Page:Tales-of-Banks-Peninsula Jacobson 2ed 1893 cropped.pdf/160

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JIMMY ROBINSON.
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until after a lot of persuasion. I had a good stock of clothing, dungaree, coloured cotton, and tobacco, so that I was looked upon as a Rangatira Pakeha. There was another white man living here at the time, known as “Holy Joe,” but how he came to be called that I cannot imagine, as he was anything but what the name implied. I always looked upon him as a runaway from Van Diemen’s Land, and such he afterwards told me he was. At this time there were over a thousand Maoris living round Wangaroa Harbour, for that was the Native name of it. There were also settlements in all the Bays, round as far as Port Cooper, so that there must have been about three thousand Maoris on the Peninsula, including those to the south of Akaroa.

Jimmy Robinson was present and helped to hoist the English standard in Akaroa. His own version of it, as told to our informant, was as follows:—“It was in the year 1840, in August. I had been up to the Head of the Bay getting a load of pipis, of which the Maoris are very fond. I had in the boat with me my wife and her youngster, who was about a year old, and named Abner; ‘Holy Joe’ was also with me, as I found him more useful in handling a whale-boat than the Maoris. We were beating down with a light south-west wind, when I noticed a ship come round the point with a fair wind, I said to Joe, ‘We shall get some tobacco at last,’ as we had been out of it for some time. We then stood towards her, but when we got a bit nearer we could see her ports, and that therefore she was a man-of-war. I said so to my mate, and he said, ‘If she is, for God’s sake let me get ashore.’ I suppose his guilty conscience pricked him, or else he had not finished his time, and thought he might be recognised. To satisfy him I said I would land him, and paid her head off for the shore. I had not got far when I heard a blank shot fired and saw some sig-