For nearly five weeks after Marion’s ships anchored in the bay all went merry as a marriage bell, though the relations of the French tars with the Maori wahine were not in the strict sense matrimonial.  The Maoris, at first cautious, soon became the best of friends with the sailors, conveying shooting parties about the country, supplying the ships with fish, and showing themselves expert traders, keenly appreciative of the value of the smallest scrap of iron, to say nothing of tools.  Through all their friendly intercourse, however, it was ominous that they breathed no word of Cook or De Surville.  Moreover, a day came on which one of them stole Marion’s sword.  Crozet goes out of his way to describe how the kindly captain refused to put the thief in irons, though the man’s own chief asked that it should be done.  But it leaks out—­from the statement of another officer—­that the thief was put in irons.  We may believe that he was flogged also.

[Illustration:  STERN OF CANOE]

Crozet marked the physical strength of the Maori, and was particularly struck with the lightness of the complexions of some, and the European cast of their features.  One young man and a young girl were as white as the French themselves.  Others were nearly black, with frizzled hair, and showed, he thought, Papuan blood.  To the Frenchman’s eye the women seemed coarse and clumsy beside the men.  He was acute enough to notice that the whole population seemed to be found by the sea-shore; though he often looked from high hill-tops he saw no villages in the interior.  Children seemed few in number, the cultivations small, and the whole race plainly lived in an incessant state of war.  He admired the skilful construction of the stockades, the cleanliness of the pas, the orderly magazines of food and fishing gear, and the armouries where the weapons of stone and wood were ranged in precise order.  He praises the canoes and carving—­save the hideous attempts at copying the human form.  In short he gives one of the most valuable pictures of Maori life in its entirely primitive stage.

A camp on shore was established for the invalids and another for the party engaged in cutting down the tall kauri pines for masts.  Crozet calls the kauri trees cedars, and is full of praises of their size and quality.  He was the officer in charge of the woodcutters.  On the 13th June he saw marching towards his camp a detachment from the ship fully armed and with the sun flashing on their fixed bayonets.  At once it occurred to him that something must be amiss—­otherwise why fixed bayonets?  Going forward, Crozet bade the detachment halt, and quietly asked what was the matter.  The news was indeed grave.  On the day before M. Marion with a party of officers and men, seventeen strong, had gone on shore and had not been seen since.  No anxiety was felt about them until morning; the French had often spent the night at one or other of the pas.  But in the morning a terrible thing had happened.