He was, he says, aboard the _Sea-hen_ when the Maori boarded the _Heemskirk_ and, without awaiting developments, he manned a boat with seven men, whom he sent off to the yacht with a warning to guard against treachery. Fatal mistake! The kettle of misunderstanding was full to the spout, and it now boiled over. Tasman feared that the six attendant canoes meant to attack; the Maori, observing the hurrying boat, instantly imagined that their comrades were to be detained on board the yacht as hostages. Stirred to action by the cries of their alarmed friends, who had also observed Tasman's action with apprehension, those in the canoes dashed to intercept the boat. Whether by accident or design, the boat crashed into one of the canoes, and the Maori, their worst fears confirmed, struck to kill, and did kill outright three Dutchmen, mortally wounding a fourth. One poor corpse they carried off, and the Maori on the ship leapt without delay into their own canoe and raced for the shore. "We shall get neither wood nor water from this accursed spot," said Tasman, "for the savages be too adventurous and bloody-minded." So he pricked off the place upon his chart, naming it "Murderers' Bay,"[54] weighed anchor, and made off in disgust. While he was yet in the bay, a fleet of two-and-twenty canoes, crowded with men, put out after him, with what intention is not known. Tasman does not appear to have feared an attack, for he tells us that a man in the leading canoe carried a flag of truce. The Maori really held in his hand a spear with a pennon of bleached flax; but, if Tasman believed this to be a flag of truce, his action was the more reprehensible. For he stopped the pursuit, if pursuit it were, by delivering a broadside which probably equalised the loss he had sustained. At all events, the man with the flag went down, and the Maori, terrified by the noise of the discharge and its deadly effect, turned and sped to the shore. So began and ended in bloodshed the first authentic meeting of Maori and Pakeha. Had Tasman not been so quick to take alarm, had he allowed his visitors time to realise his friendly intentions, it is highly probable that New Zealand would to-day have been a Dutch colony instead of a Dominion of the Empire. Away went the Dutchman, nursing his wrath and jotting down in his journal all sorts of uncomplimentary remarks about the "bloodthirsty aborigines," and in due course rounded the north of the North Island, naming one of its prominent headlands "Cape Maria Van Diemen," in compliment to the daughter of his patron, Anthony Van Diemen, governor of the Dutch East Indies.