Koche was sought for high and low, the island ransacked in vain; no trace of him was found, and the conclusion was arrived at that he had thrown himself into the sea. The chief had taken up a hatchet to kill his cook, but she sullenly asserted she had never seen a mo-eeka before, and was believed and spared, partly because the fish was rare and seldom brought to land when taken, and partly because her good cooking tickled his palate.
Prior to this attempt to treat him to the mo-eeka, Mate-oro had swept the Isle of Rangi-haute of its inhabitants. The number of captives had proved much smaller than had been anticipated, amounting in all to ten families, and barely repaid the trouble and risk of the voyage.
When Koche, on the day following the episode of the poison-fish—the last, as he flattered himself, of Mate-oro—ascended the mountain of Pitt, and stood upon a throne—
“He was monarch of all he surveyed,
His rights there were none to dispute:
From the centre all round to the sea,
He was lord of the fowl and the brute.”
His first care was to make a royal progress over his dominion, in which he fully expected to reign to the termination of his life. He felt no fear of invasion, having traversed Ware-kauri, and effected his embarkation unseen. No motive existed sufficiently strong to induce one, in the face of the difficulties of a return trip against the wind, unless it might be revenge on the part of Mate-oro, who was dead, and had ceased to trouble him. Of domestic foes he had none. The Norway rat, a deserter from a seal-ship, was the only quadruped on the island; and the seal and sea-lion, the only amphibious animals that had ever frequented the coast, had long since been extirpated, and the sealers came there no more. All looked favorable for a quiet reign.
Near an old seal camp, he found growing some wild wheat, which he cultivated after a manner, and which, with wild celery, water-cresses, fern-root, and karaka, left him nothing to desire in the way of vegetable food. On the shore, he found crabs and lobsters, and the echini (sea-eggs) in the hollows of the rock; and at times, to supplement his feast, the sea threw up her orange-colored pear. The blue petrel had their habitations in the woods, in the ground under the roots of trees, and in crevices of rocks, and were speared at night as they flew about in numbers with a noise like the croaking of frogs. They passed the day at sea-fishing, and not one was to be seen until dark put a stop to their pursuit, when they returned to land, and fluttered and croaked for hours before retiring to rest. But the subject that gave its sovereign least trouble was the dark-brown water-hen, of the size of a barnyard fowl, which inhabited the skirts of the woods, and fed on the beach. It was unable to fly, and made no attempt to escape when approached, but stood its ground, and bowed, like a pious Turk, to its fate.
At the base of the mountain, near a strong spring, he formed a summer-house—an arbor of the trees and shrubs of aromatic myrtle—and, besides supplying his wants, did little else but wander over the isle during the summer season; but, when winter came, he retired to a cave in the mountain, from which he expelled the bats, and devoted his leisure to making the utensils of the chase, toilet, and kitchen. He manufactured baskets, nets, and lines of twisted fibre, fish-hooks of mother-of-pearl, knives of sharp quartz, razors of shell, and mats for bedding and cloaks.
He covered his fish alive in red-hot ashes, and, when cooked, peeled off the skin, and ate the flesh from the ribs. He cooked his meat in an oven, of which he had one at each residence, and several at points on the shore. It consisted of a hole in the ground lined with stone, in which he built a fire, and placed pebbles and stones. His game, after the ordinary cleaning, was scrubbed with sand on the outside, and well washed inside and out. Hot pebbles were placed in the belly and shaken in under the breast, and green aromatic leaves stuffed in upon them. The oven was then cleared of fire and pebbles, and lined with green leaves, and the game placed in the bottom. The fat was washed, and placed with hot pebbles in a vessel of bark, and beside it the blood, tied in a leaf, and propped with hot stones. Then came a layer of such vegetables as were in season or at hand, and the whole was spread over with leaves, on which the remaining hot stones were placed, covered in turn with leaves, and filled in with sod and earth. After an interval according to the size of the mess, it was taken out, spread upon a cloth of the glossy leaves of the karaka, and eaten hot.
No king fared better, and no one that ever reigned passed his days in equal quietude and peace. No opposing politicians were there to vex his soul with diverse counsels, and make the worse appear to him the better reason; no blood of fellow-men weighed down his spirit; no friends clamored for reward, or silent enemies shrank from punishment.