A misty morning in the forest. A little Maori hamlet, just a collection of thatched huts, in a small clearing enclosed on all sides by the dense woods. In the rear a deep ravine, jungly with thick undergrowth, then the winding snag-strewn Patea River. This was Otautu, Titokowaru's refuge-camp. It stood on a plateau--now a richly grassed farm; scattered over the clearing were potato-gardens. There was a frail stockade of stakes, but there were no trenches or rifle pits; it was an ordinary residential _kainga_; the fugitive Hauhaus trusted to the tangled forest as their best defence. Grey dawn. The raw morning fog hung low on the sleeping village--a mist so thick that it shrouded from the view objects even a few yards distant. It lay like the winding bank of smoky mist that marks the course of a forest stream early on a summer morning; the black tree-tops stood out clear above the white pall of damp, cold vapour. Not a sound from the slumbering _kainga_, where some three or four hundred Hauhaus--Kimble Bent amongst them--lay packed in their _nikau_-roofed huts. At the edge of the clearing a solitary Maori sentry, a man armed with a revolver, sat, keeping a semi-somnolent guard. Suddenly, out of the dark forest, appeared a body of armed men. They came in Indian file; they broke into a stealthy run as they left the shadow of the trees; their bodies were bent eagerly forward; they carried their rifles at the trail; they uttered not a sound. They were the Maori advance-guard of Colonel Whitmore's expeditionary force of four hundred A.C.'s and _Kupapas_. After weeks of bush-scouting a Government column had at last happened on the Hauhau hiding-place. The Maori sentinel--he was a man of the Puketapu tribe named Te Wareo--was all in an instant wide-awake. The moment he jumped up he was fired on by the advance-guard. Leaping into cover he raced for the village, firing his revolver as he ran. The discharge of the rifles rolled crashing through the forest. Startled _kaka_ parrots flew from their tree-perches, screaming discordantly at their rude awakening. The clear notes of a bugle rang out--it was the "Advance" and "Double!" The active little colonel rushed his men up at top speed, extended them, and advanced on the hidden camp, and a strange combat began. At the first crack of the firearms the _kainga_ was awake; and what a scurry there was! The Maoris poured out of their _wharés_ just as they leaped from their sleeping-mats--some wearing only a shawl or ragged mat; others entirely naked. Some of the women rushed out of their huts without a shred of clothing on, screaming and shouting, and running for their lives. The men snatched up their guns and tomahawks, and their cartouche-belts; and quickly took post to defend their position, and give time for their women and children to retreat in safety.