Chapter 26
Raid
Out on the river Wiremu, Wang and Max sat in near darkness, while black water rolled past the wooden hull of Wiremu's dugout canoe. The full moon was hidden behind heavy clouds, giving them perfect cover. It was 3am on Monday morning, the middle watch.
All three were gripped with nervous excitement.
The few gaslights that remained on in Gibbstown and up in Collingwood City cut faint paths of light across the water.
“Save your strength,” whispered Wiremu from the front. “Let the current carry us down.” Behind them was the span of the Aorere Bridge, to the left quiet Ferntown on Ongaio Island, in front the black silhouette of Wapping Point.
The river carried them close to the right-hand bank for a time, near the great expanse of low, rush-covered, mud islands. Here the river's silt choked the estuary and became the habitat of wading birds, a semi-tidal no man's land, divided up by shallow channels.
Then the rushes ran out and the canoe drifted across the mouth of Collingwood Haven, the river continuing past Wapping Point and on out to sea.
“Here,” said Max who was sitting at the stern. The other two turned and he handed them each a black fabric square. “For your faces. I have plenty.”
They folded Max's birthday handkerchiefs into triangles and tied the ends off behind their heads, disguising the lower half of their faces.
With paddles taken up again, the gap at the mouth of the haven was quickly crossed and they came to lie just off the end of Wapping Point. Max had a fleeting image of Mahuika squatting here at the water’s edge, as they had seen her last, from on board the HMS Harrier.
Max had told his parents that he would be staying Sunday night with Wang and Wiremu at the Aorere Pā. And indeed, they had. But at one in the morning the three of them had risen, pulled on their black clothes, and slipped down to the river’s edge. Wiremu's canoe was quietly dragged from the willows before bearing the three raiders down the river, around the bend and out toward the sea.
“Look!” hissed Wiremu, pointing into the haven. Max and Wang did as they were commanded. Along the inside of Wapping Point, on which Gibbstown was built, there were any number of small jetties and high tide moorings. But at the closest pier there was a shadowy, yet familiar iron hulk.
“The Elizabeth III” whispered Max. Alistair Stewart's boat.
Wiremu nodded his head.
“Looks like The Five have company.”
Even at this late hour golden lights showed at some of the ship's round portholes.
There was silence for a moment, then Wang spoke up.
“They will surely be asleep. The danger is not greatly increased.”
Wiremu watched the ship a moment longer. Max didn't like the look of those lit portholes.
“Alright,” concluded Wiremu. “As we discussed. Max remember your Pou whenua is... well it's just beyond the Elizabeth.”
Max knew the drill. Wiremu had briefed them well. The Pou whenua that he had been tasked with uplifting was indeed just beyond the Elizabeth, sticking out of the shore-side bank, beside a white-washed boat shed.
But they weren't there for just that one. After his shouting match in The Canteen with The Five, Wiremu had surveyed four Pou whenua posts standing on the headland. It was his desire to uplift them all.
These ancient markers, Wiremu had explained, were placed strategically in the earth to show, and symbolise the interlinked relationship between the people who belonged to that part of land; the Tāngata Whenua, the Tāngata Whenua's ancestors and the land itself. Those three elements together created tūrangawaewae or a place of standing.
To Wiremu it was highly significant that these northerners had encamped themselves within his people's place of standing. He doubted that it was an accident. By stealing the pou whenua, Wiremu reasoned, they would deny the northern invaders (as he had taken to calling them) the psychological significance of Wapping Point. The 'guerilla' action would also communicate to The Five that their schemes had been seen for what they were and that they were opposed.
For his part Max wasn't exactly sure what The Five's schemes really were. But he trusted Wiremu, and the sense that he had of a brewing storm, of lightning yet unstuck, that seemed to hang ominously in the air whenever Wiremu and The Five were in the same place, told him this mission was important.
With one last glance at the Elizabeth, Max nodded his understanding and the current carried them around Wapping Point, down the channel and into Murderer's Bay.
Wiremu carefully directed the canoe toward the shore. It was a windless night, so the swell in the bay was helpfully small. It would certainly be miserable to start off wet by swamping the boat in the chop while disembarking. The stillness did mean however that any noise they made would not be hidden in the wind.
“Here we go,” said Wiremu, guiding the canoe into the beach before springing out and holding it steady for the other two. Once out of the boat and ashore they didn't hesitate. Max adjusted his kerchief and keeping low, followed Wang up the beach and into the rushes at the top of the dune.
