IN THE OTAPAWA STOCKADE
The return from Keteonetea--The hill-fort at Otapawa--A _korero_
with the Hauhaus--Bent's one-eyed wife--"The wooing o' 't"--Bent
is christened "Ringiringi."
Morning came at last, but the solitary white man in this nest of
savages had hardly closed his eyes. More than once he fancied some
one was trying the low door of the _wharé_, and he looked round the
dimly-lighted hut--a small fire was kept burning in the centre of the
floor--in search of a weapon, but found none. Bent lay there, listening
intently, and longing with an inexpressibly bitter longing for the old
camp-life, hard though it was, and for the sound of a white comrade's
voice. It had not always been "pack-drill and C.B." in his army life,
in spite of the tyrant sergeants. But now it was the bush and the
_wharé_ for the rest of his days--or, in other words, for just so long
a period as he might be able to save his head from the tomahawk.
Daybreak--and no sooner was it light than the Hauhaus began to
gather round the _pakeha's_ hut, while the women were lighting the
_hangis_--the earth steam-ovens--for the first meal of the day. "Come
out to us!" they yelled; "come out, _pakeha_!" They ran to and fro in
front of the _wharé_, and raised barking cries that sounded fearfully
menacing to the _pakeha_ sitting on his low mat-bed, and feeling not in
the least disposed to respond to the invitation to come outside and be
killed.
But the old chief speedily ended the uproar by opening the sliding door
and shouting angrily:
"_Haere atu! Haere atu!_" an imperative phrase that the deserter had
already learned to recognise as one that could be exactly translated
"Clear out!"
Thereafter there was comparative peace. The white man was under the
protection of the chief, and was allowed to wander round the village
pretty much as he chose; but he was warned not to go far, or some
warrior might take a fancy to his head.
Four or five days passed without incident, and then a horse was brought
up for Bent, and he returned to Tito's _kainga_, escorted by the
chief's daughter and ten armed men, all mounted. Tito seemed relieved
to have his _pakeha_ back again in safety, and after feasting the Maori
guard on the best the village women could lay on the dinner-mats, he
sent them back to Keteonetea loaded with new clothes and baskets of
_kumara_ (sweet potato) and _taro_--another tropic root-food brought
from Polynesia by the ancestors of the Maori, but now no longer grown
by the Taranaki people.
Soon Bent was on the tramp again. His chief, Tito, set off one morning,
taking his white man with him, for a fortified village called Otapawa,
where the Hauhaus were preparing to offer a strong resistance to the
British troops. Otapawa was about four miles away by a narrow and
winding forest track. A small river, the Mangemange, had to be forded
on the way, and here Bent had a taste of some of the minor adventures
of the bush. Bent being a rather small man and Tito a big, powerful
fellow, the Maori good-naturedly took his _pakeha_ on his back to
_pikau_ him across the stream. Bent was rather heavier than Tito had
imagined, and after balancing to and fro precariously on a slippery
place in the deepest part of the ford, the Maori's feet suddenly went
from under him, and he and his protégé were capsized in the middle of
the creek. Tito, however, kept a tight grip of the white man, and,
though the stream was running swiftly, they managed to struggle out to
the opposite bank in safety, and after drying their clothes as well as
they could continued their bush journey.
About midday the Hauhau chief and his companion emerged from the
solitudes of the forest to find themselves in the Otapawa clearing.
A hill about three hundred feet high rose like an island from the
great _rimu_ and _rata_ woods that compassed it on every side; at the
back ran the Tangahoé River. At the foot of the hill there was some
cultivation; a steep winding path led to the top; here were a ditch
and a bristling double stockade of tall tree-trunks set solidly in the
ground, connected by cross-rails lashed with forest vines; within was
the Hauhau village. The only access to the interior of the stockade was
through a low and narrow gateway, painted red.
A shawl-clad figure with a gun rose from a squatting position just
outside the _pa_ gate as the two travellers walked out from the
shade of the forest and began the ascent of the mound. A loud cry of
astonishment and warning brought out the villagers, one after the
other, bobbing their heads as they ran through the gateway. Then the
shout was raised, as they recognised Bent's companion:
"_Aue!_ Here comes Tito with a _pakeha_! A _pakeha_!"
Waving shawls and blankets and weapons, the people cried their
greetings to the chief, and the white man and his protector walked in
between two lines of wondering men and women and children, who pressed
in close behind the new-comers as they passed into the palisaded _pa_.
A long, low-eaved, thatched house stood near the middle of the _pa_,
somewhat apart from the smaller _wharés_. Into this building Tito and
Bent were taken, and finely woven flax mats, patterned in black and
white, were spread out for them. Tito rose and addressed the crowd.
