'A clever marksman,' thought George, as he snuggled behind his rock. 'If I hadn't been pulled down, I should have handed in my parole for good and all.'
He drew a deep breath. He had courage enough to admit that he had been scared.
Smack! Another bullet lodged close by; but this time there was an abrupt, dull thud, followed by a heavy groan, while a commotion further up the hill told all too plainly of a human form writhing in agony.
'Habet!' muttered George. 'Whatever is all the rumpus about? Some settlers, perhaps, have heard of our arrival and come out to stop us. What clever beggars these Maoris are at taking cover! I could not see a sign of one when I was up.' He twisted his head and stared down into the valley; but, seeing nothing for his pains, peered round the back of his sheltering rock.
There lay Winata Pakaro, famous fighting chief, his lips set in a grin of hate, his eyes glittering with the light of battle, his long hair stirred by the breeze as the locks of the Furies by their writhing snakes. Suddenly his rifle sprang to his shoulder, and George, forgetful of his own danger, lifted his head by ever so little over the rock to watch the effect of the shot.
In a moment the explosion roared in his ear; but there was no one to be seen in the valley. Only, almost simultaneously with the report of Winata's rifle, the gloom of the distant scrub was rent by a vivid flash, and George ducked again as the bullet came singing up to smash the stock of the Maori's gun and glance off up the hill.
'Na!' grunted the disgusted Winata Pakaro, and called softly to a comrade, who glided out of the bushes, not three feet from George, who, till then, had not the slightest idea that any one lay there. Winata explained his wants, and the other, whose business it was to keep in touch with the firing-line, crawled off as a fourth bullet grazed Pakaro's shoulder.
The hardy savage merely grunted, took another rifle from the hand of his comrade, and stretched himself out as before.
A crash, a groan, and, as the report of a fifth shot came from the valley, the powder-monkey, so to call him, fell upon his face, and lay still with a hole in his head. He had imitated George in peering over the rock, and now there he was—dead.
'I know only one man who can shoot like this,' thought George,' and he must be a good bit east of here.' Another bullet knocked fragments from the top of the rock. 'He has got our range to a nicety. I wish he would turn his polite attention to some other part of the hill. Ah! I thought so. It is getting too hot here.' For with the sound of the last shot Winata Pakaro glided away, giving a quick call to George to follow cautiously.
Ten minutes later a couple of Maoris stood as if by magic at his side, wound each an arm through his own, and, with their rifles at the trail, set off with him at a terrific pace down the hill.
Difficult as it was, George managed to snatch a fleeting glance or two as he tore along between his guards. On this side the Maoris were running at top speed, their objective being another hill, a natural fortress, which rose out of the valley a mile or so away. On that side, a mob of whites and friendly Maoris, far inferior in number to Te Karearea's force, were racing desperately towards the same hill, but wasting their breath in shouts and yells. But so far it was anybody's race.
'Let go!' panted George. 'I can run faster alone.'
'No tricks then, Hortoni,' growled one of the guards. 'Try to escape and we will brain you.'
Stimulated by the occasional shots which followed them, they swept along in fine style. As they neared the coveted hill, Te Karearea's Maoris converged upon it from all sides, and simply over-ran a score or so of whites who opposed them, braining one and wounding half a dozen others.
The hill gained, George flung himself upon his back, too blown to heed the bullets which whistled over him; but, as one of them passed uncomfortably close to his head, he crawled behind a rock to watch the progress of operations.
But the sharp excitement was over for the time, and the long day wore to an end with nothing but desultory fire upon either side, for the whites refused to cross a ravine, over which it would have been death to charge. The fine marksman of the morning was now conspicuous by his absence, and George wondered regretfully whether he was the man who had been carried feet first towards the camp of the whites after their one ineffectual charge upon the hill.
But towards evening the captain of the white force was startled by the sound of a Maori bugle in his rear, and, caught thus between two fires, resolved upon a desperate charge. He encountered no resistance as he led his men across the dangerous ravine; but, as he ran on, a stream of fire belched from the heart of a bush, and he had, literally, a close shave, for one of his whiskers was singed completely off. So he retired a sadder and less hirsute man, only to find that the astute Te Karearea had raided his camp and annexed his reserve of ammunition, along with all his horses, accoutrements, stores, and baggage.
This calamity finished the gallant officer, who retreated throughout the night over terrible country, with his weary and dispirited column at his heels, ammunitionless and supperless.
They were not pursued; for the Maoris themselves were tired and hungry, and preferred to set about the preparation of a well-earned meal. For even though a man fight in a bad cause, he yet gets up appetite enough to enjoy his dinner.
Wrath and disappointment at the result of the fight had made George unusually sullen, but when the pretty maid who had so deftly bandaged him, and whose musical name was Kawainga, or Star of the Dawn, brought him supper, his sufferings, less poignant than his appetite, did not compel him to refuse.
