CHAPTER XXVII

POVERTY BAY

During 1866 the New Zealand Government had deported a batch of political prisoners to the Chatham Islands. Amongst them was one Te Kooti, whose offence was said to be that, while ostensibly in alliance with the Pakeha, he had acted as a spy for the Hauhau. Te Kooti then and ever afterwards denied this charge, averring that he was at the time mentioned one hundred miles away from either belligerent. This denial has never been accepted, and most people frankly regret that Te Kooti was not hanged out of hand. This would certainly have prevented many hideous outrages; but to punish in anticipation of proof, however satisfactory, is not yet the Briton's way. So Te Kooti was deported to Chatham Island, there to eat out his heart in longing for the day when he should be able to repay the Pakeha an hundredfold for the insults and injustice (according to him) which had been inflicted upon him.

Te Kooti was a clever man, and his wits had been sharpened by much intercourse with the whites, so it was natural that he should scheme and plan ways of escape from a hateful bondage, and means to deal a return blow to the detested Pakeha.

He found and seized his opportunity when the schooner _Rifleman_ visited the island with stores; for he engineered a mutiny, out-generalled Captain Thomas, R.N., the Governor, seized the schooner and sailed on the 4th of July, 1868, for New Zealand. To obviate pursuit he set adrift a ketch, the only vessel the authorities owned, and with consummate cleverness spared the lives of the crew of the schooner on condition that they navigated her to Poverty Bay. The voyage passed without incident, save that Te Kooti strove, during a spell of contrary weather, to propitiate the wind-god by the sacrifice of his aged uncle, whom he callously cast overboard.

On the 10th of July the _Rifleman_ arrived at Whareongaonga, a point some fifteen miles south of Poverty Bay, and here the prisoners disembarked and, after looting the vessel of her cargo, arms and ammunition, set free the crew. The successful plotter then struck inland, marching, so he said, upon Waikato, there to dethrone the king, with whose conduct he professed himself dissatisfied.

News of his arrival had spread, and a mixed company of whites and friendlies under Captain Westrupp set off in chase of him, encountering him on the 20th at Paparatu. After a fight lasting all day, Te Kooti surrounded his opponents and forced them to retire with the loss of their horses, baggage and ammunition, while their casualties were two killed and ten wounded.

Colonel Whitmore at once organised the pursuit, but it was the 8th of August before he came up with Te Kooti, to whose standard more Hauhau had flocked, and who had chosen a strong position in the gorge of the Ruake Ture river, about twenty miles due west of Poverty Bay.

Colonel Whitmore had only one hundred and thirty tired and not too contented men with whom to do battle against over two hundred well-armed warriors; but his courage took no more heed of this than it had taken of the difficulties of the pursuit, which had been through country the nature of which it is hard for the untravelled Briton to imagine.

When the column struck Te Kooti's last camp, where the fires were still burning, the track led thence along the bed of the river between high cliffs, which were fortunately not occupied by the foe. Heartened by the knowledge that they were at last to come to grips with the wily fellows they had held in dreary chase for nearly three weeks, the column went cheerfully forward, and in time came where the track left the river and climbed through a gap in the cliffs into the hills. There the advance was suddenly checked by a volley which had no worse effect than to send the men scurrying to cover, whence they replied to the concealed enemy, who were nearer than they supposed.

Each side fired as the chance came. Some one fell back dead and the nearest man to him shouted down the line, "Captain Carr's gone," and himself fell dead. Mr. Canning, a volunteer, had dodged behind the trunk of a fallen tree and, anxious for opportunity, peeped cautiously over the great bole, seeking a target. He was instantly shot dead by some Hauhau who were lurking, quite unsuspected, on the other side of the tree. Two other men fell, and then the advanced guard retired on the main body, who had meantime been deserted by a number of lukewarm Maori volunteers, while some of the Pakeha were themselves in retreat. To make matters worse it poured with rain, and it was but a remnant of the column which that night reached the bivouac at Reinga, some miles down the river. It was well for them that Te Kooti, wounded in the foot, could not pursue.

The victorious Hauhau encamped at Puketapu, hard by the scene of the fight, and thence sent his runners all over the island, calling on the tribes to join him, and announcing himself the chosen of God to sweep the Pakeha into the sea. The worst of it was, the road to Poverty Bay was now practically open to the Hauhau chief, who was already breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the people there, some of whom had been chiefly instrumental in procuring his deportation to Chatham Island.

It was no _brutum fulmen_ that Te Kooti launched against the settlement, though, strange to say, both Major Biggs, in charge there, and other leading men, imperfectly realised the imminence of their danger. Biggs even dissuaded the settlers from building a strong blockhouse for a rendezvous, assuring them that there was no reason for alarm, since his scouts would surely give him twenty-four hours' notice of any projected attack. He actually laughed at them for their vigilance in watching the various fords of the Waipoa river and, as the Anglo-Saxon is extremely sensitive to ridicule, this very sensible precaution was dropped. The ford to which they had given particular attention was that at Patutahi, and there it was where Te Kooti presently crossed the stream.

Te Kooti, who maintained an iron discipline in camp and field, had by this time received numbers of recruits from the fierce Uriwera and other tribes in the locality, as well as promises of support from some at a distance. Leaving his main body in camp, he now swept down upon the plains with a chosen band of ruffians, and before the 10th of November had well begun, scattered his rascals in various directions over the settlement of Turanga, or Poverty Bay.

Mr. Butters, a wool-presser, rode up at dawn to the station of Messrs. Dodd and Peppard, where he was engaged to work, and to his horror found the two men dead upon their own threshold, while the shepherd had disappeared--he, too, had been killed.

"The raid is come. Te Kooti is upon us!" thought Mr. Butters and, instead of hurrying out of the district into safety, he went at racing speed to the mission at Waerenga-a-hika, warned the inmates, and then galloped from station to station, bearing his terrible news. He was riding all the time through the very midst of the scattered Hauhau, carrying his life in his hand and, had he worn a uniform, must have gained the cross "For Valour." As it was, he had for reward the consciousness of a good deed well done, and the knowledge that he had saved some lives by risking his own.

Some few he found alert and forearmed; others he advised in time, and some he was too late to help, as when, on riding up to one homestead, he saw outside the door the bodies of the proprietor, his wife and their baby. Knowing that here he could do no good, Butters thundered past the desolated hearth with averted face.

The Hauhau had already occupied Major Biggs's place as Butters drew near, and were dancing and yelling like fiends incarnate. The would-be saviour galloped on, sadly thinking, no doubt, that, if the poor major had consented to be wise in time, all this trouble might have been averted. Biggs had indeed paid the heaviest price for his rashness, and his last moments must have been embittered by the knowledge of the fate of those whom he had actually dissuaded from timely action in their own defence.

He met his end like a man. The natives' account of his death--the only one available--says that when the Hauhau knocked at his door he was still up, writing. Recognising that the danger he had held so lightly had come upon them, he called out to his wife to escape by the back, which she refused to do. In a few seconds more, husband, wife, child and servant lay dead, the only survivor being a hired boy, James, who escaped and joined his mother, who, with her eight children, narrowly managed to make her way to safety.

While all this horror was in progress in one direction the settlers in another, near the Patutahi ford, were warned by one of their number, who had lain awake from dawn listening to the distant firing, the meaning of which he did not apprehend until himself warned by a friendly Maori. It was here that the Hauhau had crossed the river, but refrained from doing mischief, as their leader wished to keep the murder of Mr. Wylie, one of the settlers there, as a sweet morsel for the finish. For Wylie was the man principally concerned in Te Kooti's deportation, and the fierce Hauhau had vowed that he would cut the Pakeha to pieces inch by inch, Chinese fashion. Their neighbour's warning saved Wylie and the rest, and they had gained safety before Te Kooti could overtake them.

Benson, a settler who also did good service that day in warning others, had himself the narrowest escape. As he rode home through the night, before the murders had begun, he suddenly found himself in the very midst of the Hauhau who had just crossed the ford. Supposing them to be friendlies, he spoke a word of greeting and passed through them on his way. Many a gun was pointed at him, and the savage fanatics ground their teeth with rage at losing a victim; for they dared not spoil their chance of a general massacre by the premature murder of a solitary settler.

Captain Wilson, besieged within a burning house, surrendered to the Hauhau on their promise that he and his should be spared. No sooner were the unfortunates outside, than Captain Wilson was shot, his man tomahawked and his wife and children bayoneted, save one little boy, who crawled from his dying father's arms and escaped into the scrub. The poor little fellow wandered about for days and at last found himself at the ruins of his home, where he discovered his mother, sorely wounded, but alive, in an outhouse.

A week later, when the Hauhau had departed and burial parties were searching for the dead, the two were found, the dying woman having been kept in life by the efforts of her baby son, who had stolen out nightly and foraged for food. Poor Mrs. Wilson was carried to Napier, where she died, leaving the doubly-orphaned little boy the sole survivor of the family.

Thus did Te Kooti revenge himself upon those whom he deemed the cause of his banishment. But he had gone too far; for above the cry of horror which went up all over the island when the dismal news of the massacre[69] spread, was heard the stern oath of strong men, who vowed they would not rest until they had cleared the earth of this blood-soaked savage and his gang of murderers.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 69: Thirty-two Europeans were killed, men, women, and children.]