A FIGHT TO A FINISH.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1685, 15 June 1904, Page 7

A FIGHT TO A FINISH.

A STORY OF THE MAORI WAR.

BY OWEN HALL.

[All Rights Reserved.]

CHAPTER XYII.

DICK’S OWN RANGERS,

The capture of the jßangiriri pah, and the death or surender of so many of the chiefs and principal warriors of the Lower Waikato tribe, laid the way open to the upper valley. There the river divides into two streams of nearly equal size, which enclose between them a delta of generally level and very fertile land. The capital of the Maori king, and the head-quarters of the movement had been fixed at the point where the two rivers—known respectively as the Waikato and Waipa —unite in one at a place called Ngaruawaliia. It was here that the conference of chiefs had fceen held which decided to make one of themselves king, and so oppose a united front to the Europeans: and it was here the king’s flag had been solemnly hoisted to inaugurate the new nation. No further serious resistance was offered to the advance of the army along the bank of the river, and in less than three weeks from the fall of Hangiriri the van of the forces reached the point where the Waipa joins the Waikato. Here the forest covered lands on the left of our march came to an end, and were succeeded by wide stretches of bog lands with occasional ridges of higher land between, rising like wooded islands from the marshes, which extended for many miles. This country was either wholly, or for the most part, uninhabited, and it became necessary to cross the river and remove the war into the delta, where the tribes of the Upper Waikato had their homes. We had as usual been kept busy scouting in the advance, with occasional small skirmishes, but when Ngaruawahia was reached at last we liad a rest until the army could be transferred to the other side. It was on the third evening after we had come in sight of the King’s village, and were encamped where we could see the great flagstaff not eight hundred yards away, that the captain, who had now a tent close to the river bank, sent for me. He and Dick were sitting, looking at some papers at the little table, when I saluted at the entrance. Both of them looked up, and Dick sprang to his feet. It was the captain who was the first to speak:

“Acli,” he said, “so it is zat now ve shall run into ze danger of lose ze lucky von of ze corps. Shall it be zat you vill be villing for to go mit zo gousin here into ze new corps vich it is zat he shall form?” I looked at him for a moment, and then at Dick. What? Dick form a new corps—then, of course, he would

be the captain —I should think I WOUI'J. - “Yes, sir,” I said, after just one instant’s pause; "if Lieutenant Leslie forms a corps I should certainly like to be set free to join him, if you can arrange it for me.” "Ach 1” he almost, shouted, as he rose acad £?-ve me a sounding slap on the jbackr "It is nodt zat it vill be left in mine handts, mein yong friendt, and it is veil zat it vill not, vor I voulci not gift you up. It is zat you vill haff been gazette vom Lieutenant in ze militia, and you are ordered to be discharge from ze Rangers," Roth he and Dick shook hands with me very heartily, but it was not till Dick had shown me the copy of the gazette in which my name appeared that I was fully convinced of my good fortune. To be promoted, and to join Dick in forming a new corps; it was more than I could have believed pos sible in the way of luck. I began to think the captain must be right about my good fortune after allDick and I started next morning for Auckland, where he was to receive his commission, and orders to enrol the new corps. Of course I had nothing particular to do except to report myself and await orders; so our journey down was the first holiday, trip we had had in five months of hard work. It had done neither of us any harm; at least so I thought to myself, as I looked at Dick, sitting on the deck of the little steamer that had been built to run on the Waikato since the war began. Dick had grown in these five months as much as most men of his age did in as many years. I don’t mean that he was bigger, though lie did look a little stouter, it was his face that had changed. He looked graver, and .somehow steadier than many a fellow of five-and-twenty, and except when he smiled his face was almost stern. Yes, Dick had grown up all at once into a strong, good-looking man, and nobody to look at him would have believed he was only going on for twenty. .

