This last affair was rather displeasing to me. I held to the theory that every Englishman's house was his castle, and was moreover rather savage at my guests having been so roughly handled. In fact I began to feel that, though I had up to this time managed to hold my own pretty well, I was at last in danger of falling under the imposition of "black mail," and losing my _status_ as an independent potentate--a _rangatira_ of the first water. I then and there declared loudly that it was well for the offender that I had not been at home, and that if ever he tried his tricks with _me_ he would find out his mistake. These declarations of war, I perceived, were heard by my men in a sort of incredulous silence (silence in New Zealand gives _dis_-sent), and though the fellows were stout chaps who would not mind a row with any ordinary mortal, I verily believe they would have all run at the first appearance of this redoubted ruffian. Indeed his antecedents had been such as might have almost been their excuse. He had killed several men in fair fight, and had also--as was well known--committed two most diabolical murders; one of which was on his own wife, a fine young woman, whose brains he blew out at half a second's notice for no further provocation than this:--he was sitting in the verandah of his house, and told her to bring him a light for his pipe. She, being occupied in domestic affairs, said, "Can't you fetch it yourself? I am going for water." She had the calibash in her hand and their infant child on her back. He snatched up his gun and instantly shot her dead on the spot; and I had heard him afterwards describing quite coolly the comical way in which her brains had been knocked out by the shot with which the gun was loaded. He also had, for some trifling provocation, lopped off the arm of his own brother, or cousin, I forget which; and was, altogether, from his tremendous bodily strength and utter insensibility to danger, about as "ugly a customer" as one would care to meet. I am now describing a regular Maori ruffian of the good old times; the natural growth of a state of society wherein might was to a very great extent right, and where bodily strength and courage were almost the sole qualities for which a man was respected or valued. He was a bullet-headed, scowling, bow-legged, broad-shouldered, herculean savage, and all these qualifications combined made him unquestionably "a great _rangatira_;" and, as he had never been defeated, his _mana_ was in full force.