Tommo & Hawk (28 page)

As they push me out of the cell, I sees Hawk through the smoke. He's being carried over the heads of his captors to the front of the gaol and I tries to follow him as they takes him towards the door. But them what's got a hold of me shoves me down a passageway towards the back of the gaol-house. In the corridor we come across Nottingham. He is on his hands and knees, with blood coming out his nose and mouth, coughing and wheezing from the smoke.

'Ya mongrel bastard, Nottingham!' I screams. 'Your scam failed, didn't it, you two-faced bludger!'

I suppose I should've saved me voice to pray for me life, but at that moment I hates the sod so much, I don't give a damn! Me brother's going to be killed 'cause of him and I only wish I had me axe so I could do the same to him. I hope the fire roasts the miserable pig like Sam Slit!

I can hear the crowd outside howling for blood. Strange, I ain't afraid for meself, only for Hawk. Without him there ain't no point anyways: might as well be back in the wilderness, or dead. I only hopes they make it quick. I don't want to die slow - hands clawing at me, feet kicking and stamping, me bones crunching under their sticks and stones. The mob is braying now. It's a weird sound. They must have Hawk, I reckons. I wish they'd kill me first, so I don't have to bear the pain o' hearing me brother bashed to death.

'May you rot in hell, Nottingham!' I screams as I'm bundled out the back door.

'Him mongril, Tommo,' shouts one of the Maori holding me about the shoulder, then laughs. I stares around in surprise. It is one of me mates from the Nankin Maiden! In me panic I haven't recognised him. What's happening here? I thinks. There's no one outside the back o' the gaol-house and them what's running me towards the bay are laughing like it's a huge joke.

Pretty soon we comes to a canoe well hidden on the beach, and we're off across the water and out to sea. We travels up the coast for several miles, then leave the canoe and head into the wilderness.

For over a week, we walks through mountains and valleys. Several times, we comes to a stream and we stops to bathe. It feels like we're goin' in circles and we does much of our walking in rivers to lose our footprints. Finally, towards the evening of the tenth day, we come to the pa of the Ngati Haua tribe and then into the village and there's Hawk sitting large as life with Hammerhead Jack.

Though me Maori friends has told me often enough along the way that Hawk would be all right, I were feared he could not make it through the mob unharmed. Hawk be just as happy to see yours truly as I am to see him and to me mortification, he lifts me high above the ground, swinging me up in his great arms as if I be some snot-nosed brat. But I can't wipe the grin off me stupid gob, as the tears roll down Hawk's cheeks. Hammerhead Jack roars with laughter and I can see he approves. 'We are safe from the mongrels here, Tommo!' Hawk tells me as he returns me to the ground.

And so we has been. But in the course of the year, I've learnt that life among the Maori can be as bloody difficult as life aboard ship. They has so many taboos, things they can and cannot do. They call this tapu and it is ruled over by the chief and the priests, the tohunga, what are the keepers of the tribe's history and lore. The tohunga are big men 'round these parts, second only to the chief himself.

Chief Wiremu Tamihana is not only the tribe's leader but also a kind of god. His tapu comes direct from the spirits and is the absolute law. All that the chief touches becomes tapu or, as white folk might say, holy.

We've only been in the village a couple of months when we sees how powerful this tapu be. Hawk and Chief Tamihana is sitting together, talking, with the chief smoking his pipe. By and by they takes a walk and the chief, not thinking, leaves his tinder-box behind. Four ordinary blokes happen by and, seein' the tinder-box, stops to light their pipes. But when they finds out whose tinder-box it be, they realise they has committed a terrible sacrilege by using it and they dies of fright. Truly, they dies! They is all stone dead, not twelve hours later, of the fear brought on by the tapu.

Tapu is most powerful in the chief, and he can get whatever he wants in the tribe just by saying it is his backbone or his right arm or some other part of his body. When the chief says this, he makes whatever it be sacred, so that no one else, includin' the owner, can go near it again. If a single drop of the chief's blood be spilled upon an object, then it is tapu, and can only belong to him.

In the common people, tapu is a more simple and practical thing. Say a man finds a piece of driftwood on the beach, he needs only cut a notch in it with his axe, and it becomes tapu and his property. What would Ikey thinks of this business, I wonders with a smile. A man can simply pull a single strip of flax across his doorway and no person can enter it until he returns to remove the tapu: a most efficient means o' protecting your property!

