‘Me neither, though I know some of their ways,’ he says, as the lad now translates his words back into Maori for the elders. ‘Does it not say an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth in the missionary’s black book?’ I nod. Indicating Hammerhead Jack, the chief continues, ‘Well, my blood brother has lost his eye and not taken the white man’s eye in return!’ He points at the shoulder joint which once held the giant Maori’s arm. ‘And the pakeha has taken my brother’s arm and we have only taken a hand in return. Why is this not wise?’
‘The pakeha have laws which, when they are disobeyed, lead to severe punishment. We should not take the law into our own hands but must wait for a proper judgment,’ I reply, though it sounds rather foolish even to me.
But the chief does not at once dismiss this. ‘Ha!’ he exclaims. ‘Then which is the more important, the laws of Queen Victoria or the laws of the pakeha God?’
‘In theory, the laws of God.’ The chief can see that I am struggling with my reply and raises his hand.
‘We are told that we must obey Queen Victoria, who is the most powerful pakeha. But we are also told that even she must obey the Christian God. Is that not true?’
‘It is true, but…’ I begin.
The chief stops me. ‘So, the laws of the Christian God say we must take an eye for an eye and an arm for an arm. When we take only a hand in return for an eye and an arm, and do not return the beating you took and the other Maori took to their backs, why will the pakeha whaling captain think we have acted badly?’
Tamihana pauses. ‘I am told he is a Christian. Why, under the laws of his own God, should he not be grateful for losing only his hand?’
It is difficult to argue with the flow of his reasoning. I have read the Bible twice over, and there is much within it I have come to respect. To me, the stumbling block has always been that men piously preach God’s laws on the Sabbath, but practise man’s laws on the following six days. Any fool may see that the two are in direct contradiction— that in fact greed and corruption transcend charity and compassion in society.
‘The Maori have much to fear from the pakeha laws but we cannot defeat them by ignoring them,’ I venture. ‘We must learn to use their own laws against them.’
‘Ha!’ The chief points to Hammerhead Jack. ‘Like my brother, the pakeha laws have only one eye. The other is blind and cannot see the Maori people. The governor never does anything if a Maori is killed— only when a pakeha is killed!’
I shrug. ‘The white man will not leave New Zealand. They will not go away. Queen Victoria has the Treaty of Waitangi, the paper which is signed by many of the Maori chiefs.’
‘Then we must tear it from her hand! She has stolen our mana!’ the chief replies.
‘It is said that since the Maori people have learned to use the pakeha guns, they have killed more than twenty thousand of their own people and as many have died from the white man’s diseases. There are now as many pakeha as Maori in New Zealand.’ I know this from reading the Colonial Times back in Hobart Town.
The chief shows no surprise at my words, and sighs. ‘You are right, Ork. We are allowed to kill each other as we please and Queen Victoria does nothing to stop us. Only if we kill the pakeha must we go to gaol. Is this not strange? Did she not swear at the Treaty that the Maori and the pakeha would be the same under her law? Or do you think Queen Victoria likes us to kill each other so the white man will soon become greater in number than the Maori?’
‘What can I say? I am young and not wise.’ I take a deep breath and gather my courage. ‘But you are right, Chief Tamihana, you will only be strong when you speak with one voice. Now you are single tribes and can easily be divided. As long as tribe fights tribe and Maori hates Maori, the pakeha will always win. Believe me, I am on your side, Wiremu Tamihana. The pakeha do not win because their laws are more just or their God is more powerful, but because they all fight for one Queen.’
The chief nods. ‘I will think upon this. I am the ariki, the descendant of the eldest son of the eldest son of each generation since the Maori came here from beyond the clouds and the bending of the earth line. I will talk to the ancestors.’ Then he asks again, ‘You think the Maori must have a leader, like Queen Victoria?’
The notion is, I can see, a new one for Tamihana, who frowns as he thinks about what I have said. ‘It is not for me to say, Chief Tamihana. I do not know the Maori customs.’ I search for further explanations. ‘But one big tribe which fights together under one leader will win the war over many smaller ones which fight alone.’
