Rich Man's Coffin (35 page)

"And?"

"And nothing.
 
They milled about the house as if I was a dog they wanted to let out.
 
It was humiliating.
 
I've never been made to feel less important, even by you!"

Black Jack said, "Oh well, at least you made the effort.
 
They will remember that."

"Bollocks!
 
They were sweeping the dust out on my heels.
 
I don't know how you have lived with those people for so long.
 
And you consider yourself one of them now, don't you!"

Black Jack looked down. "No, not really."

"But what of the great whaler?
 
You've been doing so well for years.
 
Has all that changed?"

"Look, Chief, since Kueka's murder, I'm confused myself.
 
Just like when I finally found Kumari.
 
It hasn't been easy for me losing my faith in two peoples.
 
I've had to become my own person completely, with a little faith.
 
You've learned that yourself."
 
The Chief nodded.
 
Black Jack continued, "So believe me when I tell you that my trust in the white man isn't that great right now either.
 
I've seen a lot of bad things that I don't like in my many years of whaling.
 
One of them being, the slaughter of whales.
 
At first, they were just dumb beasts to me; but now they are just as beautiful as any of God's other creations.
 
And the white man is killing them all.
 
In just a few years, I have seen their numbers dwindle. I cannot face staying here and watching them all disappear.
 
If I do, I fear I will see the same fate for the Maori."

Robulla said, "I hear you, but what about the money?
 
I thought that you were going to become the great wealthy whaler and return to your homeland in triumph over the white man.
 
What has happened to that dream?"

Black Jack said, "Chief, I feel that I now have a higher calling here.
 
Besides, I have not become wealthy.
 
Whaling in Winter and lazing in Summer does not make a man rich.
 
That type of wealth does not interest me anymore anyway.
 
It is spiritual wealth that I seek now.
 
This is my home, and I want to defend it.
 
I do not feel the yearning to return to America that I once did.
 
I want to shape the destiny of this new land along with my own.
 
Like you, I do not trust the white man's intentions, but I believe that he can be guided to do the right thing with this land and its native people.
 
Seeing those shackles again shocked me.
 
They are a warning that the evil of man against man can spring up anywhere. Evil has to be thwarted by good men like you and me.
 
I am leaving the white man and the Maori for awhile, and I am going to live as a monk in complete solitude and silence."

Robulla was skeptical.
 
He thought the man had finally gone mad.
Not returning to America?
 
We will see, my friend.
He thought.

Chapter 23

         
Solid black night held deafening silence.
 
No bells tolled the time. No watch knew the hour.
 
A set of hands sifted through soft ashes like hot snow in the dark. Two lips pursed as a pair of cheeks puffed.
 
He blew gently on the smoldering stone. Orange light oozed briskly from the core of the coal.
 
Beating to each breath, the radiant ember pulsated from red to yellow, like a diamond heart on fire, pumping bright life into the face of its reviver and his room.
 
Heat flowed on the cold heels of fleeting shadows. The vast area where light was lacking fell backward when the wavering warmth waned with his lung wind.
 
At last satisfied with its steady strength, he removed the burning rock from its pale with blacksmith's tongs and placed it in the ready stove where it promptly ignited the waiting tinder.
 
Peering in upon his new home's first flames, Black Jack cheerfully said aloud, "Merry Christmas to me, in 1843."

         
The whalers had helped him move.
 
Like Robulla, they all thought he was mad to leave such a lucrative profession at its peak.
 
Black Jack assured them that he was making the right decision by virtue of the fact that he had prayed a long time about it.
 
Besides, he had noticed that the last couple of seasons had seen significantly fewer whales come into the bay; and the supposed
shore
whalers had to search further out to sea for the great creatures:
 
Something that they seemed slow to admit.
 
A 'trend' they all said, nothing to become alarmed or concerned about in the long run for whaling as a whole.
 
Two slow seasons did not a bust of the business make; and besides, there were just too many whales for their small operation to have affected the overall number of the leviathan.
 
That's what they all had said; but Black Jack knew better.
 
His common sense told him that killing the calf along with the cow would eventually mean no more cattle:
 
A simple principle which was as true in whaling as it was in farming.
 
Trying to tell the whalers that the world was a farm and that they were more like cattle rustlers than good farmers was like telling a drunkard that the brewer was going belly-up.
 
They would hear none of it.
 
They all joked him about something called 'Amistad'; as it seemed to them that his sudden upheaval from the Pakeha village was a sign of his rebellion.
 
In the end, however, all farewells had been handled in good spirits with no hard feelings between Black Jack and the crew from Kakapo.
 
In fact, to show their good will and appreciation, they had helped him move his few worldly possessions from the seaside village to his newly selected site inland.

         
"Are you going to be a hermit now, Black Jack?"
 
One of the men had asked.

         
"Something like that."
 
Black Jack replied.

         
They banded together to help build him a 'proper' home, with sawed timber beams and plank walls.
 
