As the column marched through the wooded slopes, a young midshipman, not much more than twelve or thirteen years of age, came running to the four soldiers. He was clutching three cutlasses.
‘Beg pardon, sir,’ he said breathlessly to Jack. ‘Captain’s compliments an’ says you might need these.’ He stared for a few moments at Jack’s left wrist, suddenly realizing he was offering the cutlass to an arm without a hand on the end. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said, blushing. ‘Didn’t see.’
Jack smiled at the boy who seemed in a high state of excitement, told him not to fret, and ordered King to take the cutlasses. Sergeant King handed the broad-bladed weapons around. Gwilliams swished his through the air, slicing the atmosphere with satisfaction.
Wynter looked at his broad-bladed cutlass in horror. ‘Whaddo I want this for?’
Sergeant King replied, ‘Obviously we’re expecting close-quarter fighting.’
‘Can’t I use me bayonet? I an’t never used one of these things.’
‘Stick it in your belt then,’ came King’s reply.
A short time later, the firing became louder as the column reached the front line. Sprawled on the ground and under cover were the British militia, firing at a man-made hill ahead of them. It was Jack’s first sight of a
pa,
an earth-and-timber fort built by the Maoris. There were rifle pits dug in and around the tiered earthworks, and a wicker palisade around the whole. It reminded Jack vaguely of Maiden Castle, an Iron-Age hill fort in Dorset. The
pa
looked formidable. Jack had attacked and overrun fortified positions in the Crimea and such attacks were often very costly. He wondered if a frontal assault was going to be ordered here, since progress could not be made by simply exchanging fire. His stomach tied in a knot at the thought. Jack was no coward, but dodging bullets as thick as a swarm of bees, while running over open ground was one of the most terrifying experiences in warfare.
Suddenly a huge man appeared above the palisade, his brown body gleaming with sweat. His long black hair flowed in the wind as he raised a muscled arm and shook his fist at the militia. Jack found his spyglass with his good hand and flicked it open. Putting it to his eye he observed a magnificent specimen of a handsome warrior with a tattooed face, arms and shoulders, muscles standing out like iron ridges from his body. The warrior stuck out his tongue the length of his chin and then yelled: ‘Come on, pakeha. What are you waiting for? Come and fight like men or go home to your wives.’
Dozens of shots rang out as the militia and navy sought to rid the skyline of this open target. But they were unsuccessful. The Maori had ducked down again, laughing as he did so.
Sergeant King said to a sailor next to him, ‘Was that the chief?’
The sailor shrugged and replied, ‘Might have been.’
‘But he was so big – and strong-looking.’
‘Brother,’ said the sailor, ‘they
all
look like that.’
‘Shit,’ muttered Gwilliams, ‘we got ourselves a war then.’
‘’Ow many of ’em is in there?’ asked Wynter of a Taranaki Volunteer, who was lying on his back, reloading his rifle.
‘’Bout five hundred.’
‘Five hundred bleeders the size of that last one?’ exclaimed Wynter. ‘Why, we’re all dead men then.’
The exchange of fire continued until the light began to fade and the landscape was drifting into gloaming. Captain Cracroft gave the order to prepare for a frontal assault. Jack drew his sword. King and Gwilliams gripped their cutlasses. At the last minute, Wynter also decided the blade was better than his rifle and bayonet. On a given signal they rose up out of the grasses and from behind trees, charging over the open space between relative safety and the Kaipopo
pa.
Men went down under a fusillade from the rifle pits ahead. This was the last Maori hail of shotgun and rifle fire, answered by those on the run before they tossed away their firearms. Now it was sword, club and hand-axe.
The air was full of wild yells and battle cries. In the half-light the Maoris fought vigorously, hacking at the pakeha with the untutored skill of a warrior nation to whom warfare was almost a sport. Sailors and militia waded in with cutlass and rifle butt. Maori strategy was usually to cut and run once the enemy were within the walls. This they did now, slipping away into the falling darkness. The engagement was sharp and decisive, and was over within minutes. One naval man, coxswain from the
Niger
and first into the
pa,
pulled down the Maori flags.
