War to the Knife

And had it all come to this? Was all the labour, the self-denial, the toilsome day, the weary night, the exile, the home-sickness, but to end thus? Not for herself did she mourn, perhaps, so much; not for the warrior maid, whose high courage and inherited traditions enabled her to defy insult and brave death. They had courted the danger and must now pay the price. With Massinger, too, his chief regret would be that he could not stand in the ranks as at Rangariri and Orakau, dealing death around, and fighting breast to breast with the ruthless foe. And though death by tortures, dreadful and protracted, such as all had heard of in old Maori wars (and it was whispered around camp-fires was not wholly obsolete), was gruesome and unnatural, still it was, in a rude sense, the payment lawfully exacted by the victors. But for these mild and gentle teachers of the Word, who had, for nearly a decade, wearied every faculty of mind and body in the service of their heathen destroyers, it was indeed a hard and cruel fate. She saw, in imagination, Cyril Summers dragged to the fatal tree, with the rope around his neck, as was that steadfast servant of the Lord, Carl Volkner. She saw the ashen face and stricken limbs of Mary Summers, as, all-expectant of her own and her children's fate, she would witness the death and mutilation of her beloved partner. What was the mercy, the justice, of that Supreme Being to whom they had bowed the knee in prayer since infancy, where was an overruling Providence, if this tragedy was permitted to be played out to the last dreadful scene? Where, alas! could one turn for aid or consolation?

Such thoughts went coursing through her brain, mingled with such curious and even trifling observation, unconsciously made, as during the fast-fleeting moments of life have often been noted to occupy the mind. She looked mechanically at the war-dance still being performed by the exulting savages, varied by the devilish rites, if such they could be called, performed around the dead officer's head, which with awful eyes appeared to stare down upon the unholy crew. Cyril Summers and his wife were kneeling in prayer; the children, having exhausted themselves in weeping, were examining the débris of their household gods. Hypatia herself, with her masses of bright hair thrown back from her face, and carelessly tied in a knot behind her head, was leaning against the doorsill, in position not unlike the Christian maiden in a great picture, where each martyr is bound to a pillar in the amphitheatre, when she saw Erena move more closely to Massinger's couch and whisper in his ear. The Maori guard was temporarily occupied, as an expert, in noting the evolutions of the war-dance, and had relaxed his watch. The sick man lay motionless, but the languid eyes opened; a gleam of hope – or was it the fire of despair? – was visible, with a slight change of expression.

"She knows something; she has told him," thought Hypatia, as she moved cautiously but slowly, and very warily, within hearing.

At this time the supreme saltatory expression of triumph was being enacted. The noise was deafening, so that the clear tones of Erena's rich voice were audible.

"This is nearly the end of the war-dance; then the murders and the torture will commence. The torture will last all night; they will take out Roland and tie him to a stake, cutting pieces of flesh from his body. Poor fellow! there is not much on his bones. As for us, we shall be carried away to the Uriwera country."

"You want to frighten me to death," said Hypatia. "What dreadful things even to speak of! Can we not kill ourselves? I never thought I should wish to do that. I can now feel for others who have done so."

"They have prevented it. Our hands are tied. There is no river here; no precipice, or we could throw ourselves over, as our women have often done."

"You seem strangely indifferent, Erena. I cannot think you heartless; but on the verge of death, or a captivity infinitely worse, surely you cannot jest about our position?"

"Far from it. My whole heart is quivering with excitement and anxiety; for his life, which I value a thousand times more than my own, is trembling in the balance. But, after all, I do not really think these dreadful things will come to pass."

"Why? What reason have you?"

"You remember that I came in late, the day after our arrival – on the day when I wished to go on with our journey?"

"Now I do remember. You looked as though you had been a long way."

"I had indeed. I went back on our tracks very nearly as far as the cave where Roland lay concealed, when we brought him away from the Gate Pah. I thought I might meet some of my father's people, who would have made short work of these bloodthirsty Hau-Haus. But he had gone off towards Opotiki, as a report had come of another rising. But luckily I met some one, and it will go far to save our lives."

"Who was it?" asked Hypatia, breathlessly.

