The superstitious fellows actually surrounded the capstan and prevented the weighing of the anchor, until one of themselves, Lieutenant Wirihana, an exceptionally strong man and one of the best officers in the contingent, swung the ringleader up in his arms and made to heave him overboard. A round dozen of the offender's relatives rushed the officer, and even then with difficulty prevented disaster to their cousin.
Kereopa, tired of dodging about the region round Opotiki, struck across country for Poverty Bay, preaching his perverted gospel as he went. Behind him followed Patara, intent to prevent his fellow-prophet from too free an indulgence in his lust for blood. Patara more than suspected his colleague of an intention to murder Bishop Williams, and this he was determined not to allow. Kereopa had good ground in which to sow his evil seed, yet many of the leading chiefs among the Ngati-Porou not only refused to join him, but requested the Government to supply them with firearms, so that they might adequately deal with the monster. The request was sensibly granted, and Ropata and his chiefs kept the Hauhau busy until the arrival of Captain Fraser and his colonials.
Ropata showed the manner of man he was in the fights which followed. A dozen of his own sub-tribe (Aowera, of the iwi of Ngati-Porou) had been taken, fighting among the Hauhau. Ropata set them before him in a row and said, more in sorrow than in anger, "This is my word to you, O foolish children. You are about to die. I do not kill you because you fought against me, but because you disobeyed my orders and joined the Hauhau." He then shot every man of the twelve with his own hand.
Like master, like man. On one occasion a couple of fleeing Hauhau encountered one of Ropata's dispatch-bearers and, delighted to make a capture, haled him in the direction of Patara's camp. But they had caught a Tartar, though they were left little time to realise it. Ropata's man, with every sense alert, noticed that the tupara carried by one of his captors was capped and cocked. Assuming the gun to be loaded, the prisoner suddenly snatched it, wheeled like lightning and shot the other guard. Number one could, of course, make no resistance, and was almost immediately shot dead with the second barrel of his own gun. The cleverness of the prisoner in first shooting the armed guard illustrates very well the quick-wittedness of the average Maori.
In September, Sir George Grey formally proclaimed that the war which had begun at the time of the murders at Oakura was at an end, and that, the rebels having been punished enough by their disasters in the field and the confiscation of part of their lands, he pardoned all who had taken up arms, save those responsible for certain murders. The Governor further announced that he would confiscate no more lands on account of the war, and that he would release all prisoners as soon as the rebels should return in peace to their homes. The proclamation gave great offence to numbers of colonists, who jeered at the idea of peace while so many Maori were in arms; but Sir George Grey's statement that "the war was at an end" had no reference to the Hauhau, neither were they included in his pardon—unless, indeed, they chose promptly to submit, which they did not.
The Hauhau on the west coast made clear their decision in a most atrocious fashion. The Governor dispatched the proclamation to Patea, near Whanganui, by a Maori, who was shot, but lived long enough to warn the Government interpreter, Mr. Broughton, who was coming up behind him, to put no trust in the Hauhau.
Mr. Broughton was doubly deceived. He believed in his own influence over the Maori, and he was quite unaware that the Hauhau were predetermined to kill any messengers bringing overtures of peace. Their treachery went further; for, in order to be sure of a victim, they had begged that an interpreter might be sent to explain to them certain passages in the Governor's message which they professed not to understand.
After such a beginning, the end was inevitable, should Mr. Broughton persist in delivering himself into the power of the Hauhau. And this, deaf to advice and persuasion, he did. Three Hauhau came out from the pa to meet him when he arrived on the 30th of September, and even then he was offered a last chance of escape; for one of the three had formerly been in his service, and now implored his old master not to trust himself within the pa. Mr. Broughton persisted, and was received in sullen silence. Striving to seem unconcerned, he took no notice of the incivility, and moved towards a fire which was burning in the marae. As he reached it, a Hauhau shot him in the back, and the poor man fell dying into the blaze, where he lay until some of his murderers pulled him out and flung him, still alive, over the cliff into the Patea.
The hatred of the Hauhau for the Pakeha was intense, and their attitude to the whites differed completely from that of the Maori in previous wars. They seemed to be obsessed with evil spirits, whose mission was to promote in their victims a lust for blood and a disposition for cruelty of the most appalling kind. They were as men who had swallowed a drug having power to kill goodness and purity and generosity, and to fill the soul in their stead with malice, hatred and vices too degrading to be named.
It was fortunate for New Zealand that the evil seed which Te Ua sowed fell only here and there on soil whence it sprang rank and poisonous as the deadly upas tree; for, had it taken root universally, there is no saying at what bitter cost the colonists must have weeded it out. But, though almost every tribe in the north sent its recruits to the fanatics, there yet remained in most of them a remnant who refused "to bow the knee to Baal," and who, if they did not fight for the Pakeha, at least gave no aid to the Hauhau.