‘Balderdash! They wouldn’t show their hand before they had built their pa,’ bawled the general. ‘That isn’t like the Maori.’
‘They haven’t shown their hand, General,’ said Jack, exasperated. ‘This is inside information. My spies have penetrated the rebel meetings. This time we know what they’re going to do before they do it.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Captain.’
‘Sir, this is my job. I have been doing it now for several years. If you do not act on my information, what use is there having a branch of intelligence at all? If you wait and do nothing, you will lose more men when you do have to act. They will build a pa, have no doubt on that score, but if we move now we can intercept them before that happens. They will be caught by surprise and for once we’ll have the upper hand, instead of the other way around.’
After a long period of silence the general’s eyes narrowed. He shook a finger at Jack.
‘If this turns out to be a wild goose chase – why, man, these expeditions cost money, and there’s precious little of that in the army coffers at the present time. The government at home thinks we can operate on dry leaves out here. The duke is threatening to take all British troops out of the islands for good and leave it to the militia. What a precious mess the settlers will make of it too. Half of them don’t know one end of a rifle from the other. But . . .’ He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing before Jack’s eyes. ‘I’m going to take your word for it, Captain, and if your word turns sour on me, I’ll stamp you into the ground.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Jack, now fearful himself that the Maori spies he had working for him had got it wrong. It was possible, of course, that one or two of them were actually working for the other side. Now his name, rank and reputation were on the line. ‘I’m certain you won’t regret it.’
General Cameron himself led the column that marched to the mouth of the Katikara River. To his mild astonishment, for he had been more than convinced that Captain Fancy Jack Crossman had received false information, the Maori were there. Cameron attacked at once, using field guns to batter the enemy in half-dug rifle pits and trenches, and then sending in Colonel Warre’s 57th – Middlesex men for the most part – who carried out a bayonet charge on the shattered defences. Around three dozen Maori were killed, many more wounded, with the loss of only three British soldiers. It was true that as usual several of the enemy escaped into the bush, to live to fight another day, but on the whole General Cameron was pleased.
He was not pleased enough, however, to remember that it was Captain Crossman’s group who were largely responsible for his success. No mention was made of Jack, or to Jack, regarding the incident. Governor Grey congratulated the general himself on the affair, but the shadowy force who had made this happen were forgotten. This was to set a precedent. After all, the general might have argued with himself, it was not as if members of an ‘intelligence network’ did the actual fighting. Spies were helpful but could be likened to cooks. Kitchen staff dished out essential meals that were gratefully received but once eaten all interest in them died. They were left to wash the dirty dishes in sordid silence.
Over the next few months Jack continually ‘passed on the word’, putting Cameron in a favourable position. You did not get huge pats on the back for simply passing on the word. You got them for acts of bravery and valour, like the one performed by Drummer Stagpoole and Ensign Down who risked their own lives to save that of a wounded comrade under heavy fire.
Up in Auckland, the settlers provoked the governor into attacking Waikato tribes just south of them by complaining that they themselves would be attacked if he did not do so. It was Grey’s intention to destroy the king movement and stamp out insurrection before it was allowed to flower. A chieftain called Rewi had publicly called for the Maori to ‘kill all pakeha’. Grey was not going to put all the work on to regular soldiers, however, and insisted that the settlers provided four hundred militia men to assist Her Majesty’s forces. All sorts of tradesmen, farmers and artisans signed up: from butchers to cobblers to shepherds. They exchanged their cotton and leather aprons and crooks for muffin caps, blue jumpers and blue trousers with a smart red stripe down the leg. The militia were conscripting only single men. Those who wanted out simply proposed to their best girl and got married in haste. Some married men who were eager to fight denied they had ever been to the altar. In any war there are always those with zeal and those who prefer to watch from the sidelines.
