refuge with a
friendly neighbouring chief, Te Pehi. Meanwhile, the _Boyd_ had been
stripped and burned. In the orgie that followed George's father
snapped a flint-lock musket over a barrel of gunpowder, and, with the
followers round him, was blown to pieces. Nigh seventy lives were lost
in the _Boyd_ massacre. Of course the slain were eaten.

[Footnote 1: As given by him to J.L. Nicholas five years afterwards.
See Nicholas' _Voyage to New Zealand_, vol. i., page 145. There are
those who believe the story of the flogging to be an invention of
George. Their authority is Mr. White, a Wesleyan missionary who lived
at Whangaroa from 1823 to 1827, and to whom the natives are said to
have admitted this. But that must have been, at least, fourteen years
after the massacre, and George was by that time at odds with many of
his own people. He died in 1825. His last hours were disturbed by
remorse arising from an incident in the _Boyd_ affair. He had not, he
thought, properly avenged the death of his father--blown up by the
powder-barrel. Such was the Maori conscience.]

Then ensued a tragedy of errors. The captains of certain whalers lying
in the Bay of Islands, hearing that the survivors of the _Boyd_ were
at Te Pehi's village, concluded that that kindly chief was a partner
in the massacre. Organizing a night attack, the whalers destroyed
the village and its guiltless owners. The unlucky Te Pehi, fleeing
wounded, fell into the hands of some of George's people, who,
regarding him as a sympathiser with the whites, made an end of him.
Finally, to avenge him, some of the survivors of his tribe afterwards
killed and ate three seamen who had had nothing to do with any stage
of the miserable drama.

Less well known than the fate of the _Boyd_ is the cutting-off of the
brig _Hawes_ in the Bay of Plenty in 1829. It is worth relating, if
only because it shows that the Maoris were not always the provoked
party in these affairs, and that, moreover, vengeance, even in No
Man's Land, did not always fall only on the guiltless. In exchange for
fire-arms and gunpowder the captain had filled his brig with flax and
pigs. He had sailed out to Whale Island in the Bay, and by a boiling
spring on the islet's beach was engaged with some of his men in
killing and scalding the pigs and converting them into salt pork.
Suddenly the amazed trader saw the canoes of his friendly customers
of the week before, headed by their chief "Lizard," sweep round and