While recognising, however, the gallantry of the Maoris, the world has hitherto taken little account of the high moral character of the king-movement. A conspicuous example of this quality is afforded by the career of Henare Wiremu Taratoa. Baptised and taught by Henry Williams, after whom he was named, this man had been afterwards trained at St. John's College, and had actually taken a part in the founding of the Melanesian Mission. When at length he was pronounced unfit for the sacred ministry on account of his impetuous disposition, he became a teacher in the mission school at Otaki. Here he remained until 1861, when the governor's aggressive policy determined him to cast in his lot with his threatened countrymen. Settling in Tauranga, a place which became the scene of military operations in 1864, he joined in the fighting at the Gate Pa, where the Imperial troops sustained their most severe defeat. But he had never forgotten his Christian training. On arrival at Tauranga, he set up a "school of instruction in arithmetic and christening." He then organised a system of councils, which regulated both civil and religious matters. The result was that "the people feared to do wrong, and nothing but good order prevailed." When war broke out, his rules were strikingly humane. There must be no ill-treatment of women or non-combatants; no soldier once hit must be shot a second time; if an enemy were hungry he must be fed; fighting must never begin on a Sunday (as all the British campaigns had done), but rather on a Friday, "that being the day on which Christ was crucified." These rules were not vain ones with Taratoa and his men. Through the night after the conflict at the Gate Pa, Henare tended the English wounded, one of whom, in his dying agonies, thirsted for a drop of water. There was none in the _pa_, nor within three miles on the Maori side of it, but Taratoa threaded his way through the English sentries in the darkness, and returned with a calabash of water to slake his enemy's thirst. By the side of each wounded Englishman there was found in the morning some small water-vessel, placed there by the Maoris before they deserted the fort. In spite of their success at the Gate Pa, the Maoris were soon afterwards beaten at Te Ranga (June 21), and in this battle the humane Taratoa was killed. Upon his body was found a little book of prayers which he had compiled and used. It concluded with the apostolic precept which he had obeyed at the risk of his life, "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink."