"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.
Then came the native allies, the Arawa, the Ngapuhi, the Ngatiporu, all stern and warlike of appearance, proud to do honour to the maiden whose mother was of their race, with the blood of chiefs in her veins, whose descent could be traced back to the migration from Hawaiki.
Those who knew of the love, so deep, so passionate, which subsisted between the daughter and the sire, could partly realize the dull despair, the agonizing grief, which filled his heart at the moment. But none of the ordinary signs of sorrow betrayed the storm of anguish, the volcanic wrath and stifled fury, which raged within. His stern countenance preserved a rigid and awful calm. His voice faltered not as, walking forward when the cortége halted, he respectfully made request that the coffin-lid should be raised.
"Let me look upon the face once more," he said, "even in death, that I shall never see again on earth."
His request was granted. He stooped, and raising the cerecloth, gazed long and fixedly on the face of the dead girl. Then moving forward, he signed to the clergyman to proceed with the service, remaining uncovered until the last sad words were, with deepest feeling, solemnly pronounced.
As the irrevocable words were spoken, and the clay-cold form, which had held the fiery yet tender soul of Erena Mannering, was lowered into the grave, a tempest of sobs, cries, and wailing lamentation, until then repressed, burst forth from the Maoris in the great gathering. Then Mannering slowly turned away, and after dismissing his following, accompanied Mr. Summers. From him he learned the full particulars of the Hau-Hau invasion – of their captivity, their fearful anticipation of death by torture, the sudden appearance of Ropata and his warriors, their miraculous escape, and the death of Erena in the very moment of deliverance.
"She gave her life to save that of the man she loved," said Mannering. "Her mother, long years since, did the same in my case. She is her true daughter. It was her fate, and could not be evaded. She had the foreknowledge, of which she spoke to me more than once."
Roland Massinger, on the way to recovery, but too weak for independent action, still lay in the military hospital.
Mannering, as he stood beside his couch, and gazed on his wasted features, looked, with his vast form and foreign air, like some fabled genie of the Arabian tale.
"She is gone," said the sick man, as he raised himself and held out the trembling fingers, which feebly grasped the iron hand of his visitor – "she is gone; she died in shielding me. I feel ashamed to be alive. I cannot ask your pardon. I was the cause of her death."
The rigid features of the father relaxed, as he watched the grief-worn countenance of the younger man, and noted the sincerity and depth of his despairing words.
"My boy," he said, "you have played your part nobly, as did she; and you have, by a hair's breadth, escaped being buried beside her this day. She died for the man she loved, as only a daughter of her race can love. There must be no feeling but affection and respect between us. I mourned her mother as do you her daughter. Poor darling Erena! Oh, my child – my child!"
Mannering's freedom from ordinary human weakness deserted him here. He threw himself on his knees by the side of Massinger's bed, who then witnessed a sight unseen before by living eyes – the strong man's tears as he abandoned himself to unrestrained grief. Sobs and muffled cries, groans and lamentations of terrible intensity, shook his powerful frame. Weakened by his wound, and compelled to thus relieve his intolerable anguish, Roland Massinger's tears flowed fast in unison, as for a brief interval they mingled their sorrow. Then raising himself, and regaining the impassive expression which his features, save in familiar converse, ordinarily wore, the war-chief of the Ngapuhi bade adieu to the man whom he had looked forward to acknowledging with pride as the husband of the darling of his heart, the idol of his latter years.
"Fate has willed it otherwise," he said. "You may have happy years before you in your own land, with perhaps a wife and children to perpetuate your name and inherit your lands. I wish you such happiness as I know she would have done. Her generous heart would so will it, if she could speak its promptings from 'the undiscovered country.' In her name, and with her authority, knowing her inmost thoughts, I say – May God bless you and prosper you in the future path! In this life we shall meet no more."
Kereopa and Ngarara had escaped; but Ropata, who had started as soon as he delivered up his Hau-Hau prisoners, was hot on their trail. Kereopa, in spite of his keen and eager pursuit, fled to the Uriwera country, where he found shelter for a time, but led the hunted life of the outcast until it suited his protectors to betray him. Forwarded to Auckland, he was duly tried, convicted, and hanged.
