“It was nearly finished on the 19th of July, when Colonel Wyatt withdrew one-half of the men, and left the other 150 under the command of Captain Swift. He is dead now, poor fellow, and no words of praise from me can reach his ear; but a better officer never carried sword or wore the Queen’s uniform. God bless him! I was only a poor sergeant; but if I had been his own brother, he could not have been kinder to me. His example told upon us all; we all liked our duties, and tried to do all we could to suppress the rebellion. His first act was to seize a number of rebel canoes and to man them with crews from his own detachment; in this way we contrived to seize large quantities of potatoes and other provisions from the hostile natives. But he did more than this: he extemporized a body of Forest Rangers, who scoured the dense bush around the redoubt, kept the natives at a distance. He had heard of atrocities they had committed on defenceless women and children, and longed for an opportunity of meeting them in the field. Poor fellow! he little dreamed that his first meeting with them would be his last. But such are the chances of war. If he had lived, the world would have heard more of him, for there was never a braver or a better officer in the British or any other service. “Well, things went on as usual till the 7th of September. On the morning of that day we had a visit from Mr. Armitage, the resident magistrate of the township of Havelock. He had charge of five large canoes, manned by natives, and loaded with forage and provisions, which were proceeding from Camerontown, a friendly Maori pa, to the Queen’s Redoubt. The forage had been brought up from the Waikato Heads; the barque _City of Melbourne_ had conveyed it there from Auckland. The river transport had been established in consequence of the difficulty of transporting stores by the great South Road; and as the canoes were paddled by friendly natives, no one imagined that there could be much danger of their being attacked.