I don’t know how I looked, of course, but I know I felt a good deal older too. Not like Dick, of course, because I hadn’t had any responsibility, and he had had a lot of it all these months; and yet, as I sat looking at him:—he was gazing at the forest as we floated down, the river—it seemed to me there was something more—something even the responsibility wouldn’t quite account for. 1 looked back to the time when I had seen him first, and I almost started at the change. But now as I thought of it. I seemed to remember that it was the same I had noticed first on the morning after that night when house was burned and my uncle killed. >

We landed at the place where the military road first reached the river, and managed to get horses to take us to the other side of the forest. Dick wanted to see what the farm at Mata toke looked like now that it had been so long in the hands of the commissariat, so we went a mile or two out of our way to see it. I thought it looked splendid, and even Dick had to acknowledge that in some ways it did look tetter than when they got it. He wandered about looking at things, and saying nothing, till at last I let him go by himself while I looked about to find, horses we could hire for the rest of our journey into town. When 1 had arranged about them I went to look for him.

I found him at last, standing with his arms folded, looking down into the hollow place which still showed the spot where the house had stood. He didn’t move as I came up, and I had to speak to him at last before he seemed to know there was anybody there. Then he looked at me, and I was startled at the strange, stern look on his face that made him look years older.

“Why, Dick!” I exclaimed, “what’s the matter? You look like a ghost.” He smiled very slightly. “How do you know, Jack ? Did you ever see one?” he said. f< No, but I shouldn’t have been surprised if you had, by the look on your /face when I came up,” I answered. < He said nothing for a minute: then he looked into the hollow place again. “Well, perhaps I may, Jack,” he said at last. <c ßut there: have you managed to get horses? It’s time we were starting, or we shan’t get in before dark.”

We said no more about it, but I thought to myself that Dick hadn’t forgotten that night. I wondered what he would do if he ever came across the chief Tamati, who had given the order to murder his father. Since that night in the paddock when he asked whether I had shot him Dick had never mentioned his name to me. Was the chief dead? : Somehow I didn’t think so; and now as I rode beside Dick and thought about it all-I seemed to understand why his face had looked so pale and stern that day when he went to examine the dead Maoris in the pah at Rangiriri. Tamati hadn’t been among them, I felt sure.

~ We . had a week’s holiday, and then we set-to work to form the new corps. Bessie and I had made great friends, and even when Dick and I had moved out to Otahuhu where the new Rangers were being embodied, and the

work of getting the men into shape took nearly all our time, I managed to spend one or two nights each week at my aunt’s pretty cottage in one of the suburbs. I think what made Bessie and I such great friends was that she felt as if she had lost Dick herself. No doubt he cared for his sister as much as ever, but he had changed so much himself that she felt as if he was almost a stranger. She used to ask me all sorts of questions about him, and I could see that she was puzzled and disappointed, though nothing would have made her admit it, for nobody could have been more proud of a brother than she was. But for all that I believe she felt more at home when she was laughing and talking with me; for it was very seldom you could make Dick laugh nowadays.

I don’t know that I "was ever more sorry to leave anybody than I was to say good-bye to Bessie. For a girl, she ■was the very ■ best comrade I had ever come across, and she took as much interest in our new corps, and I do believe knew as much about the men that joined it as either Dick or I did. We had to go, however, and all I could do was to promise both my aunt and Bessie that I would do my best to keep Dick from running into danger, and to write as often as ever I could to let them know how we were getting on.

It was near the end of February before we got back into the Waikato Valley, and this time our work lay a good deal farther up than we had been before. We had been gone nearly three months, and in the meantime the troops l had crossed the Waikato into the delta, and had moved forward in two divisions, one keeping near to each of the rivers that bounded it. The King’s village hadn't been defended, and now it was changed into a headquarters’ depot, where there was a garrison, and where military and commissariat stores of all kinds were kept for the troops in the field. There had been several engagements, in which, though the Maoris had always fought very bravely, they had been defeated, as might have been expected when they fought the more disciplined and far better armed troops in the open field. No other pah had been erected since the one we had taken at Rangiriri, and all the officers seemed to think they wouldn’t try it again now they knew how the artillery could batter them to pieces.

