Slowly the young man turned them over one by one. Many of them were drawings of outposts, heads of native chiefs, &c. At last he came to one, somewhat larger than the others. It depicted the assault and capture of a Maori pah, standing on a hill that rose gradually from the margin of a reedy swamp. The troops had driven out the defenders, who were shown escaping across the swamp through the reeds, the women and children in the centre, the men surrounding them on all sides to protect them from the hail of bullets that swept down upon them from the heights above the captured fortress.
A shadow fell across the face of Dr. Rauparaha, and his hand tightened upon and almost crumpled the paper in his grasp; then he smiled, but with a red gleam in his dark eyes.
“'The assault on Maungatabu by the 18th Royal Irish,'” he read.
“The brave Irish,” he said, with a mocking smile, raising his head and looking intently into the pale face of the girl; “the brave Irish! So ardent for liberty themselves, such loud-mouthed clamourers to the world for justice to their country—yet how they sell themselves for a paltry wage to butcher women and children”—then he stopped suddenly.
“Pardon me, I forgot myself. I did not remember that your father was an officer of that regiment.”
She gave him her hand, and her eyes filled. “No, do not ask my pardon. I think it was horrible, horrible. How can such dreadful things be? I have heard my father say that that very victory filled him with shame.... He led the storming party, and when the pah was carried, and he saw the natives escaping—the men surrounding the women and children—he ordered the 'Cease firing' to be sounded, but——” and her voice faltered.
“But——” and the lurid gleam in Rauparaha's eyes made her face flush and then pale again.
“The men went mad, and took no notice of him and the other two officers who were both wounded—the rest were killed in the assault. They had lost heavily, and were maddened with rage when they saw the Maoris escaping, and continued firing at them till they crossed the swamp, and hid in the long fern scrub on the other side.”
“And even then a shell was fired into them as they lay there in the fern, resting their exhausted bodies ere they crept through it to gain the hills beyond,” added the young man slowly.
“Yes,” she murmured, “I have heard my father speak of it. But it was not by his orders—he was a soldier, but not a cruel man. See, this next sketch shows the bursting of the shell.”