FOOTNOTES:
[48] An ornament in the form of an image. Regarded as a most valuable heirloom and, probably, as a talisman.
[49] A wooden trumpet, six feet in length.
[50] The first man to be killed in a fight was called the mataika. "I have the mataika!" was the cry of the successful slayer, and duels often arose after a battle, owing to disputes among the claimants to the honour.
THE COMING OF THE PAKEHA
THE DUTCHMAN'S LOSS
I
It wanted a couple of hours to sunset. All the way from the rim of the world the blue Pacific waves heaved slumberously towards the shore, thundered against the iron rocks, and rolled lazily eastwards into the gathering night. The long cloud-shadows chased one another across the fern, the silver-winged gulls circled the blue bay, ready to chorus a harsh "good-night," and the sinking sun, flinging a challenge to the coming darkness, set the sky ablaze.
Night, swift, inexorable, was not far away; there would be no moon, and the Patupaiarehe, imps of evil, wander in the dark in search of mischief. Luckless the Maori who walks through forest glade or over fern-clad hill when they flit on their wicked way.
So, lest they should be caught by the tricksy sprites, the Maori, who were chatting in the marae, rose to disperse. Suddenly, one who had been looking carelessly about him, uttered a loud yell.
"He! He!" he cried. "Titira! Titira!" (Look! Look!).
The clamour which followed brought the chief—a splendid figure in his kaitaka and coronet of huia plumes. Hurried question and excited answer gave him the reason of the commotion, and he, too, looked out to sea.
A cry escaped him. Amazement, incredulity, fear were in the tone. "A whale with white wings![51] What can it mean? It is magic or——"
He broke off, staring at his men. His lips were trembling, his eyes round. Great chief though he was, fear wrapped him as a garment.
None answered. Some looked under their lids at the oncoming Thing; some fastened their gaze upon the chief, and every man there muttered a karakia, if so he might avert impending doom.
On came the marvel, growing ever more distinct, and upon the polished decks the astounded Maori could see beings who looked like men, though their outward seeming was strangely different from any men whom the Sons of Maui had ever encountered.
Then a voice was heard, calling something in a strange, harsh tongue. A whistle shrilled; a score or so of the odd forms raced from end to end of what the bewildered Maori now decided must be a canoe of some sort, and with magical swiftness the "white wings" collapsed and lay folded upon the long spars. Another call, a loud, rattling noise, something fell with a mighty splash into the sea, and the mysterious vessel came to rest.
One minute of tense silence. Then a scream went up from the watching Maori.
The strangely garbed forms were human. But their faces! Their faces were white!
In the extremity of their terror the Maori fled into their whare and covered their heads. It was now only too plain that the Patupaiarehe were abroad upon that awful night of nights.
Yet worse was to come upon the morrow.
II
On the 14th of August, 1642, the distinguished circumnavigator, Abel Janssen Tasman, left Batavia in his yacht Heemskirk with a fly-boat, Zeehaen (Sea-hen), dancing in his wake, to investigate the polar continent which Schouten and Le Maire, his countrymen, claimed to have found, and which they had named Staaten Land. It was on the 13th of December in the same year that, after discovering Tasmania, the commodore came one radiant evening within long sight of what he calls a "high, mountainous country."
This was the west coast of the Middle Island, then for the first time seen by the eyes of white men, or so it is reasonable to believe; for the claims made by France and Spain to priority of discovery are based upon wholly insufficient grounds.
A few days later Tasman cast anchor in the bay to the west of that bay which bears his name, and at whose south-eastern extremity the town of Nelson now flourishes. Tasman himself gave a name to the bay in which he anchored, but not until he was about to leave it. A glance at the map will make it clear that both of these bays wash the northern shore of the Middle Island, Te Wai Pounamou, "The Waters of Greenstone."
III
The sun had not yet set when Tasman's anchors splashed into the bay and the sight of the strange white faces sent the Maori scurrying into their whare. An hour must elapse before the long-lingering day faded into night, and an hour is time and to spare for brave men to recover their confidence, however badly their nerves have been shaken. So it came about that, before nightfall, the chief and his warriors issued from their whare, and low voices muttered questions which no one could answer.
One thing, however, had become clear in that time of fear and hesitancy. So at length:
"They are men like ourselves," the chief said reassuringly. "There is no doubt about it, for I have been watching them from my matapihi.[52] Their faces are white and their canoes differ from ours, but they have no desire to quarrel. On the other hand, they continually signal, inviting us to visit them. I believe them to be friendly. My children, let us take a nearer look at these Pakeha. Fear nought. Atua fights for the Maori. Come!"
Accustomed to obey the word of their chief, the Maori manned a couple of canoes and paddled out towards the ships.
But the chief was aware that, for all their calm exterior, fear—that worst fear of all, fear of the unknown—tugged at his children's hearts, and he had no intention of trying them too far. So at his word the huge tetere brayed, "in sound," says Tasman, "like a Moorish trumpet," the Maori shouted, splashing the water with their paddles, but giving no hostile challenge, and the sailors crowded their bulwarks, making signs of amity and displaying attractive articles to the brown men.
But twilight was fading now, and the chief hastened ashore to see his hapu safely housed, and to set a guard, lest these queer white fellows should land during the night. The tetere brayed again an unmusical "Lights out!" and with a great clamour of tongues the Maori withdrew behind their stockade to discuss the most surprising event of their lives.
Then the day died and the curtain of night came heavily down, to rise upon the tragedy of the morning.
