Here of course he made a blooming error, for what member of the Lost Legion ever allowed preaching to interfere with fighting, or carried devotional books about with him when he had to hump his own swag. Now this josser, thinking he knew all about the customs of the white man, considered he was quite safe in turning on his prophetic tap. So on the evening after the small success already spoken about he started in and informed his hearers that he had received a revelation, directing the Hau Haus that on the following day, which was Sunday, they were to leave the pah an hour before noon and advance on the white men's shelter trenches, which they would find empty, and that the majority of the latter who had not been turned into stone by the angel Gabriel would be surprised at their devotions and fall a prey, without any resistance, to the tender mercies of the Hau Haus, who, he guaranteed, were to escape, scathless, from wounds or death. These promises seem absurd to white men, but they were implicitly believed by the Maoris, who next day acted on the strength of them. The main position of the Colonials was in the rear of three strong thorn hedges, two of which flanked the third, and these had all been well trenched and were, of course, held, day and night, by a strong guard; in fact the men lived and slept in them. Between the centre hedge and the pah, a distance of less that 500 yards, stretched a smooth meadow, without a particle of cover, and the astonishment of our men was intense when, at 11 o'clock A.M., they saw some hundreds of the Hau Haus quietly leave the pah and advance in two wedge-shaped columns against the centre of their position. At first they thought it was a general surrender, but the war flags the enemy carried rapidly dispersed that idea; and when the two columns were well between the three hedges, and not 100 yards from any of them, the bugle sounded and a tremendous volley was poured into the misguided Maoris, who fell in heaps of dead and wounded men. Notwithstanding the awful shock their nerves must have received from this quite unexpected slaughter, these gallant though fanatical warriors at once charged home and tried to force their way through the strong thorn fence, only to be swept away like flies. And soon the survivors had to beat a hasty retreat back to the pah, lashed the whole way by the heavy fire of the white men, who did not go to church. It was during the advance that the incident I originally alluded to took place. The first volley had smashed the Hau Haus' leading column, the advance of which the apostle led in person; for, to give these prophets only their just due, they never hung back from taking the post of the greatest danger in any of the crazy enterprises that they persuaded their disciples to undertake.