men, women, and children, eager to select the best points of observation upon the several eminences around. There, while squatting together, a great amount of good-natured chaff and bantering goes on—such as this:

“Now, how ever came you, Hori, to bring those eyes of yours here with you? They're sure to lead you some stupid contrary topsy turvy way.”

Hori has a ready wit, and tells Ona, this wench bent upon plaguing him, that he didn't mind very much what mischief his eyes brought upon himself, so long as they served him to guide in a right direction such giddy things as she.

“You, Hori! How big you talk!” retorted Ona. “Hah, you! thinking you can guide anything well that don't really know a pretty page 43 kotero's [girl's] eyes from those of a calf-shark. It's bad enough, one would think, to be a fool, Hori; but it's worse to show yourself a braggart with it too.”

“What you speak of me, Ona, may, or may not, be true: it's not for me to say which,” rejoined Hori, meekly, but with a faintly visible touch of acerbity: “Still, this much you know, Ona, just as well, perhaps, as I do, that these things you allude to, when separated from the body, are something, after all your jesting, not very unlike one another.”

Ona, evidently pouts at Hori's irrelevant and indelicate analogy, and went as far even as to designate him a nasty old bull-seal, that couldn't for the life of him distinguish—well—smoke from fog, stare at either for as long as ever he might.

Hori gets suddenly absorbed, and treats Ona's rude and unkind words, apparently, with stoical indifference. The fact is his eyes had just at that moment caught a glimpse of something on the water away northward. After a maturer survey, Hori triumphantly perks his face derisively towards his reckless persecutor, and says, exultingly,—

“Girl: you now have nothing more to say to me about blindness. You talk about the like! You! a pretty one you are, indeed, to do anything of the kind—that can't tell a bank of clouds from a war-canoe! Look! see if you've got any sight left at all in your eyes, Ona—you'll behold that. Yonder speeds hitherward the toas.” [braves.]

Honi, here, at any rate, proved to the satisfaction of himself, that he was gifted with a farer-reaching sight than any of them, despite all Ona's saucy and quite uncalled for most aggravating taunts about the imperfection of his vision: for it really turned out to be, after all, no other than their own, thrice-welcome, war-canoe, and rapidly speeding hitherward too.

“See, now, Hori,” quoth Ona, with a most marvellous placative change in the expression of her rather winsome features and the inflexion of her deep-toned melodious voice, “who can tell whether or no they've got Rawhinia with them. Should you be the first to say they have, Hori—that is, knowing, mind! that it's no fraud—I'll never say No, Hori, to your Will you!”

Eager enough as Hori was to execute the behest of Ona—for the truth was, despite all the banter, he liked her not a little, and more so now as she had, at last, spoken so sweet and softly. He found, however, after a painstaking trial, that he was unable to succeed in giving the assurance which so great a reward was held out for. Something he had discovered, it is true, but, so far, it could not be determined upon with any certainty what the something really was. It might be only Dickey Barrett and the two, whalers who went with him, standing on the bow. Hah! This object for'rd perplexed ardent Hori—well—no small bit. It hindered him from singling out Rawhinia even should she be there. However, the reason for Hori's difficulty in this matter was, afterwards, satisfactorily explained. Rawhinia had been, all this while that Hori was straining almost, his eyes out, to individualise her, half-reclining page 44 at the bow, obscured by a seaman's sou'wester hat on her head, and, around her body, one of their peajackets.

After the hearty salutations of welcoming were finished, it became known that the expedition, in a way, had been a success; and, but for a certain eontretemps, all but a bloodless one. When the ‘Flyingfish’ schooner, Captain Philip Marett, master, and subsequently, as it was ascertained, bound to Moturoa, with provisions, was driven, through actual stress of weather, to seek shelter in the harbour of Kawhia, and therein had slipped anchor a good way off shore, it was getting late on in the day, and no one from the land bothered themselves to look anyway near. At early grey dawn, however, on the following morning, there came leisurely and quictly paddling alongside, in a canoe, an infirm-looking aged man, along with a youth and two small boys. When this patriarch got on board, he, the hoary aborigince, gave a faint smile of injured susceptibility, when the Captain, without delay, put to him, through an Interpreter, the question, “If his tribe on shore, these times, was friendly with the Pakeha?”

