Fine fighters Hemi Nape and his boys, were and well they bore themselves, but alas! how could they, less than twenty in number, withstand such overwhelming odds?--so that though they fought like fiends incarnate still they were driven back and must have been quickly wiped out. Help, however, was at hand, for suddenly old Tamehana Te Aewa, with the roar of a wild bull, threw himself into the vortex of the combat and, begorra! he made things lively. You see, when the centre and left subdivisions gave way he tried to rally them, but failing to do so he returned alone to the fight, so as to throw in his lot with the lads who scorned to fly. Just at the moment he arrived Hemi had ordered his men to take cover, but that did not suit Tamehana, who charged the Hau Haus like a whirlwind and killed two of them with a clean right and left; then, throwing away his empty gun, he picked up a spear dropped by one of the dead men and drove it through a third one's body, grabbing, as the dying man fell, his gun and tomahawk. The gun was unfortunately not loaded, but he made use of it by braining a fourth man with the butt and then sank the blade of the tomahawk so deep into a fifth man's skull that as he tried to wrench it out the tough handle went to splinters. Immediately he seized his last victim's gun and was about to use it when a bullet struck him in the arm, and he had just time to shoot the man who had wounded him when another smashed his right knee to pieces and put a termination to his day's sport. When he fell the Hau Haus made a rush to finish him off, which rush was met by a counter-charge of Hemi Nape's men, who, although they were all wounded, determined to die rather than allow old Tamehana to be killed or captured. Led by Marino, Hemi's son, for Hemi himself had been shot dead a moment before, they threw themselves on the Hau Haus and made such a determined stand that it gave time to Haimona with his supporting company to come into action. This grim old warrior had been originally posted too far in rear of the van and had lost some time in rallying the fugitives, whom he tongue-lashed out of their cowardly nervousness, his endeavours being helped by the scornful yells and entreaties of the men and women spectators, who, mad with excitement, watched the apparently lost battle from the bank of the river. Then promptly adding the whilom runaways to his own party, he rapidly advanced to make his effort. There was no fear now of the late fugitives turning tail again, for nigh crazy with shame and contrition, they would far sooner face a thousand deaths than be branded as cowards through the length and breadth of New Zealand.