Ngarara had a shorter term of comparative freedom. One morning, shortly after the attack on the mission, a small party of the Aowera appeared at Whakarewarewa, the main body of the tribe being encamped on Lake Rotorua. A bound prisoner was in their midst, on whose movements they kept watchful guard. It was Ngarara! A sub-chief, having been apprised of the capture, arrived with leading warriors. One glance at his stern features assured the captive that he had no mercy to expect. Contrary to Maori usage, he did not disdain to beg for it.
"I tried to kill the pakeha," he said. "What harm was there in that? He stole the heart of the girl I loved; who, but for him and his cunning ways, might have loved me. I would have given my life for her. Other men have killed pakehas – Rewi, Rawiri, even Te Oriori; why should I be the sacrifice?"
The chief listened with an air of disgust, but did not deign to reply. Meanwhile an order had been given, and the party marched on, taking the prisoner with them, preserving a strict silence, which evidently impressed him more deeply than any other treatment. In about three hours they arrived at the mission station of Ngae. Here a feeling of misgiving appeared to arise in the captive's mind, and he muttered the word "Tikitere" with an accent of inquiry. But no man answered or took notice of his speech.
But when they reached that desolate and awful valley, and saw the mud volcanoes and steaming springs in furious motion, his courage failed him. He saw the hissing, bubbling lakes separated by a narrow ridge, aptly named the Gate of Hell, standing on which the traveller shudders, while breathing sulphuretted hydrogen and beholding the turbid waves on either side – the while the tremulous soil suggests the enormous power of the central fires, which at any time might rend and ruin all around with earthquake shock and suddenness.
He knew also, none better, of the dread blackness of the inferno, in which the sombre billows of a tormented sea of boiling mud are heaving and seething continually.
As with careful steps his guards half dragged, half carried him across the treacherous flat, seamed with fissures, where death lay in wait for the heedless stranger, he appeared to comprehend fully the fate that awaited him. He yelled aloud and struggled so wildly, even despite his bonds, that, at a motion of Ropata's arm, two stalwart natives stepped forward to the aid of their comrades as he neared the fatal abyss.
"Dog of a murderer, coward and slave besides," said the chief, as, halting on the brink, the guards awaited his signal – "a disgrace to the tribe which never was known to flee! Did Erena show fear when the bullet pierced her breast? Did the pakeha soldier shriek like the night owl when thy traitor's bullet struck his back – his back, I say, and he with thee in the same battle against the Ngaiterangi at Peke-hina? Did the pakeha girl, the white Rangatira, or the Mikonaree cry for mercy when Kereopa was ready to commence the torture? It is not fitting for thee to die the death of a warrior or a soldier. A coward's death, a slave's, a cur's, is thy only fitting end. Such, and no other, shalt thou have." He motioned with his hand.
A yell which made the deeps and hollows resound came from the unhappy wretch, as his captors lifted him on high and raised him for a moment above the Dantean abyss. As the miserable traitor fell from their grasp, he seized in his teeth the mat (purere) of the nearest man, who, but for the prompt action of his comrade, might have been dragged with him into the inferno. But that wary warrior, with lightning quickness, struck such a blow on the nape of his neck with the back of the tomahawk hanging to his wrist with a leather thong, that he fell forward, nerveless and quivering, into the hell cauldron beneath. For one moment he emerged, with a face expressive of unutterable anguish, madness, and despair, then raising his fettered arms to the level of his head, fell backward into the depths of the raging and impure weaves.
"Tutua-kuri-mokai!" said the chief, as he gave the signal for return, and sauntered carelessly homeward. "He will cost nothing for burial. There are others that are fitting themselves for the same place."
Cyril Summers with his family returned to England, rightly judging that, in the present state of Maori feeling, it was unfair to expose his wife to the risk of a repetition of the horrors from which they had escaped. Hypatia accompanied them, unwilling to forsake her friend, whose state of health, weakened by their terrible experiences, rendered her companionship indispensable. On reaching England the Reverend Cyril was offered an incumbency in the diocese of his beloved bishop, now of Lichfield, in the peaceful performance of the duties of which he has found rest for his troubled spirit. His wife's health was completely re-established. Without in any way derogating from the importance of his work among the heathen, which, after having reached so encouraging a stage, had been ruthlessly arrested, he arrived at the conclusion that he had a worthy and hardly less difficult task to perform in the conversion of the heathen in the Black Country. His bishop acknowledged privately with regret that their savages, though not less truculent, were devoid of many of the redeeming qualities of the Maori heathen.