Despite all his high ideals and the danger of disobeying an indirect order from Lovelace, Jack was unable to stay away from Amiri. Now that Jane was not coming, the captain slipped yet again from his pedestal. Strangely he found that now he had taken up with the Maori woman again his headaches had returned. Sometimes they were so savage he was confined to a dark room by the surgeon, who could do little for Jack’s suffering. Once again he sought local remedies, which did sometimes ease the pain. However, he was beginning to believe it was God’s punishment for his adultery.
‘Are you unwell tonight, my man?’ asked Amiri softly, as she entered Jack’s quarters by the back door, tiptoeing in the gloom.
Jack’s voice came to her from the desk under the window and she saw his hunched shape against the evening sky.
‘Oh? Amiri? No, I’m well enough today – I just haven’t lit the lamp yet . . .’
‘What are you writing, Jack?’
‘I – I’m just finishing a report.’
‘Is it not a letter to your wife?’
The figure stiffened in the chair, then slumped again.
‘Yes – yes, you’re right. It is. You know me too well, Amiri.’
‘Please do not think I am jealous. She is your wife. You met her long before you saw me.’
‘It’s not that.’
‘Oh – it is the guilt?’
‘Yes, yes, I am a weak man.’
‘It is different for soldiers – you might die tomorrow in battle.’
‘There are no excuses, but thank you for trying.’
Amiri lit the lamp and saw that Jack was looking worn and haggard, probably with the pains from his head.
‘Are you not sleeping, Jack?’
He gave a short laugh. ‘Not much.’
‘Come here.’
He went to her and she made him sit on the edge of his cot while she massaged his neck and shoulders.
‘I am unhappy too, Jack, with the war.’
‘Aren’t we all?’
‘But the governor. He is bringing many Australians to our country and is promising them land. There is no land to give. It belongs to the Maori. There is talk of five thousand men coming. My people are being turned out of their villages and told to go and live elsewhere. What justice is this?’
Jack was always careful about what he said to Amiri. Nathan Lovelace had taught his protégé well. Trust no one, not even your own wife. Amiri was not even Jack’s wife. He kept any sensitive information to himself, for Amiri was a Maori and Jack had no doubt that her people came before her pakeha lover. He would have expected no less from her. She was a woman of the highest honour. Had he been in her position he would have had the same priorities.
‘Is that so? If it is, it’s quite bad, but I believe the governor is clearing a buffer zone behind Auckland. There’s nothing vindictive in the move. It’s not part of the land confiscation scheme.’
Amiri suddenly became angry, her eyes flashing.
‘We will drive the pakeha into the sea, Jack – when the tribes all meet together, we are numberless, like the ants.’
Actually, thought Jack, it is we who are numberless. We who are the ants. The sixty thousand Maori were already outnumbered by the Europeans on the islands, by at least ten thousand. Poor misguided Maori people. Even now, outside in the evening somewhere, troops were singing the American civil war song, ‘We’ll hang John Brown on a sour apple tree,’ prior to marching out the following morning to find the Maori foe. Most of the action was now just south of Auckland, but there were still the odd
skirmishes round and about New Plymouth.
Amiri stayed the night and left the following morning, expressing her fear that Jack would be sent to Auckland now that the fighting had switched from Taranaki to Waikato. Jack himself feared the same and had no heart or desire to go. Yet he knew he must. He was first a soldier and all else came second. His whole adult life had been spent in a uniform, of which he was sometimes immensely proud, at other times ashamed. All one could do, as a soldier, was make sure that the wearer did not besmirch his own honour. Most of the time you did as you were ordered and saw that it was a good order. When it was not, for there were fools wearing senior officers’ caps as in any profession, you questioned it and did what you could to prevent a bad action. To an old soldier like Jack a court martial for disobedience was preferable to an unwarranted and terrible violation of what was lawful.
Jack watched his Maori lover slip through the murky dawn and wretchedly went back to his letter.
Unknown to both Jack and Amiri, someone saw her leave, had been waiting for her to leave. It was a tall Maori in a plaid shirt and grey trousers, his shotgun with a cord sling over his back, his long black hair swept back and tied at the base of his skull with a black ribbon. He let the woman cross the low bridge over the stream, then followed at a distance, tracking her more by her spoor than by keeping her in sight. Eventually he was rewarded by the destination: a cave in the hills where there were a number of other Maoris, one of whom he recognized instantly. He nodded in satisfaction. The master would pay him well for this information: very well indeed. He returned to the garrison.
