Hauwhenua's war-party--A night march--Attack on Turuturu-Mokai Redoubt--A heroic defence--The heart of the captain--Touch-and-go--Relief at last.
One biting cold evening in July, 1868, the whole population of the "Bird's-Beak" _pa_ gathered on the _marae_ to watch the departure of a fighting-column launched by Titokowaru against the whites. It was a night fitter for the snug _wharé_ than for the war-path, but the omens were propitious for the expedition, and the war-god's sacred breeze, the _whakarua_, breathed of Uenuku, blew across the forest.
The sixty warriors of the _Tekau-ma-rua_ took the trail with the lilt of the dance-girls' _poi_-chant in their ears, and the war-choruses yelled by their comrades in the village gritted their battle-spirit. They were fittingly and thickly _tapu_'d for the night's work, _karakia_'d over with many hardening and bullet-averting _karakias_, and thoroughly Hauhau-bedevilled for the fight. Some of the warriors, belted and painted, carried long Enfield muzzle-loaders, some double-barrelled guns, some stolen or captured carbines, and a variety of other firearms. Each rifleman's equipment included a short tomahawk thrust through his flax girdle; a few--the storming-party--were armed with long-handled tomahawks, murderously effective weapons in a hand-to-hand combat. Though a winter's night, most of them were scantily clad, as befitted a war-party. Some wore shirts and other part-European dress; some only flax mats and waist-shawls.
Up and down the village square, as the Hauhau captain, Hauwhenua, led his band out into the forest, strode Titokowaru, in a blaze of fanatic exaltation, crying his commands to the warriors. Waving his plumed _taiaha_, he shouted, "Kill them! Eat them! Let them not escape you!" And as they disappeared in the darkness he returned to his place in the great council-house, where on his sacred mat he spent the night in commune with his ancestral spirits and in reciting incantations for the success of his men-at-arms.
In single file the Hauhau soldiers struck into the black woods. As they entered the deeper thicknesses of the forest, where not a star could be seen for the density and unbroken continuity of the roof of foliage above them, they chanted this brief _karakia_, a charm invoking supernatural aid to clear their forest-path of obstructions and smooth their way: