The night before the divisions of the pursuing column separated, Major Kepa ordered one of his _tohungas_, a wild-looking, tattooed old warrior, learned in all the savage arts of Maoridom, to _whakapakoko nga upoko_, that is, to dry or preserve the heads of the slain Hauhaus. Porter and the other Europeans in the Maori contingents now for the first time witnessed the ancient process of smoke-drying human heads. The heads had up to this time been carried in flax kits on men's shoulders through the bush, and it was necessary, if they were to be taken out to the camp, that they should be preserved from decay. The old medicine-man went into the bush and returned with armfuls of branches of the _mahoé_-tree, and made a fire, which he kept burning until all the wood was reduced to glowing embers. The earth was heaped up around this fire, and the head, neck downwards, was placed over it, and all openings at the sides were closed, so that the fumes from the charcoal oven would pass up into the head. The brains had previously been removed and the eyes stuffed up. As the smoking went on, the old man smoothed down the skin of the face with his hands to prevent it wrinkling and wiped off the moisture, until the head was thoroughly smoke-dried and quite mummified. For several hours the head-smoking went on, and in the morning the trophies of the chase were packed for the final march. Half-starved, ragged and weary, the Constabulary and their Maori allies at last reached the open country; from the top of the range of wooded hills they had seen the white tents of Colonel Whitmore's headquarters at Taiporohenui. That evening they were in camp, and there they enjoyed the first square meal they had had for days. Kepa and Porter and their contingents had been nine days in the bush. Captain Porter went to Colonel Whitmore's quarters as soon as he arrived, and reported the result of his expedition. While he was giving the commanding officer an account of the forest chase, the Whanganui men who had taken the Hauhau heads came up in a body and opened the tent door, and poured in head after head upon the ground, exclaiming as they did so, "_Na, Witimoa, to upoko_!" ("There, Whitmore, your heads!") The little colonel was thunderstruck. He stared with consternation in his eyes on the ghastly heads, most of them tattooed, with grinning teeth and long blood-stained hair, strewn about the floor where they had rolled. There were eleven of them, some at the colonel's feet, some beneath the table; some had rolled under the camp bedstead. He had forgotten all about his promise of a reward for heads. Anyhow, he now told the Maoris, he did not mean that the heads should actually be brought in to him in camp, but that a reward would be paid for each Hauhau killed in the pursuit. But he kept his word to Kepa, and each head was paid for.