This “ancient-of-days” replied to the query with a droll sort of grimace on his spare, shrivelled, and pinched countenance, accompanied with a fin-like backward movement of his open hands, and thus delivered himself: “Wouldn't the shark, if it could, not like to be friendly with the swordfish?”

This hoary head and his present retinue evinced such an innocent and amusing curiosity at everything they saw, touched, tasted or handled, that gradually, they drew the favour, despite of themselves, of all aboard, and thereupon begat unreserved confidence. One most strange thing, however, with them at the time was this: that when Rawhinia came upon deck, they paid no more heed to her—no; not a bit more—than one they were accustomed rubbing up against every hour in the day. 'Tis true, eventually, the old man had the courtesy to stoop for a moment or two and press upon her facial protuberance the corresponding prominent organ of his face; but this, obviously, ended any further regard—any additional recognition.

Later on in the morning, two grown-up young men and three merry young koteros [girls] joined the other Natives aboard: and they, likewise, in no less marked a manner, displayed a naive, engaging demeanour—so far, in fine, as to arouse a yearning in the seamen's breasts to take a short run ashore, just for the purpose of seeing for themselves what sort of homes such very nice civil people lived in. The Captain and his stevedore, together and alone, were about to accompany these engaging visitors on their return to shore in the gig, under the plea of providing fresh provisions, when, over the rail, just as they were about to glide away from under, Rawhinia eagerly pled to be taken along with them. She sadly wanted, she told them, “To try and find out, if she possibly could, where her sister was then.”

Now then: What could the skipper do? A point-blank refusal was quite out of the question to give to the captivating pleadings of such an page 45 altogether loveable Prosperine as Rawhinia, and off the three, in company, made for the shore together. During the afternoon, the Captain and the stevedore returned; but no Rawhinia with them. A party, who had stated that they well knew all Rawhinia's tribe, begged very hard on the Captain to allow Rawhinia to stay with them until such time as the sea went down sufficiently for the ship to make a start.

“No harm should befall Rawhinia: no; none whatever, as long as she was with them.”

When the sea on the bar, at length, went down, after a few days favourable weather, Rawhinia's person on board, as a matter of course, was urgently besought; but, those urged, returned this dissatisfactory reply—that their guest was, meanwhile, very unwell, and hoped the Captain would excuse her going aboard on that day. Another day and again another day was delay still entreated, until the Captain was quite beside himself, as well too he might, with downright vexation. Just at this time, as the afflicated skipper was in a torture of indecision about how, in such an exigency, properly to act, lo! the Taranaki war-canoe, as unexpected as it was highly acceptable, came alongside, to his infinite relief.

As soon as friendly parlance between the new arrivals and the officers of the ‘Flyingfish’ was got through, Mr. Barrett explained to Captain Marett the nature of his mission thither. It was then, there and then arranged, that the first mate, Barrett, and the two English whalers, should go in company ashore, in order, as Dickey Barrett jocosely put it, “To see how the land lay.”

This small band was received by the Natives, apparently, with the utmost cordiality. Rawhinia, they frankly avowed to be with them; but was, just at the moment, on a visit of friendship at a kainga not many, only a few miles away. Had any of the Pakehas any desire then to go and see her?

This gracious-like affability of these unsophisticated people had with it, such a semblance of the true ring of sincerity and pure bonhommism that, eventually, it had the effect of removing all suspicion of anything like in the nature of double-dealing which, most probably, ere this, must have been entertained. Just while about to leave with such a favourable impression, the quick ear of Mr. Barrett, quite easually, from an adjoining apartment, caught this suppressedly-uttered sentence: “Kia hohoro ta tatou haere,” meaning, “Let us travel quickly;” and, momentary, he concluded within himself, that here treachery was evidently at work! Wilily, without, without his ever communicating his altered sentiments to anyone, he entered into a cheerful conversation apart with the old man who had first boarded the ‘Flyingfish.’

