Bent's half-Indian temperament soon adapted itself to this wild life in the forest. No drill day after day, no parades, no sentry-go, no buttons to polish, and no uniform to mend--surely this savage life had its compensations. When the Maoris had urgent and laborious work on hand they worked like fury, and compelled--with the spur of a tomahawk--the white man to toil with equal industry, if not willingness. Fort-building, trench-digging and timber-felling were undertakings in which the whole strength of the community laboured from dawn till dark, and the chiefs as hard as the common men and slaves. It was warrior's work. But there were periods of halcyon, lazy days in Maoridom, when "Ringiringi" and his ragged comrades of the bush, their work over, could just "lie around" and smoke and eat, and take no thought for the morrow so long as they could procure a pipe-full of strong _torori_ (tobacco) and a square meal of potatoes and pork. Tito proved a not unkind master, when he found that his white man neither attempted to escape from the tribe nor shirked the often heavy tasks imposed upon him.
[Illustration: A BRITISH COLUMN ON THE MARCH.
(_From a water-colour sketch by Major Von Tempsky, 1866._)]
The _paheka_ soon became an adept in the wood-craft of the Maoris. He accompanied the young men of the tribe on their forest expeditions, bird-snaring and bird-spearing; these camping-out trips sometimes lasted for a week or more. Far into the solitudes of the great woods the little hunting-parties penetrated, always armed, for they never knew when or where the Government Maori scouts might be encountered. The days were spent in birding and pig-hunting, and the long nights by the blazing camp-fire, when the white man learned from his Hauhau comrades many a wild legend and folk-story, hair-raising tales of witchcraft, and mournful _tangi_-songs and love-ditties without end.
Powder and shot were too valuable to waste on the birds of the forest in those days. One of the Maori snaring methods, as practised by "Ringiringi" and his companions, was to cut out wooden _waka_, or miniature canoes or troughs, fill them with water, and place them in some dry spot in the forest where pigeons and _tui_ were plentiful. Just over these troughs flax-snares were arranged, so that when the birds, thirsting for water after feasting on the bush-berries, flew down to drink, and stretched their heads through the running loops, they were tightly noosed. Other snares were set on the _miro_-trees, of whose sweet berries the pigeons and _tui_ were particularly fond. "Ringiringi" quickly learned the art of setting snares of flax or cabbage-tree leaf with cunning slip-loops in the branches of the fruit-laden _miro_; in a clump of these pines he sometimes caught in a single day as many as three hundred or four hundred birds--_kaka_ parrots, _tui_, and pigeon--for the forests were alive with feathered creatures, and in the autumn time, when the wild fruits were ripe and abundant, they were to be taken with little trouble; the noisy _kaka_ parrot was the most easily lured of all. The only forest bird that was not welcomed by the hunters was the owl, or _ruru_; should one happen to be killed it was never eaten, because in Maori eyes it was an _atua_, a spirit or the incarnation of a tribal deity.