The Governor's reply was to collect a mixed force of five hundred men, including three hundred of the "bouncing" friendlies, and borrow two hundred regulars from General Waddy for moral support. With these he marched upon the _pa_ about which such a pother had been raised. The Queen's troops, who were not allowed to fight--though the enemy did not know that--acted as a camp guard, while the colonials and friendlies worked by a circuitous and very difficult route to the rear of the _pa_. Here they took a strong redoubt, which commanded the fort, and captured fifty Maori on their way to join the garrison. All this was effected without the loss of a man, and the enemy, seeing themselves, as they supposed, surrounded, evacuated the _pa_ by the front. Had the regulars been allowed to fight, the hostile force must have been annihilated; but, much to their astonishment, they were allowed to walk off unopposed. The numerically insignificant contingent of colonials and friendlies entered the _pa_ next day, having accomplished in two days, under the Governor's eye, that which the commander-in-chief had for six months declared to be impossible of accomplishment with less than two thousand regulars. Perhaps, however, he was right. As one result of this constant friction and of General Cameron's representations to the British Government, there remained in the colony in 1865 only five regiments, and these were employed in guarding the districts which had been reduced. After March, 1865, the Colonial Forces for the most part conducted the war in their own way; but it would be absurd to deny that, but for the regulars who remained, the conquered tribes would have reassembled and obliged the war to be fought over again, or necessitated an increase in the strength of the colonials proportional to that of the Imperial troops withdrawn. As it was, while the regulars stood on guard, the colonials fought their fight unhampered by reviving sedition--fought and, as we shall see, conquered. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 66: See p. 55.] [Footnote 67: See p. 233.] CHAPTER XXIV PAI MARIRE,[68] OR THE HAUHAU SECT