A Hauhau jumped up and said, "Yes, I have them."
"Show me which soldier you took them from," said Bent.
The Maori, with von Tempsky's sword in his hand, pointed to the major's corpse.
"Well," said Bent, "that is the body of Manu-rau, whom the _pakehas_ called von Tempsky, and that is his sword."
A great "Ah-h" came from the people, and the exultant possessor of Manu-rau's sword of wondrous _mana_ went bounding down the _marae_, flashing the weapon above his head, turning his painted face from side to side in the hideous grimaces of the _pukana_, and thrusting out his tongue to an extraordinary length.
The Hauhaus were in a frenzy of excitement when they realised that the renowned Manu-rau was indeed lying dead before them. Some of them proposed to drag the body out and cook it in the _hangi_, so that they might have the satisfaction of devouring their most dreaded enemy, and eating his heart, the heart of a _tino-toa_, a warrior indeed.
But Titokowaru, raising his sacred spear-staff, forbade the handling of the dead for the present.
Bent was now ordered to return to his hut, and the door was again fastened on him. The proposal to cook and eat the bodies of von Tempsky and his comrades was debated in a wild _korero_. Bent, from his eye-hole in the wall of the _wharé_, saw Hauhau after Hauhau, the orators of the tribes, jump up, tomahawk or gun or sword in hand, and furiously declaim as they went leaping and trotting backward and forward in the open space between the ranks of the victors and the dead; and the deeds of the battle-field were told again and again in great boasting words.
Von Tempsky's body, the _pakeha_-Maori had observed while on the _marae_, had not been mutilated, except for that tomahawk cut. His heart had not been cut out, though Bent half expected it would have been. The rite of the _Whangai-hau_, the ceremony of propitiation and burnt sacrifice following a battle, had not, however, been omitted. On the previous night, Tihirua, the young war-priest, had cut open a soldier's body and had torn out the heart, which he had offered in smoke and fire as oblation to Uenuku, the God of War, chanting a _karakia_ as he watched the heart of the hated white man smoking in the flames.