The Swimmer.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 2, 10 July 1912, Page 51

The Swimmer.

A STORY OF COOK STRAIT.

Written for The Weekly Graphic ”by

James Cowan.

©NE bright anil windy morning four-score years ago saw a long red-painted canoe, packed with

wild-looking brown men, sliding northward over the long blue swell that set into the southern entrance to Cook Strait, the Maori Sea of Raukawa. A triangular sail, apex downwards, made of interwoven strong strands of twisted Max, was set on a mast forward, and under its steady pull the great dug-out—it must have been quite eighty feet in length with a beam amidship of five or six feet —went easily climbing up the clear hills of brine and spearing down into the purpled hollows with a monstrous tongue-darting gargoyle of a carved figurehead out-thrust before it like some pagan god of the wind and waves. There were perhaps sixty people on board, some on the thwarts, some squatting on the closelaid manuka-sticks that formed the flooring of the canoe. Most of them were men, fieree-eyed, black-tattooed fellows, stripped to a waist mat, with short handled tomahawks or weapons of greenstone or whalebone stuck in their flaxplaited girdles; flintlock muskets were laid beside them. In the stern sat two steersmen with their long steering-pad-dles, one out on either side of the tall spiral-carved sternpost; the helmsmen were the pick of the canoe crew, for the brisk southerly swell made the safe handling of the long, narrow craft a matter of delicate sea skill. And just in front of 'them squatted the captain of the_yvar canoe in a crouching attitude, with a flax mat about his shoulders; a small-built man with a hawk like profile, the hooked nose that the Maoris ■■•al! “ihu-kaka” or “parrott’s-beak,” and an eye and expression that indicated a, mingling of cunning and ferocity. This was Rauparaha, the great Rauparaha who had conquered all before him with his newly-gotten muskets in the hands of his "ever victorious” army- of NgatiToa. lie was returning to the shores of llataitai (where Wellington now stands) and to Kapiti Island with his captives and his loot from the sack of Kaiapohia, the ruined capital of the Ngai-Tahu tribe', that stood a few miles from the present site of ( hristchurch. Ami there in the middle of the canoe were some of the miserable new-made slaves, oir.-e free men and women of Kaiapohia; they sat with bowed heads, their arms were loosely bound; in front of them and beside them with ghastly savage irony were displayed a number of decapitated heads, some of them the heads of their closest relatives slain in the storming of their stockaded home-town.

The canoe was one of a fleet, for m the distance, ahead and on either hand, you could have seen the three-cornered sails of other canoes —some were big double canoes—gleaming a moment in the strong sunshine, then dipping as the war-boats sank into the trough of the

With this brave fair wind the run to the fortress-isle of Kapiti was only a matter of a few hours now, for Cape • ampbell lay well astern. But the Sea of Raukawa, funnel-like and mountainbounded, is notorious for its unexpected shifts of wind, and so it eame that all of a sudden the flax sail of Rail’s war-canoe "as taken aback, and only sailorly promptitude kept the long narrow craft ’'"ht side up. The flaxrope sheet was '■i't loose in an instant and the sail and mast doused; and out came the paddles, ■he wind had ehopped right round to I io nor’-wes't, and it was now a dead I’ 11 '-. '’’l* l the teeth of the breeze. Old tin s tattooed brows grew bhvek and '"iibled as he ],j 3 ]j Cen quick gaze •iiouiid the horizon and mumbled a karakla a storm-allaying charm. The pad'll''- were now going strong, full forty them. I'he prisoners had been tinbound and paddles thrust into their '•‘mis, and soOn they were toiling as II rd, if not as willingly, as the others. P ami down like one man went the miked brown shoulders and the foatherI' mned black heads; ami a gray-haired warrior rose in the middle of the canoe ai "l waving a s|a*ttr tongued weapon of »x>od, a Uriah*, belted with red kaka

feathers jusp below the tongue, chanted a time song for the erew —"Rite, ko te rite, rite, ko te rite, hukere, ka hukere”; and so the cannibal boat fought onwards over the wind-troubled breast of HineMoana.

One of the ’midship captives, paddling with a dull mechanical stroke, was a chief of the South Island tribe, the NgaiTuahuriri, who were the principal elan of Kaiapohia pa. His name—as my old Maori historian and folk-lorist Whabahora tells me —was Kahaki-rangi. He was a man of perhaps forty; a tall, square-shouldered, powerful fellow, a "toa” or warrior of some repute in his ■tribe. Beside him, crouching on the bottom of the vanbe, with but a scrap of torn waist-mat to clothe her nakedness, was his young daughter, a girl of fifteen or sixteen years, dragged away like him from the ravaged pa, a destined slavewife for some' Ngati-toa savage. Her name was Pito-rua.

For some hours the canoe men paddled steadily on, steaming with salty perspiration, for_it was bitter hard work forcing the deeply-laden craft through the water, and the sea had lost its regularity of run in consequence of the shift of the wind, and grew confused and choppy. The other canoes were not to be seen, for they, too, had to lower their sails and take to the paddles. Old Ran’ headed his canoe for the faintlooming hills of llataitai; he was anxious to get under shelter of the land.

And now the paddlers were hungry as well as weary. There was plenty of water on board, in calabashes, but no food except a few small baskets of kumara. "We are hungry,” said one of the warriors to Ran’; “we are mate-kaf. Let us lie-to for a meal, else we shall never reach the further shore of Raukawa.”

Old Rauparaha's firoiHous eye lighted on the woeful little group of prisoners huddled amidships. There were several women and girls besides the young girl Pito-rua.

"Heat the oven!” ordered the old savage.

