A clear, bright, moonlight night of summer; a moon that silvered the sharp hill-tops of the broken Maori country, but left black mysterious shadows in the gorges and river valleys that every few miles cut deeply into the rolling fern lands; valleys full of danger and death, for in their depths crept the war-parties of the savage, laying ambushes, planning murder and mutilation. On a gently sloping rise on the open fern lands a hundred white tents, the camp of the _pakeha_ troops, glittered in the full moonlight. The sweet bugle-calls of "Lights out" and the "Last post" rang out for miles across the wilderness, and except for the piquets and sentries the camp was soon asleep. But away on the forest edge, a mile from the safely entrenched camp, a little band of men, half a dozen scouts, crouched hiding in the fern, carbines in their hands, watching, listening. They were the eyes of the army. Their wits, their keenness of vision and hearing, were pitted this night against the savage men of the forest, born bushmen, with the cunning of the Indian. It was the 17th of January, 1869, nearly three months after the repulse of the Colonial troops at the Moturoa stockade. All this time Titokowaru and his victorious _Tekau-ma-rua_ had everything their own way on the West Coast, scouring the country-side, burning settlers' houses, killing cattle, and strengthening their palisaded position at Tauranga-ika. The East Coast campaign following on the Poverty Bay massacre had necessitated the diversion of nearly all the Constabulary from the West Coast, until the storming and capture of Te Kooti's hill-fort Ngatapa and the flight of the rebel chief to the forests of the Urewera Country enabled attention to be again given to the Taranaki and Waitotara Hauhaus. Now, well on in the month of January, 1869, Colonel Whitmore, with Colonel Lyon--a brave one-armed soldier, veteran of the Crimea--as his second in command, advanced from Wanganui with a strong force of Armed Constabulary, about eight hundred in number, besides a large body of _Kupapas_, or friendly Maoris, mostly of the Whanganui tribe, under Kepa te Rangihiwinui. The force encamped at the end of the first day's march near the right bank of the Kai-iwi stream, about ten miles from Wanganui, and prepared to march the next day through the Okehu Gorge and on to Nukumaru and Tauranga-ika.