From Whakamara village the Maoris fell back on a little fortified _pa_ in the rear of the camp. This position they abandoned after a brief skirmish, and then the forest chase began. Whitmore ordered an immediate pursuit, and a flying column of sixty white Armed Constabulary, under Captains Northcroft and Watt, and about one hundred and forty Maori _Kupapas_, under Major Kepa and Captain Thomas Porter, all in light marching order, took to the bush after the retreating enemy. [Illustration: A CONSTABULARY OFFICER IN BUSH-FIGHTING COSTUME. (_From a photo of Colonel T. Porter's taken in 1869._)] The advance-guard of the pursuing force numbered twenty-five Maoris, about equally divided between the Whanganui and Arawa tribes. Captain Porter was the only European officer with them, but one or two white scouts and bushmen accompanied the Maoris. As the column's march was necessarily in single file through thick and tangled bush, it was difficult to bring a large number of men into action when any skirmish or ambuscade occurred, and the consequence was that practically all the fighting was done by the advance-guard. It was a picturesquely savage chapter of the war, that chase of Titokowaru and his scattered Hauhaus. There was more than a touch of the barbaric in it, for some of the Government forces reverted to the primitive war-methods of the Maori himself. Between the moccasined hero of the war-trail in Fenimore Cooper's and Captain Mayne Reid's romances of Red Indian days, and Kepa's Maori guerilla and some of his white comrades, there was, after all, only this difference: one took the trail hunting for scalps, the other for heads! As mentioned in a previous chapter, Colonel Whitmore had agreed to a request made by Major Kepa after the fighting on the Waitotara, and had offered rewards of £10 a head for Hauhau chiefs killed and £5 for ordinary men. Kepa's _Kupapa_, Maoris, recruited from the Whanganui, Ngati-Apa, Ngati-Raukawa, and other "friendly" tribes--only friendly to the _pakeha_ by reason of their deadly animosity to the Taranaki tribes--were little less savage than the Hauhaus themselves, and this manhunt under the _mana_ of the Government was just the work that delighted them. They were "stripped to a gantlin'" for the bush chase--simply a waist-mat or shawl and cartridge-belts and a pouch for their percussion-caps. And some of the white bushmen-scouts were just as eager on the head-hunting trail, and added to their service arms a tomahawk.