Our work lay at the front, of course, where the breadth of the country between the rivers was now so great that it was quite impossible for one corps of scouts to follow up the scattered bodies into which the tribes seemed now to be divided. The force m the delta was much larger on the whole than it had been when we first invaded the valley. The Governor’s plan was not only to beat the Waikato tribes, but to make an example of them, so as to warn the other tribes by occupying the heart of their country with military settlers. He had issued proclamations warning them that unless they submitted by a certain time part of their lands would he confiscated as a punishment for rebellion, and now two regiments of settler-soldiers had been raised, mainly in Australia, to settle on the lands in the delta, and hold them by military force. These regiments were for the most part in the district already, and added largely to the force, but they were not mu oh use for scouting, and it was impossible even to begin the work, of settling them on the land till we had more effectually beaten the tribes who still showed here and there in considerable force, and then disappeared again. The lands of the delta, especially at the lower end, are generally very level, though the further south you go the more you come on low ridges, usually covered with more or less forest. The land is rich, and a great deal of it even in its wild condition looked at a little distance almost like an ESnglish park on a large scale. It wa3 only on a nearer inspection that you discovered that the open land was covered with a rank growth of ferns instead of grass, which made travelling difficult. The patches of forest occurring here and there made it difficult to get any wide view of the country, so that the progress of an invading force was almost necessarily slow. The position of the tribes to whom the country originally belonged, and whose homes were still scattered over it, was much worse. iNo part of. their country was naturally defensible. The villages, scattered about on the level lands, each with its patch of cultivation, where they grew their corn and sweet potatoes, which with their peaches supplied their only vegetable food, were liable at any time to be dis-. covered, leaving them without any provision either for food or lodging against the coming winter. The weather was fine, for February in New Zealand is like August in England or America, the last month of summer, when the corn and the peaches are ripe, and the days still are hot, though the nights begin to grow less sultry than they were a month before. The weather was good for the work we had.to do, for life in the open, air was enjoyable, but it was hard for the Natives, who had to desert their villages before their crops were gathered. We

were kept busy week after week, while the days grew shorter, and the nights began to grow just a little cooler than was pleasant when you had to camp wherever the evening found you without any cover except the blanket which each man carried over his shoulder. We had picked our men with care, and a little practice in the field had them efficient, so that I would have backed them to hold their own even against our old corps of the Rangers. The Maoris had made no important stand since the middle of February, and uoav it was April. They appeared at different points in small bodies indeed, trying rather to annoy us and obstruct our advance than to challenge us to serious struggle. “If this goes on, Dick,’’ I said, "these poor beggars will be starved right out of the district. Where do you suppose they’ll go then?” * It was a beautiful (but rather chilly evening after sunset, and Dick and I were seated one on each side of a glowing fire made from stakes out of a fence at a deserted Native village, where a score of pigs had taken possession of what had been a nice little cultivation. The men had killed one of the pigs, and were roasting part of it at a fire a little way ofi. Dick looked thoughtfully into the fire for a minute before he answered.

"I don’t believe they’ll give up their country without at least one more big struggle, Jack,” he said. "Depend on it they’ll do something before they go; after all, you know, they’ve no place to go to, and nothing to eat except what the other tribes may give them.” "And that won’t be much, Dick, now that they’re in' trouble. It was all very well when they were going to drive us into the sea; it’ll be different now that we’ve driven them out of their own country.”

A stern, dark look came into Dick’s eyes. ‘They began it, Jack—they’ve got to take the consequences,” he said, "but I feel certain they’ll make one more big fight for it before they give in; I wonder if they’ll try it again in the open.” "Not if they’ve got tlieir wits about them, Dick. They know by this time that their short range guns have no chance against rifles in the open.” "*No,” he said, "these double-barrell-ed shot guns are nasty things close at hand—almost better than rifles, I think—but of course they’re useless at long range.” "If I were a Maori, I’d vote for a pah every time, Dick. They’d be beaten in the long run, of course, hut at least they’d have the satisfaction of doing- a lot of harm first. I believe they could make them stronger than Rangiriri too.” "Well,” Dick said, with a half-laugh, “keep your eyes open, Jack. Im expecting to come across a pah any time