The first Pou whenua post was here, resting at a drunken angle, the little potbellied Tekoteko carved on its top staring up at the silver clouds. Seizing it together, they both pulled, and it came away easily, trailing dry sand.
Max scanned the beach. All clear.
Wiremu was just visible in the murk, down by the water’s edge, holding the canoe. With the log tucked under their arms they set off on the return journey. The Pou whenua was lighter than Max had expected, ancient and dry from salt spray, wind and a hundred thousand sunrises.
“Good work,” whispered Wiremu as the Pou whenua was lowered into the belly of the canoe. “One down, three to go.”
“This is where it gets interesting,” said Max, looking back over the low rush covered dunes toward the roofs of dark buildings clustered together amongst the scrub.
“If anyone needs help or has a warning... morepork call, “said Wiremu.
“Not a morepork,” hissed Max. “It's a forest bird. Out of place here.”
“What then?”
“A godwit. Make a double note like kew-kew.”
“Ok. You are the expert.”
“Good luck.”
Max turned and retraced his steps back into the dune. Wang set off along the beach at a slow jog, heading toward the second Pou whenua. Wiremu pushed the canoe back out beyond the tiny breakers, remounted and started paddling parallel to Wang, back toward the end of the Point.
Max was soon squatting in the inky shadow behind the first building, waiting for his breathing to settle. The building was a simple, windowless box that appeared to be built for storage. Moments ago, he had ducked over the dune, picked his way across a pile of driftwood, before slipping in under a tangled Tree Lucerne hedge.
There were other buildings about. All dark and showing no signs of life. He peered into the shadows between each. It was deathly quiet, even the gentle lap of the sea was blocked out.
In the thick of it now, enemy territory.
But he wasn't expected, so the chance of discovery was very slim. Still, he checked the shadows a second time before moving on. In the stillness the crackle of dead leaves under his feet sounded like Chinese fireworks.
A minute later he was behind another big featureless building, its windows all boarded up. The area through which he moved was neglected and he figured that he must be right on the boundary between the Pā site and Gibbstown proper. As if to confirm this he came at once to a path that ran through the trees and past the corner of his warehouse before continuing on toward the end of The Point. It would be the main thoroughfare from the street.
The path was deserted, he shot across and hunkered down under the bushes on the far-side.
So far so good.
Again he moved though low trees and in a couple of minutes found himself looking out from their cover over an expanse of grass and toward the back of a small cottage. Beyond the cottage and to the left he could make out the white-washed boat shed, beside which would be the pou whenua he had been sent to collect. Beyond this was the black water of the haven. The Elizabeth III still sat at her mooring.
Wang would have retrieved the second Pou by now and returned with it to Wiremu in the canoe. Together they would be making their way to the end of the Point and the third one. Max needed to keep moving.
The best way forward was to cross over to the back of the cottage. The humble structure was built on piles and from beneath Max would be able to command a view of the open space between it and the boat shed. He made his dash and slipped under the little house. Arm over arm he moved to the far side and stopped behind a flight of wooden stairs. From here he could see a fair way up the Point, past more huts and flax bushes, almost all the way to the pine trees on the end. The grey scene was devoid of life. No lights showed in any of the windows. Only the portholes of the Elizabeth shone little golden moons.
Bump!
Something or someone moved in the hut above his head. Max froze and waited for his thumping heart to slow.
No need to panic, just a bump.
Then came the loud sound of a chair dragging across the wooden floor boards and someone taking a step or two. He waited for an age then, his breath hot behind the black kerchief.
From the darkness beneath the hut he scanned the shadows all around, looking for an escape. He had to move, to keep ahead of Wang and Wiremu in the canoe, but he daren't make a sound and alert the person on the other side of the thin floor.
It was some minutes before the singing drifting down from above penetrated his racing mind. Another minute before he comprehended what it was.
The words were in Te Reo, and Max could nether fully hear them nor, of course, understand their meaning. But it was clear that they were sung by a woman and sung beautifully. The quiet notes, sung in secret, hung in the air, and reminded Max of Tamati Marino's funeral procession. He could hear in the tones, in the pauses and breaths, in the holding of a note and the cutting short of another, the sounds and stories of the land, of the bush and the birds, and of the river and the people of the sea.
To his surprise he realised that the singer could only be Mahuika. Max wondered for a moment if the words he was hearing were some kind of spell, and if he had been enchanted and had in fact lain under the cottage for hours. With the moon and stars still hidden behind clouds he had no way of knowing. He was trying to remind himself that he wasn't in some fairy tale when the singing stopped.