The dead were counted as the darkness descended. Almost fifty Maori bodies were found, though only a fourth of those had gone down in the frontal attack. There were fourteen dead amongst the volunteers, militia and the navy. When the column marched back to New Plymouth, Jack learned of the animosity between colonists and the military. The colonists despised the Maori, while the soldiers knew they were fighting against a brave, resourceful and intelligent enemy. The Church had taken sides and fought for the rights of the Maori. The governor, one Thomas Gore Browne (or ‘Angry-belly’ to the Maoris), a seemingly indecisive man, was caught between the factions.
It was the age-old problem of land. The colonists were hungry for it. They wanted to purchase land: lots and lots of it. Understandably many of the Maori were reluctant to sell their heritage. Under the Treaty of Waitangi land could only be acquired by British colonists if they purchased it from its owners or from the government. But ownership was often a misty and vague thing: sometimes land might be owned by one Maori, sometimes by a family, sometimes by a whole tribe. He who sold it might be only a part owner; even no owner at all. Even folklore had been known to come into it. One Maori maintained that a particular parcel of land had been first owned by his ancestor: a lizard that had lived in a cave above the plot.
This particular fight had been over a stretch of fertile land known as Waitara, down in the bottom left-hand corner of North Island. It had supposedly been bought from a sub-chief of the tribe that owned it, but the head chief disputed the sale. Jack learned that these purchases were often subjected to great arguments which led to outright war. Wiremu Kingi, the Maori leader involved in this dispute, had been declared a rebel, but many clergy and soldiers felt the governor was being unjust.
Jack and his men were billeted with the 65th Foot, where he had learned much of this from a lieutenant of that regiment: Brian Burns, who hailed from Kilmarnock in Ayrshire. As they sipped whisky in the mess, Burns filled in a little of New Zealand’s recent history for Jack.
‘We’ve been here since the late seventeen hundreds,’ said Burns. ‘The Maori have been here longer, of course, by about five hundred years. No real fuss when we first arrived. No guns. Just bits of paper. The Maori accepted us, but of course there were only a few colonists then. In 1840 the Maori and us signed the Treaty of Waitangi, which gave us sovereignty over all New Zealand. That’s when the bother started. The two languages of the treaty didn’t quite match up. Not surprising, of course – different languages never do. So the Maori interpretation is at variance with our own. Not wildly different, but enough to cause trouble when it comes to who rules whom, or the purchase of land.’
‘Why did they bother? I mean, why did the Maoris sign in the first place?’
‘Och, there was some talk of the French invading, so the Maori chiefs handed over the protection of the islands to us.’
‘But they never did. The French, I mean.’
Burns took a swallow before replying. ‘No, but it was a genuine fear, the French were indeed ready to invade. Since then we’ve had five or six governors, I can’t remember exactly, but the best was George Grey. Unfortunately Browne isn’t fashioned of the same material. Are you a Scot, Captain?’
The last question caught Jack by surprise. He was indeed a Scot, or half of one. His father was a Scottish baronet who had seduced an English maid and then turned her out once the child had been born. That child was christened Alexander Kirk. When young Alex discovered his father’s deception, he left home in high dudgeon and joined the army under the assumed name of Jack Crossman, which so far as the military was concerned he still bore. Since that time his father had been reduced to a mindless idiot by senile dementia and his older half-brother James had assumed control of the estates. James was a good man, far better than their father, and he was something of a hero to Jack.
‘Yes, I am. Half, anyway.’
‘I thought I detected something of an accent.’
‘It’s been ironed out. I was sent to school in England, then the army – you know. It’s never been very broad.’
‘No need for apologies – accent never made the man. Now where was I – aye, the governor. He tries his best, of course, but he has no vision.’
‘Tell me,’ asked Jack, ‘why did the Maori retreat tonight? You would have thought they would fight to keep their fort. It must have taken a lot of work to build it.’
Burns laughed. ‘They can fling up those things in a matter of days. Brilliant engineers, the Maori. It was bewildering at first, the way they simply melted away from their
pas.
