When hunger and tribal hatred had been sated, the victorious warriors, observing ominous signs of a gathering storm, returned to the west coast, and remained for a few days' rest at Omere.43 While here, the eagle eye of Waka Nene descried a vessel44 in full sail beating through Cook Strait. To the quick intellect of the chief, the sight of the ship opened up in an instant fresh possibilities; for he knew what intercourse with the pakeha had done for the Nga-Puhi, and he saw no reason why the same advantages should not be shared by his friend and ally, Te Rauparaha. Doubtless that chief had confided his fears to Waka Nene, and they had probably consulted long and anxiously as to the growing weakness of the position at Kawhia. When, therefore, Tamati beheld the passing ship, he saw at a glance that, if this part of the coast was frequented by vessels of the white man, it offered the same facilities for obtaining arms and ammunition which Hongi enjoyed at the Bay of Islands. With unrestrained excitement he called out to his comrade: "Oh, Raha,45 do you see that people sailing on the sea? They are a very good people; and if you conquer this land and hold intercourse with them, you will obtain guns and powder and become very great." This optimistic little speech was apparently all that was required to confirm Te Rauparaha in his growing desire to take the decisive step of migrating with the whole of his people from the storm-threatened Kawhia; and when the chief turned his face towards home, it was with the full resolve to come back at the first convenient season and make the country his own.
The homeward journey was characterised by the same ruthless behaviour towards the resident people which had been practised on the way down, those who were captured being killed and eaten without any unnecessary ceremony.46 What occurred within the confines of the Manawatu district we do not know, because the present-day representatives of the Rangitane people declare that they saw and heard nothing of the invaders. As they proceeded further north, however, we hear more of them; for while they were in the Rangitikei district an incident occurred which it suited the Ngati-Apa people not to forget. In one of the many excursions made into the interior in search of prisoners, a young chieftainess, named Pikinga, was captured by a party of Te Rangihaeata's men. Pikinga was the sister of Arapata Hiria, the Ngati-Apa chief against whom Waka Nene and Te Rauparaha were operating at the moment; and, if the gossip of the day is to be believed, she was possessed of no mean personal charms. She, at least, was attractive enough to captivate the most ruthless of the party, for it was not long before Te Rangihaeata fell a victim to her charms and made her his wife.
Whether this was merely a passing whim on the part of an amorous young warrior or a move in a much deeper game of diplomacy, it would be difficult to say at this distance of time, particularly as each tribe now imputes to the action of the chief a different motive. The Ngati-Apa claim, with some insistence, that the marriage was the expression of a bond of perpetual peace between them and Te Rauparaha: while the Ngati-Raukawa, to whose lot it fell some fifty years later to contest the point, contend that no such wide construction could be put upon Rangihaeata's action, and that, even if it involved the tribes in a treaty of friendship at the time, the compact was subsequently denounced by Te Rauparaha on account of the treachery of Ngati-Apa. It is quite within the region of possibility that Te Rauparaha, having regard to the political aspect of the situation, would, so soon as he had measured their strength, lead the Ngati-Apa to believe that he desired to cultivate their goodwill; because immediately he had determined to seize the country opposite Kapiti, he would perceive the wisdom of having some friendly tribe stationed between him and his northern enemies, upon whom he could rely to withstand the first shock of battle in the event of a Waikato invasion. Such tactics would not be foreign to the Ngati-Toa leader, for that part of his life which was not spent in battle was occupied in the development of schemes whereby the efforts of one tribe were neutralised by the efforts of another; and if he could make pawns of the Ngati-Apa, he would chuckle to himself and say, "Why not?"
But Te Rauparaha was not the man to seriously contemplate anything in the way of a permanent peace with Ngati-Apa, or with any one else whom he felt strong enough to destroy. And even assuming that he encouraged them in the belief that Rangihaeata's devotion to Pikinga was a common bond between them, he would not dream of maintaining such an understanding a moment longer than it suited his purpose. It seems, therefore, more likely that, when he satisfied himself that the people of the Rangitikei were no match for his own warriors, and that he could subdue them at his leisure, he was at some pains to impress them with a sense of his magnanimity, but only because he desired to use them as a buffer between himself and the Waikatos. Years afterwards, when he felt secure against invasion, he repudiated all friendship with Ngati-Apa, and ordered his people to wage eternal war against them. The claim which the Ngati-Apa subsequently made to the land in the Rangitikei-Manawatu districts, on the ground that they were never conquered by the Ngati-Toa, because this marriage protected them from conquest, was therefore not well founded, the ordinary occurrence of a chief taking a captive woman to be his slave-wife being invested with a significance which it did not possess. Upon the consummation of this happy event, the war party, laden with spoil and prisoners, made their way back to the north. When they reached Kawhia, after an absence of eleven months, Tuwhare being dead,47 Waka Nene, who had now assumed command of the northern contingent, took his leave of Te Rauparaha, and Te Rauparaha prepared to take leave of the land of his fathers.
CHAPTER IV
THE LAND OF PROMISE
When the period of feasting and enjoyment, which invariably followed upon the return of a successful Maori war party, had terminated at Kawhia, Te Rauparaha immediately became involved in a fresh struggle with Waikato. The cause of the hostility was remote; but, as Waikato had vowed to drive him out, no pretext was too slight upon which to base a quarrel. Thus the killing of one of their chiefs by a Taranaki warrior, to whom Te Rauparaha was related, was sufficient to justify the marching of a large war party against him. Their force advanced in two sections: the one came down the inland track, and the other, which was to actively engage Te Rauparaha, entered Kawhia from the sea. Two pas, Tau-mata-Kauae and Te Kawau, speedily fell before the invaders, and again Ngati-Toa were defeated at the battle of Te Karaka, on the borders of Lake Taharoa, after an heroic struggle, in which it is said that three hundred Ngati-Toa fought more than a thousand Waikatos. These disasters were indeed darkening the outlook for Ngati-Toa, and the position has been graphically described by one native historian, who states that "the losses of the tribe of Te Rauparaha were very great; by day and by night they were killed by Ngati-Pou." Success had also attended the arms of the section of Waikato who, under Te Wherowhero, had swept through the Waipa Valley and across the forest plateau until they reached the Wai-Kawau pa on the sea-coast, just north of the Mokau River. This they stormed and sacked by force of overpowering numbers, and, surfeited with victory, they united with their comrades at Te Karaka, and then triumphantly marched home.
With so many of his pas obliterated and his warriors slain, Te Rauparaha retired upon Te Arawi, a coastal stronghold built upon the summit of a forbidding-looking