Jack was indeed sent north, as expected, to assist in the fight against the Waikato tribes. On 20 November 1863, he and his men were standing on the Rangiriri Ridge looking down on the Waikato River. King-movement Maoris had built more of a redoubt this time, not quite a full pa, with trenches and rifle pits on the two banks of Waikata. The battlefield was some 50 miles from Auckland. General Cameron had told his officers they were to make simultaneous attacks from the front and the rear of these earthworks. First came the inevitable bombardment with Armstrong field guns – the largest of the three being the 12-pounder. The attack, as so often with long-range weapons, had little effect on the redoubt, the earth swallowing the lumps of iron with sludgy gulps. Jack could see where the battle was going and requested a place with his men in the charge that was to come, but Cameron was still peeved with him over various issues and refused permission.
‘Thank Gawd for that,’ said Harry Wynter. ‘’Bout time we did some lookin’ on, instead o’ gettin’ our brains knocked out.’
‘Your brains being where?’ questioned Gwilliams.
‘Never you mind,’ growled Wynter, taking a silver cigarillo case out of his pocket and preparing to light one of the contents. ‘You just treat me with a bit o’ respect.’
Sergeant King’s eyes widened. ‘Put that bloody cigarillo away, you meat-headed idiot!’ he roared. ‘I’ll give you respect with the five that make up my right fist if you don’t behave.’
Jack turned to glare at his men and his eyes too went from narrow to round.
‘Where did you get that silver case, Wynter?’
The private quickly slipped the case back into his pocket.
‘It was give to me.’
‘By whom?’
‘Mate o’ mine.’
‘His name?’
‘Can’t recall’
‘Yet he gives you valuable silver cases.’
‘S’right, sir. I won it. In a card game.’
‘You said it was given to you.’
‘Well . . .’ Wynter grinned. ‘He ’ad to give it me once I’d won it, din’t he?’
Jack was certain Wynter was using the gold he had stolen from the shipment to buy such items, but he had no proof.
‘We’ll talk more about this later, Private. You will show me the man from whom you won that cigarillo case. Understand?’
‘Sir!’
Then to Gwilliams, Wynter said, ‘I never knew anybody else what said whom like the captain does. Is that a real word? I thought it was who.’
‘It’s called grammar.’
‘Is it though?’
Men of the 65th, a Yorkshire regiment, had earned the nickname of the Royal Tigers in India. In New Zealand they were called the ‘Hickety Pips’, a mispronunciation of the Maori hikete piwhete. They were a hard, determined bunch and three companies were ordered to charge the Maori redoubt: a direct assault. But it took some eight attempts before they were able to storm the two outer trenches.
Down on the river, the 40th, West Country boys with long-vowelled accents, were attacking from two ships: the Avon and the Pioneer. Their objective was the central redoubt, a 20-foot-high fortification in the middle of the pa. Men were going down in greater numbers than General Cameron had anticipated. The smoke-laden air was full of the cries of the wounded as the rifle pits and trenches of the enemy took their toll on the attackers. Maoris were falling too, but in fewer numbers. General Cameron was one of those soldiers always of the opinion that a professional modern army is unstoppable, if pitted against a less organized enemy. But the cost was hurting him.
‘Where’s the 14th?’ he asked a staff officer.
‘They’re in there too, sir,’ came the reply, ‘alongside the 65th.’
‘Over eight hundred men,’ growled the general, ‘and we can’t take a few Maori in a mud fort. Damnation. I will have them. I will. Who have we got in reserve?’
