It was no _brutum fulmen_ that Te Kooti launched against the settlement, though, strange to say, both Major Biggs, in charge there, and other leading men, imperfectly realised the imminence of their danger. Biggs even dissuaded the settlers from building a strong blockhouse for a rendezvous, assuring them that there was no reason for alarm, since his scouts would surely give him twenty-four hours' notice of any projected attack. He actually laughed at them for their vigilance in watching the various fords of the Waipoa river and, as the Anglo-Saxon is extremely sensitive to ridicule, this very sensible precaution was dropped. The ford to which they had given particular attention was that at Patutahi, and there it was where Te Kooti presently crossed the stream. Te Kooti, who maintained an iron discipline in camp and field, had by this time received numbers of recruits from the fierce Uriwera and other tribes in the locality, as well as promises of support from some at a distance. Leaving his main body in camp, he now swept down upon the plains with a chosen band of ruffians, and before the 10th of November had well begun, scattered his rascals in various directions over the settlement of Turanga, or Poverty Bay. Mr. Butters, a wool-presser, rode up at dawn to the station of Messrs. Dodd and Peppard, where he was engaged to work, and to his horror found the two men dead upon their own threshold, while the shepherd had disappeared--he, too, had been killed. "The raid is come. Te Kooti is upon us!" thought Mr. Butters and, instead of hurrying out of the district into safety, he went at racing speed to the mission at Waerenga-a-hika, warned the inmates, and then galloped from station to station, bearing his terrible news. He was riding all the time through the very midst of the scattered Hauhau, carrying his life in his hand and, had he worn a uniform, must have gained the cross "For Valour." As it was, he had for reward the consciousness of a good deed well done, and the knowledge that he had saved some lives by risking his own. [Illustration: Butters gives the alarm--Poverty Bay] Some few he found alert and forearmed; others he advised in time, and some he was too late to help, as when, on riding up to one homestead, he saw outside the door the bodies of the proprietor, his wife and their baby. Knowing that here he could do no good, Butters thundered past the desolated hearth with averted face. The Hauhau had already occupied Major Biggs's place as Butters drew near, and were dancing and yelling like fiends incarnate. The would-be saviour galloped on, sadly thinking, no doubt, that, if the poor major had consented to be wise in time, all this trouble might have been averted. Biggs had indeed paid the heaviest price for his rashness, and his last moments must have been embittered by the knowledge of the fate of those whom he had actually dissuaded from timely action in their own defence.