'As I had ridden into the fusilade, a chief was shot in the neck, with the penalty that he could never afterwards turn his head. Happily he was not looking over his shoulder at the moment, for that would have been an awkward position in which to be left. My plunge into the battle was a little risky, but I calculated that the Maoris would, most likely, be glad of an excuse to stop fighting. Combatants who fall out easily, generally are. They regard as a benefactor, anybody who can rescue them from their scrape, with due form of ceremony and guarantee of dignity. My order to the Maoris, desiring peace, was obeyed.'
This is the Sir George Grey whose doings you follow with the keenest tingle of interest—Grey, Pro-Consul. But his other activities all grouped round this signature, and they are to be read with it. From England he went back to New Zealand, thinking he could best influence the Old World from the shores of the New World. He sat himself down in the remote solitude of Kawau, among his books, and every morning his heart beat round the Empire, a morning drum.
Twice Governor of New Zealand, he was yet to be its Prime Minister, a record which is unique. Being asked to work in New Zealand domestic politics, he replied: 'I will be a messenger if in that capacity I can usefully serve the State.' Yet, once more, you turn to the romance maker and discover him taking down, by the lake side of Rotorua, that of Hine- Moa. He rescued it, a Hero and Leander legend, with a variation, from the Maori ages, and placed it, a pearl, among his other delvings from Polynesian mythology. The story captured him, with its naive charm, when first he heard it from the lips of a chief, and many should know it.
''Tis odd,' he made the comment, 'how frequently like incidents occur in the mythology of diverse races. By what means were they communicated? As I have pointed out, in my compilation of Maori legends, there is one of Maui, which recalls to you the finding of Arthur, in Tennyson's "Idylls of the King." The same legendary idea occurs; a child cradled by the sea, none knowing that it had any other parent.'
'Now, O Governor,' spoke the Maori chief, 'look round you and listen to me, far there is something worth seeing here.' Sir George was sitting on the very spot where sat Hine-Moa, the great ancestress of the tribe, when she swam the lake to join her sweetheart Tutanekai. She was a maiden of rare beauty and high rank, and many young men desired to wed her. She found escape from these perplexities in a long swim to her choice, Tutanekai. But the Maori chief goes forward with the idyll, and must be followed word for word, as Sir George wrote:—
At the place where she landed there is a hot spring, separated from the lake only by a narrow ledge of rooks. Hine-Moa got into this to warm herself, for she was trembling all over, partly from the cold, after swimming in the night across the wide lake of Rotorua, and partly also, perhaps, from modesty at the thought of meeting Tutanekai.
Whilst the maiden was thus warming herself in the hot spring, Tutanekai happened to feel thirsty and said to his servant, 'Bring me a little water.' So his servant went to fetch water for him, and drew it from the lake in a calabash, close to the spot where Hine-Moa was sitting.
The maiden, who was frightened, called out to him in a gruff voice like that of a man: 'Whom is that water for?
He replied, 'It's for Tutanekai.'
'Give it here then,' said Hine-Moa. And he gave her the water and she drank, and, having finished drinking, she purposely threw down the calabash and broke it.