[Footnote 21: That the sailors were quite a different _hapu_, though belonging to the _iwi_ of England, and in no way "related" to the soldiers, I have heard often stated by the natives, as well as by the narrator of this story. Neither will we wonder at their having jumped at this conclusion, after having compared "Jack," let loose for a run on shore, with the orderly soldiers. I will here take occasion to state that I shall not hold myself accountable for the many mistakes and misapprehensions of my old friend the Ngapuhi chief, when he speaks of us, our manners, customs, and motives of action; when he merely recounts the events and incidents of the war, he is to be fully depended on, being both correct and minutely particular in his relation, after the native manner of telling a story, to omit _nothing_. I have had, indeed, to leave out a whole volume of minute particulars, such as this for instance: where a _pakeha_ would simply say, "we started in the morning after breakfast," &c., the native would say, "in the morning the ovens were heated, and the food was put in and covered up; when it was cooked it was taken out, and we eat it, and finished eating, then we got up and started," &c. In the course of the narration I have translated, I have had to listen to the above _formula_ about fifty times; the lighting of a pipe and the smoking it, or the seeing a wild pig (describing size and colour, &c.), is never omitted, no matter if it is five seconds before commencing a battle. This is the true native way of telling a story, and it is even now a wonder to them to see how soon a European tells the story of a journey, or voyage, or any event whatever. If a native goes on a journey of three days' duration, during which nothing whatever of any consequence may have occurred, it will take him at least one whole day to tell _all_ about it, and he is greatly annoyed at the impatient pakeha who wants to get the upshot of the whole story by impertinently saying, "Did you get what you went for?" To tell _that_ too soon would be out of all rule; every foot of the way must be gone over with every incident, however trivial, before the end is arrived at. They are beginning now to find that in talking to Europeans they must leave out one half at least of a story to save time, but the old men _can't_ help making the most of a chance of talking. To cut a story short seems to them a _waste of words_ by _not_ speaking them, while we think it a decided waste of words _to_ speak them. In old times the natives had so few subjects for conversation that they _made the most_ of what they had, which accounts for their verbosity in trifling matters.]