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were counted as the darkness descended. Almost fifty Maori bodies were found, though only a fourth of those had gone down in the frontal attack. There were fourteen dead amongst the volunteers, militia and the navy. When the column marched back to New Plymouth, Jack learned of the animosity between colonists and the military. The colonists despised the Maori, while the soldiers knew they were fighting against a brave, resourceful and intelligent enemy. The Church had taken sides and fought for the rights of the Maori. The governor, one Thomas Gore Browne (or ‘Angry-belly’ to the Maoris), a seemingly indecisive man, was caught between the factions.
    It was the age-old problem of land. The colonists were hungry for it. They wanted to purchase land: lots and lots of it. Understandably many of the Maori were reluctant to sell their heritage. Under the Treaty of Waitangi land could only be acquired by British colonists if they purchased it from its owners or from the government. But ownership was often a misty and vague thing: sometimes land might be owned by one Maori, sometimes by a family, sometimes by a whole tribe. He who sold it might be only a part owner; even no owner at all. Even folklore had been known to come into it. One Maori maintained that a particular parcel of land had been first owned by his ancestor: a lizard that had lived in a cave above the plot.
    This particular fight had been over a stretch of fertile land known as Waitara, down in the bottom left-hand corner of North Island. It had supposedly been bought from a sub-chief of the tribe that owned it, but the head chief disputed the sale. Jack learned that these purchases were often subjected to great arguments which led to outright war. Wiremu Kingi, the Maori leader involved in this dispute, had been declared a rebel, but many clergy and soldiers felt the governor was being unjust.
    Jack and his men were billeted with the 65th Foot, where he had learned much of this from a lieutenant of that regiment: Brian Burns, who hailed from Kilmarnock in Ayrshire. As they sipped whisky in the mess, Burns filled in a little of New Zealand’s recent history for Jack.
    ‘We’ve been here since the late seventeen hundreds,’ said Burns. ‘The Maori have been here longer, of course, by about five hundred years. No real fuss when we first arrived. No guns. Just bits of paper. The Maori accepted us, but of course there were only a few colonists then. In 1840 the Maori and us signed the Treaty of Waitangi, which gave us sovereignty over all New Zealand. That’s when the bother started. The two languages of the treaty didn’t quite match up. Not surprising, of course – different languages never do. So the Maori interpretation is at variance with our own. Not wildly different, but enough to cause trouble when it comes to who rules whom, or the purchase of land.’
    ‘Why did they bother? I mean, why did the Maoris sign in the first place?’
    ‘Och, there was some talk of the French invading, so the Maori chiefs handed over the protection of the islands to us.’
    ‘But they never did. The French, I mean.’
    Burns took a swallow before replying. ‘No, but it was a genuine fear, the French were indeed ready to invade. Since then we’ve had five or six governors, I can’t remember exactly, but the best was George Grey. Unfortunately Browne isn’t fashioned of the same material. Are you a Scot, Captain?’
    The last question caught Jack by surprise. He was indeed a Scot, or half of one. His father was a Scottish baronet who had seduced an English maid and then turned her out once the child had been born. That child was christened Alexander Kirk. When young Alex discovered his father’s deception, he left home in high dudgeon and joined the army under the assumed name of Jack Crossman, which so far as the military was concerned he still bore. Since that time his father had been reduced to a mindless idiot by senile dementia and his older half-brother James had