John Rutherford, the White Chief | Page 7

put all together into a large canoe, our hands being tied; and the New Zealanders, searching us, took from us our knives, pipes, tobacco-boxes, and various other articles. The two dead bodies, and the wounded mate, were thrown into the canoe along with us. The mate groaned terribly, and seemed in great agony, the tomahawk having cut two inches deep into the back of his neck; and all the while one of the natives, who sat in the canoe with us, kept licking the blood from the wound with his tongue. Meantime, a number of women who had been left in the ship had jumped overboard, and were swimming to the shore, after having cut her cable, so that she drifted, and ran aground on the bar near the mouth of the river. The natives had not sense to shake the reefs out of the sails, but had chopped them off along the yards with their tomahawks, leaving the reefed part behind.
"The pigs, which we had bought from them, were, many of them, killed on board, and carried ashore dead in the canoes, and others were thrown overboard alive, and attempted to swim to the land; but many of them were killed in the water by the natives, who got astride on their backs, and then struck them on the head with their merys. Many of the canoes came to the land loaded with plunder from the ship; and numbers of the natives quarrelled about the division of the spoil, and fought and slew each other. I observed, too, that they broke up our water-casks for the sake of the iron hoops.
"While all this was going on, we were detained in the canoe; but at last, when the sun was set, they conveyed us on shore to one of the villages, where they tied us by the hands to several small trees. The mate had expired before we got on shore, so that there now remained only twelve of us alive. The three dead bodies were then brought forward, and hung up by the heels to the branch of a tree, in order that the dogs might not get at them. A number of large fires were also kindled on the beach, for the purpose of giving light to the canoes, which were employed all night in going backward and forward between the shore and the ship, although it rained the greater part of the time.
"Gentle reader," Rutherford continues, "we will now consider the sad situation we were in; our ship lost, three of our companions already killed, and the rest of us tied each to a tree, starving with hunger, wet, and cold, and knowing that we were in the hands of cannibals.
"The next morning, I observed that the surf had driven the ship over the bar, and she was now in the mouth of the river, and aground near the end of the village. Everything being now out of her, about ten o'clock in the morning they set fire to her; after which they all mustered together on an unoccupied piece of ground near the village, where they remained standing for some time; but at last they all sat down except five, who were chiefs, for whom a large ring was left vacant in the middle. The five chiefs, of whom Aimy was one, then approached the place where we were, and after they had stood consulting for some time, Aimy released me and another, and, taking us into the middle of the ring, made signs for us to sit down, which we did. In a few minutes, the other four chiefs came also into the ring, bringing along with them four more of our men, who were made to sit down beside us.
"The chiefs now walked backward and forward in the ring with their merys in their hands, and continued talking together for some time, but we understood nothing of what they said. The rest of the natives were all the while very silent, and seemed to listen to them with great attention. At length, one of the chiefs spoke to one of the natives who was seated on the ground, and the latter immediately rose, and, taking his tomahawk in his hand, went and killed the other six men who were tied to the trees. They groaned several times as they were struggling in the agonies of death, and at every groan the natives burst out in great fits of laughter.
"We could not refrain from weeping for the sad fate of our comrades, not knowing, at the same time, whose turn it might be next. Many of the natives, on seeing our tears, laughed aloud, and brandished their merys at us.
"Some of them now proceeded to dig eight large round holes, each about a foot deep,