E was a clod when Lane found him—a piece of six-year-old Maori flesh, with the carriage of a conqueror, and the tongue of a dissolute gutter-snipe, and the brown of the earth that bore him in his supple skin. Lane was looking for land in those days, and waded deep in the waters of indecision before he finally paid tithe to Mindoorie in the province of Southland. He had searched Taranaki, Wairarapa, and Auckland in the north, and had fallen foul of many native kiangas where the was unwelcome. He had nearly got himself mere’d (this is done with a thing like a tomahawk) a score of times, and in those ways he assimilated some unofficial dregs of Maori information.
Then he met Wi—which is, in full, Wiremu Poananga—which is, in translation, William Clematis. Wi’s father was dead in a coastal raid, and Wi's mother, being sick, had been cast out, according to custom, that she might die without defilement to the pa. This she obligingly did, and Wi sat on her body out in the white sunlight, and beat her with his baby fists because she took no heed of him.
Lane rode past, and he hooked up the child with his crop-handle under the armpit, and demanded explanation in his broken Maori from the men who lolled at the gates.
They could not touch the body until certain formulæ had been observed, for the Maori body is sacred, both in life and death. And they could not touch Wi, for Wi had touched the Thing on the grass. This was made clear while Wi stood up, defiant in his nakedness, and hurled all the bad words of his knowledge at the pakeha. He was grandly built (but this is a race-mark. Maoris make the finest footballers in the world until they grow tallowy from overeating), and his strong little face had none of the round-eyed stolidity of the ordinary Maori infant.
“He’s too good to go loafing about in a pa all his days,” said Lane, and forthwith sought out Wi’s only remaining relative. For Wi came of a tribe that had fallen on evil days, but—in some crosswise fashion—he had the blood of Te Arawa in his veins.
The woman who belonged to Wi was old and toothless, and a smoker of some sixty years’ standing. She spoke no English, and understood less. But Lane made pantomime with his tobacco-pouch and the wrathful Wi, and in due time the bargain was struck. The pa provided Wi with a shirt that came to his middle, and trousers that buttoned over the shoulders and made him behave outrageously. Then Lane set him on the horn of the saddle, and took him away to be fashioned into a pakeha. It was the act of a very young man, and it was quite possible that it would lead to complications later on. But Lane gloried in the knowledge that it was a chance in three lifetimes, Maoris being notoriously devoted to their babies, and won the love of the fierce little heart in a week.
“What are you going to do with the brat?” asked Brazenose when Lane came back to town. “He follows you round like a poodle-dog, and he does seem to have a mortal dislike to clothes. Besides, he will be most sinfully jealous when you form other ties.”
When Lane left England, he had said in his wrath that he would never marry. And it may here be noted that he kept that oath.
“We’ll meet that when it comes. Just now I’ve to teach him our lingo, and cleanly habits. He’s quick in the uptake. And I want to see how the Maori temperament stands English training.”
This was before education of the native became a matter of custom, and Brazenose grinned his derision. Wi had left a double row of teeth-marks in his arm that morning.
“You’ll find it a dangerous amusement, then. The imp has too much devil in him for my taste.”
But Lane understood the plucky, passionate baby soul rather better.
“Don’t you believe it. He’ll be a fine man one day. There’s spunk in the little beggar. I thrashed him yesterday, and never got a chirp out of him. Hurt him properly, too, and he took it like a man. Yes; I’ll make something valuable out of Wi ’fore all’s done.”
“Wish you joy,” said Brazenose, unconvinced.
But Lane laughed, and betook himself without fear to the making of Wi.
Wi was a solemn infant, with strong white teeth that tested all strange things, from the soap in Lane’s dressing-room to saddle-straps and a new half-sovereign. This last he folded as fingers fold paper, and sealed with indent of sharp teeth; and Lane wore it on his watch-chain until his death.