not the only bit of patent
exaggeration in his story. Then they sailed away.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Transactions New Zealand Institute_, vol. xxviii.]

What prompted the attack at Murdering Beach is uncertain--like so much
that used to happen in No Man's Land. It is said that Tucker had been
to Otago some years previously and had stolen a baked head from the
Maoris. It is hinted that an encounter had taken place on the coast
not long before in which natives had been shot and a boat's crew cut
off. As of most occurrences of the time, we can only suspect that
lesser crimes which remained hidden led to the greater, which are more
or less truthfully recorded.

[Illustration]

Chapter VI

MISSION SCHOONER AND WHALE BOAT

"Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy."--_Text of Samuel
Marsden's first sermon at the Bay of Islands, Christmas Day_, 1814.

Maoris, shipping before the mast on board whalers and traders, made
some of the best seamen on the Pacific. They visited Sydney and
other civilized ports, where their fine physique, bold bearing, and
strangely tattooed faces, heightened the interest felt in them as
specimens of their ferocious and dreaded race. Stories of the Maoris
went far and wide--of their fierce fights, their cannibal orgies,
their grotesque ornaments and customs, their lonely, fertile, and
little-known country. Humane men conceived the wish to civilize and
Christianize this people. Benjamin Franklin had planned something of
the kind when the news of Cook's discovery first reached England.
Thirty years later, Samuel Marsden, a New South Wales chaplain,
resolved to be the Gregory or Augustine of this Britain of the South.
The wish became the master-passion of his life, and he lived to fulfil
it. How this resolve was carried out makes one of the pleasantest
pages of New Zealand history. The first step was his rescue of
Ruatara. In 1809 a roaming Maori sailor had worked his passage to
London, in the hope of seeing the great city and--greatest sight of
all--King George III. The sailor was Ruatara, a Bay of Islands chief.
Adventurous and inquiring as he was intelligent and good-natured,
Ruatara spent nearly nine years of his life away from his native land.
At London his captain refused to pay him his wages or to help him to
see King George, and solitary, defrauded, and disappointed, the young
wanderer fell sick nigh unto death. All the captain would do for him
was to transfer him to the _Ann_,