"It was Winiata. He had heard of these Hau-Haus being on the march, and that Ngarara had persuaded Kereopa to follow us up."

"And what aid did he give you?"

"Merely this – that a body of Ngatiporu were following up this taua, led by the most dreaded warrior in all New Zealand, Ropata Waha Waha."

At the mention of this name, so well known throughout the length and breadth of New Zealand —

"In close fight a champion grim,In camps a leader sage" —

Hypatia could hardly repress a cry of joy.

"Then perhaps we may be saved, after all."

"If he comes in time; and God grant he may. He should be very close now. And I know Winiata will travel without rest or food till he strikes his trail. And yet I have a foreboding that one of us will die. So said the tohunga, whose words never failed yet. I cannot shake off the feeling."

"You have overworked yourself," said Hypatia. "You can have had little rest, food, or sleep since you left yesterday. It is the result of fatigue and anxiety."

"Anxiety has too often been my lot," said the girl, with a deep accent of sadness. "But fatigue I never felt yet. These wretches are spinning out their dance. They had better make the most of it. If all goes well, it is the last some of them will ever join in. Now, listen! Do you hear nothing?"

Hypatia bent her ear towards the forest, and listened with all the eagerness which the situation demanded. A faint murmur once, and once only, made itself audible.

"It is the sound of the breeze among the pines," said she at length.

"Listen again! Do you hear nothing?"

"Only a far-off sound like the rippling of the river. Once I thought I heard the trampling of feet; but it must be a mistake."

"It is no mistake," said Erena. "I hear the steady tramp of a large body of men; and so would these fools, if they were not too much occupied with their absurd dance, which they intend to finish up with blood. And so it will; but not as they think."

The war-dance, with its stamps and roars, its shuddering hisses and accurate evolutions as if of one man, was drawing to a close. Already one of the foremost warriors, at a sign from Kereopa, had placed a rope round the neck of Cyril Summers, who had commenced in a final prayer to commend his soul and his loved ones to the protection of their Maker, when a shout from a number of unknown voices made the forest ring, and caused the crowd of Hau-Haus to turn their faces in that direction. At the same moment a close and well-directed volley was poured in, which laid fully one-half of them low, and wounded a much larger number. Then a man stalked calmly forward, sword in hand, whose sudden apparition created as much consternation among the Hau-Haus as if he had been a Destroying Angel specially commissioned for their extirpation. One look at the stern features and martial form of him who stood calm and unmoved amid the pattering hail of bullets, with which the Hau-Haus strove to return the fire, was sufficient for most of the Pai Marire. With a wild cry of "Ropata Waha Waha!" which came tremulously from their lips, they fled in all directions in a state of the most abject terror. And well might they or other rebels take panic at the sight of him who stood exposed to danger, both from friends and foes, as though the thick-flying bullets were thistledown.

The hostile tribes were fully of opinion that he bore a charmed life, that no shot had power to harm him, probably in consequence of Satanic influence. Hence his sobriquet of Waha Waha was strangely suggestive of an unholy alliance between the Prince of Darkness and the cool strategist and remorseless warrior, to whom fear and mercy were alike unknown. A target for the best marksmen in a hundred fights, himself chiefly unarmed, he had never received a wound or spared an enemy. As he stood there, with an expression of scorn and concentrated rage upon his expressive features, with dripping sword and blazing eyes, he might well have stood for a portrait of an avenging angel, or indeed Azrael, the minister of Death, in all his lurid majesty.

Kereopa and his principal followers, who had fled at the first onset, probably thought that they had a fair chance of escape. But Ropata, with his usual astuteness, had formed a cordon around the Hau-Hau band, into which the surprised natives ran, only to find themselves shot down or captured. Among the latter were eleven members of his own tribe, the Aowera. Of these he proceeded to make an example upon the spot. Calling them out of the group of captives by name, he thus addressed them —

"You are about to die. I do not kill you because you are found in arms against the pakehas. But I forbade you to join the Hau-Haus. You have disobeyed me; you must now pay the penalty."

Having revolvers handed to him, he then shot every man with his own hand.

"Bring forward the deserter."

The soldier, a man of the 57th, bound and helpless, was then led up.

