attack the _Hawes_. The seamen, still on board, ran up the rigging,
where they were shot. The captain, with those on the islet, rowed away
for their lives. The brig was gutted and burnt. The Maoris, perplexed
by finding a number of bags of the unknown substance flour, emptied
the contents into the sea, keeping the bags.[1]

[Footnote 1: Judge Wilson's _Story of Te Waharoa_.]

Certain white traders in the Bay of Islands resolved to bring "Lizard"
to justice, in other words to shoot him. They commissioned a schooner,
the _New Zealander_, to go down to the scene of the outrage. A
friendly Bay of Islands chief offered to do the rest. He went with the
schooner. On its arrival the unsuspecting "Lizard" came off to trade.
At the end of a friendly visit he was stepping into his canoe when his
unofficially appointed executioner stepped quietly forward, levelled
his double-barrelled gun, and shot "Lizard" dead.

As a matter of course the affair did not end there: "Lizard's" tribe
were bound in honour to retaliate. But upon whom? The _Pakehas_ who
had caused their chiefs death were far out of reach in the north.
Still they were not the only _Pakehas_ in the land. In quite a
different direction, in the harbour which Captain Cook had dubbed
Hicks's Bay, lived two inoffensive Whites who had not even heard of
"Lizard's" death. What of that? They were Whites, and therefore of the
same tribe as the _Pakehas_ concerned! So the village in which they
lived was stormed, one White killed at once, the other captured.
As the latter stood awaiting execution and consumption, by an
extraordinary stroke of fortune a whaling ship ran into the bay.
The adroit captive offered, if his life were spared, to decoy his
countrymen on shore, so that they could be massacred. The bargain was
cheerfully struck; and when an armed boat's crew came rowing to land,
the _Pakeha_, escorted to the seaside by a murderous and expectant
throng, stood on a rock and addressed the seamen in English. What
he told them to do, however, was to get ready and shoot his captors
directly he dived from the rock into the water. Accordingly his plunge
was followed by a volley. The survivors of the outwitted Maoris turned
and fled, and the clever _Pakeha_ was picked up and carried safely on
board.

At that time there was living among "Lizard's" people a certain Maori
from the Bay of Islands. This man, a greedy and mischievous fellow,
had instigated "Lizard" to cut off the _Hawes_