His hearers saw a vision of a Maori El Dorado! But how was it to be reached? In canoes they could not venture so far, nor did they know the way. Doubtless, however, they remembered how Stewart of the _Elisabeth_ had carried Rauparaha and his warriors to Akaroa in the hold of his brig a few years before. Another brig, the _Rodney_, was in Cook’s Strait now, seeking a cargo of scraped flax. Her captain, Harewood, was not such a villain as Stewart; but if he could not be bribed he could be terrified--so thought the Ngatiawa. In Port Nicholson (Wellington harbour) lies a little islet with a patch of trees on it, like a tuft of hair on a shaven scalp. Nowadays it is used as a quarantine place for dogs and other doubtful immigrants. Thither the Ngatiawa decoyed Harewood and a boat’s crew, and then seizing the men, cajoled or frightened the skipper into promising to carry them across the sea to their prey. Whether Harewood made much ado about transporting the filibustering cannibals to the Chathams will probably never be known. He seems to have had some scruples, but they were soon overcome, either by fear or greed. Once the bargain was struck he performed his part of it without flinching. The work of transport was no light task. No less than nine hundred of the Maori of Cook’s Strait had resolved to take part in the enterprise, so much had Rauparaha’s freebooting exploits in the south inflamed and unsettled his tribe. To carry this invading horde to the scene of their enterprise the _Rodney_ had to make two trips. On the first of them the Maori were packed in the hold like the negroes on a slaver, and when water ran short suffered miseries of thirst. Had the Moriori known anything of war they might easily have repelled their enemies. As it was, the success of the invasion was prompt and complete. Without losing a man the Maori soon took possession of the Chathams and their inhabitants. The land was parcelled out among the new-comers, and the Moriori and their women tasted the bitterness of enslavement by insolent and brutal savages. They seem to have done all that submissiveness could do to propitiate their swaggering lords. But no submissiveness could save them from the cruelty of barbarians drunk with easy success. Misunderstandings between master and slave would be settled with a blow from a tomahawk. On at least two occasions there were massacres, the results either of passion or panic. In one of these fifty Moriori were killed; in the other, perhaps three times that number of all ages and sexes. On the second occasion the dead were laid out in a line on the sea-beach, parents and children together, so that the bodies touched each other. The dead were of course eaten; it is said that as many as fifty were baked in one oven. I have read, moreover, that the Maori coolly kept a number of their miserable slaves penned up, feeding them well, and killed them from time to time like sheep when butcher’s meat was wanted.