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Chapter VI

MISSION SCHOONER AND WHALE BOAT

  “Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy.”—­Text of Samuel
  Marsden’s first sermon at the Bay of Islands, Christmas Day, 1814.

Maoris, shipping before the mast on board whalers and traders, made some of the best seamen on the Pacific.  They visited Sydney and other civilized ports, where their fine physique, bold bearing, and strangely tattooed faces, heightened the interest felt in them as specimens of their ferocious and dreaded race.  Stories of the Maoris went far and wide—­of their fierce fights, their cannibal orgies, their grotesque ornaments and customs, their lonely, fertile, and little-known country.  Humane men conceived the wish to civilize and Christianize this people.  Benjamin Franklin had planned something of the kind when the news of Cook’s discovery first reached England.  Thirty years later, Samuel Marsden, a New South Wales chaplain, resolved to be the Gregory or Augustine of this Britain of the South.  The wish became the master-passion of his life, and he lived to fulfil it.  How this resolve was carried out makes one of the pleasantest pages of New Zealand history.  The first step was his rescue of Ruatara.  In 1809 a roaming Maori sailor had worked his passage to London, in the hope of seeing the great city and—­greatest sight of all—­King George III.  The sailor was Ruatara, a Bay of Islands chief.  Adventurous and inquiring as he was intelligent and good-natured, Ruatara spent nearly nine years of his life away from his native land.  At London his captain refused to pay him his wages or to help him to see King George, and solitary, defrauded, and disappointed, the young wanderer fell sick nigh unto death.  All the captain would do for him was to transfer him to the Ann, a convict ship bound for Sydney.  Fortunately Marsden was among her passengers.  The chaplain’s heart was touched at the sight of the wan, wasted Maori sitting dull-eyed, wrapped in his blanket, coughing and spitting blood.  His kindness drew back Ruatara from the grave’s brink and made him a grateful and attached pupil.  Together they talked of the savage islands, which one longed to see and the other to regain.  Nor did their friendship end with the voyage.  More adventures and disappointments awaited Ruatara before he at last reached home.  Once in a whale ship he actually sighted the well-beloved headlands of the Bay of Islands, and brought up all his goods and precious presents ready to go on shore.  But the sulky captain broke his promise and sailed past the Bay.  Why trouble to land a Maori?  Ruatara had to choose between landing at Norfolk Island or another voyage to England.  Cheated of his earnings and half-drowned in the surf, he struggled ashore on the convict island, whence he made his way to Sydney and to Marsden’s kindly roof.  The whaling captain went on towards England.  But Justice caught him on the way.  He and his ship were taken by an American privateer.