"You," he said, addressing the renegade, "are a disgrace to your regiment and to your country. You are said to have shot two of your own officers in battle. You have helped these natives to commit crimes which are a thousand times worse than open war. You will kill no pakehas or natives after today."

With the instinct of a born leader, Ropata had taken in the various points of the situation at a glance, and issued his orders with the promptitude which the crucial moment demanded.

"Release the pakehas. Kill that Hau-Hau dog holding the rope, and hang up the deserter with it; he is not worthy of a soldier's death. Bind that Ngapuhi; he shall answer to his own chief."

These orders, coming from a man who rarely had occasion to speak twice, were obeyed on the instant. The amateur executioner was tomahawked before his surprise permitted him to drop the rope. Cyril Summers was freed, and the deserter was run up to the branch of the willow tree destined for his martyrdom. The cords which bound Erena and her attendants were loosed by willing hands, the men and even the women promptly possessing themselves of weapons from their dead captors.

Ngarara's countenance, when he saw himself at once baulked of his revenge and cheated of his prey, was a study of all the evil passions which degrade the human race to the level of the brute. Such is the phrase, unfair indeed to the animal creation, which, however unsparing in its allotted course of action, is never guilty of the calculated cruelty of la bête humaine. For one moment he stood indifferent to his coming fate as Ropata himself; then, drawing his revolver, fired point-blank at Massinger, who had raised himself to a sitting posture with Erena's assistance, and was watching the conflict with an eagerness which betokened a partial renewal of strength. As he raised the weapon Erena flung herself before her lover, with an instinctive movement of protection. Passing her right arm around his neck, she lowered him to his pillow, with all the heroic tenderness which from time immemorial has characterized the woman as nurse and ministering angel. With a grin of fiendish malice Ngarara parried the tomahawk blow aimed at him by a blood-bespattered Aowera, and, eluding his clutch, dashed into the forest and disappeared.

The fray was over. The Hau-Hau prisoners were securely bound. Sullen and despairing, they stood in a circle on the spot where their war-dance and the Pai Marire rites had been performed. The derision of their captors was openly expressed. The bodies of their comrades and relations lay around in all the hideous abandon of the death-agony. From the tall pole the head of the ill-fated soldier still stared with eyeless sockets and bared teeth on the ghastly scene – it might have been fancied with grim triumph and exultation; while from the willow tree dangled the corpse of the deserter, an unconscious witness, where he had so lately posed as an actor.

As if the dreadful spectacle had a fascination which they could not resist, or that their miraculous deliverance had rendered them incapable of connected thought, the destined victims had remained almost in their positions taken up previous to the arrival of Ropata and his contingent.

Mrs. Summers had sunk down on a sofa which had been dislodged from its position, with her children, wondering and tearful, beside her. The female attendants of Erena were clustered around their mistress. Cyril Summers, over whom the bitterness of death had passed, stood by his wife, gazing with awe-struck eyes into the distance, while his moving lips from time to time gave token that he was returning thanks to that Almighty Being to whom he had appealed in his darkest hour. While Hypatia, wrapped in a world of strange and awful phantasy, still stood by the outer entrance of the porch, looking straight in front of her, at this weird melodrama of human life, in which the reality so often transcends the unrealities of the "fantastic realm."

Erena and Roland Massinger had preserved their position unaltered, except that, from one of support, the girl gradually sank forward, until her head rested on her lover's breast. A cry from one of the Maori girls arrested the attention of all. Hypatia, roused from her trance, rushed over to find two of them raising Erena from her reclining position, with looks of alarm, while the arterial blood which welled up from her bosom told of a mortal wound. Massinger's death-pale countenance, stained with blood, as were the coverings of his couch, seemed to denote that these lovers, thrown together by such fortuitous circumstances in life, were fated to be undivided in death.

Though Massinger was unwounded by the bullet which, aimed with fatal accuracy, had pierced the bosom of Erena, his situation was most critical. For her there was no hope. The lung had been perforated; the laboured breathing showed but too truly that death was imminent. In Massinger's case the appearances were hardly more promising. The rude treatment to which he had been subjected after his capture had caused the partly healed wound to break out afresh. He was rapidly approaching the state of mortal weakness to which Erena was succumbing. Such was only too probable; but Cyril Summers, who had gone through a course of instruction in surgery, was enabled to stop his bleeding, and to afford temporary relief to Erena.

