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Rh choose the trees to be felled for spars. The natives, cleverly separating them, murdered and ate them. Then, disguising themselves in the clothes of the massacred, Maoris boarded the vessel at night and killed everybody on it, excepting a cabin boy who had shown kindness to Tara, a woman, and two children. The woman and children were saved by hiding themselves.

The attacking party also suffered. Tara's father and several other natives were killed by the explosion of a barrel of powder they carelessly handled. The explosion also set fire to the ship and totally destroyed it. As for Tara, he ever afterward hated Europeans, and in turn he was disliked by his own people, who undertook to revenge his humiliation because, according to Maori custom, an insult to one Maori was an insult to his entire tribe. If the whalers on the coast had not resolved to have revenge for this massacre, probably no further consequences would have resulted from this imprudent flogging. But the whalers thirsted for utu also, and attacking the chief whom they erroneously believed responsible for the slaughter, they destroyed his village and killed every native In it, excepting the chief, who escaped. A result of this vengeance was long and murderous strife between the whites and the Maoris. For three years after the massacre, says one historian, "natives took revenge on any pakeha who fell into their power." The whites retaliated, and, says Gudgeon, "very few