The passage of the Okehu—A night's vigil—Mackenzie the scout—"Maoris in the bush!"—The watchers in the fern—A race for life.
A clear, bright, moonlight night of summer; a moon that silvered the sharp hill-tops of the broken Maori country, but left black mysterious shadows in the gorges and river valleys that every few miles cut deeply into the rolling fern lands; valleys full of danger and death, for in their depths crept the war-parties of the savage, laying ambushes, planning murder and mutilation. On a gently sloping rise on the open fern lands a hundred white tents, the camp of the pakeha troops, glittered in the full moonlight. The sweet bugle-calls of "Lights out" and the "Last post" rang out for miles across the wilderness, and except for the piquets and sentries the camp was soon asleep. But away on the forest edge, a mile from the safely entrenched camp, a little band of men, half a dozen scouts, crouched hiding in the fern, carbines in their hands, watching, listening. They were the eyes of the army. Their wits, their keenness of vision and hearing, were pitted this night against the savage men of the forest, born bushmen, with the cunning of the Indian.
It was the 17th of January, 1869, nearly three months after the repulse of the Colonial troops at the Moturoa stockade. All this time Titokowaru and his victorious Tekau-ma-rua had everything their own way on the West Coast, scouring the country-side, burning settlers' houses, killing cattle, and strengthening their palisaded position at Tauranga-ika. The East Coast campaign following on the Poverty Bay massacre had necessitated the diversion of nearly all the Constabulary from the West Coast, until the storming and capture of Te Kooti's hill-fort Ngatapa and the flight of the rebel chief to the forests of the Urewera Country enabled attention to be again given to the Taranaki and Waitotara Hauhaus. Now, well on in the month of January, 1869, Colonel Whitmore, with Colonel Lyon—a brave one-armed soldier, veteran of the Crimea—as his second in command, advanced from Wanganui with a strong force of Armed Constabulary, about eight hundred in number, besides a large body of Kupapas, or friendly Maoris, mostly of the Whanganui tribe, under Kepa te Rangihiwinui. The force encamped at the end of the first day's march near the right bank of the Kai-iwi stream, about ten miles from Wanganui, and prepared to march the next day through the Okehu Gorge and on to Nukumaru and Tauranga-ika.
This country around the Kai-iwi was mostly open fern land, but some of the river gullies were filled with a dense growth of forest. A short distance to the north of the camp there was a deep gorge, the valley of the Okehu stream. Through this gorge a road had been cut some years before, and the river had been bridged, giving access to Nukumaru and the Waitotara, and this was the route by which Colonel Whitmore intended to approach the Hauhau stronghold. It was, however, plainly a dangerous place, where the Maoris might easily lay an ambush. The little colonel was too old a soldier to run risks of this sort, and he determined to have the gorge carefully scouted before he took his column into it.
That afternoon he selected half a dozen of his most active men, some of them Constabulary, some volunteers, and as soon as night fell despatched them to the Okehu, with orders to spend the night on the fern-covered right bank of the gorge, and find out if the Maoris were laying an ambuscade in the bush below. Trooper William Lingard, of Bryce's Kai-iwi Cavalry—the young trooper who had distinguished himself at the Tauranga-ika skirmish described in the last chapter—was placed in charge of the scouts. With him were Chris. Maling, a young surveyor—his father had been killed by the Maoris years before, and he often declared that he would never rest until he had killed a Maori with his own hands in revenge; a Frenchman called Peter the Guide; three men named Herri, Powell, and Williamson; and an old Indian soldier named Mackenzie. It is with this Mackenzie that this story of a night's scouting expedition is chiefly concerned.
It was the calmest of nights, a still night when sounds travelled far, and in silence the little squad of armed scouts set out from the tented camp in single file towards the dark gorge of the Okehu. They marched as silently as Indians, for they were shod exactly like Indians, in moccasins that felt the ground as soundlessly as a wild cat's pad.
The making and wearing of those moccasins was Mackenzie's idea. This veteran soldier was a man who had been brought out from India by Sir Henry Cracroft Wilson, when that gentleman settled in Canterbury. He was, as one of his scouting comrades says, a fine-looking, resolute man, something over forty years of age, with hair beginning to turn grizzly, and a bold, fearless eye. He was partly of Gurkha blood, and his senses were wonderfully keen. He had marvellous escapes from death, and had even been partly scalped. Once when he was overpowered and felled in a mêlée, a savage had passed his knife around his head and underneath the scalp, and was about to "lift his hair" when a timely bullet from one of Mackenzie's comrades knocked his assailant over, and the soldier was rescued. His companion ran to his aid, pressed down the torn scalp into its place, and bound it firmly with bandages. Mackenzie saved his hair, but to his last day bore the scar of the scalping-knife running round his head. He carried besides his carbine a remarkable weapon, a two-ended steel knife, or dagger, of Afghan make, which he wore in a sheath at his back with a flap of skin over the top. One end of the dagger was a stiletto and the other was a double-edged cutting and thrusting blade, ground as sharp as a razor. It had the handle in the middle. With this knife he would perform some wonderfully dexterous feats. He would throw it up into the air thirty or forty feet and catch it by the middle as cleverly as a juggler as it came whizzing down. He would stick a piece of paper on a post and, retiring twenty or thirty yards, hurl the shining weapon at it and transfix the target in the exact centre, the knife quivering several inches deep in the post.
The moccasins the scouts wore were made by Mackenzie from the skin of a horse. Immediately the party had been organised the old soldier went out with his carbine and shot one of the numerous ownerless horses that roamed the hills. Cutting out suitable pieces of the skin, he fitted them while still warm to his comrades' feet, with the hair inside; then cut thongs and laced the horse-skin shoe firmly to the foot. In a few hours these moccasins took perfect shape, and made the most suitable foot-gear for bush-work that could have been devised. "If we wear ordinary boots out scouting we're sure to lose our lives," said Mackenzie; "we can't scout noiselessly in them, or run fast enough when it comes to running."
An old Maori war-track wound through the high fern above the Okehu Gorge. Along this the scouts marched to take up their night's vigil. Two were posted at the end of the gorge nearest the camp, two more about two hundred yards away, and the third couple about the same distance farther on, above the middle of the gorge. The men made themselves nests in the fern alongside the track, and close to the edge of the slope that fell to the impenetrable blackness of the bush below. The leader, as he posted the men, told them to keep a sharp watch and listen for any sounds, and to give a signal if any of them heard Maoris in the gorge. The signal was to be the thrice-repeated sharp cry of the weka, the night-roving wingless bird that haunted these forests and gulches.
After posting his comrades in their several positions, young Lingard rejoined his companion Maling in a little nook in the thick fern just on the gorge side of the narrow foot-track, and stayed a while with him conversing in whispers. In half an hour's time he cautiously patrolled the track again to visit the others. When he came to Mackenzie, the old soldier was sitting up reading a pocket Bible by the bright moonlight.