He explained, with a good deal of pride, as Bent imagined, how he had
become possessed of a live white man--a somewhat unusual acquisition
amongst the Maoris in that unrestful period, for the impatient Hauhau
was, as a rule, too fond of trying his new tomahawk on a _pakeha_
skull to keep a prisoner long. The _korero_ over, food was brought in
in freshly plaited baskets of green flax--boiled pork, dried shark (a
present from a seaside tribe), boiled _taro_ and _kumara_--quite a
bountiful meal for a war-time bush camp.
Up to this time the deserter's adventures had been, if not exactly
tragic, at least of a severely unpleasant turn. Now, however, they took
a humorous twist--humorous from an onlooker's view, though to the white
man himself it seemed rather the final pannikinful in the bucket of his
misfortunes.
A woman was brought into the _wharé_. She walked over and seated
herself on the flax _whariki_ by Bent's side.
The white man turned and looked at her in some surprise. Her vision
still haunts the memory of the old adventurer as that of a particularly
ugly woman. She was not old, probably not above twenty-five, but
she was blind in one eye, her lips were of negroid thickness--such
"blubber" lips as seen here and there among Maori tribes tell their
tale of an ancient Melanesian strain in the blood of the Polynesian
immigrants. She was tattooed on the chin, and there was a deeply
chiselled blue line on the inner cuticle of her lower lip. Her hair
hung round her face in a tangled mop. "Well," said Bent to himself,
"she is no beauty."
The woman spoke some words of greeting to Bent, but he steadily gazed
on the floor and said nothing.
Then a Maori sitting near by, who could speak a little English, said,
"This woman wants to marry you!"
"Oh, Lord!" exclaimed Bent. "What for? I don't want to get married."
An old man, whose name was Peneta, and who was draped from shoulder to
ankles in a red blanket, walked up to the white man and, halting in
front of him, pointed to the one-eyed woman.
"_Pakeha_," he said, with a quiet grimness in his tone, "this is my
niece, Te Rawanga. You must marry her (_me moe korua_). If you refuse,
you will die! That is all."
This was translated to Bent.
Here was a dilemma, indeed! Bent had nothing to say. He looked at the
woman by his side, and she smiled at him as coquettishly as her one
good eye allowed. He looked, and the more he looked the less he liked
her. Then he glanced at the dour old uncle, and cast his helpless eyes
around the crowded meeting-house. The men were glum and scowling;
one or two of the young girls seemed to perceive the humour of the
situation, for they giggled, and then hid their faces in their shawls.
Bent eyed his prospective uncle-in-law again. The old man was
impatient. He said again, "Take my niece as your wife."
"_Ae_," assented the white man, who could see no hope of escape. "I'll
take her."
So the young soldier was mated, to the satisfaction of every one but
himself. "She wasn't my fancy, to put it mildly," he says. "But I
suppose it was her last chance, and the old man would have tomahawked
me if I hadn't taken her."
Mrs. Bent's wedding-furnishings, which she bundled a little later, with
determined air, into the corner of the communal house assigned to the
white man, were spartan and primitive in the extreme.
They consisted solely of a large plaited _whariki_ (sleeping-mat) and
a wooden pillow, which, to the white man, seemed alarmingly like some
weapon of chastisement.
Matrimony amongst the Hauhaus was simplicity itself.
Bent, now fully received into the tribe, had a Maori name given to him.
It was "Ringiringi," a name he bore for two or three years, until the
war-chief Titokowaru rechristened him "Tu-nui-a-moa."
The origin of this name "Ringiringi" may be explained, as an example of
the way in which the Maoris so frequently acquire new names often from
very trivial incidents. It was a contraction of "Te Wai-ringiringi,"
which was one of Tito te Hanataua's nicknames, bestowed upon the chief
about two years previously. A party of Ngati-Maniapoto Maoris from the
King Country were at that time on a visit to Taiporohenui, where a
large war-council of the rebel tribes was held. Tito te Hanataua was
one of the Taranaki orators, and as he _taki_'d up and down, spear
in hand, in the usual energetic manner of the Maori speech-maker,
he spoke so rapidly and fluently that the Kingites dubbed him "Te
Wai-ringiringi," meaning "The Pouring Water," because his words poured
from his lips like water. Tito was rather proud of this nickname, and
his bestowal of it upon Bent was in a sense a mark of favour.
Bent at this time was a thin, rather weak-looking man, and his slimness
was made the subject of a _haka_ chorus amongst the people, a little
song for which his one-eyed wife was responsible. These were the words:
"_Ki te kai, e Ringi,
Kai poroporo te manawa,
Te iti to hopé,
Whakapai Angoré_,"
("Eat away, O Ringi,
Eat your fill of _poroporo_ berries
To make you strong again;
Lest your waist be small and weak,
Eat to become a fine Englishman!")
The _poroporo_ is a forest shrub which bears an abundance of large red
berries, a favourite food of the _tui_ and pigeons, which become very
fat on this rich bird-fare.
The white man, however, as he told his _wahiné_, preferred to leave the
_poroporo_ to the _tuis_, and to fill out his attenuated waist, which
the people looked upon with some amusement, with good Maori pork and
potatoes.