THE FOREST FORAGERS
Fugitive Hauhaus--Hard times in the bush--The eaters of
_mamaku_--Bent's adventure--Lost in the woods--Rupé to the
rescue--The _tapu_'d eels.
"After we deserted Tauranga-ika," says my old _pakeha_-Maori, "we led a
miserably rough life in the bush. We were as near starvation sometimes
as we could well be. Kepa's _Kupapas_ and the white scouts were hunting
for us, stalking us like wild beasts, and we were hiding in the forest
and living on what we could pick up. We scattered in parties. I and
some of the Hauhaus selected a safe spot in the deep bush, built
_wharés_ to shelter ourselves, and then went out to the edge of the
forest digging up fern-root for food. We scoured the bush for the
_mamaku_ fern-tree,[13] and cut out the white pith of the tree; it was
one of our principal foods at that time. It has a peculiar effect on
any one who eats much of it--it makes him strangely drowsy and sleepy.
Sometimes, too, we had to eat _whara-whara_ and similar mosses, and the
mushroom-like _haroré_ that grew on the _tawa_-trees, and _hakeke_,
or wood-fungus. We became very weak and feeble for want of food. We
did not dare to light a fire in the daytime, for fear the smoke rising
above the forest trees would betray us. At night we would kindle a
small fire, just enough to keep the pipes going as we sat round and
smoked and talked in low voices."
Titokowaru's warriors, too, ran short of ammunition. For his
cartridges, Bent sometimes had to use small pieces of hard wood cut to
the proper size instead of lead bullets. The natives were also often
short of percussion-caps; they used to save the exploded ones, and cut
off match-heads and insert them. A box of caps was a great prize to a
Hauhau in those days. This ingenious use of match-heads was a common
practice in the later days of the war, and many a box of _pakeha_
matches found its way through supposedly "friendly" Maori hands into
the rebel camps.
For three or four weeks the Hauhaus concealed themselves in the forests
between the Waitotara and the Patea Rivers, their warriors making
occasional sorties and laying ambuscades for straggling whites.
Not only was Bent in daily and nightly danger of death at the hands
of his enemies, the Government men, during this period of hiding and
starving in the bush, but in one of his adventures he narrowly escaped
the tomahawks of his own companions, the Hauhaus.
Bent and a party of about twenty Maoris set out one day from their camp
at Oteka, away inland of the Weraroa, on a food-hunting expedition into
the great trackless forests in the rear of their hiding-place. They
travelled half a day's journey into the rugged bush-country, a lone
region where no booted foot had ever trod. They fished for eels in the
creeks, and climbed for wild honey wherever they saw the bees buzzing
round their hives in the hollow trees. They carried with them _taha_
(calabashes made from the _hué_, or vegetable gourd); these they filled
with the honey. When they had collected as much as they could carry,
they started on their return tramp to the _kainga_. Bent's _pikau_, or
back-load, consisted of about thirty pounds weight of honey in _taha_
and two large eels, all in a flax basket.
When the party left their camping-place the white man went on ahead,
and was soon out of sight of his companions. After a while he found
that he had missed the route by which he had come the previous day.
He pushed on and on, hoping every moment to catch sight of a broken
branch or a footprint or a tomahawk blaze on a tree that would indicate
the trail. He wandered about, up and down hill, crossing creeks, and
tearing what little clothes he wore in the tangled bush, until he had
not the least idea where he was.
He was lost in the forest.
Night came on while the lonely white man was still toiling bewildered
through the dense woods. He spent the hours of darkness crouched up
under a tree, sleeping little, and shivering with the cold, for he was
thinly clothed and had no blanket, and no matches or flint and steel
with which to light a fire for warmth and cooking.
Early next morning Bent climbed a tall _rata_-tree near his bivouac
and scanned the wild country round. Nothing but forest, forest
everywhere--vast waves of deep verdure sweeping away and away as far
as the eye could see. No sign of human life--no guiding landmark.
Somewhere beneath that impenetrable pall of green that clothed
everything were his people. But where?
Ah! What is that blue, thin coil rising slowly out of the forest far
ahead, westward?
A curl of smoke! A Hauhau camp; perhaps some hunting-party cooking
their morning meal.
The white man joyfully descended from his tree-perch, and quickly
getting into his _pikau_ straps again, set out at as fast a pace as his
load would allow him, steering in the direction of the smoke.
