Page:Tales-of-Banks-Peninsula Jacobson 2ed 1893 cropped.pdf/151
himself seen the huge copper Maori in which they roasted several corpses at a time. Bloody Jack was the Maori who held the command in defending the pa. He was not a chief, but his great fighting qualities had placed him at the head in this time of desperate danger. He and many others escaped after the last successful assault, and found a refuge in the bush. Every plantation and whâre that the merciless victors could find, they utterly destroyed, so that famine should be the lot of the wretched few who had escaped them.
When their horrible work was done they went aboard the brig, and one cannot help thinking that Captain Stewart, who was the commander of the vessel, was rightly served for aiding the Maoris by carrying them on their bloody errand, when, instead of flax and pigs, these savages brought aboard a number of their wretched victims. He (Captain Stewart) remonstrated, but was warned that his fate would be a terrible one unless he obeyed Rauparaha in all things; and there is little doubt he would have been killed, had they not required his skill to take the vessel back to Kapiti, which was their destination. The voyage must have been a fearful one for captain and crew, for the Maoris kept murdering their prisoners, and cooked their flesh in the ship’s coppers, greatly to the horror of the sailors, who insisted on them being at once destroyed when the Maoris left the ship.
One terrible incident seems to stand out in bold relief. When the Martha came up the harbor, Rauparaha and his men hid themselves under the hatches, and told Captain Stewart to make signals to the shore that he wanted to trade, in the hope that some unsuspicious Native might be lured aboard and become their victim. The experiment succeeded only too well. A chief of importance seeing the signal, and thinking the Martha was an ordinary