[Illustration: THE FIGHT AT MOTUROA, 1869.] * * * * * A grim story of that hard-fought retreat through the bush is told by Kimble Bent. After the _kokiri_, the rush out in pursuit, had been ordered by the Maori war-chief, one of the Nga-Rauru men came across a white soldier lying on the ground, with his head pillowed against a fallen _pukatea_-tree. He had been cut off from his division by the foremost of the pursuing Hauhaus, and was lying there feigning death, hoping that the rest of the Maoris would pass on and not notice him. The Nga-Rauru man, however, stopped and looked closely at the prostrate _pakeha_. He said to one of his comrades, "I don't think that man is dead." Going up to the Constabulary man, he put his hand on his shoulder, and said in English, "Wake up!" The white man opened his eyes. He exclaimed, "Save my life! Let me go, and I'll never forget you--I'll repay you for it." The Nga-Rauru man, who must have been a humorous kind of barbarian, said to his victim, again in English, "Go on your knees and pray to your God to save your life!" The soldier knelt as he was told, and ejaculated some sort of a prayer. Playing with his prey, the savage asked, "Well, are you saved now?" The kneeling soldier looked up, but could make no answer. He stared at his terrible-looking captor, with horror in his eyes. "_Poroporoaki ki to Atua!_" ("Say farewell to your God!") cried the Maori, and swinging his gun round in both hands, he brought it butt down with a frightful smashing blow on the soldier's head. The man fell backwards dead. His slayer stripped him of his uniform and accoutrements, and a little later could have been seen dancing a furious _haka_ in front of the stockade, his face blackened with charcoal from the charred tree-stumps, the soldier's cap on his head, and the captured carbine in his hand. Young Tutangé Waionui was in the thick of the skirmishing. "My weapons that day," he says, "were a _tupara_ (double-barrelled gun) and a revolver. The gun was a muzzle-loader; I preferred it to the breech-loaders used by the _pakeha_, because something was always going wrong with them. I could load (_puru-pu_) very quickly; but a quicker man was old Te Waka-tapa-ruru--he who was killed; there was no one so expert as he at loading a muzzle-loader." What scenes of horror followed that battle in the bush! The Hauhaus were in a delirium of triumphant savagery. Like frenzied things they came dancing and yelling back to the _pa_. They had blackened their ferocious faces with charcoal from the burnt tree-stumps in front of the _pa_. Singing war-songs, shouting _Pai-mariré_ cries, dancing their weapons in the air, projecting their long snaky tongues and rolling their eyes till only the whites were visible, set in a petrifying glare--the grimace of the _pukana_--it was a sight that brought fear to the heart of the lone white man, accustomed though he was by this time to spectacles of barbaric ferocity.