What would be the first act in the drama? He thought of isolated families of the settlers, now living in apparent peace and security, abandoned to the cruelty of a remorseless enemy. Would the horrors of Indian warfare be repeated? Would a partial success, which, from their advantageous position, and the absence of any large body of regular troops, the natives were likely to gain, be avenged by merciless slaughter? In either case, what bloodshed, agony, wrongs irrevocable and unspeakable, were certain to ensue! What would be the outcome? He thought of the farmsteadings he had seen, with neat homesteads, garnered grain, contented hardy workers, their rosy-cheeked children playing amidst the orchards. Were these to be left desolate, burned, ravaged, as would be inevitable with all outside the line of defence? Then, again, the populous kaingas, with grave rangatiras and stalwart warriors; the merry chattering wahines, sitting amid their children when the day was over, much like other people's wives and children, enjoying far more natural comfort than the British labourers' families—were they also to be driven from their pleasant homes, starved, harried, pursued night and day by the avenger of blood? Like the heathen of old, dislodged by the chosen people with so little mercy? The carefully kept kumera plantations, so promising for another season, were they to be plundered or destroyed? The lines from Keble returned to his memory—
"It was a piteous sight, I ween, to mark the heathen's toil— The limpid wells, the orchards green, left ready for the spoil."
Was all this murder and misery to take place because the representatives of a great nation differed with a quasi-barbarous, but distinctly dignified, lord of the manor about the title to an area of comparatively small value when compared with the millions of acres of arable and pasture still for sale, undisputed?
A contention as to title by English law ousted the jurisdiction of magistrates in an assault case. Why should not this paltry squabble about an insignificant portion await an authoritative legal decision? No people apparently understood the deliberate verdict of a Court better than these Maoris. Delay, even protracted delay, would have been truly wise and merciful in view of the grisly alternative of war. Such a war, too, as it was likely to be!
However, though Erena and Warwick were confident of a fight, no official notice had yet reached them. It might yet be avoided, and so hoping, after hearing with increasing distinctness all manner of strange and fearful sounds, above, around, beneath, our traveller fell asleep.
The morning proved fine. As Massinger left his couch, the half-arisen sun was reluming a landscape neither picturesque nor alluring. Wild and wondrous it certainly was; upon such the eyes of the pakeha had never before rested. The elements had apparently been at play above and below the earth's surface, which showed signs of no common derangement. Rugged defiles, strangely assorted hillocks of differing size, colour, and elevation. A scarred volcanic cone poured out steam from its base upward, while, between the whirling mists, igneous rocks glinted, like red-hot boulders, in the morning sun. Near this strange mountain was a lake, the glittering green of which contrasted with the darkly red incrustations heaped upon its margin. Looking southward, a sense of Titanic grandeur was added to the landscape by a vast snow-covered range, on the hither side of which, he had been told, lay the waters of the historic Taupo—Taupo Moana, "The Moaning Sea."
CHAPTER VII
Strolling back to camp, his movements were quickened by observing that the rest of the party had finished the morning meal, and were only awaiting his arrival to commence the first day's sight-seeing. After a council of war, it was finally decided to remain in the valley for the rest of the day, making for Taupo and Rotomahana on the morrow.