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Updated: May 14, 2025
"Horoeka is sure to have returned to the kainga by this time, and, by cunning or by force, I'll get out of that crazy ruffian what he has done with my brother." Reconnoitring the kainga in the light of the risen moon Hugh stealthily approached the palisade surrounding it. From the biggest of those wharés came the sound of men's voices, one at a time, in loud and eager talk.
To his unspeakable thankfulness the young man gathered from the chance remarks of one of the speakers that Dick, alive and uninjured, had been brought by Horoeka into the kainga at nightfall, and was now shut up in one of the wharés.
On a well-selected hill-side close by are his cultivations some few acres of maize, potatoes, kumera, melons, taro, fruit-trees, and so on, surrounded by a strong stake-fence. A few yards below the kainga is the beach, where a capital boat shows that Tama prefers Pakeha workmanship to the native article a canoe that also lies near.
Then, while Fred Elliot was speeding on a seven miles' tramp round the shore of the lake to the surveyors' camp to invoke the aid of the only other white men in that remote part of the country, Hugh Jervois had made his way to the Maori kainga. "It's my best chance of finding Dick," he had said to Fred.
The house, a rambling, wooden building, is of a good size though, being an hotel and store. Round it are several hundred acres of grass. Sometimes it is very festive, for a large Maori kainga is not far off; and at Te Otamatea a race-course has been made, where the annual races of the Kaipara districts are held.
Before the two young men wrathfully turned their backs on the kainga, Hugh, who had a very fair knowledge of the Maori tongue, warned the natives that the pakeha law would punish them severely if they knowingly allowed his young brother to be harmed. But they only replied with insolent laughter.
Only just in time, however, for the next instant the moonlit slope beneath the kainga was alive with Maoris men, women, and children shouting and rushing about in a state of tremendous excitement. It was for Dick alone they hunted, not knowing he had a companion, and they were evidently mystified by the boy's swift disappearance.
In his youth Tama was a warrior, having taken part in the battle which ended with the affair at Marahemo, as described in the previous chapter. A fugitive from his own district, his hopes of one day becoming a lordly ruler over some large kainga of his own being shattered by defeat, he fell in with Samuel Marsden, and by that Apostle of New Zealand was converted to Christianity.
They showed him that the marae was completely deserted now, the group about the cooking-place having retired into the wharés for the night. If he only knew which of those silent wharés held Dick, a rescue was possible. To blunder on the wrong wharé would only serve to arouse the kainga. "Oh, if I only knew which! If I only knew which!" Hugh groaned in agony of mind.
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