A hungry man is an angry man, and certainly when George had eaten all the good things set before him, and smoked a looted cigar—Te Karearea with generous irony had sent him a handful—his temporary irritation vanished, and his usual cool temper reasserted itself. He had plenty of common-sense, and recognising that there was nothing to be gained by quarrelling with the chief, presently accepted the latter's invitation to stroll round the camp and visit the pickets. For Te Karearea observed all proper military precautions, and maintained an iron discipline in camp and field.
'It would be no easy matter for a Pakeha to break through my lines, Hortoni,' he remarked, as they turned again towards the bivouac.
'If you are hinting at me, I have no intention of trying,' was George's reply to this suggestive remark. 'But why are you so anxious to detain me?'
'Why are you so anxious to leave me, my friend?' countered the Maori, and, as George burst out laughing, 'I have not treated you ill, Hortoni,' he added rather wistfully.
'True. Still, you talk as a fool. Home, friends, duty, inclination, all call me away from you. You are in arms against the men of my race. Is it any wonder that I fret in the toils?'
'Yet there are chiefs who have their Pakehas,' urged Te Karearea.
'That is not much to the credit of those Pakehas,' George said loftily; and to change the subject went on: 'Where is Paeroa?'
'Be wise in time, Hortoni,' the chief urged earnestly. 'You possess, though you do not realise it, a certain means of attaining greatness. Ascend the ladder which I am holding for you, and you will be great. Refuse, and you are doomed, even as your race is doomed. You ask for Paeroa. He is gone to carry the message of my coming.'
'And who will listen to it?' George asked dryly.
'Say rather, who will not hear my word?' Te Karearea drew himself up proudly. 'Waikato and Ngatiawa shall hear and flock to my standard. Taranaki and Wanganui shall lift the spear and shake the tomahawk. Taupo and Ngaiterangi, Whakatoea and Ngatiporou, Ngatiapa and Ngatihau[1]—all these and more shall hear and come with club and gun. But Arawa, the accursed, shall be deaf, and them and the Pakehas shall my legions smite and slay until the land which has been ours since Maui drew it forth from the sea, is ours once again. Behold! I, Te Karearea, have sworn it.'
The sonorous cadence of vowels rolled out into the night, and George, to his surprise, felt a passing throb of sympathy for this uncrowned king. After all, the land had originally—and not so long ago—belonged to the Maori; nor could the Pakeha be said to be altogether clean-handed in the matter. It was a fleeting mood; but it sufficed to induce George to let the chief down gently, and to refrain from further argument.
Just then the rapid beat of a horse's hoofs was heard, and Te Karearea, with a word of excuse to George, ran back to the sentry they had just passed, whispered an order, and at once rejoined his guest, as he was pleased to style his paroled prisoner.
'During the afternoon I learned that the captain of the force opposed to me sent to Turanga for reinforcements,' he began, smiling. 'This, in all probability, is the messenger returning. I am going to catch him.'
'But,' objected George, 'if the messenger recognise that the sentry is not a "friendly," he will bolt, and then your man will certainly shoot him.'
'It takes some education for a Pakeha to distinguish, let us say, Arawa from Ngatiawa,' said Te Karearea reassuringly. 'No; there will be no difficulty—of that sort.' He paused to whisper instructions to a sentry on the inner ring, and George, glancing back, saw that the messenger was slowly walking his tired horse towards the picket.
'I must ask you to retire, Hortoni,' said Te Karearea courteously. 'I must examine this man, and——'
'Oh, quite so,' agreed George. 'The poor beggar little dreams what is in store for him. When your interrogation is at an end, turn him over to me, and I will do my best to console him.' He nodded to the chief and turned his back upon the bivouac, thinking as he went of the grim jest which Fate was about to play upon the unlucky messenger.
Hoping to get a bit of news on his own account, George strolled towards the outer picket, and in course of time was challenged by the sentry in the strictly orthodox manner: 'Halt! Who goes there?'
George explained, and handed the sentry a plug of tobacco, off which the Maori promptly bit a piece. But he was a surly fellow, and gave a gruff negative when asked if he happened to know anything of the Pakeha who had ridden into the camp.
'They will eat the oyster and throw away the shell; that's all I know,' he growled, his answer showing that he came from the coast.
'Meaning, I suppose, that they will turn him out of the camp when they have learned all that he has to tell,' commented George. 'I should like a word with him before he goes. I wonder if he will come this way.'
'Whakatore Atua!' (the gods forbid) ejaculated the sentry, with a nervous glance over his shoulder. 'Let him take another road to Reinga. I want no ghosts on my beat.'
