Polynesian Mythology · The Legend of Rātā (2/2)

Shortly after his visitor had left him, Whakatau called aloud to his people, saying. “Let the sideboards be at once fresh lashed on to our canoe, to the canoe of our ancestor of Rātā.” His men were so anxious to fulfil their chief’s orders, that almost as soon as he had spoken they were at work, and had finished the canoe that very day, and dragged it down to the sea; when night fell, six of his warriors embarked in it, and Whakatau made the seventh; they then paddled off, following a direct course, until they reached the village of Tinirau; where they found Hine-i-te-iwaiwa seated in her house of mourning. Whakatau then asked her, “Have the warriors all left yet?” and she replied,

“They will not do it, they are afraid.”

Whakatau then said to her, “Farewell, then; do you remain here until you hear further from me.”

Whakatau and his men having re-embarked in their canoe, made a straight course for the place where was situated the great house called the Tihi-o-Manono, and they let their anchor drop and floated there.

When the next morning broke, and some of the people of the village coming out of the house, and beyond their defences, saw the canoe floating at the anchorage, they gave the alarm, crying out, “A war party! a war party!” Then the warriors came rushing forth to the fray in crowds, and arranged themselves in bands. Then stood forth one of their champions whose name was Mango-huritapena and he defied Whakatau, who was standing up in his canoe, calling out, “Were you fool enough, then, to come here of your own accord?” and Whakatau answered him, by shouting out, “Which of the arts of war do you consider yourself famous for?” and Mango-huritapena shouted out in answer,

“I am a most skilful diver.”

“Dive here, then, if you dare,” shouted out Whakatau in reply. Then the champion of the enemy gave a plunge into the water, and dived under it. Just as he got right under the canoe, one of Whakatau’s men poured the oil which Hine-i-te-iwaiwa had given them into the sea, and its waters immediately became quite transparent, so that they saw the warrior come floating up under the canoe, and Whakatau transfixed him with a wooden spear; so that champion perished.

Then forward stepped another champion named Pītakataka, and he defied Whakatau, shouting out, “Ah! you only killed Mango-huritapena because he chanced to put himself in a wrong position.”

Whakatau shouted out in reply, “Which of the arts of war are you skilled in then?” and he answered,

“Oh! I leap so skilfully that I seem to fly in the air.”

“Then leap here, if you dare,” answered Whakatau; and the champion of his enemies took a run and made a spring high into the air; but Whakatau laid a noose on the canoe, and as the warrior alighted in it, he drew it tight and caught him as a bird in a snare, and thus slew that warrior also.

And thus, one after the other, he slew ten of the most famous warriors of his enemies; one whom he had seized, he saved alive, but he cut out his tongue, and then said to him, “Now, off with you to the shore again, and tell them there how I have overcome you all;” having done this, Whakatau retired a little distance back from the place, so that his canoe could not be seen by his enemies.

In the afternoon Whakatau landed on the coast, and before eating anything, offered the prescribed sacrifice of the hair and a part of the skin of the head of one of his victims to the gods; and when the religious rites were finished, he ate food; and having done this, he directed the people he had with him to return, saying, “Return at once, and when you reach the residence of Hine-i-te-iwaiwa, speak to her, saying, ‘Whakatau told us to come, and tell you, that he could not return with us;’ and he further said, ‘If heavy rain falls in large drops, it is a sign that I have been killed; but if a light, misty rain falls, and the whole horizon is lighted up with flames, then you may know that I have conquered, and that I have burnt the Tihi-o-Manono;’ he also said that he wished you to sit upon the roof of your house watching until you saw the Tihi-o-Manono burnt.” Whakatau’s people at once returned to Hine-i-te-iwaiwa to deliver the message he had given them.

Just before nightfall, Whakatau drew near the great house, called the Tihi-o-Manono, and as the people of Whitinakonako, a great chief, were collecting firewood at the edge of a forest, he stealthily dropped in amongst them, pretending to be collecting firewood too; and as they were going home with their loads of firewood upon their backs, he managed to push on in front of them, and got into the house first with a long rope in his hand. One end of this he pushed between one of the side posts which supported the roof, and the plank walls of the house, and did the same with every post of the house, until the rope had gone quite round it, and then he made one end of it fast to the last post, and held the other end in his hand.

By this time the people who lived in the house all came crowding on to pass the night in it, and soon filled it up: the house was so large, and there were so many of them, that they had to light ten fires in it.

When their fires had burnt up brightly, some of them called out to Mangōpare, the man whom Whakatau had saved alive, and whose tongue he had cut out, “Well now, tell us what kind of looking fellow that was who cut your tongue out;” and Mangōpare answered,

“There is no one I can compare him to, he was not like a man in the proportion of his frame.”

One of them then called out, “Was he at all like me?”

But Mangōpare answered, “There is nobody I can compare him to.”

Then another called out, “Was he at all like me?” and another, “Was he like me?” until, at length, Mangōpare called out,

“Have I not already told you, that there is not one of you whom I can compare to him?”

Whakatau himself then exclaimed, “Was he at all like me?”

And Mangōpare, who had not before seen him in the crowd, looked attentively at him for a minute, and then cried out, “I say, look here all of you at this fellow, he is not unlike the man, he looks very like him, perhaps it is he himself.”

But Whakatau coolly asked him again, “Was the man really something like me?”

And Mangōpare replied, “Yes, he was like you: I really think it was you;” and Whakatau shouted aloud,

“You are right, it was I.” As soon as they heard this, all of them in a moment sprang to their feet. But, at the same instant, Whakatau laid hold of the end of the rope which he had passed round the posts of the house, and, rushing out, pulled it with all his strength, and straightway the house fell down, crushing all within it, so that the whole tribe perished, and Whakatau, who had escaped to the outside of the house, set it on fire, and Hine-i-te-iwaiwa, who was sitting upon the roof of her own house watching for the event, saw the whole of one part of the heavens red with its flames, and she knew that her enemies were destroyed. Whakatau, having thus avenged the death of Tūwhakararo, returned to his own village.