‘Ah! One tribe, one war! You are a good man, Ork.’ The chief smiles.
‘Ork good!’ Hammerhead Jack cries, amidst much cheering.
I wait until the noise has died down. ‘I would like to ask something for myself?’ I say to the chief.
Chief Tamihana nods, granting me permission to make my request. I turn to Hammerhead Jack.
‘My brother, Tommo? Can we find out what has happened to him?’
The men laugh anew and I look about me in distress. How can they laugh at this? Hammerhead Jack knows we are twins and very close. He grins broadly. ‘Ho! The little axe man!’ His single eye grows wide and shines bright, as though it has taken in the light from the missing other. ‘Tommo is Maori also! He will join you in two days, Ork.’ He holds up two fingers. ‘We will welcome him when he comes. We have taken him another way to confuse the pakeha policeman. He is with the old man and the others who were together with us in the whaleboat.’ Hammerhead Jack takes a step towards me and puts his huge single arm about my shoulder. ‘Tommo good! Ork good!’
I try very hard to restrain myself, but all can see the bright tears that run down my cheeks and the stupid smile upon my black face. Though we are fugitives, for the moment Tommo and I have beaten the mongrels.
BOOK TWO
Chapter Nine
TOMMO
The Land of the Long White Cloud
June 1858
We has been gone nearly two years from Hobart Town and has lived among the Maori for over a year. We’s playing it safe even though there was never any warrant for our arrest. From what we’ve heard the authorities believe that the Maori attacking the prison was seeking revenge for the death of Hori Hura. No doubt we’s thought to be well and truly dead! The government troopers wasn’t too keen to come in search of us even if we was still alive, for there be a growing dispute between the white settlers and the Maori people over possession o’ the land. A bad quarrel is brewin’ as the settlers becomes more greedy for Maori land, and the Maori chiefs more suspicious and unwilling to sell.
To send troopers in search of them what’s killed two criminals, what was going to hang anyway, weren’t deemed in the best interests o’ the colony. Instead, the whole business has been quickly forgotten in the name of diplomacy. Sergeant Nottingham were given the boot and retired on a government pension. We hears he has become another drunk, cadging drinks in Kororareka’s hotels. Maple and Syrup has absconded to Auckland, while Mrs Barrett ain’t been seen since the night o’ the card game, his whereabouts unknown. De Silva, o’ course, sailed happily away.
What a rescue it were! Smoke and shouting everywhere and I’m thinking it’s all over for me and Hawk when he is carried out of the cell by four savages. Soon after, three blokes grab yours truly, and I expects we’ll both be torn to pieces by the mob.
As they push me out of the cell, I sees Hawk through the smoke. He’s being carried over the heads of his captors to the front of the gaol and I tries to follow him as they takes him towards the door. But them what’s got a hold of me shoves me down a passageway towards the back of the gaol-house. In the corridor we come across Nottingham. He is on his hands and knees, with blood coming out his nose and mouth, coughing and wheezing from the smoke.
‘Ya mongrel bastard, Nottingham!’ I screams. ‘Your scam failed, didn’t it, you two-faced bludger!’
I suppose I should’ve saved me voice to pray for me life, but at that moment I hates the sod so
much, I don’t give a damn! Me brother’s going to be killed ‘cause of him and I only wish I had me axe so I could do the same to him. I hope the fire roasts the miserable pig like Sam Slit!
I can hear the crowd outside howling for blood. Strange, I ain’t afraid for meself, only for Hawk. Without him there ain’t no point anyways: might as well be back in the wilderness, or dead. I only hopes they make it quick. I don’t want to die slow— hands clawing at me, feet kicking and stamping, me bones crunching under their sticks and stones. The mob is braying now. It’s a weird sound. They must have Hawk, I reckons. I wish they’d kill me first, so I don’t have to bear the pain o’ hearing me brother bashed to death.
‘May you rot in hell, Nottingham!’ I screams as I’m bundled out the back door.
‘Him mongril, Tommo,’ shouts one of the Maori holding me about the shoulder, then laughs. I stares around in surprise. It is one of me mates from the Nankin Maiden! In me panic I haven’t recognised him. What’s happening here? I thinks. There’s no one outside the back o’ the gaol-house and them what’s running me towards the bay are laughing like it’s a huge joke.
