SOME MIRACULOUS ESCAPES I HAVE KNOWN
"There's a sweet little cherub who sits up aloft
And looks after the life of poor Jack."
DIBDIN.
By miraculous escapes I mean those escapes from death that have been
entirely engineered by the Power above, who has preserved the life of
human beings when they were utterly helpless, and who, for some
inscrutable reason, saves one life and allows others to be destroyed.
The yarns I am now going to spin will illustrate, I think, what I have
written above.
About midnight on 6th September 1868 a New Zealand Field Force, under
the command of Colonel McDonnell, consisting of 200 white men and 70
friendly natives, left camp, crossed the deep, rapid and icy-cold
River Waingongora, and started to attack Tetokowaru in his stronghold
Te-ngutu-o-te-manu.
I am not going to inflict on you the miserable yarn of the unfortunate
fight, as I have written it elsewhere; suffice it to say that the
great majority of the 200 white men were untrained new chums, and that
over 40 of them bolted at the first volley. The remainder stood their
ground, although they refused to extend; so we lost one-third of our
number, killed and wounded, in less than a quarter of an hour, and had
to retreat, leaving our dead and many wounded men behind us.
So that you can understand the position of affairs, I may tell you
that Colonel McDonnell, retaining the command of 100 of the white men,
had sent the remaining 100 under Major Von Tempsky, to act on the
right of his own party, and, as soon as he saw that nothing but a
retreat could save the remainder of his force, he sent Captain
McDonnell, his brother, to Von Tempsky with orders for the Major to
retreat at once, and join up with his own party.
This order was delivered, but a few seconds later the Major was shot
dead. Captain McDonnell then gave the order to Captain Buck, who
promised to carry it out. Captain McDonnell returned to his brother,
and the retreat began. Instead of immediately obeying the order,
Captain Buck endeavoured to recover the Major's body, and was at once
shot dead, without having passed the order on to anyone else. The next
senior officer, Captain Roberts, took command of the party; but, as he
was ignorant of the order to retreat, he still continued to hold his
ground, until he was informed by some of his men that the Colonel had
retreated. Joined by a few friendly natives, he retired by another
route, and led the remains of his shattered and worn-out party into
camp next morning.
Having given you a rough idea how things stood with our men on the
afternoon of the 7th (please remember the date), I will now start the
yarn.
It was late in the afternoon when Captain Roberts began his retreat,
pursued by a party of Hau Haus. His men, nearly all new chums, behaved
badly; but with a few good men, and the friendly natives who had
joined him, he kept the enemy at bay till nightfall, when they drew
off.
Now among his party he had a man named Dore, one of the Wellington
Rangers, and a new chum.
This poor fellow had his arm, just below the shoulder, smashed to
pieces by a bullet, fell, fainted from loss of blood, and was
abandoned.
When he came to, he found himself stripped of everything, with the
exception of his tattered and blood-stained shirt.
He must have been discovered by the pursuing Hau Haus, who had
evidently thought him dead, but who, although they stripped him,
forbore to tomahawk him or mutilate his body. This in itself was a
marvel, and shows that that sweet little cherub must have taken his
case in hand, as, with one other exception, the Hau Haus were never
known to omit tomahawking and mutilating a dead body.
The poor chap hid in a hollow rata-tree, and when it was quite dark
attempted to find his way back to camp. He, however, was a new chum,
knew nothing of bush work, and consequently lost his way, wandering in
a circle, and always returning to the vicinity of the blood-stained
pah and ferocious Hau Haus. This he continued to do for three days;
but on the evening of the 10th he managed to get out of the bush into
the open country, and made for the camp. All this time he had been
without a bite of food, with a severe raw wound, with only the
fragment of a shirt to protect him against the icy-cold sleet and
frost, and although all that time in the close vicinity of the Hau Hau
pah, he miraculously escaped being spotted.
As I said before, on the evening of the 10th he found himself in the
open country, and struck out for the drift across the flooded
Waingongora River. He remembered reaching it, then lost recollection.
How he crossed that drift, a very bad one even for a strong and
healthy man to tackle alone, is more than a miracle; but he always
asserted he was fired on while doing so, and fainted on reaching the
bank.
Here he was only two miles from the camp; but his mind became a blank,
for he wandered about till the evening of the 12th, when he was
discovered by a patrol, coming out of a clump of bush, and he was
brought into camp.
Now, just consider for a moment what this man Dore went through, and
what awful dangers he escaped. Badly wounded and found by the most
savage fanatics on the earth, yet, against their custom, they neither
tomahawk nor mutilate him. Then he wanders for over five days, through
bitter frost and cold, with an open and untended wound; he escapes the
notice of the enemy, crosses, while weak from the loss of blood,
starvation and pain, a most dangerous river, and yet, when brought
into camp, his wound heals long before those of men who are not nearly
so badly hurt, and who have not been through his awful experiences.