He then ordered thirty-six men of the Royal Artillery to rush the main tower with revolvers. They went in with great bravado, firing their handguns at anything that looked like the enemy. It was a wild and extravagant gesture from the general, which might have astounded the Maoris into a panic. In truth, it was a rotten failure. The RA lost their commander, and many others, and had to retreat. Jack turned his head as he saw Captain Mercer, the officer in charge of the assault, go down under fire. He had met Mercer in the mess, two nights before. But when he looked back, there was a Maori clambering over the earthworks to reach the captain and drag him to safety, getting himself wounded in the process. It was an incredibly selfless and courageous act, which gained rare praise from General Cameron, who said he was determined to find out the name of that Maori as he was a fine and noble warrior.
Next, the order went out to the naval brigade. One hundred men in blue, armed with cutlasses and rifles, stormed the parapet of the central fortification as they might the quarter-deck of an enemy ship in an engagement at sea. Again they were caught in a hail of fire from the defenders. Naval men went down, here and there, unable to make any impression on the Maori defenders. It seemed as though the Maori citadel in the middle of the redoubt was unassailable.
‘Call them back,’ the general said, sighing. ‘We’ll hold our position here.’ He looked around him. ‘It’s getting dark. I want the pa completely surrounded. None must escape. We will take it in the morning.’
Jack and his men bivouacked nearby. Ta Moko was not with them on this occasion, but Jack knew his Maori guide could have told the general that there would be escapees during the night. Indeed, when morning came, such was the case. A large number of the enemy had slipped through the cordon. Those who had been left behind wasted no time in surrendering. The toll on the Maoris was 50, but the British had suffered a similar number of casualties. It was one of those times when Jack could not help wondering if they had come to some sort of agreement, a compromise, there would be over a hundred men still walking around, breathing air, and living a life. There appeared to have been no real gain for either side. So the British had won? But was their win merely in name only? Some battle honours to go on the colours? Or was it a significant psychological victory, which was a telling blow to the Maori cause?
Over 180 prisoners were rounded up. The British troops showed these men great respect for their gallantry and General Cameron said they should be treated well. Then, with the way open south, Jack and his men were sent up to Auckland, whe
re Sergeant King was to present some of his maps to senior officers billeted in the city. For King, it was the highlight of several years of work. He solemnly displayed the products of his endeavours before bored colonels as if they were the works of Michelangelo.
‘What your man doesn’t seem to understand,’ a major said to Jack on the side, ‘is that it’s fun getting lost in the bush. How else are we to test our mettle if not from having to find our way out of a fix every so often? How dull it would be, chum, if we knew exactly where we were going and how long it would take to get there, all the time. There’s no sense of achievement in treading in the footprints of a sergeant-clerk.’
In his heart of hearts, Jack was inclined to agree with the major, but of course he said nothing to King, who was like a boy presenting his handmade model to his tutors at school. This was his work. The fruits of his profession. Nothing could destroy King’s feeling of euphoria.
Later, Jack learned that the name of the Maori who tried to save Captain Mercer was a chief named Te Oriori. Unfortunately Mercer’s wound was mortal, and the chief’s attempts were in vain. Nevertheless, Jack’s admiration of Maoris as a warrior race had again increased with that selfless act.
Fifteen
Captain Abraham Wynter, of the Honourable Artillery Company, was in the dressing room of his grand house on Main Street, New Plymouth. There were a total of seventeen bedrooms in the huge white clapboard residence, only a half-dozen of which were ever occupied at the same time. On the occasions that Captain Wynter had held drinking and card game evenings, most guests were unable to return home afterwards (in actual fact, many were incapable of making it to the front door) and were permitted to doss in the first unoccupied bedroom they had the good fortune to stagger into, so long as it was not one of the two master bedrooms used by the host. Captain Wynter himself was a light sleeper. His troubled mind often kept him awake in the early hours of the day as he brooded on various issues which circled his brain. It took but a creak of a stair, or the wind in the eves, to have him sitting bolt upright in bed, his heart racing ahead and his fear not far behind. On such occasions Captain Wynter would take himself to his second bedroom, in an attempt to find a change of atmosphere, and blessed sleep.
Kiwi Wars Page 18