Several men laid their paddles inboard and busied themselves in the forepart of the canoe. There, well up towards the bows, was a pile of large flat stones, the oven-stones, such as were carried on large canoes on long cruises. The “ko-hatu-takataka ” or “ ahi-papa ” this primitive sea-stove was called. The oven was quickly prepared. Rough mats were dipped in the sea, and laid dripping on the bottom of the canoe, and the stones were arranged on the top of them. Wet mats were also laid around the edges of the fireplace to prevent damage to the canoe. Sticks of manuka were piled upon the flat stones, and ignited with flint and steel (a gun-flint and a tomahawk head), and the cannibal fire was soon blazing away. " That girl will do!” said Rauparaha, pointing a cruel hooked linger at poor Pito-rua. “Kill her and cook her!”

The poor little girl did not utter a sound as she saw her murderers come crouching over the thwarts towards her. She gave her father a pitiful look and sprang to his side. The horror-stricken Kahaki-rangi pressed his nose to the girl’s in farewell. The next instant she was torn violently from his arms, and a tomahawk sank into her brain. The father sprang at the executioner, but was felled by a blow from a man behind him.

“Slay that man, too!” cried Rauparaha. "lie is the girl's father, is he? Then cook him also!”

But Kahaki-rangi did not wait for the cooking. Exerting all his strength he threw his opponents off, stunned me of them with a canoe-paddle, and in a moment had jumped over the side of the canoe and had disappeared. Diving, he swam under water in the wake of the canoe as long as bis breath held out, and when he rose on the top of a wave and turned his head to look back, he saw the canoe was nearly twice her length from him. A yell, eame from the cannibals, and two or three men

snatched up loaded muskets and tired at him, but he dived again before the triggers were pressed. Rauparaha did not put his canoe around and give chase to the escapee, as he probably would have done had tHe water been smooth. And a meal was more important just then. >So the fugb tive was left to sink or swim there in miil-strait, while lijis daughter’s flesh was Toasted on the red-hot stones of the “ ahi-papa,” and poor little Pito-rua went into the stomachs of the Ngati-Toa anthropophagi. Most men in Kahaki's plight would have just thrown up their arms and gone to the bottom. He was right out in the middle of the stormy >Sea of Raukawa; as lie lifted on the top of the sea he could just see the’ faint blue mountains of the South Island, the ranges at the back of Cloudy Bay, and beyong them the snows of the Kaikouras. In the other direction were the hills of the llataitai country and the purple mountains that rose back of the Wha-nganui-a-Tara entrance, the harbour which we now call Port Nicholson. But that was the enemy’s country. His one hope, a poor one, lay in winning the southern shore. And towards that southern shore, the coast of Cloudy Bay, the brave Kahaki-rangi tinned his resolute tattooed face.

Hour after hour Kahaki swam slowly but steadily on. The sea was rough and the spray half-blinded him often, but he cleared his eyes with a dash of a brown hand and swam on, now and again turning on his back to ease his arms and float awhile. He was a man of great muscular development, an athlete such as the Maori toa had to be in those days of perpetual war. The night came down, and still Kahaki swam, guiding his course by bright Autahi, which we call Canopus, and the high-swinging jewels of Maahu-Tonga, the Southern Cross.

And Kahaki 'betook to his pravers ami incantations, murmured karakias, appeals to his tribal atua Kahukura, the Rainbow-god, to Tangaroa and to Ruamano and to Tuhirangi, ocean-deities and sometime savour of the drowning mariner. And tears from his smarting eyes, tears for his daughter, little Pitorua, mingled with the brine of the sea. But more karakias he mumbled between the washes of spray, heart-strengthening eharms and spells; and, like bravo Ulysses of old, Kahaki swam on towards the unseen southern shore. Suddenly a strange black object broke

1 the pbowphoregsent .glimmer of the seas Just ahead of the .swimmer. At first h.» thought it was the. back of a quietlvriaing whale; then as the sea set him within reach of it he knew. He gripped it; it was a great log, a driftaway treetrunk. Joyfully the swimmer threw his arm over the rough bark and rested awhile, and said to himself: "My gods have hearkened to my prayer. They have sent me this tree. I shall not die, I shall not die!” Gripping with all his strength a knotty projection on the upper round of the log, Kahaki drew himself out of the water and thankfully stretched a leg en either side, lie was quite naked and half-dead with cold, but there he clung all through the hours of darkness. Once a great sperm whale rose out of the depths and spouted so close to him that he was bathed in the falling geyser of fine spray from its spiracles. And dolphins sported round, like sea-gods found old Poseidon, and as they' flashed ahead and all about, trailing quick flames through the darkness of the sea, Kahakirangi said to himself: "My atuas are taking me home.” The first faint light of dawn showed the log-bestrider that he was well into the bight of Cloudy Bay. The tree-trunk, a totara flood-borne from the lleretaunga or some other northern river, was in the grip of a shoreward-setting current, but its drift was too slow for Kahaki. With one hand, the right and then the left, he piddled away to help his salving ship along. The tide presently turned, and to his dismay sent him steadily out again. All day long he paddled, in a heroic effort to guide his log shorewards. Hour after hour he watched the coast recede and then grow nearer again. The strong flood tide had set him fast ashore; the silver-glimmer-ing beach of < loudy Bay grew closer, and now he heard the steady roll of the ■breakers loud and full. In through the surf drove the lifefraught log. The backwash took it an! hurled it out a space; and Kahaki rolled over with it but clung like a wild cat to his hold, where a branch had been broken off leaving a short projecting stump. In again came the roller, an I on it rode Kahaki. The log stranded, and Kahaki threw himself face down and desperately dug his hands and feet into the sand. The great wave left him. On he struggled, sand and spray blindeiT, ami there, jifst as darkness eame on again, he fell senseless, but living, on the hard white strand of Wharerangi.