Of course for the white man, property be only owned by evidence of a government deed and protected by a gun. Tapu has often made it hard for the Maori to deal with the pakeha. Many white folks don't bother to learn the importance of their taboos and don't respect their rules. Living amongst the Maori, I has come to understand much about tapu, but I still makes mistakes. Hawk though has gone to much trouble to learn some of the complex tapus and laws o' the people. This has come in most handy in his dealings with the Ngati Haua tribe and many others. Me brother has become a big man among the natives.

Meself, I've had enough of adventures to last me a lifetime. I want us to move on, to find our way back to Australia. Being here ain't much different to being on the Nankin Maiden as Chief Tamihana don't allow grog in his villages, something what makes big brother Hawk happy, o' course! I am now almost two years dry, though not cured in the least of me desire for the fiery grape. Not a single day passes without me thirsting for a drop.

Hawk, meanwhile, is determined that we stay on in this dry place to repay our 'debt' to Hammerhead Jack.

'Debt! What's you mean, debt? We don't owe no debt! You saved his life!'

'You are wrong, Tommo,' Hawk says in his patient way what makes me want to kick him in the bollocks. 'I only helped him back into the whaleboat.'

'You saved him from the whale! And from being flogged to death!'

'Maybe,' he replies. 'But he saved both of us. Two lives! We owe him at least one, Tommo.'

'Me own, I suppose?' I says, sarcastic-like.

'No, Tommo, you needn't give up your life. But there is much we can do to help.'

Hawk reckons that a great injustice is being done to the native people by the white men. His conscience has got the better of him. But the world be full o' mongrels and now, with as many settlers in New Zealand as there are Maori, they's taken over this place and claimed it for their own. What can Hawk do to change this? Nothing! But he won't listen. And now he tells me that war is coming.

'War!' I shouts. 'War between the pakeha and the Maori? And you wants us to be a part of it? On the side of the Maori?' I scream at him. 'What can we do, a nigger and a skinny runt? For Gawd's sake, let's scarper while we still can!'

'Tommo, we can't, not now!' he says, pleading.

'What? Why not? You gunna be a general in the army or something?'

'Adviser, no more,' Hawk answers calmly. 'The Maori must unite. The tribes must be brought together or they cannot prevail against the government troops and the settlers.'

'You know what?' I says, truly angry now.

'What?'

'You're gunna get us killed, that's what!'

'Listen, Tommo! The settlers, with the connivance of the government, are stealing Maori land. As long as the Maori are divided they have no hope of impressing the governor. They have no collective power to claim their rights under the treaty.'

'Where'd ya learn all this rubbish, Hawk? Nobody has no power to exert against no British government! You think we's got power to exert? You think the Aborigines in Tasmania, what's practically all perished at the hands o' the government, had power? You think Georgie Augustus Robinson, the government man what was meant to protect the Abos, was their true friend? All he done was herd Truganini and her people into nowhere so the whites could take their land! What treaty is ya talking about, mate?'

'Waitangi. The Treaty of Waitangi.'

'Waitangi? That piece o' shit-paper! The Maori may as well wipe their arses on it for all the good it will do 'em!'

'It says the Queen will guarantee the full, exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates, forests and fisheries and other properties they may collectively and individually possess, so long as it is their wish and desire to retain the same in their possession!' Hawk quotes all this right off, so that I want to punch his face in.

I shrug. 'The government's changed its mind, then, like it always does.'

'No, there's more!' says Hawk, his eyes gleaming. 'It is in the rest of the treaty that they are boxing clever now, thinking to evade their responsibility with misinterpretation!'

'Misinterpretation, is it now? Shit, Hawk, wake up!'

'Listen, this is what the New Zealand Company say,' and he takes to quoting again: ' "We have always had very serious doubts whether the Treaty of Waitangi made with naked savages by a consul invested with no plenipotentiary powers…"'

'What's pleni-po-tentiary mean?' I asks. Hawk and his big words!