'Ghosts? Reinga?' echoed George amazed. And then, as the full significance of the Maori's words came home to him, he turned and sped like the wind towards the bivouac, a prayer in his heart that he might reach it in time.
Meanwhile the messenger, a sturdy young fellow in the orthodox red coat of the service, had led his horse to the bivouac of the head chiefs.
'I have come to the wrong place, it seems,' he said cheerfully, little imagining how true were his words. 'It is Captain Westrupp's bivouac I'm after. Well, boys, I suppose you licked those rascals?'
'Yes; we licked them,' answered Winata Pakaro in fluent English, while his leader remained unobtrusively in the background. 'They are now in full retreat.'
'Hurrah! Well, I must hunt up the captain. Where is his bivouac?' He cast a longing eye upon the cold viands, scattered about.
'Nay; sit and eat,' invited Winata Pakaro. 'You need food after your long ride. The captain is not in the camp, nor is it likely that he will return to-night.'
'Oh, in that case, here goes'; and the young soldier sat down and ate with appetite, while Winata Pakaro pumped him dry of information as to the number and disposal of the British and Colonial troops. The meal and the interrogation ended together.
'Thank you, boys; you are the real old sort,' said the messenger gratefully. 'Now tell me where my mates are camped. It is odd that none of them are about; but I suppose they are all dog-tired.'
He turned to go, smiling at them; but at a sign from Winata his arms were pinioned, and while a couple of Maoris held him in a firm grip, a third lashed his ankles together.
He was very strong, that was evident; but he was intelligent too, and did not waste his strength in useless struggles. 'You crafty demons!' he snarled at them. 'You are Te Karearea's men.'
'Yes,' admitted Winata Pakaro,' and we are also brothers of the men who died to-day. So there is a blood-feud, and, as we have you, you must die.'
'You will not dare to kill a prisoner of war.'
'Oh, we will do all things as they ought to be done, and follow the rules of war. You come by night into our camp, pretending to take us for "friendlies," and endeavour to worm information out of us. Thus you are proved a spy. It is the custom of civilised nations at war to hang spies. Good! We will hang you, and so escape the vengeance of the Pakeha.' His saturnine chuckle was echoed by the chiefs who stood in a semi-circle about the prisoner.
The unhappy soldier looked round despairingly. What hope was there for him? Before him a crescent of stern-faced men, and all about him men of the same colour, with faces yet more fierce and horrid. For the rank and file had gathered to hear the last of the discussion—to see the last of the Pakeha.
At a sign from Winata Pakaro two grim-visaged warriors stepped forward with a rope, one end of which they cast over the stout limb of a great tree. The other end, which was noosed, they slipped over the head of the prisoner, who, pale as death, but erect and brave, gave them back glance for glance.
He was a soldier, and he would not show the despair he felt to these enemies of his flag. 'I warn you that a terrible vengeance will be taken if you murder me,' he said boldly.
A derisive yell arose among the bystanders, and at a covert sign one of the executioners drew the rope taut, handing the loose end to the other.
The miserable messenger gave up hope. He was brave, and he did not mean to go out of the world like a craven. But it was hard, for he was young and strong, and life glowed in his veins. He cast an agonised glance around, but only savage, grinning faces met his eyes. He closed them, murmuring a prayer, when a shout, not far off, struck his tense nerves with such a shock that they quivered, like harp-strings suddenly smitten, and for the first time he trembled—not with fear, but with hope.
Again that shout, loud and insistent, crying something in Maori which he could not understand. Yet when he heard it, he trembled all the more, for there was something in the voice which rang familiar in his ears. Yet how could that be?
Once more the frantic appeal: 'Kei whakamate ia koe!—Do not kill him! Do not kill him!'
Stamping footsteps, crushing down the rustling fern—nearer, louder, furious at the feeble opposition. And at last a man, panting, sobbing for breath, burst into the open space illumined by the bivouac fire, gasping as he came his ever-recurring 'Kei whakamate ia koe!'
For one instant the soldier stared, incredulous. He seemed paralysed. His eyes started from his head. His limbs shook under him. Suddenly he felt the tightening noose, stiffened, caught at a hasty breath, and spent it in a quavering shriek: 'George! Quick! They're murdering me!'
The two Maoris with the rope set off at a run. But ere the cord could press the swelling throat, George Haughton crashed through the encircling crowd, tumbling them this way and that; and, as he charged down upon them, whirling the mysterious mere over his head, the executioners dropped the rope and fled for their lives, howling.
In an instant George was at his friend, plucked the cruel rope from his neck, and flung it away. Then pushing Terence behind him against the tree, he stood on the defensive, eyes glaring, but keen; his chest heaving from his run; challenge and menace in every line of him.
[1] All the Maori tribes named above were in arms against the British at one time or another during the wars. The Arawas were friendly.