Several skirmishes between the whites and Maoris occurred in the winter and early spring of 1866, and one of these had some concern for the exile. About three miles away from Taiporohenui was a village called Pokaikai, to which "Ringiringi" was sent awhile by his chief. While he was there the prophet Te Ua arrived. He dreamed a dream, one of bad omen, and he straightway counselled "Ringiringi" to return at once to Taiporohenui. "Ringi" obeyed. Three days, or, rather, three nights afterwards, a force of colonial soldiers under Colonel McDonnell unexpectedly attacked Pokaikai and rushed the village, killing several Hauhaus. In some way the Forest Rangers under McDonnell had heard that the deserter Kimble Bent was in Pokaikai, and they were eager to capture or shoot him. Some of them surrounded one of the wharés in which they imagined Bent was sleeping. A young volunteer named Spain had just previously, unnoticed by them, gone into the wharé to bring out a dead Hauhau, and while he was there the Rangers—hearing some one say there was a white man within—fired a volley into the hut, which unfortunately mortally wounded Spain. This young soldier was the only pakeha killed in the fight.
THE SCOUT
Tu-Mahuki, a friendly Maori of the Whanganui tribe who served on the British side in the Maori War, with his wife Takiora.
(From a sketch by Major von Tempsky, 1866.)
When "Ringiringi" heard of the Pokaikai affair from the fugitives who fled through the bush to Taiporohenui, he felt that the Hauhau prophet had indeed been his good angel, for it was only Te Ua's injunction to return to the main Hauhau camp that had saved him from the vengeful bullets of his fellow-whites. And thenceforward the white man was a dreamer of many a strange dream, and he came to believe almost as implicitly as the forest-men themselves in the omens that lay in the visions of the night, and in warning voices from the spirit-world.
About this time "Ringiringi" changed hands, much as if he were a fat porker or a keg of powder or any other article of Maori barter. Rupé ("Wood-pigeon"), a chief of Taiporohenui, made request of Tito—to whom he was related—for his pakeha mokai, his tame white man. He had never owned a pakeha, he explained, and would like one all to himself, and he knew that "Ringiringi" would be a handy man to have around, to keep his armoury of guns, of miscellaneous makes and dates, in repair, and to make cartridges for him. So "Ringiringi" was passed over to his new owner, whom he served, with the exception of some short intervals in the war-time and in the period of exile on the Upper Waitara, until 1878.
Soon after "Ringiringi" had become one of Rupé's household, his chief's son, a young lad named Kuku (another name for the wood-pigeon), fell seriously ill. The white man doctored and carefully nursed the boy, and under his treatment he recovered. Rupé's gratitude to his mokai took a chieftain-like form. As payment, or utu, for curing his son, he led up his daughter, a young girl of fifteen or sixteen, and presented her to "Ringiringi" as his wife.
"Indeed, she was a pretty girl," says the old pakeha-Maori, recalling the dead past. "I'll never forget her. She had handsome features, almost European, though she was of pure Maori blood. Her lips were small, her hair was wavy and curly, instead of hanging in a straight, black mat, and she had what was very strange in a Maori, blue eyes—the first blue-eyed native I have ever seen. She was a very gentle girl—she never kanga'd or said unpleasant things about others, never quarrelled with the other women. She did not smoke either, which was unusual. Her chin was tattooed, but not too thickly or deeply. She had, too, the rapé and tiki-hopé patterns engraved on her body, the hip, and thigh, tattooing which was in fashion in those days, and which the girls and women were proud of displaying when they went out to bathe."
With this agreeable young wife, whose name was Rihi, or Te Hau-roroi-ua, Bent lived for nearly three years. She bore one child, which died, and soon after she, too, died, to the pakeha-Maori's great sorrow. His one-eyed wife, the lady of Otapawa, had left her unwilling husband some months before he took Rihi in Maori marriage.