It also had a wood shingle roof instead of the manuka branches that served as the watershed for so many Maori huts in the pa.
 
The wood came from sheers that were either splintered or showed the first signs of not being shipshape. Once they were shored within the small building, they served their purpose well.
 
Supplies were brought as well to give Black Jack a sterling start to his strive for independence.
 
He was stocked with the essentials, including a sturdy double-edged five-pound axe, a one-pound hammer, an assortment of nails, a cast-iron pot, one frying pan, one plate, one tin cup, a set of utensils, and a hoe.
 
All were carried on a small cart pulled by a mule, along with a potbelly stove and a large copper water cistern.
 
It reminded Black Jack of home, complete with the iron chalice for stoking the hopefully eternal fire.

         
Since he was saying his goodbyes during the holidays, the sailors insisted on his staying for one last sendoff. He obliged them a sentimental soiree of celebration and singing at the grog shop.
 
It was almost as festive as his fateful night following his first flensing, but Black Jack ended the fun and fanfare early. Fetching a pale of flame, he fended a phalanx of spear grass and fern as he fled for his new castle and fortress of freedom.
 
He desired to provide himself with all of the creature comforts. Ironically, he was faced again with debating whether the perpetual furnace was his servant or his master.
 
As the first droplets fell from the threatening clouds, a cold wind followed. Still, he felt that he had done the right thing for Christmas Eve.
 
There was one more thing that the gang had managed to get especially from Sydney to help Black Jack pass the long nights alone.
 
Now in the light, he compared the shiny brass of his new mouth harp to the dingy tinge of his old one. He played a few notes on each and found they that they set their respective tones.

         
Since the Wairau Massacre, a lot had happened with Robulla as well.
 
He had gone to trial in town and been acquitted.
 
The governor at the time was sympathetic to the Maori as a whole owing to the fact that the Treaty of Waitangi afforded them protection as any other subjects of the Crown.
 
The unauthorized grab for land at the hands of anxious settlers, therefore, was deemed a violation of local Maori rights. The case was dropped on those grounds.
 
The Judge’s generous decision had a calming effect upon the chiefs of Cloudy Bay, including Robulla, who saw that the treaty actually held meaning and power.

         
Following his trial, Robulla did not feel at home on the South Island and began to consider moving home again to the north.
 
His decision was helped by a handful of factors.
 
First, he saw a map of all of New Zealand made by the white man.
 
In it he saw the North Island next to the South Island, and all the territory that he controlled either directly or indirectly.
 
It was large, but nowhere near the size he had thought.
 
It surprised him to see the other coast of the islands so close to where he was.
 
Then he laid eyes on the map of the entire world with New Zealand in its proper perspective.
 
This global view had a profound effect upon the Chief.
 
For the first time, he realized that he did not rule the majority of the world, as he had always thought.
 
Seeing the amount of land controlled by the Pakeha mad him realize that he had been drunk on power, and he sobered up.
 
Being a prudent man at heart despite his propensity for zealousness, Robulla remembered the words of Black Jack about yielding to the Pakeha.
 
Even in the calm following the trial proceedings, he was left with an uneasy feeling about the future role of the Europeans in New Zealand.

         
This tempered concern led to Robulla's agreement with Black Jack as to the resigned warrior-whaler's role in the new order of Maori-Pakeha politics.
 
The two proposed a strikingly similar purpose for his post at
Para
, the Maori name for the area where Black Jack had built his hut.
 
Directly inland over the ridges from White's Bay, and just north of the massacre site near the Tua Marina stream, Para was an area of flat, flax-covered land that lay at the absolute heart of the Waitohi Valley, which extended south from the waterside pa of the same name.
 
To the west were steeper mountains still, so that this stretch of ground provided an ideal path for anyone traveling from points north to the mouth of the broad Wairau River where it met the sea down south.
 
In other words, both men knew that no parties would pass no matter what their intentions, without the knowledge and scrutiny of Black Jack White.
 
He was to become, in fact, the unofficial gatekeeper for the newly surveyed valley.

         
Speaking of which, the survey map had no small effect upon the old chief either.
 
Seeing the valley cut up into hundreds of intersecting lines, all perfectly straight and mostly at right angles in total opposition to the natural lay of the land, further convinced him as to the confusion of the Pakeha.
 
Why did they persist in slicing the land into little confined spaces that beckoned to be filled in? He wondered.
 
Why not enjoy the varied features of the land as they existed?
 
A lake here, a river there, a mountain and a volcano in the distance:
 
That's how the land was put together, not with straight lines and points on a map.
 
The lines on the land were like shackles on men, he thought.
 
The land would tell the men where best to live, and not the other way around. In keeping with that principle, Robulla looked at the white man's map and saw that one of his favorite places in the world, Lake Taupo, was actually the largest lake in New Zealand; and it was dead-center in the North Island.
 
How appropriate, he thought; and perhaps why he had always felt that it was a special place.
 
Regardless, it was going to be his retreat for the next few years, he decided, as he set out north.