‘Good God,’ the officer in the bunk exclaimed, sitting up with a jerk, as if the last trumpet had sounded:  ‘D’Eth, where?’

Then he saw ‘D’Eth’ grinning, realised that there was still time for repentance, and bundled forth to the quarter deck.

The larger quarter deck on to which Sir George Grey had stridden, much needed cleaning up.  In the north of New Zealand, a flag staff carrying the Union Jack, had been cut down by an insurgent chief.  A settlement had been sacked, with completeness and the chivalry innate in the Maoris.  No hurt was done the whites, that could be avoided, nor was there looting of property.  The Maoris let Bishop Selwyn wash the earth with the contents of a spirit cask.  It was all sobriety in victory.

‘They were,’ Sir George noted of his favourite native race, ’naturally ambitious of military renown; they were born warriors.’  British troops had been hurled against their pas, or fortresses, only to be hurled back, heaps of slain.  A Maori pa, in some forest fastness, stoutly built for defence from within, held by determined men with firearms, was hard to storm.  Gallantry rushed to suicide.

The Maori wars, in their broad sense, are history.  It is enough here to define them as the collision of two races.  The white tide of civilisation was beating upon the foreshores of native New Zealand.  There were King Canutes, tattooed warriors of the flying day, who would have ordered it back.  You see how easily troubles grew, although they might have been the last desire of anybody.

Two Maori chieftains, Heke and Kawiti, were the centre of disturbance, and Sir George Grey was to have faithful dealing with them.  Heke he called the fighting chief, Kawiti the advising chief; one the complement of the other.

‘When I met Heke after the war,’ he mentioned, ’it was said that he was somewhat nervous.  I thought I was the person who should have been nervous, because I was in his country almost alone.  I liked him, and really all the old Maori chiefs were fine fellows—­shrewd, dignified, with a high sense of honour.  Heke made me his heir when he died, to the neglect of his wife, but of course I gave her everything.’

This Heke was the son-in-law of Hongi, a Napoleonic figure in Maori annals.  Hongi was before Sir George’s time, but he heard all about him from contemporaries.

New Zealand, when Hongi had the guidin’ o’t, was still a land remote from the concern of the Old World.  Missionaries had begun to spread light in the country; runaway convicts from Australia arrived stealthily, seeking refuge.  For the rest, Hongi and the Maoris were the war lords, and the fiery torch was generally abroad.  Hongi visited England, was lionised as a New Zealand trophy, and presented, with every ceremony, to the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV.  He got many presents, and, before reaching New Zealand again, he exchanged them to a purpose which the givers could hardly have foreseen.  Hongi had been quick to discern the road to conquest, which musket, gun-powder, and bullet would give him in New Zealand against the native weapons.  He chortled to himself as did Lamech:  ‘I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt.’