Long after the happy union of its lovers, Mokoia saw another sight when Hongi, “eater of men,” marched down with his Ngapuhi musketeers from the north to exterminate the Arawa of the lake country. To the Roto-rua people Mokoia had in times past been a sure refuge. In camp there, they commanded the lake with their canoes; no invader could reach them, for no invader could bring a fleet overland. So it had always been, and the Mokoians trusting thereto, paddled about the lake defying and insulting Hongi and his men in their camp on the farther shore. Yet so sure of victory were the Ngapuhi chiefs that each of the leaders selected as his own booty the war-canoe that seemed handsomest in his eyes. Hongi had never heard of the device by which Mahomet II. captured Constantinople, but he was a man of original methods, and he decided that canoes could be dragged twenty miles or more from the sea-coast to Lake Roto-iti. It is said that an Arawa slave or renegade in his camp suggested the expedient and pointed out the easiest road. At any rate the long haul was successfully achieved, and the canoes of the Plumed Ones--Ngapuhi--paddled from Roto-iti into Roto-rua. Then all was over except the slaughter, for the Mokoians had but half-a-dozen guns, and Hongi’s musketeers from their canoes could pick them off without landing. [Illustration: EVENING ON LAKE ROTO-RUA] Fifteen hundred men, women, and children are said to have perished in the final massacre. Whether these figures were “official” I cannot say. The numbers of the slain computed in the Maori stories of their wars between 1816 and 1836 are sometimes staggering; but scant mercy was shown, and all tradition concurs in rating the death-roll far higher than anything known before or after. And Mokoia was crowded with refugees when it fell before Hongi’s warriors. Of course, many of the islanders escaped. Among them a strong swimmer, Hori (George) Haupapa, took to the lake and managed to swim to the farther shore. The life he thus saved on that day of death proved to be long, for Haupapa was reputed to be a hundred years old when he died in peace.