Whether by accident or design, the boat crashed into one of the canoes, and the Maori, their worst fears confirmed, struck to kill, and did kill outright three Dutchmen, mortally wounding a fourth. One poor corpse they carried off, and the Maori on the ship leapt without delay into their own canoe and raced for the shore.
"We shall get neither wood nor water from this accursed spot," said Tasman, "for the savages be too adventurous and bloody-minded." So he pricked off the place upon his chart, naming it "Murderers' Bay,"[54] weighed anchor, and made off in disgust.
While he was yet in the bay, a fleet of two-and-twenty canoes, crowded with men, put out after him, with what intention is not known. Tasman does not appear to have feared an attack, for he tells us that a man in the leading canoe carried a flag of truce. The Maori really held in his hand a spear with a pennon of bleached flax; but, if Tasman believed this to be a flag of truce, his action was the more reprehensible.
For he stopped the pursuit, if pursuit it were, by delivering a broadside which probably equalised the loss he had sustained. At all events, the man with the flag went down, and the Maori, terrified by the noise of the discharge and its deadly effect, turned and sped to the shore.
So began and ended in bloodshed the first authentic meeting of Maori and Pakeha. Had Tasman not been so quick to take alarm, had he allowed his visitors time to realise his friendly intentions, it is highly probable that New Zealand would to-day have been a Dutch colony instead of a Dominion of the Empire.
Away went the Dutchman, nursing his wrath and jotting down in his journal all sorts of uncomplimentary remarks about the "bloodthirsty aborigines," and in due course rounded the north of the North Island, naming one of its prominent headlands "Cape Maria Van Diemen," in compliment to the daughter of his patron, Anthony Van Diemen, governor of the Dutch East Indies.
A little farther north he made the islands which he charted under the name of "The Three Kings," since he discovered them upon the Epiphany, and he again endeavoured to obtain "rest and refreshment." But he was disappointed once more, for the same cautiousness which had led him so precipitately to launch the boat on that unhappy day in Massacre Bay, now caused him to sheer off from The Three Kings. Small wonder, though, that he did not stop there to investigate.
"For we did see," he records in his journal, "thirty-five natives of immense size, who advanced with prodigious long strides, bearing great clubs in their hands."
"Valentine," "Jack," or any other historic destroyer of the race of giants might well have been excused for showing a clean pair of heels in face of such odds. Thirty-five of them! It was too much for Tasman, who, without more ado, bore away for Cocos, where he obtained the "rest and refreshment" of which he stood so much in need.
So Abel Tasman never set foot in New Zealand. Having mistaken the southern extremity of Tasmania for that of Australia, he now fell into the error of believing the land at which he had touched to be part of the polar continent, or Staaten Land. Months later, the mistake was corrected, and Tasman's newest discovery received the name by which it has ever since been known—New Zealand.