Pretty soon we comes to a canoe well hidden on the beach, and we’re off across the water and out to sea. We travels up the coast for several miles, then leave the canoe and head into the wilderness.
For over a week, we walks through mountains and valleys. Several times, we comes to a stream and we stops to bathe. It feels like we’re goin’ in circles and we does much of our walking in rivers to lose our footprints. Finally, towards the evening of the tenth day, we come to the pa of the Ngati Haua tribe and then into the village and there’s Hawk sitting large as life with Hammerhead Jack.
Though me Maori friends has told me often enough along the way that Hawk would be all right, I were feared he could not make it through the mob unharmed. Hawk be just as happy to see yours truly as I am to see him and to me mortification, he lifts me high above the ground, swinging me up in his great arms as if I be some snot-nosed brat. But I can’t wipe the grin off me stupid gob, as the tears roll down Hawk’s cheeks. Hammerhead Jack roars with laughter and I can see he approves. ‘We are safe from the mongrels here, Tommo!’ Hawk tells me as he returns me to the ground.
And so we has been. But in the course of the year, I’ve learnt that life among the Maori can be as bloody difficult as life aboard ship. They has so many taboos, things they can and cannot do. They call this tapu and it is ruled over by the chief and the priests, the tohunga, what are the keepers of the tribe’s history and lore. The tohunga are big men ‘round these parts, second only to the chief himself.
Chief Wiremu Tamihana is not only the tribe’s leader but also a kind of god. His tapu comes direct from the spirits and is the absolute law. All that the chief touches becomes tapu or, as white folk might say, holy.
We’ve only been in the village a couple of months when we sees how powerful this tapu be. Hawk and Chief Tamihana is sitting together, talking, with the chief smoking his pipe. By and by they takes a walk and the chief, not thinking, leaves his tinder-box behind. Four ordinary blokes happen by and, seein’ the tinder-box, stops to light their pipes. But when they finds out whose tinder-box it be, they realise they has committed a terrible sacrilege by using it and they dies of fright. Truly, they dies! They is all stone dead, not twelve hours later, of the fear brought on by the tapu.
Tapu is most powerful in the chief, and he can get whatever he wants in the tribe just by saying it is his backbone or his right arm or some other part of his body. When the chief says this, he makes whatever it be sacred, so that no one else, includin’ the owner, can go near it again. If a single drop of the chief’s blood be spilled upon an object, then it is tapu, and can only belong to him.
In the common people, tapu is a more simple and practical thing. Say a man finds a piece of driftwood on the beach, he needs only cut a notch in it with his axe, and it becomes tapu and his property. What would Ikey thinks of this business, I wonders with a smile. A man can simply pull a single strip of flax across his doorway and no person can enter it until he returns to remove the tapu: a most efficient means o’ protecting your property!
Of course for the white man, property be only owned by evidence of a government deed and protected by a gun.
Tapu has often made it hard for the Maori to deal with the pakeha. Many white folks don’t bother to learn the importance of their taboos and don’t respect their rules. Living amongst the Maori, I has come to understand much about tapu, but I still makes mistakes. Hawk though has gone to much trouble to learn some of the complex tapus and laws o’ the people. This has come in most handy in his dealings with the Ngati Haua tribe and many others. Me brother has become a big man among the natives.
Meself, I’ve had enough of adventures to last me a lifetime. I want us to move on, to find our way back to Australia. Being here ain’t much different to being on the Nankin Maiden as Chief Tamihana don’t allow grog in his villages, something what makes big brother Hawk happy, o’ course! I am now almost two years dry, though not cured in the least of me desire for the fiery grape. Not a single day passes without me thirsting for a drop.
Hawk, meanwhile, is determined that we stay on in this dry place to repay our ‘debt’ to Hammerhead Jack.
‘Debt! What’s you mean, debt? We don’t owe no debt! You saved his life!’
‘You are wrong, Tommo,’ Hawk says in his patient way what makes me want to kick him in the bollocks. ‘I only helped him back into the whaleboat.’
