On the cliff-top where they left the forest there was a little Maori camp. Here the fugitives were ordered to the main Hauhau camp, the Kawau _pa_, where Titokowaru and his followers had established themselves, weary of war, but nevertheless resolute to die "fighting like the shark," as the Maori has it, if attacked in their last hiding-place. The Kawau _pa_ stood in an admirable position for defence, in a great bend of the Waitara River. The winding rapid river here swept round a long tongue of steep-banked level land, protecting it on three sides; in the rear was the dense forest. The banks of the river were from twenty to thirty feet high, and could be climbed only in a few places. On this high tongue of land, about a quarter of a mile long, there stood a large village of well-built _raupo_ and _nikau_ thatched houses; between the village and the forest were the cultivations of potatoes, _kumara_, and _taro_. On the opposite side of the river, in the direction of the Taramouku Range, wild horses and cattle abounded in the bush. A short distance below the village there was a large _pa-tuna_, or eel-weir, consisting of two rows of stout _manuka_ stakes set closely together and sunk into the river-bed and converging in a =V=, at the lower end of which _hinaki_, or eel-baskets, were set for the purpose of catching the _piharau_, or lamprey, which abounded in the Waitara, and which were a great Maori delicacy. As Rupé and his _pakeha_ Bent and their companions marched slowly into the _marae_ of the war-chief's camp, their eyes on the ground, they were welcomed with the ancient ceremony of the _powhiri_. The village women and girls waved green branches and shawls as they retired before them, singing all together the famous old greeting song, "_Toia Mai te Waka!_" ("Oh, haul up the canoe!") likening the guests to a canoe-party of visitors arriving from a distant shore. Then as the women fell back the whole force of Titoko's warriors leaped to their feet, and swinging their firearms this way and that, threw themselves with martial fury into all the thrilling action of the war-dance. The ground shook under the mighty tread of many scores of brown feet, and the forest rang with the chorus of the war-song and the reverberating volleys of many guns. And then, when the dance was ended, the _hongi_ of long-severed friends, the pressing of nose to nose, and the pitiful weeping for the dead. For quite two hours the great _tangi_ lasted. When it ceased one of the head-men of the river-tribes sent the new arrivals to his own camp, close by the Kawau; the village women came in procession, to the lilt of the _tuku-kai_ song, bearing their baskets of food, steaming hot from the _hangi_, and the half-starved white man and his friends were soon enjoying a bountiful feast after their long-enforced existence upon the meagre rations of the bush. * * * * *