Massinger at first resented the proffered aid. "Why trouble me?" he said resentfully. "She has given her life to save mine; it were base of me to survive her at such a cost. Let us die together. My life belongs to her, who has now saved it for the third time."

"Then it is mine to dispose of," came the answer, in her low rich tones. "I die happy, since you are saved. If the bullet of Ngarara had found your breast instead of mine, I would have followed you to the spirit-land. You do not doubt that – oh, my darling – my own beloved! The sun would not have gone down before I should have commenced my journey to the reinga."

"Erena," said Massinger, "have I ever doubted your love, true alike in life and the dark realm, to which we are hastening?"

"Raise me," she said, "that I may see his face once more. My eyes are darkening. Oh, my beloved!" – and her soft voice faltered, and became hollow and inexpressibly mournful – "I have loved you with every fibre of my being, with every motion of my heart! The pakeha girl loves you also, though she cared not to own it, in her own land. She will live for you in the days that are to come – days of peace and happiness, now that the war is over. Would she die for you as I have done? Yes; for she is noble, she is true. She would have scorned to take your love from poor Erena, even had you offered it. Her soul lay open to me – and yours. You were true to your word. She was too proud to steal your heart from the poor Maori girl. And now, farewell – farewell for ever – oh, my loved one! I die happy. I have given my life for yours – what does a daughter of the Ngapuhi wish more?"

She leaned forward and hid her head on the breast of her lover, while her long black tresses flowed over his pillow, as her arms strained him to that faithful bosom, still warm with the heart's purest feelings. Reverently the little group of spectators gazed on the dying girl. Sobs and lamentations came from the women of her own race, while tears flowed fast from the eyes of Mary Summers and Hypatia.

Raising herself for a moment, she motioned to Hypatia to come nearer. Her dark eyes glowed with transient light as she kissed her hand; then laying it in that of Massinger, she whispered —

"He is yours now. May all happiness befall you! Yet forget not – oh! forget not – poor Erena."

A deep sigh followed the last words. Her head fell back; the hand which Massinger and Hypatia held was pulseless. The faithful spirit of the nymph of the wood and stream, the fabled Oread of the old-world poets, had passed away.

The tragedy at Oropi, so nearly completed, might have been averted, but for an unlucky accidental circumstance, the occurrence of which embittered the remainder of Allister Mannering's life. And yet he could not wholly abandon himself to self-accusation and ceaseless regrets, inasmuch as he had quitted the trail on which, as the avenger of blood, he was pursuing the Hau-Hau band, in order to save the lives of innocent and helpless people.

He, indeed, with his contingent, would have arrived at Oropi on the same day as Ropata, or, perhaps, earlier. He would then have been able to prevent the preliminary sufferings of the missionary household, and could have ensured the safety of his beloved daughter and only child. The cause of his leaving the direct track to the mission station of Cyril Summers was sufficiently imperative – such as, indeed, no man of ordinary humanity could disregard.

A panting messenger, speeding along the track from Whakatane, arrived with the news that another band of Hau-Haus had killed the crew of the Jane schooner at Opotiki, had murdered Mr. Fulloon, and captured the Reverend Mr. Grace, whom there was every reason to believe they intended to murder.

It was not known to Mannering at this time that there was any likelihood of Kereopa's band being in near proximity to Erena and her wounded charge. By ordinary computation she should have reached Tauranga several days before that bloodthirsty fanatic could have overtaken her party. Cyril Summers and his household, having been warned by the bishop, would probably have moved into one of the coast settlements.

