Meanwhile, the rival Maori had been occupied in the usual preliminaries to a fight. The Ngatewhatua had disembarked; and on the following day the two parties were drawn up, facing one another, at a short distance apart. The korero then commenced, and was kept up hour after hour by alternate orators on either side. These delivered themselves in the verbose and florid style customary, running up and down between the lines, and using very unparliamentary language, I have no doubt. The men of the two factions were seated on the ground meanwhile, occasionally grimacing or defying each other. The modern veneer of civilization and Christianity seemed entirely to have disappeared, and the ancient Maori manners to have superseded it. At length, such a pitch of rage was reached that the war-dance appeared inevitable, and after that nothing would stop the conflict. It was just at this juncture that the missionary rode up. Dismounting, he at once strode between the rival lines, being greeted with growls and opprobrious epithets by the Ngapuhi, and with cries of "Go home! Go home!" from his own flock.
I think I can see that scene now. In the foreground the broad surface of the river, flowing between low banks covered with light scrub. To the right the few houses of the little settlement, with a group of pale-faced Pakeha, men, women, and children, anxiously awaiting the upshot of the "muss." In front, a stretch of open land, partly grassed and partly covered with fern, with stumps and logs here and there visible. Behind it clumps of scrub, and, close to, the line of the heavy bush, extending all round and covering the hill-ranges that rise further back.
In the centre of this scene are the two bands of Maori; brown tatterdemalions in ragged shirts and trousers, armed with guns, and merè, and patu, and axes, some squatting on the ground, some standing erect, all convulsed with anger and ungovernably excited. Before each rank is the ariki, and one or two principal men on either side.
Between the two armies strides the tall, gaunt form of the missionary, his arms raised and gesticulating, his grey hair and beard floating on the wind. Heedless of his reception he begins to talk. He is a perfect master of Maori oratory, with its long quotations from old tradition and from the Bible, its short pithy sentences, its queer interjectional effects. Gradually the tumult quiets down, the Maori begin to listen, the Ngapuhi forget they are Catholics.