As the troops dashed cheering through the breach, the Maori attempted to slip out at the rear of the _pa_; but, seeing the men of the 65th, the whole mass of them surged back and came face to face with the foremost of those who had entered from the front. These, startled at sight of so many savage foes rushing furiously upon them, pressed upon their comrades, who in turn faltered, and the troops in another moment turned and ran, shouting, "They are there in thousands!" Undaunted by this terrible sight, the reserves dashed up to encourage their dismayed comrades, but to no purpose. The Maori, momentarily inactive from sheer astonishment, recovered and poured a disastrous fire upon the mob of struggling men, twenty-seven of whom were killed and sixty-six wounded. It is useless to try to explain away this unhappy incident. It is enough to say that the men of the 43rd Regiment two months later atoned for their behaviour, and wiped out their defeat by utterly routing the Maori at Te Ranga, where the position was not at all unlike that at the Gate _Pa_. Despite the fact that there were now arrayed against them some ten thousand British regulars, and five thousand colonial troops, the Maori made no overtures of surrender--save for a few at Tauranga. Instead, they withdrew from the Waikato plain, as well as from those parts occupied by the soldiers, and joined forces with the Whanganui rebels in the fastnesses of the latter's country, where they were able to indulge in their favourite bush-fighting and guerilla warfare. Here, too, their resistance was strengthened by the growth of a shocking superstition, which bred in them a fanatical hate, and lent to their methods a brutality never previously exhibited in their conflicts with the Pakeha. Another development which strongly influenced the remainder of the war occurred about the time when the operations at Tauranga were brought to a close. Until the early part of 1864 the Colonial Forces had played a subordinate part in the war--not from choice--though their conduct had been invariably deserving of the highest praise. The time was now at hand when they were to become principals instead of supernumeraries, and by their own strenuous efforts bring about the end of a struggle which General Cameron had more than once frankly despaired of finishing. "The nature of the country forbids the idea of a decisive blow being struck in the Whanganui district," he once wrote to Sir George Grey, "and if Her Majesty's troops are to be detained in the colony until one is struck, I confess I see no prospect of their leaving New Zealand."