Page:Tales-of-Banks-Peninsula Jacobson 2ed 1893 cropped.pdf/92

when we told him that we wanted to see his Maori prisoner, greatly to our surprise, he at once consented. Taking up a hammer that was lying near his feet, he walked up to a great cask that stood a few feet from his house, and knocked off the hoops round the top of it, and removed the head, then over-turning the barrel without any seeming regard for its contents, he told Puaka to come out. Then slowly and with difficulty there crawled out a horrid-looking object, with matted hair and filth-besmeared body. The stench from the cask was quite overpowering, and we all shrunk back from it. Then Hempleman told us to carry the man to the front of his house, but only Mohi could venture near him, and he did so by holding his breath. We could not restrain our tears at the sight of our friend, and I went for some water to wash off the filth; but it was long before we got him anything like clean, and then his captor came and fastened him by the leg to an iron bar at the side of the house. When Puaka was able to speak to us, I asked him what he had done to incur such a terrible punishment. He said, ‘I happened to be at Wairau when the pakehas attacked Rauparaha, and the Wairau massacre followed. I was so alarmed at what I witnessed on that occasion, that I hurried down the coast with all speed, to escape the consequences that I feared would follow from the pakeha’s vengeance, but without revealing to any one on the way the cause of my hasty flight. It was not till I reached Otago that I dared to open my lips about what happened at Wairau. A stay of three months in that far off place calmed my fears, and I prepared quietly to return home; but on my way to Akaroa I passed along the coast from Wairewa, instead of going up the valley. On reaching Pireka I was recognised by the hands, and taken before Hempleman, who said that he had lately heard of my hurrying past him without giving