IV
The day was not far advanced when a single, small canoe rapidly approached the ships, where officers and men ran eagerly to the rail to observe the oncoming Maori.
But Abel Tasman knew nothing of the addiction of the Sons of Maui to forms and ceremonies, nor did the latter allow for their visitor's ignorance. Consequently, there arose at the very outset a misunderstanding, which was to bring about fatal consequences.
One of the thirteen occupants of the canoe must have been the herald,[53] come to announce that his chief would immediately visit the strangers. The rowers lay on their oars within easy distance of the Heemskirk, while the envoy delivered his message.
Making no attempt to discover the Maori's meaning, the Dutchmen rather stupidly "kept up a great shouting throughout his oration," while they displayed food, drink and trinkets to the admiring eyes of the rowers, who were sorely tempted to take risks and clamber aboard. But loyalty to their chief restrained them, and with dignified gestures and in musical speech they signified their regret at being obliged to decline the Pakeha's invitation. Then, conceiving their message understood, they paddled back to the shore, much to the disappointment of the Dutchmen.
No sooner did the solitary canoe swing away from the ship than seven others put off from the shore. As they drew near, six of them slackened speed, while one came on confidently to the Heemskirk.
After a momentary hesitation, half-a-dozen Maori clambered up the side with, according to Tasman, "fear writ upon their faces." This is probable; for here was a clear case of omne ignotum pro magnifico; but that these were brave men is proved by the fact that, "with fear writ upon their faces," they showed a bold front to the cause of that fear, and boarded the Heemskirk.
Scarcely had the feet of the brown men touched the deck than Tasman seems to have taken fright and, as far as one may judge, lost his head and committed a deplorable error.
The fight in Massacre Bay
He was, he says, aboard the Sea-hen when the Maori boarded the Heemskirk and, without awaiting developments, he manned a boat with seven men, whom he sent off to the yacht with a warning to guard against treachery.
Fatal mistake! The kettle of misunderstanding was full to the spout, and it now boiled over. Tasman feared that the six attendant canoes meant to attack; the Maori, observing the hurrying boat, instantly imagined that their comrades were to be detained on board the yacht as hostages.
Stirred to action by the cries of their alarmed friends, who had also observed Tasman's action with apprehension, those in the canoes dashed to intercept the boat.
Whether by accident or design, the boat crashed into one of the canoes, and the Maori, their worst fears confirmed, struck to kill, and did kill outright three Dutchmen, mortally wounding a fourth. One poor corpse they carried off, and the Maori on the ship leapt without delay into their own canoe and raced for the shore.
"We shall get neither wood nor water from this accursed spot," said Tasman, "for the savages be too adventurous and bloody-minded." So he pricked off the place upon his chart, naming it "Murderers' Bay,"[54] weighed anchor, and made off in disgust.
While he was yet in the bay, a fleet of two-and-twenty canoes, crowded with men, put out after him, with what intention is not known. Tasman does not appear to have feared an attack, for he tells us that a man in the leading canoe carried a flag of truce. The Maori really held in his hand a spear with a pennon of bleached flax; but, if Tasman believed this to be a flag of truce, his action was the more reprehensible.
For he stopped the pursuit, if pursuit it were, by delivering a broadside which probably equalised the loss he had sustained. At all events, the man with the flag went down, and the Maori, terrified by the noise of the discharge and its deadly effect, turned and sped to the shore.
So began and ended in bloodshed the first authentic meeting of Maori and Pakeha. Had Tasman not been so quick to take alarm, had he allowed his visitors time to realise his friendly intentions, it is highly probable that New Zealand would to-day have been a Dutch colony instead of a Dominion of the Empire.
Away went the Dutchman, nursing his wrath and jotting down in his journal all sorts of uncomplimentary remarks about the "bloodthirsty aborigines," and in due course rounded the north of the North Island, naming one of its prominent headlands "Cape Maria Van Diemen," in compliment to the daughter of his patron, Anthony Van Diemen, governor of the Dutch East Indies.
A little farther north he made the islands which he charted under the name of "The Three Kings," since he discovered them upon the Epiphany, and he again endeavoured to obtain "rest and refreshment." But he was disappointed once more, for the same cautiousness which had led him so precipitately to launch the boat on that unhappy day in Massacre Bay, now caused him to sheer off from The Three Kings. Small wonder, though, that he did not stop there to investigate.
"For we did see," he records in his journal, "thirty-five natives of immense size, who advanced with prodigious long strides, bearing great clubs in their hands."
"Valentine," "Jack," or any other historic destroyer of the race of giants might well have been excused for showing a clean pair of heels in face of such odds. Thirty-five of them! It was too much for Tasman, who, without more ado, bore away for Cocos, where he obtained the "rest and refreshment" of which he stood so much in need.
So Abel Tasman never set foot in New Zealand. Having mistaken the southern extremity of Tasmania for that of Australia, he now fell into the error of believing the land at which he had touched to be part of the polar continent, or Staaten Land. Months later, the mistake was corrected, and Tasman's newest discovery received the name by which it has ever since been known—New Zealand.
In this manner came the first Pakeha to the country of the Maori, and fled in fear, learning nought of the land or of its people. The Children of Maui watched for the return of the men with the strange white faces; but they came not, neither Tasman nor any other. So the visit of the Pakeha became a memory ever growing fainter, until at last it died, not even tradition keeping it alive.
Then, one hundred and twenty-seven years after Abel Tasman had found and seen and gone away, there came a greater than he, one not so easily turned back—the captain of the Endeavour, James Cook of undying memory.