'It means someone what has been given the full powers of the government, like an ambassador.' Hawk answers. 'Where was I? Oh yes… "invested with no plenipotentiary powers, without ratification by the Crown, could be treated by lawyers as anything but a praiseworthy device for amusing and pacifying savages for the moment."' Hawk stabs at the air with his finger. 'We cannot allow this to happen!'

'We? What's this "we"? Hawk, we is not Maori! We is supposed to be British, remember! Shit, we is supposed to be on the other bloody side, mate!'

'No, no, they are also British, the Maori!'

'British?' Now I'm curious. 'How come?'

Off he goes again and I think what a bloody bore he's gunna be if he ain't careful. ' "In consideration for consent to the Queen's government, the Queen will protect all the Maori people and give them all the rights and privileges of British subjects."' Hawk looks at me steady. 'So you see, they are the same as the settlers in their entitlements, but their land be taken away from them with a clever ploy, a misrepresentation!'

'There ain't nothin' new in that! That's what governments do for a living, mis-bloody-represent!'

'Tommo, you must understand this thing! It is like we said on the ship, it's a matter of conscience, good men working for the common good of the common man!' He sees me doubtful face and adds, 'Not letting the mongrels win!'

I jerk my head and snort. 'The mongrels always win when they is the government!'

Hawk ignores me and if there were a tub nearby, I swear he'd have took to thumping it. 'The Maori do not possess the land individually like we do. Land is owned by the tribe, and if the individual should use it for his own, it is only by permission of all the tribe as represented by the chief. The tribe allows him to use the shadow of the land though the substance, the soil itself, belongs to all. It has been their way, their law, since time out of mind.'

'But it ain't our way, is it?' I insist.

'That's right,' says Hawk, 'but the British government understood this difference and recognised it. The treaty states that land can only be sold to the government with the full permission of all the tribe and its chief. Settlers may not buy land directly from any individual, only from the government. But the settlers are doing so, and the government is turning a blind eye.'

'There you are, what the eye don't see, the heart don't grieve over!' I claps my hands and laughs. 'Put down your spectacles, gentlemen, the little Queen in London Town owns all the aces in New Zealand! Can't expect her to see across the sea, now can we?'

'No, it's not right, Tommo!' Hawk shouts. 'It's deliberate cheating! It's Queen Victoria cheating her own subjects of what's rightfully theirs!'

'And so you wants to go to war against her? Ha! You must be mad!'

'The Maori people have a saying: "For women and land, men die."'

'And Tommo also has a saying: "We ain't got no women and we ain't got no land and so I'm telling you straight, we ain't gunna die for fuck-all o' nothing!"'

Hawk laughs despite himself. 'The Maori people must speak with one voice and Chief Tamihana wishes there to be a Maori king to bring all the tribes together. This he has almost accomplished. A new king will be announced in the next few months.'

'A king for them, a queen for us? You think that will solve the problem?'

'Tommo, Chief Tamihana has a most persuasive argument. He asks, "Is there not Queen Victoria of England, Nicholas of Russia, Louis Napoleon of France and Pomara of Tahiti - each a native monarch for their people? Each nation is separate, and I also must have a king for myself."'

'Sure, and we already has a queen. Why should we help him?'

Hawk looks hurt. 'Tommo, the Maori have always had their wars, one tribe hating the other. That's the government's strength, to encourage one against the other, to divide and conquer! Since the musket was introduced to them, the Maori have killed more than twenty thousand of their own people! I can help Chief Tamihana to make peace amongst the tribes.' He is breathing heavy now. 'They have agreed to a king of their own but there is still much dissension between them on other matters. If they may be united then they will be a force to be reckoned with. Their wishes cannot then be ignored by the governor.' Hawk grins suddenly. 'For the first time in my life my colour is useful. I am neither white nor brown, I am as black as the ace of spades, so I have no axe to grind. I'm no threat to either side. This makes me the perfect go-between.'

'That's right, it'll be no different to always! Everybody hates the nigger, so now everyone can hate the black go-between! You be perfect for the job o' being hated,' I says.

'Please let me do this, Tommo! I have been given my voice back and I must use it well. What better way than to stand up for what's right and honest, eh? Chief Tamihana is a good fellow, he wants peace and unity. He has shown us great charity, you know this. He has not spared his hospitality and his people have treated us like their own kind. We have so much to be thankful for.'