Thus one danger was contingent, the other was a pressing and instant summons. Life and death were in the decision. Murder and outrage, perhaps, even now, had taken place. The full complement of horrors could only be averted by a forced march and the sudden appearance of his hapu upon the scene. "Angel of God was there none" to whisper that loved daughter's name, darling of his heart, apple of his eye, that she was? Was there no mysterious spirit-warning such as, if tales be true, has often, through invisible sympathetic chords, eliminated time and space? Did not the traditional second sight, inherited from Highland ancestors, and of which he and Erena claimed their portion, prove faithful in that dread hour? Long afterwards – in years when he could talk calmly of his loss, dwell upon her courage, her beauty, and extol her intellectual range – he confessed to his closest friend and comrade that he had felt, from the time he turned aside to Opotiki, an overshadowing, inexplicable gloom and despondency. He was convinced in his own mind that (as he said) some dreadful deed had taken place, or was even then about to happen. Therefore he was hardly surprised, after hours of feverishly fast travelling, to find Mr. Volkner's mutilated corse beneath the willow tree which he had himself planted. Mr. Grace, after being in hourly expectation of a violent death, had been rescued by Captain Levy, one of the survivors of the crew of the Jane, and put on board H.M.S. Eclipse, Captain Fremantle.

Burning with wrath, and maddened with the doubt as to whether Erena and Massinger might not even yet be within the region traversed by the Hau-Hau scouts, Mannering made a forced march, halting neither by day nor night, rendered still more furious and despairing by the freshness of the trail, leading straight for the Oropi mission station. Kereopa had sworn, as rumour had it, that he would kill the third Mikonaree pakeha and carry off his wife and children as a prey, before proceeding to join the Kingites in the sack and plunder of Auckland.

It was midnight when the mission was reached. An unwonted stillness reigned; no dog barked, no voice was heard from the native camp – an unusual state of things within his experience, the wakeful Maori being always ready for converse at any hour of the night. The mission house itself was partially closed only, but silent and deserted. The trim garden was trampled over. The shrubs and fruit trees had been broken down. The keen eyes of the Maoris discerned a spot where the ground had been disturbed. A short search exhumed more than one body, on which bullet and tomahawk had written the history of the engagement. The furniture in some rooms was intact, in others recklessly broken up. A handkerchief, a shoe, a neck-ribbon, told of recent occupation. One article of female Maori headgear, a plume of the beautiful huia, the distracted parent recognized as an ornament of Erena's.

Meanwhile, like questing hounds, the Ngapuhi warriors traversed the surrounding thickets with all the keenness of a savage race. Imprints and signs, so faint as to be almost invisible to the white man, told all too plainly to them the history of the occupation of the Hau-Haus, the arrival of Ropata and his men, the fight (if such it could be called) and finally the departure of the whole party, including the family, the victorious contingent, and the prisoners, in full march for Tauranga.

Hoping against hope, yet with a cruel doubt eating at his heart, Mannering sat with his head between his hands for a stricken hour, before he gave orders for his troop to be in readiness to march, when the Southern Cross pointed towards dawn. Long before the stars had paled, he strode fast and eagerly at the head of his faithful band, on the well-marked Tauranga track.

It was past midday when they arrived. The place was astir, the streets were filled. There was murmur of voices, and that indescribable feeling in the air as of woe, or death imminent. Such was the conviction which smote the strong soul of Allister Mannering as, with his warriors ranked in battle line, he joined the throng, evidently converging towards a lofty cliff, which reared itself above the harbour.

An enclosure in which shrubs were in luxuriant growth now came into view, and marble columns showed themselves amid the dark green foliage. It was the cemetery.

The truth flashed across him. He had been afraid to ask. Was it, could it be, the funeral procession of his darling daughter – of Erena, the bright, beautiful, fearless maiden, whom he had so lately seen in the pride of her stately maidenhood and joyous youth? Lovely and beloved, was it possible that she could be now, even now, before his haggard eyes, borne to her tomb? He gazed on the little band of mourning girls who carried the flower-decked coffin. The native attendants of the missionary family walked behind with Mrs. Summers and Hypatia, while Cyril Summers, in full canonicals, with another clergyman, the army chaplain, preceded the cortége.

Behind them, again, came a company of the 43rd with their officers, another of the 68th, and the Forest Rangers, with Von Tempsky at their head. Also Messrs. Slyde and Warwick, who had been granted special leave for that day only by the army surgeon, looking weak and pale after their enforced seclusion.