Bent, standing just outside the _pa_ gateway, watched the in-bringing of the bodies of his fellow-whites--prelude, he too well knew, to a cannibal feast. He turned to enter the village, when an old Maori, tugging away madly at a flax line which he had made fast to the neck of a dead man, caught sight of him, and shouted: "You, _pakeha_! Come and give me a hand. Help me to drag in my food!" "What do you want?" Bent heard a rough voice ask. He turned and saw the war-chief Titokowaru standing at his side. "What do you want of this _pakeha_?" The Maori replied that he wished the white man to help him haul the soldier's body into the _marae_. "No!" cried the chief in his great hoarse voice. "No! you must not call upon my _pakeha_ to help you. He shall not touch the bodies of his countrymen." So the war-captain and his cartridge-maker stood by watching the frightful procession of Hauhaus and their prizes. The seven naked bodies were dragged into the _pa_ and laid out in the centre of the _marae_. The excited people all gathered in a great circle around the bodies. One after another the orators leaped out from the squatting ranks, their eyes flashing wildly in the _pukana_ glare; they bounded to and fro, and cut the air with their tomahawks as they told the thrilling episodes of the fight. All the clothes, arms, and accoutrements taken from the dead and wounded were laid before Titokowaru. "Whose was this?" the war-chief would ask, picking up a carbine, or an ammunition-pouch, or a soldier's tunic from the heap. "Mine," replied the man who had taken it on the battle-field. "Take it away, then," said Titokowaru. "Whose is this?" picking up another trophy. "It is mine," a young man would reply; "it is my first spoils of war, a _tanga-ika_." "Burn it," was the chief's order. Then the human bodies lying on the _marae_ were apportioned one by one, to each tribe, as piles of food are served out at a ceremonial Maori gathering. "Nga-Rauru, this is yours! Tangahoé, this is yours!" and so on, till the seven bodies were all disposed of. A woman sat weeping on the _marae_. She was Te Hau-karewa, wife to one Te Rangi-whakairi-papa and a sister of Te Waka-tapa-ruru, the old warrior who had fallen in his desperate rush upon the white enemy that morning. Though old, she was a tall, fine-looking woman, with a mass of black curly hair. Ceasing her _tangi_ for the dead, when the bodies of the soldiers were laid out on the ground, she rose, and, taking a stick in her hand, she walked along the row of the dead men and struck each a blow on the head.