"After we deserted Tauranga-ika," says my old _pakeha_-Maori, "we led a miserably rough life in the bush. We were as near starvation sometimes as we could well be. Kepa's _Kupapas_ and the white scouts were hunting for us, stalking us like wild beasts, and we were hiding in the forest and living on what we could pick up. We scattered in parties. I and some of the Hauhaus selected a safe spot in the deep bush, built _wharés_ to shelter ourselves, and then went out to the edge of the forest digging up fern-root for food. We scoured the bush for the _mamaku_ fern-tree,[13] and cut out the white pith of the tree; it was one of our principal foods at that time. It has a peculiar effect on any one who eats much of it--it makes him strangely drowsy and sleepy. Sometimes, too, we had to eat _whara-whara_ and similar mosses, and the mushroom-like _haroré_ that grew on the _tawa_-trees, and _hakeke_, or wood-fungus. We became very weak and feeble for want of food. We did not dare to light a fire in the daytime, for fear the smoke rising above the forest trees would betray us. At night we would kindle a small fire, just enough to keep the pipes going as we sat round and smoked and talked in low voices." Titokowaru's warriors, too, ran short of ammunition. For his cartridges, Bent sometimes had to use small pieces of hard wood cut to the proper size instead of lead bullets. The natives were also often short of percussion-caps; they used to save the exploded ones, and cut off match-heads and insert them. A box of caps was a great prize to a Hauhau in those days. This ingenious use of match-heads was a common practice in the later days of the war, and many a box of _pakeha_ matches found its way through supposedly "friendly" Maori hands into the rebel camps. For three or four weeks the Hauhaus concealed themselves in the forests between the Waitotara and the Patea Rivers, their warriors making occasional sorties and laying ambuscades for straggling whites. Not only was Bent in daily and nightly danger of death at the hands of his enemies, the Government men, during this period of hiding and starving in the bush, but in one of his adventures he narrowly escaped the tomahawks of his own companions, the Hauhaus.