He toiled on and on, breaking through jungles of undergrowth and
clinging vines, over logs and through watercourses, until suddenly he
found himself at the foot of a rocky wall which rose perpendicularly
above him for about thirty feet.
He endeavoured to clamber up the precipice, assisting himself by the
forest roots and creepers which hung in trailing coils down its face,
but they gave way under his weight when he had ascended but a few feet,
and he found himself at the base of the cliff again, debating whether
to try the climb again, or make a long detour, and perhaps lose the run
of the point for which he was heading.
Suddenly, high above him, a voice cried, "Who's there?"
The startled white man, peering through the tangle of foliage and
creepers, saw a man standing on the cliff-top--a Maori girt with a flax
mat, a gun in his hand. It was Rupé, his chief and owner.
The Maori was gazing intently down the cliff. With him was a woman,
the old chief's daughter Rihi, who was Bent's wife. He had heard the
noise made by Bent in his attempt to scale the cliff, and he noticed
the shaking of the bush-vines and leaves that screened the lower part
of the wall, but the white man was so far hidden from his vision, Bent
called to him: "Don't fire, Rupé! It is I, your _pakeha_--Tu-nui-a-moa!"
"_E tama!_" cried the old chief. "I am glad indeed! I came out
searching for you, for your life is in great danger."
The _pakeha_, changing his position so that Rupé could see him,
explained his predicament.
"Remain where you are," said Rupé, "and I will lower a rope to you."
In a few minutes a line, made of split leaves of the _harakeke_ flax,
knotted together, and strengthened with _aka_, or bush-vines, was
thrown down the cliff to Bent. The upper end of the hastily made bush
rope the old man had made fast to a tree on the cliff-top.
"Send your _pikau_ up first, and you can follow," ordered Rupé.
Bent tied his flax basket of eels and honey to the line. Rupé hauled it
up, lowered the line again, and Bent tied it round his body below the
arms. Then the chief and his stalwart daughter hauled the light-weight
_pakeha_ safely to the summit of the wall.
Rihi and her father both wept as they took Bent's hands, so great was
their relief at finding their _pakeha_ safe and sound. Rupé told the
white man that he had feared he was dead.
"Why?" asked Bent.
"Why? There are a score of armed Hauhaus searching the forest for you,
and had they found you before I did they would have killed you."
The old chief explained, further, that when Bent did not return to
the bush-village the previous night, his fellow-eelers had come to
the conclusion that he had given them the slip on the journey home,
and had made off to the white men's camp. So at daylight a party set
out to scour the forest round the _kainga_, fully intending, if they
found the deserter in hiding, to summarily execute him. Old Rupé, too,
had taken to the forest with his daughter--before daylight--but for a
different reason: he did not believe his _pakeha_ would desert him,
and as he concluded Bent had lost himself in the bush, he had kindled
a fire on the most prominent hillside in the forest, in the hope that
the wanderer would see it and make his way towards it. His bush-craft
was successful, and no doubt it saved Bent's life, for had he gone
wandering on he would most probably have run into the arms of his
hunters.
So the three of them--the _rangatira_ and his "tame white man" and the
Maori girl--travelled homeward as quickly and as quietly as they could,
seldom speaking to one another for fear some prowling Hauhau should
hear them. "Even now, if they find you out in the forest," said Rupé,
"I may not be able to save you. Be cautious, for this may be your last
day!"
Late in the afternoon the camp of the fugitive rebels was reached, and
Bent was safe.
Titokowaru, just back from a scouting expedition to the forest-edge,
was in the village. The grim war-chief was genuinely pleased to see the
white man back again, and safe.
"_E tu!_" said he; "it was fortunate indeed that Rupé met you in
the forest. Had any of the others found you--my young men of the
_Tekau-ma-rua_--then you had been a dead man!"
Now came an illustration of that many-sided law, the _tapu_. Titokowaru
took the two eels which Bent had carried home on his back and hung them
up as an offering to the _atua_, the heathen gods. They were under the
ban because they had been borne on the white man's back, which was
temporarily _tapu_; therefore they could not be eaten.
The honey, however, was not wasted. Titokowaru, having no doubt a
sweet tooth, sagely decided that it would be sufficient to hang up the
eels for the gods; he _whakanoa_'d the honey, that is, he repeated
_karakia_, or incantations, over it, by which the maleficent powers
of the _tapu_ were nullified or averted and the food made fit for
consumption.