In 1845, John Webster and his friend, F. E. Maning, from Onoke, Hokianga, and another white freelance from Hokianga, William Munro. joined Tamati Waka's force, which took the field against Hone Heke in the Bay of Islands war. There was much skirmishing around Lake Omapere and the neighbouring hills. Webster was armed with a rifle and a supply of 200 cartridges when he entered joyfully into the guerilla warfare. He described to me the chivalrous game of war as he witnessed and shared in it there.

The old Webster home at Opononi, Hokianga, showing the saluting guns In the wall embrasures.

The Maori Tournament.

“When either side wished to spend a day fighting,” Webster narrated in his reminiscences, “they went to the challenge hill Taumata-Karamu, near Omapcrc's shores, and fired off a musket. The challenge was always accepted. One morning William Munro and I, and some of Nene's men, went to the challenging hill and were soon in the thick of it. On the side facing Heke's pa some trenches had been dug. I got into one of them. The near bullets were spitting past us as we lay in the holes, exposing our heads only.

“As a compact had been made between Nene and Heke that they were to cease fighting at sundown, and page 20 page 21 it was getting on to that time, a distant cry arose of ‘Ka po te ra!’ (‘The sun is setting'). Immediately some hundreds of men seemed to rise out of the ground, with a great roar of ‘Kua po te ra!’ (‘The sun has set'). The two armies gathered together, for there was not a shot in anger after the sun had gone down, but still it was quite light. Each party was about ten yards from the other. Two men (one from each side) would meet half way and, after rubbing noses, would make enquiries as to the casualties of the day.

“Then both messengers returned to their respective armies, and first one and then the other gave a great hart (war dance). It was a grand sight, and set one's blood boiling and made the ground shake.

“Off to California.

Webster was by this time a man of experience in Maori business. He had learned the native tongue, and he was well skilled in trading, and in buying kauri timber and kauri gum. He assisted his friend Dr. Campbell in Auckland in the Maori trade, and then, when the great gold-diggings rush in California created a demand for foodstuffs, he sailed as supercargo in the barque Noble, carrying a cargo of flour and potatoes for San Francisco. It was in 1850, when all the sailormen were singing: —

“There's plenty of gold, so I've been told,

“On the banks of the Sacramento.”

Life in the raw, new gold-city was lively in the extreme and often extremely perilous. Dr, Campbell was with Webster in the Noble. The two saw the great fire which swept San Francisco. They remained more than a year in California, in business, and acquired some of its teeming wealth for themselves.

A Cruise in the “Wanderer.”

Then, in 1851, Webster, having had enough of commerce for a while, was attracted by “the bright eyes of Danger” once more, and joined the schooner yacht Wanderer for a cruise which proved the greatest adventure of his roving life.

The Wanderer, a beautiful topsail schooner of 240 tons—about the size of that handsome little New Zealand craft the Hula, the last topsail schooner in these sea;—was owned by Mr. Benjamin Boyd, a rich Australian settler who was a man of wealth and of considerable celebrity in Britain, a cultured and daring fellow, always ready for a new adventure. Webster and he were congenial spirits. They had met in New Zealand and warmly renewed the friendship in San Francisco, and Webster welcomed the invitation to give up prosaic trading and sail for the South Seas.

The Wanderer was just the vessel to take his fancy. She was built for pleasure cruising; she belonged to the Koyal Yacht Squadron and had been cruising in the Mediterranean before Boyd bought her and took her out to Sydney. She was quite a little man-o'-war; she had ten brass guns mounted on the main deck and a 12-pounder gun called a “long Tom,” mounted on a swivel aft. Plenty of ammunition, round shot and grape, was carried for these guns; and besides the

(J. D. Pascoe, photo.)
The valley of the Kakaia River, South Island, New Zealand.

schooner's crew were well supplied with muskets, boarding-pikes, and tomahawks for close-quarters. There were boarding-nettings for tricing up all round above the bulwarks, to prevent the vessel being taken by a rush. All these methods of defence were needed in the South Seas in that era when a cruise among the cannibal islands was always an enterprise calling for continual vigilance and readiness to fight. Ben Boyd was in command; he had a. sailing master, and Mr. Webster, by virtue of his sailoring experience, was Boyd's lieutenant. The crew for the cruise were Kanakas, all good boatmen for landing work, from Western Pacific islands. Besides Boyd and Webster, there were only three white men on board.

In the Solomon Islands.

In May, 1851, the Wanderer was at Honolulu, and by October she was cruising in the Western Pacific, visiting the New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands. From San Christoval, Boyd sailed for the great mountainous island called Guadalcanar; it was one of the southern islands of the Solomons. Its lofty ranges, everywhere densely covered with forest, rose into cloudy peaks. One of the danger islands where the mountain tribes were always at war with the shore dwellers, and where the “man-a-beach” usually sent, or tried to send an arrow into any white target within range; the white man in his turn had musket or pistol always ready. It was seldom safe to venture on shore. But the white men, for all the warning? they received, were sometimes caught off their guard, and the owner of the Wanderer was one of them.

The Disappearance of Ben Boyd.

The Wanderer lay at anchor in a sheltered inlet of Guadalcanar now marked on the chart as Wanderer Bay. Early on the morping of October 15, 1851, Mr. Boyd had a dinghy lowered and with a Kanaka sailor went on shore to shoot pigeons; he had been on shore with his gun on the previous day. There was some sporting rivalry between him and Webster, and he got up early to anticipate his friend: When Webster went on deck he saw his friend half way to the shore, and he hailed him. Boyd had taken a powder-flask and sholbelt which Webster had left handy on the cabin table intending to go on shore himself that morning. Boyd, laughing, held up the flask and belt, and called out that he would lie back to breakfast with some birds. “That,” said Webster, “was the last I ever saw of my friend Ben Boyd.”

The Wanderer's owner went round a wooded point, intending to go up a valley near the landing. Shortly afterward's those on board the schooner heard two shots fired at short intervals. They thought Boyd was using his double-barrel gun on the pigeons. But nothing more was heard.

The Schooner Attacked: A Desperate Fight.

Then, to their horror, the yacht's people saw a flotilla of war-canoes sweep round the point and dash towards them under the impulse of scores of paddles. The canoes were packed with savages yelling their fighting cries, and there was a hideous bellow and roar from conch-shells, the war-trumpets of the Solomons.

Webster was in command of the yacht. It was a fearful moment, when he suddenly realised that the guns were not loaded. Out with your muskets, ye Wanderers, all hands! The first weapons to hand were snatched up. Tomahawks, pikes, guns, pistols—not a second to lose, for the warriors arc already boarding the schooner. Some of them climbed on board, plying spears and clubs, and showers of arrows flew from the canoe crews. Several natives were killed on the deck; after a desperate fight the other boarders were hurled back into their canoes. Fortunately they boarded on only one side. Had they attacked on both sides of the schooner simultaneously the Wanderers would all have been slaughtered. By this time the long Tom and the other guns had been loaded, and charges of grapeshot were fired into the canoes. Webster, who had shot down two natives on the deck, took charge of the long Tom and laid and fired it. Some canoes were sunk or shattered, and others drew off. It was probably the first time those savages had encountered artillery.

The shore was bombarded, and then the Wanderer's largest boat was lowered, and with a strong armed crew and a two-pounder gun in the bow, Webster landed and searched vainly for his missing friend.

The Wanderers scoured all the shore and burned the native villages. Boyd's sword belt was found, and part of the skull of the native sailor with him, but that was all. Without a doubt the bodies of both men had been carried off for a cannibal feast.