‘You saved him from the whale! And from being flogged to death!’
‘Maybe,’ he replies. ‘But he saved both of us. Two lives! We owe him at least one, Tommo.’
‘Me own, I suppose?’ I says, sarcastic-like.
‘No, Tommo, you needn’t give up your life. But there is much we can do to help.’
Hawk reckons that a great injustice is being done to the native people by the white men. His conscience has got the better of him. But the world be full o’ mongrels and now, with as many settlers in New Zealand as there are Maori, they’s taken over this place and claimed it for their own. What can Hawk do to change this? Nothing! But he won’t listen. And now he tells me that war is coming.
‘War!’ I shouts. ‘War between the pakeha and the Maori? And you wants us to be a part of it? On the side of the Maori?’ I scream at him. ‘What can we do, a nigger and a skinny runt? For Gawd’s sake, let’s scarper while we still can!’
‘Tommo, we can’t, not now!’ he says, pleading.
‘What? Why not? You gunna be a general in the army or something?’
‘Adviser, no more,’ Hawk answers calmly. ‘The Maori must unite. The tribes must be brought together or they cannot prevail against the government troops and the settlers.’
‘You know what?’ I says, truly angry now.
‘What?’
‘You’re gunna get us killed, that’s what!’
‘Listen, Tommo! The settlers, with the connivance of the government, are stealing Maori land. As long as the Maori are divided they have no hope of impressing the governor. They have no collective power to claim their rights under the treaty.’
‘Where’d ya learn all this rubbish, Hawk? Nobody has no power to exert against no British government! You think we’s got power to exert? You think the Aborigines in Tasmania, what’s practically all perished at the hands o’ the government, had power? You think Georgie Augustus Robinson, the government man what was meant to protect the Abos, was their true friend? All he done was herd Truganini and her people into nowhere so the whites could take their land! What treaty is ya talking about, mate?’
‘Waitangi. The Treaty of Waitangi.’
‘Waitangi? That piece o’ shit-paper! The Maori may as well wipe their arses on it for all the good it will do ‘em!’
‘It says the Queen will guarantee the full, exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates, forests and fisheries and other properties they may collectively and individually p
ossess, so long as it is their wish and desire to retain the same in their possession!’ Hawk quotes all this right off, so that I want to punch his face in.
I shrug. ‘The government’s changed its mind, then, like it always does.’
‘No, there’s more!’ says Hawk, his eyes gleaming. ‘It is in the rest of the treaty that they are boxing clever now, thinking to evade their responsibility with misinterpretation!’
‘Misinterpretation, is it now? Shit, Hawk, wake up!’
‘Listen, this is what the New Zealand Company say,’ and he takes to quoting again: ‘"We have always had very serious doubts whether the Treaty of Waitangi made with naked savages by a consul invested with no plenipotentiary powers…"’
‘What’s pleni-po-tentiary mean?’ I asks. Hawk and his big words!
‘It means someone what has been given the full powers of the government, like an ambassador.’ Hawk answers. ‘Where was I? Oh yes…"invested with no plenipotentiary powers, without ratification by the Crown, could be treated by lawyers as anything but a praiseworthy device for amusing and pacifying savages for the moment.”’ Hawk stabs at the air with his finger. ‘We cannot allow this to happen!’
‘We? What’s this “we"? Hawk, we is not Maori! We is supposed to be British, remember! Shit, we is supposed to be on the other bloody side, mate!’
‘No, no, they are also British, the Maori!’
‘British?’ Now I’m curious. ‘How come?’
Off he goes again and I think what a bloody bore he’s gunna be if he ain’t careful. ‘"In consideration for consent to the Queen’s government, the Queen will protect all the Maori people and give them all the rights and privileges of British subjects.”’ Hawk looks at me steady. ‘So you see, they are the same as the settlers in their entitlements, but their land be taken away from them with a clever ploy, a misrepresentation!’
‘There ain’t nothin’ new in that! That’s what governments do for a living, mis-bloody-represent!’
Tommo and Hawk Page 22