You may call it luck. I maintain it was the work of that sweet little
cherub, who, for his own reasons, "bossed up the whole show!"
In many of my yarns I have mentioned the massacre at Poverty Bay that
was engineered by that arch-devil, Te Kooti, and his gang of fiends,
called Hau Haus. On 10th July 1868 Te Kooti and some 200 Hau Haus
landed at Whare-onga-onga, having escaped from the Chatham Islands.
They had overpowered the guard there, seized the schooner _Rifleman_,
forced the crew to sail them to Poverty Bay, and had landed some
fifteen miles south of the white settlements. Owing to the criminal
negligence of the Government, who, because they wished for peace,
persuaded themselves they had got it, the defence force had been
disbanded, and even the arms and ammunition removed from the adjacent
districts, so that the settlers were almost helpless, while Te Kooti
was soon joined by all the restless fanatics in the country.
Major Biggs, who was in charge of the Poverty Bay district, made head
against Te Kooti, with whatever men and arms he could scrape together,
but with small success. He was also guilty of an unpardonable piece of
folly, as he allowed the settlers to remain on their scattered
homesteads, and delayed collecting them together for mutual support,
although warned to do so by friendly natives, who offered to assist in
building defensive works. For this delay he paid dearly, as he and the
whole of his family were surprised and, with the exception of one boy,
brutally murdered. It was on the night of 9th November that Te Kooti
made his raid on Poverty Bay. On that night Captain Wilson, second in
command, was sitting in his house writing, when a party of Hau Haus,
under a fiend called Nama, knocked at the door and informed him they
had a letter for him from Hirini-Te-Kani, the head chief of the
district. The Captain, however, had his suspicions, and told them to
pass the letter under the door, at the same time arming himself and
calling his servant Moran to come to his assistance. Moran slept in an
outhouse; but he succeeded in breaking through the enemy, and joined
his master. The Hau Haus, seeing they could not deceive the Captain,
tried to force the door open with the trunk of a tree. The Captain at
once opened fire on them, and forced them to drop it; so they then set
fire to the house.
The white men fought on until the house was in full flare, when
Captain Wilson accepted the Hau Hau offer of life for himself and
family, provided he surrendered. It was a choice of that, or being all
burned alive; and as there was a slight possibility of the Hau Haus
keeping their promise, Captain Wilson surrendered.
Carrying a little boy in his arms, and followed by his wife and Moran,
with the other children, three in number, if I remember rightly, they
were surrounded by the Hau Haus, who led them towards the river. _En
route_ he asked one of the natives where they were being taken to, and
was at once shot, from behind, through the back.
Staggering to a bit of manuka scrub, the Captain threw the child into
it, telling him to run, and in the confusion the youngster was not
noticed and hid in the scrub. At the same moment Moran was tomahawked,
and Mrs Wilson and the children were savagely treated, bayoneted and
left for dead. The children were dead, but Mrs Wilson still lived.
Te Kooti and his gang remained in the settlement till the morning of
the 14th--mark the date--plundering and murdering all the women and
children who had escaped the night of the 9th, and whom his men found
in hiding. On the afternoon of the 16th a small patrol from
Tauranganui visited the blood-stained settlement and found little
James Wilson hidden with a dog in his arms. The boy told them how he
was trying to get to Tauranganui to bring help for his mother, who was
lying wounded in an outhouse at their late home, but he had lost his
way. As well as he could, poor child, he also described his miraculous
escape.
He had hid in the scrub, but next day came back to the spot where his
family had been murdered. Here he found the bodies of his father, his
brothers, his sister and Moran, but not that of his mother.
He had then wandered back to his old home, hiding whenever he saw
anyone, and there, in an outhouse, had found his mother lying
dreadfully wounded.
The patrol went on to the house and found the poor lady in a dreadful
state, but quite conscious. She told them that after the murder of her
husband and children she had been most brutally ill-treated and then
left for dead. When she came to herself she struggled back to what had
been her home, and had taken refuge in an outhouse, where she had been
found by her little son, who had kept her alive by scouting for hens'
eggs or anything else he could find.
Now I call the escape of that child miraculous. For a helpless
youngster to get away in the first place is wonderful; but that he
should have been successful in evading the Maori search, of five days,
for stragglers, and after finding his mother, to have been able to
feed himself and her for seven days, with the food he scouted for, is
a bit more than miraculous, and I put it down entirely to that sweet
little cherub who sits up aloft.
Mrs Wilson and her son were removed to Tauranganui and afterwards to
Napier. For nine days after she had been found it was hoped she might
recover, but her injuries were too great, and she died shortly after
she reached the latter place.
The above short and very incomplete yarn may give you some idea of the
reason why we, members of the Lost Legion, so cheerfully underwent the
great hardships we did to revenge the Poverty Bay massacre of November
1868.
FOLLY, PLUCK AND ENDURANCE
It is wonderful what a great number of good scouts and men have
jeopardised and even lost their lives and the valuable information
they have obtained, by a small act of folly, or by refusing to endure
hardships for a few hours longer, when by doing so they might have won
through safely and have brought to their O.C. the information he so
badly wanted.
