But the boar is not to be drawn out from among the high branching roots that protect his flanks and stern. At every near approach of dog or man he feints to charge, lowering and tossing his head, uttering yet fiercer notes of wrath, or tearing up the ground, and sending splinters flying from the tree with blows from his tusks; such threatening movements on his part effectually deterring his foes in their advance. Sticks and stones, large and weighty, are hurled at him from all sides. What does he care for such puny projectiles? Even a well-aimed tomahawk, that strikes him full and fairly, fails to hurt or penetrate his armour of bristles and tough hide. Like Achilles, his weak place is in his heels--his rear, and that is well protected behind him.
But another foeman to the swinish champion now appears upon the scene. A man, whom I have come close to in the hurry-skurry, suddenly calls to me--
"Look at old Tama up there behind the tree!" Then he shouts in stentorian delight--
"Te toa rere, te toa mahuta! Go it, Tama, old boy! Hopu te poaka! Jump in and kill him!"
Looking up at the great trunk of the rata, with its extensive pedestal of gnarled and twisting roots, that for six or eight feet from the ground branch down all round its base, I see peering round the stem, and from above the roots, a face that I know well; it is that of Tama-te-Whiti. He has made a circuit, got behind the tree, and is now climbing over and among the extended roots, cautiously and silently stealing upon the pig, with intent to drive it out of the cover of the tree.
Old Tama's grey hair hangs loosely over his brows; his elaborate tattooing looks unusually conspicuous; his arms are bare to the shoulder; and, as he gradually draws himself into our view, we see his body is almost bare, except a few fluttering rags of shirt that still remain about him. The other day I saw Tama at the township, elaborately attired in black broadcloth and white linen and all the rest of it, looking a perfect picture of smug respectability and aged innocence. Now here he is, grasping a tomahawk in his sinewy hand, with a knife held between his teeth, and--albeit 'tis only a boar he is attacking--with a fire dancing in his eyes like that which shone there in his hot youth, when, here in these self-same woods, he and the young braves of his tribe met in deadly conflict with the invading Ngapuhi.