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The last note was followed by the sound of footsteps above his head and the sudden opening of the cottage door. Then before his eyes, on the top step, a bare foot and thin ankle appeared, followed a second later by its partner on the next step. Max froze, his heart in his mouth. Each step creaked as she descended.
The witch had come to get him!
Mahuika was quickly on the grass and walking away, wrapped in a long shawl, her black hair unbound. Max pushed himself further into the dirt beneath the hut, glad of the darkness, his black clothes and kerchief. She was heading toward the end of the Point and was almost to the next building when she suddenly stopped and turned around. Her eyes were just black holes in her strangely pale skin, her mouth and moko a black tear at the bottom of her skull face. Max felt a shiver go right to his core.
She looked directly at his hiding place. He could feel those sorcerous eyes peeling away the darkness. In a moment she would cry out and raise the alarm. And he would run for his life... unless she had bound his legs with another spell.
He stared back, unblinking, across the distance until his eyes watered, willing the darkness beneath the hut to cover him like a blanket. But then Mahuika turned and continued on, walking away around the back of the far hut.
Max stayed motionless fearing a feint, with her watching from some hidden angle. But after another a minute, knowing there was no time left, if he wished to make his rendezvous with the canoe, which he certainly did, he rolled out and dashed across the grass to the white-washed boat shed.
He arrived safely in the deeper dark behind the shed, with no sound of alarm piercing the night. Peering back around the corner he could see Mahuika slipping through the trees and shadows further up the point. She was on her way to where Wiremu and Wang must surely now be pulling the third pou whenua from the ground.
Max lifted his kerchief, cupped his hands around his mouth and let out the “kew-kew!” of an alarmed godwit. It seemed pitiful little, but he could do no more. He slid down the stones at the front of the building and ducked under the rail ramp that led from the boat shed door down into the water.
At the water’s edge disturbed crabs scuttled under damp rocks, as Max squatted to watch the Elizabeth. The single pier to which she was moored was only a few yards along the strand from his hiding place. The lights still burned within the portholes and Max could just make out a faint trace of smoke rising from her funnels. She was 'resting hot', a practice employed by a captain who didn't plan to stay on shore for long.
In the quiet Max could hear singing again. But this time it wasn't the beautiful tunes of a women's voice, but the rancorous sound of men at their drink. At first Max assumed that it originated from behind him, from one of the notorious hotels of Gibbstown. But in a moment he changed his mind and sense of direction, the singing came from on board the Elizabeth.
Scurrying out from under the ramp he stood and reached up for the last pou whenua. But he withdrew his hand a moment before his skin touched the rough grain. He knew that he really hadn’t taken the time to fully understand the pou whenua and their significance, meaning or suddenly important now, their potential power. He had been driven on this quest primarily because it mattered to Wiremu. But now the night seemed full of superstition.
In the gloom... it must be 4am... the carved face with its pointed tongue and round eyes leered down at him from the top of its log.
Did he dare take it? Did it mind being taken? Could it resist him?
Max found himself thinking about charms and enchantments again.
If this Pou whenua was the last of four, would the power of the other three now reside in it alone?
He hadn't been thinking like this before when he and Wang had taken up the first log. But at that point he hadn't seen Mahuika.
His mind was made up by a sudden shout from the trees at the end of the point. It was a woman's call, clear and alarmed. Wiremu and Wang had been discovered!
Max reached up and grabbed the pou whenua seeking to lift it from the stony bank. He pulled and nothing happened. Nothing at all. It was stuck fast in the packed soil. Max released his grip, relieved at least that his palms didn't burn with unquenchable magic fire or been locked eternally to the post.
The shouting continued and was growing closer. She was going to rouse the other four, and half of Gibbstown besides! Max scrambled up the bank and gripped the pou whenua down near the base with both hands. As he began working the log, pulling it and rocking to back and forth, Mahuika bust onto the pier and ran its short length, shouting in Māori. Reaching the Elizabeth, she sprung on board and began banging on the hatches with her hands. Max renewed his efforts, as on the Elizabeth trap doors started opening in the steel deck and lamp lights blinked on in the rigging.
Panicking now Max gave a massive heave on the pou whenua and somehow caused the bank to give way. He and the coveted log tumbled back toward the water in a loud cascade of stone and dust.
“There!” shouted Mahuika when the noise of Max's fall drew her attention. Raised male voices suddenly joined hers.
Surely Kingi, Ihaka and the other two.