now, since the country isn’t so level. I’ve seen half a dozen good places to build them within this last week. I only wonder they didn’t use them.” Two days later we were still scouting in advance, and as yet we had met no opposition worth mentioning. The country was beautiful, and I was half inclined to feel envious of these Waikato Militia fellows among whom it was to be divided. Dick and I had arranged a code of signals by which he could give his orders at a distance, and that afternoon, just as I was thinking of the luck of these fellows—gold-miners and men of that sort, a great many of them were —he made the signal to divide forces. I' was to lead my wing round one side of the piece of forest in front of us, while he went round it the other way. No sooner said than done. I gave the order to my men, and we edged off to the left, while he did the same to the right. The piece of wooded land seemed to be a ridge, coming down to a narrow point at the end where we were, and widening out as it went south. We were accustomed to the task of plunging through the fern thicket that covered the whole face of the country where there was no forest, and in ten minutes Dick’s party and mine had lost sight of one f another. As we skirted the forest I noticed that the wooded land rose higher, and as I looked at it I couldn’t help thinking it was just the kind of place I’d have chosen to build a pah upon. The land I calculated must be fifty or sixty feet higher than the place where I was, and there was plenty of timber on every side to build a strong stockade. I was still thinking how it could.be done, and what would be the best way to attack such a place if we came across it, when two or three shots fired at us from the cover of the trees brought me hack from my dreams. We were about two hundred yards from the edge of the forest, and therefore, I knew, almost out of range of the guns of the Maoris, so we advanced, firing a 'few shots in reply as we went. The firing kept pace with us as we advanced, and, the number of the shots rather increased, so we edged away a little more, in case a stray bullet might do mischief, and pushed on. I was anxious to reach a point where I could command a view of the little wooded hill by which I might judge how far it extended before 1 iell back to reioin Dick, and I thought there was at least a chance of this if I advanced two hundred yards further. I fancied the clump of forest had reached its widest part, and I thought very likely the higher land was not so much a ridge as a low hill, such as I had seen before more than once. We pushed on rapidly, and I was perhaps twenty yards in advance of my men when I caught the first glimpse of what them

was on the other side of the wood. It was the pah Dick had been looking for. After all perhaps . they had ‘been -right. That was the. first thing that flashed through my mind as I looked at it. I had dreamed about a pah in the middle' of the wood, but, after all, perhaps this was better. It was, as I had fancied it might be —the ridge on which the patch of forest grew was almost like an island. It was covered with trees except the southern end, which was bare, and a little higher .than the rest. It. was on this they had built their, pah. I stood still and examined it through my glass, and each of my men, as he came in sight of it, stood and looked at it too. It could hardly have been more than six hundred yards away, and with’my glass I could see it as distinctly as if I had been, within one hundred. Yes, the trilbe meant to make a stand here —a last stand for their homes and country. And there could be no doubt the place was a good one for the purpose. The end of the ridge on which it stood seemed to be almost round —indeed, it was wonderfully like the' bare knoll at Matatoke farm where I had seen. the Maori .-waving. his club the night my uncle was murdered. The stockade took in the whole top of the hill, and it seemed to be built of far heavier and stronger - posts than the one at Rangirmi. The slope of the hill was not steep, blit it was quite enough to give the defenders a great advantage in firing on any force advancing to attack them. It was big enough, too. to contain a large force, and as I looked at it a largo party caiVie round the hill as if they had seen us, and were advancing to the attack. It was time to fall back. We wheeled, and retreated by- the way we had come. It was evident, the party at the edge of the forest undeistood, for they followed us under cover, firing from time to time, as if to challenge us to stop and attack them. v. e took no notice, but continued our march until we had nearly left the wood behind, and then the firing ceased and the party came in sight on the top of a rising ground that was almost bare, waving their guns and shouting a war chant at the top of their voices. Suddenly the singing stopped, and a single figure came forward with a gun in his hand, lie waved his other hand in the ail, as it he were beckoning to us, as he shouted in a voice' that could be heard distinctly even at the distance at- whicn we were: “Haere mail Haere mai, t,e pakaha Aroha toni! Haere mai! Ivanui te stranger! Love to you! Come on. Plenty of plunder!” I had .turned my glass on the speaker for somehow 1 seemed to recognise the voice. Yes, my guess was right—it was Ropata.

(To be Continued.)