“Come with me aboard again,” said he in Maori, “Tupare, and have some acknowledgment for all the kindness you have shown. I know you like many good things which I could readily supply, such as nice tobacco, brandy and gin, and, better than all, too, spicy-flavoured German saveloys. 'Gad friend, Tupare! these fine dainties make one's page 46 mouth to water by the barely making mention of them: don't they now?”

Tupare was elated to almost overpowering transport at the thought of having so many good things put into his possession: “Wouldn't he now be enabled to satisfy himself and astonish too, all his friends after, by the recital of how graciously he had been treated!” This was how old Tupare got inveigled once more aboard; and the said Tupare, Barrett knew full well, was no mean chief. Thus, so far, so good. Directly, they weighed anchor, and got their vessel outside the Heads. There they lay-to, and contrived to get this message conveyed ashore: “That unless Rawhinia was restored by the day but one after to-morrow, promptly at sunrise, off, without any further nonsense, at once, should go Tupare's head.”

To-morrow's sunrise came, and no communication: next morning's, and yet no sight of Rawhinia. Another morning's sunrise, and, without further consideration, the threat would most certainly be executed. There was no help for it: the Native duplicity had driven them, most unwillingly, to this extreme recourse.

Rawiri, one of the paddlers, a minor fighting chief, a lieutenant of Whara Pori's, had conferred upon him the distinguished privilege, if rendered necessary, of performing the sanguinary office of decapitation. This Rawiri distinctly proved himself to have had an inordinate relish for the enacting of any such a truculent job, insomuch, in fact, that long before the time of the stars leaving the overarching firmament, he had planted himself on watch on the pinnacle of the ship's forecastle, patiently awaiting for the first glimpse of the golden rim. As such, when barely perceptible, showed itself above the eastern horizon, Rawiri, without ever as much as casting his eyes to the right or to the left, in all haste betook himself to where the unconscious Tupare was quartered, and, with a blow or two of his well-whetted tomahawk, noiselessly severed the head. But, lo! What must have been Rawiri's dismay, on his being told, almost as soon as he had accomplished this decapitation business, that his services as executioner, happily, would not be required, as, Rawhinia, at that very moment, had just popped aboard! She, inauspiciously, had slipped quietly in at the opposite end to that in which Rawiri had been so zealously engaged!

There was one matter of consolation, however, in connection with this inadvertent tragtedy, which was this: that those who had conveyed Rawhinia to the side of the vesse, had paddled straightway back again, without their ever having left their skiff. Had they been less auxious to return ashore, Mr. Rawiri's services might have been further called into requisitions for despatching a few more additional victims.

“It is certainly jolly awkward, this beheading business,” quoth Barrett, east down-like, to Captain Marrett. “I myself,” he said, “wouldn't the like had taken place—no! not for almost the price of anything I could name. But, tush! after all, mistakes, it is said, will page 47 occur in the best regulated of families: it's no use at all us noising about spilt oil.”

“I can't make out at all the object of Rawiri's unwarrantable haste,” said Captain Marett, moodily. “Beggar it! he might as well have looked around him, to have seen whether or no the necessity had arisen.”

“There is one thing,” rejoined Mr. Barrett, with perceptible feeling in his tone, “that, hadn't I seen the absolute and, consequently, unavoidably urgent necessity for decoying the unfortunate wretch, at the time I did, my kind and most excellent friend, Te Puki, would never more have had the pleasing gratification of laying eye-sight again upon his only child Rawhinia. Nay; he would henceforth have had to mourn the captivity of two daughters instead of that of the one. Phill!” Mr. Barrett added, jocosely, “I am glad now that we are bound for the same port; and, allow me to tell you, we make a mistake—we certainly do, indeed—if either stays a moment beyond what can be avoided here. So, Good by, old man, for the present: we are now off back to the Sugar Loaves, at Moturoa, as speedily as stout arms can make the timbers fly through the briny.”

And, in a trice, almost, Barrett, Whara Pori, and their men, bore away from the “Flyingfish,” Barrett, with inner satisfaction at having Rawhinia safe by his side, and Rawiri with, perhaps, quite as much satisfaction at being instrumental in sending to the realms of the avenging spirits, one of his hated enemies, and one of their leaders too. No apprehension whatever was entertained by anyone at this time of the bloodshed which would eventually follow from their recent tragical performance.