Gripping the carving Max stood and his suspicions were confirmed. There at the gunwale, silhouetted in the newly lit lamp light, stood The Five. With them, spilling up from below, were a good number of the Elizabeth's crew. Max lumbered toward the water's edge; glad his black kerchief had remained in place.
Men, clearly intent on apprehending him, were starting to stream back off the pier. Then Wiremu and Wang, paddling furiously, rounded under the bow of the Elizabeth, and shot toward where Max was waiting.
“Get in!” roared Wiremu, as they drew near. But they were still too far off for Max to properly obey, so he started wading out, and was up to his waist when his friend's hands gripped him and the pou whenua and clumsily pulled the pair of them into the pitching canoe. The log quickly joined the other three on the floor and Max, regaining a seat, took up his paddle. “Let's go,” hissed Wiremu, as another commanding voice cut the air.
“Stoke the engines! All hands. Cast off!” The speaker could only be Captain Alistair Stewart.
“They mustn’t escape!” barked a second voice, Kingi Kuratahi.
“Go! Go! Go!” shouted Max and slowly, painfully slow at first, but gaining speed, the small dug-out canoe heaved away into the dark waters of Collingwood Haven.
---
“They are coming!” yelled Wang, looking over his shoulder.
“Just paddle,” was Wiremu's only answer to the self-evident observation. The chug of the Elizabeth's big steam engines and the shouts of her crew had carried to all three of them.
The boys cut across the surface of water that was as black as the volcanic glass in Professor Wynyard's display case. To their left the government funded gaslights that lined Haven Road twinkled, while above, at the edge of the terrace, the lights of the city also pushed the night back a few feet. On the right the reed banks and mud islands of the river delta separated them from the main channel.
Max knew that they were dead. He had taken one quick look back and seen the white of the foaming bow wave beneath the onrushing Elizabeth. It wasn't a game anymore, wasn't stealing apples from the neighbour's orchard, they were being chased by grown men! This was the choking that came after the biting off of more than you can... His mind was starting its catalogue of regrets and fantasies of turning back time.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
Still he paddled for all he was worth. Arms and lungs burning, but still too slow.
“Not far now,” called Wiremu from the stern. Max had no idea what that could mean. As far as he could see they had a very long way to go to... anywhere. The sailors on the Elizabeth were starting to call to them, mocking their progress as they drew quickly near.
But then a wide channel through the reeds opened up on their right. Wiremu, using his paddle like a tiller, turned the canoe into it.
Max, chest aflame, arms aching, looked back again to see their pursuers also make the turn. He saw too that crew members were hanging over the bow rail and readying long handled boat hooks.
“Keep going!” encouraged Wiremu. “We've almost got them.”
Max didn't appreciate his friends ill placed humour, clearly things were the other way around. Though he didn't have long to think about it, for the next moment a metal hook bit into the stern of their canoe and the Elizabeth's bow wave was spilling spume all about them, her engines loud in his ears. She was right on top of the tiny canoe.
Wiremu bashed the hook and handle away with his paddle, and another came stabbing down. Max was about to turn and join the hopeless battle, when all at once there was a loud belching, wallowing sound. Men cried out in alarm, fell and all around the canoe hit the water with great splashes. With engines running 'full ahead' the Elizabeth III unceremoniously buried her iron hull deep in the suddenly shallow black mud of the estuary bottom.
Wiremu gave a chuckle as the canoe and the three friends in it drew quickly away.
“In here,” he commanded, digging his paddle in so that the small boat slew to the left. Three paddles churned the water and the canoe shot into a narrow passage that forked off and led through the reeds. A split second later two loud reports rang out from the becalmed ship and double water spouts appeared, where the canoe had just been, as bullets smacked the water!
The new channel swallowed the three fugitives as the shouting and cursing from the grounded vessel died away. With heads down they followed the winding course in exhausted silence. When they were finally deep in the rushes and scrub islands they began to speak.
“Where will this take us?” asked Wang, indicating the secret channel along which they travelled.
“Back to the main river. With one short portage,” answered Wiremu, resting his paddle across his knees. The other two followed suit. Then pulling the black kerchiefs from their faces, they looked at one another and burst into laughter. Then as the last of the adrenaline burned out of their blood they grew solemn again.
“That was close,” said Max, stating the obvious.
“A little too close,” agreed Wiremu, taking up his paddle again.
“You played it well,” stated Wang.
“We all did,” was Wiremu's only reflection. Then hooking his thumb behind him he added, “The tide is finished coming in. It's not going to lift them off tonight. Captain Stewart's shame will be exposed to every Haven Road commuter come morning.”