But that’s the way they fight, the way they’ve always fought. First it was tribal warfare, but now they’ve got us to battle against. They’ve modified the
pas
of course – added rifle pits – but essentially they’re the same forts they used before we came on the scene. Bloody difficult to penetrate with ordnance. You can rain cannonballs on them and they just absorb them. It’s nearly always a frontal attack because they always have the sides and rear blocked. Earthworks like the
pa
are impenetrable.’
‘Aren’t frontal attacks a bit expensive in manpower?’
Again Burns laughed. ‘We get slaughtered. Today we were lucky. I guess the Maori got a bit confused in the twilight. But others have not gone so well, Captain. There’s been a few mistakes here and there – a few arrogant commanders who have been put in their place. Ah, here’s Williamson. Colleague and friend. Stacy, Captain Jack Crossman, of the 88th. Jack, Captain Stacy Williamson of the 12th.’
Williamson, a heavy-browed man, shook Jack’s hand and then sat down in a vacant chair, heavily. In fact he exuded heaviness all over. He was big-limbed and bodied, with a large head and thick broad shoulders. An Aberdeen Angus bull of a man, except that when he spoke it was not from north of the border. It was pure country Suffolk.
‘The hand?’ asked Williamson, signalling one of the mess waiters with three fingers. ‘India?’
‘How did you know I came from India?’ asked Jack.
‘Oh, word travels. I heard there were 88th coming. Irish map-makers I was told.’
Jack’s team were indeed map-makers, especially the redoubtable Sergeant King, but they were also something else.
‘Correct. That is, correct about map-making, but not about the hand. I lost that in the Crimea.’ He paused before adding, ‘And none of us is Irish, though the regiment was formed there of course.’
Jack’s left hand had been crushed by a siege ladder and then amputated. He was now quite used to working round its absence. He could load his revolver by tucking it under his elbow. A rifle was more difficult, but being an officer he was not required to carry one. Of course he could not present in battle like other officers, with a pistol in one hand and sword in the other, but then battle was not his normal stamping ground. He was more used to sneaking around in the bush, blowing up enemy emplacements, and relaying intelligence to generals.
‘Ah, the Russians,’ murmured Williamson, ‘a more pedestrian enemy. Down here we fight a more colourful enemy under different skies, different stars. Do you know what the locals call New Zealand? Land of the Long White Cloud. Poetic, don’t you think? You should listen to some of their stories, too. I have. There’s a chap down at the quay they call “Speaker for the 7th Canoe”. His ancestors passed down the history of their migration to these islands to him. Memorized the whole voyage and told it to a grandson. Marvellous memories. Don’t borrow money from them and expect them to forget it.’
Jack smiled. ‘I have no intention of borrowing money from anyone, least of all a Maori.’
‘Oh, they’d lend it to you all right – generous to a fault. Now where’s my three fingers of gin . . .?’
While Jack was comfortably ensconced in the officers’ mess, his men were down at a beer tent, swilling ale. Wynter was on his third jug and Gwilliams, the barber from North America – the United States or Canada, no one really knew which – was not far behind. Sergeant King was with them, though he could have been in the senior NCO’s tent. King did not drink. He was trying to write a letter to his son Sajan, avoiding slops on a rickety table. Sajan was a child King believed he had fathered of an Indian mother. The biological connection was doubtful, but King had declared himself the parent and that, as far as he was concerned, was enough. Sajan was now in England at a Board School in Yorkshire, an exotic pupil amongst mill workers’ children.
Gwilliams was thinking there were an awful lot of naval men around, but when he asked one of them why, he was told they were actually army. Apparently they had discarded their red coats in New Zealand and were wearing blue serge jumpers and blue trousers. It made a lot more sense to wear muted colours, since in this environment they were not fighting in neat lines, but battling through bush country.
‘Well, soldier, what do you reckon on this territory?’ Gwilliams asked of the man. ‘Farming country?’
‘Sheep pasture,’ replied the soldier, leaning his elbows on the table. ‘When I get done with the army, I’m like to settle here for good. Rolling hills, meadowland. It’s a paradise, man. You only got here today, but you wait till you get out there and see the main of it. Hot springs, too. Lakes the size of seas. Yes, sir, I’m going to send for the family and settle.’