I have known men who, despite years of experience, have rushed out of
their camp to tackle a lion with only the one cartridge that was in
their rifle; and there are plenty of men who go prospecting or even
big-game hunting and have their rifle and ammunition carried for them
by a Kafir boy. Trouble comes, the boy bolts, and they are in a mess.
Again, I have known men throw away ammunition and rations, rather than
endure the fatigue of carrying them on the line of march, and how
often has not a night's march or a premeditated attack on an enemy's
position been spoilt by some man lighting his pipe or letting off his
rifle that he has been told to carry unloaded?
The yarn I am going to spin you now will perhaps bear out what I have
just written, and though the man who committed the folly extricated
himself by a deed of heroism never surpassed and seldom equalled, yet
the act of folly he and his mate perpetrated might have led to the
loss of three lives, their own included.
It was in November 1865. The Hau Haus (fanatical and rebel Maoris) had
received a severe defeat at the hands of the Colonial forces and
friendly natives at Waerenga-a-Hika, which so broke them up that they
were unable to face the music in that district (Poverty Bay) for a few
years.
Over 400 of them had surrendered. Of these some 200 had been
transported to the Chatham Islands, the remainder settling down
peacefully for a long time. There were, however, still a large number
of the most fanatical and bloodthirsty of the savages who, although
unable to make a stand, yet roved about the country in small bands,
seeking opportunity to destroy any white man or friendly native whom
they might come across.
Now among the Defence Force, scattered at posts built for the
protection of the settlers, was a big, raw-boned Irish sergeant named
Walsh, who had heard very many extraordinary yarns about some
petroleum springs at a place called Pakake-a-Whirikoka, situated some
thirty miles from the post he was in charge of. I do not know what his
reasons were; perhaps it was only curiosity, or perchance he had
ideas of becoming an oil king. But as things looked quiet and
peaceful, he determined to visit them, and persuaded an old settler
and his son, named Espic, to guide him to the locality.
Well, they started early in the morning, the time being summer and the
weather very hot, and after a long ride of nearly thirty miles reached
the steep hill leading to the springs. Here they dismounted, and,
because they had seen no signs of the enemy, decided to leave their
horses in charge of the boy, while they went up the hill, on foot, to
examine the springs.
This in itself was an act of folly; but they went one worse, for, the
weather being hot, and meaning only to be absent a very short time,
they left their carbines, coats and all their ammunition at the foot
of the hill, rather than endure the slight trouble of carrying them,
and started the ascent with only their revolvers.
Now they had been spotted by one of these bands of Hau Haus, who, as
soon as they saw the two white men go up the hill, crawled up to the
horses and captured them, with the arms and ammunition. The boy,
however, although fired at, escaped and got away. The Hau Haus,
thinking they had their prey secure, tied up the horses to a tree, and
went up the hill after the white men, who, having heard the shots,
were returning.
As soon as they met, the natives fired a volley, which broke Espic's
arm and wounded Walsh on the forehead and hand. The white men returned
the fire, and in the skirmish that followed Walsh was again wounded
and, the white men's revolvers being now empty, the Hau Haus, nine in
number, rushed them with the tomahawk, to finish them off.
In the hand-to-hand scrap that ensued Walsh was again twice wounded;
but he still fought on, and a Hau Hau, determining to finish him, put
his cut-down gun to Walsh's chest and fired.
Fortunately the bullet must have fallen out of the gun, as Walsh only
sustained a bad burn on the chest. Springing in, he felled his
assailant with a tremendous blow from the butt-end of his revolver.
This was too much for Maori superstition. That a man whom they had
badly wounded five times should be able to continue to put up a fight
was bad enough; but that he should be able to floor their best man
just after that best man had shot him through the chest was more than
any decent Hau Hau could understand. Leaving the horses and the
stricken man behind them, away they fled, only too anxious to put as
great a distance as they could between themselves and the awful
tohunga (magician), who refused to be killed. So much for folly and
pluck. Now I will go on to endurance.
No sooner had the astonished and affrighted Hau Haus bolted than Walsh
and his mate kicked their prisoner into convalescence and proceeded
down the hill, where they found their horses tied to a tree, but the
carbines, ammunition, and even saddles, taken away. Both men were
badly wounded, Walsh in five places; but he would neither kill his
prisoner nor let him go. Passing a rope round his neck, they made
shift to mount their horses, bare-backed, and, forcing him to
accompany them, they led him that long, hot ride of thirty miles,
back to Tauranganui, where they arrived that night. Yes, faint though
they were with the loss of blood, racked with the pain of untended
wounds, without a round of ammunition, and hampered by an evil brute
of a Hau Hau, who did everything in his power to retard their
progress. Yet they would neither kill him nor let him go.
That I think is a yarn that illustrates folly, pluck and endurance.