It was near evening before we realised Tarheto was missing. Tupaia was in quite a state of agitation. He wanted me to go back to the marines’ camp to see if Judge had him. He wanted Banks to go into the forests to see if he could be found there. He wanted everybody to do something to help him. I had not seen him so upset before. And to be honest, I had not thought overly on what Tupaia might be feeling to be among us here.
He was not one to volunteer his thoughts to me easily, and I had never paused to ask him. He was an outsider to most of us, and Banks was the only person he seemed happy to confide in. But over the past days he had withdrawn from us, perhaps sensing the hostilities building between our factions, or our continual pressing him to find food or make contact with the blacks—and had decided to keep some distance from most of us.
He and his boy had started keeping largely to themselves. Though when I say boy, I admit I never really understood the relationship between the two, but took it to be that Tarheto was his nephew or some family member or other. And until I saw Tupaia now so distraught that the boy was gone, I had not understood how important it was to him to have a fellow countryman with him. Somebody who, like him, was not us.
He was articulating every possible fear, in his limited English. He believed the marines had abducted the boy to have their evil ways with him, knowing what had happened to young Rossiter. He believed the natives had kidnapped him to have some other evil ways with him. He believed Judge had taken him to provide some sport for his twisted ways. He believed he had been attacked by some as-yet-unknown creature of this land. He believed some evil had befallen him that he could not even imagine.
I will admit that I did hold some fears for the boy’s safety when he first came on the ship, being so young and with such beguiling features—large eyes and full lips and beautiful brown skin—and knowing that the sailors who had developed a taste for Otaheitian flesh might be tempted to prey on him. But he was housed with Mr Banks and the other gentlemen, far from the parts of the ship inhabited by the common sailors. And Banks, I think, regarded the boy as something of a novelty, patting his head as he patted his dogs on the ship and throwing him treats.
Even the natives of New Zealand had thought Tarheto something of a prize. When we were anchored off the place we had named Hawke’s Bay, several men tried to steal him away from us. We had been trading fish from them for Otaheitian cloth, which the natives were quite fond of, often snatching it from each other. These natives were rogues of the first order, and we would often make a bargain with them and send down some cloth and they would send up something different to what we had agreed—fewer fish in the basket being pulled up to the ship’s rail, or even a stone from their boat.
Then an armed canoe came alongside us and a native offered to trade a fur cloak. The Captain had his eyes on it and sent down a piece of red cloth to trade, but the native dog calmly took it and packed it along with the fur cloak both into a basket and rowed off—deaf to the Captain’s demands he come back.
We should have been warned by that, but were not, as soon more natives came alongside to trade with us for fish. And young Tarheto was standing out on the edge of the rigging with several others, lifting up the goods being traded. One of the natives decided he would be his prize, and reached up and grabbed him, pulling him into his canoe. Two men then held him down in the canoe while the three others in it paddled off briskly.
The Captain at once ordered the marines to fire upon the canoe, and at least one of the men was hit, which enabled Tarheto the opportunity to leap overboard into the water and attempt to swim back to us. The canoe turned around to recapture him, a sign of how highly they valued the boy, but the marines fired on them again until they fled.
When the boy was lifted back into the ship he was clearly shaken by the ordeal, and thanked his gods for rescuing him by throwing a fish into the ocean. Our Captain, who was, I felt, more responsible for saving him, responding by naming the place Cape Kidnappers.
I imagined that wherever the boy was now, things would not be good for him, for neither his distant gods nor the Captain would be able to help him. And despite Tupaia’s pleas, as the sun set, there was very little we could do to help find him in the darkness.
I imagine each of us spent that night wishing that one of the others might have the words or the way to console Tupaia. But who among us would that be? If Sydney Parkinson had tried to comfort him with passages from the Bible, Tupaia would likely cover his ears. If Isaac Smith tried to tell him that Tarheto could look after himself, Tupaia would take that as an indication that something very bad had happened to him. If Mr Green built up the campfire and said it would help him see us and find his way back, Tupaia might take it as evidence that something was preventing him from returning to our camp. I imagine each of us had some image of the boy lying on the ground somewhere, in a puddle of blood—like Jeffs—his face a lifeless shock of horror.
The only comfort we could truly offer Tupaia was our silent and awkward companionship and a small fire. And that was scant comfort at all.