Bent at this time was a thin, rather weak-looking man, and his slimness was made the subject of a _haka_ chorus amongst the people, a little song for which his one-eyed wife was responsible. These were the words: "_Ki te kai, e Ringi, Kai poroporo te manawa, Te iti to hopé, Whakapai Angoré_," ("Eat away, O Ringi, Eat your fill of _poroporo_ berries To make you strong again; Lest your waist be small and weak, Eat to become a fine Englishman!") The _poroporo_ is a forest shrub which bears an abundance of large red berries, a favourite food of the _tui_ and pigeons, which become very fat on this rich bird-fare. The white man, however, as he told his _wahiné_, preferred to leave the _poroporo_ to the _tuis_, and to fill out his attenuated waist, which the people looked upon with some amusement, with good Maori pork and potatoes. CHAPTER V TE UA, PRIEST AND PROPHET Te Ua and his gods--The _Pai mariré_ faith--"Charming" the British bullets--Bent's interview with the prophet--His life _tapu_'d--Preparing for battle--Life in the forest _pa_. About this time Kimble Bent became acquainted with a man whose name has passed into New Zealand history. This was Te Ua Haumene, the founder and high-priest and prophet of the Hauhau religion, or, more correctly speaking, fanaticism. Te Ua came riding into the Otapawa village one day with a bodyguard of armed men. Bent describes him as a stoutly built man of between forty and fifty, attired in European clothing, and carrying a carved _taiaha_--a chief's halbert or broadsword of hardwood, flattened at one end in a blunt blade, and sharpened at the other into a tongue-shaped point, and decorated with tufts of red _kaka_ feathers; in a plaited flax belt round his waist was thrust a greenstone _mere_. Te Ua was the man who taught the Taranaki rebels the _karakia_, or incantations--some of them a curious medley of Maori and English--which they chanted in their wild marches round the sacred _Niu_ in their village squares. These incantations and chants he professed to have heard from supernatural visitants, the spirits who came on the four winds, and from the angel Gabriel, who spoke in his ear as he lay asleep in his _raupo_ hut and bade him go abroad and spread a new religion, which should band together the tribes of the Maori nation. Many strange tales Bent had heard about the prophet and his wondrous _mana_. Te Ua had succeeded in imbuing his fanatic disciples with an unquestioning Moslem-like faith in the potency of the Hauhau cult and its accompanying charms and magic formulæ. He was the Mahomet of the Taranaki people, and exercised an influence over the bush-fighters of Ngati-Ruanui and allied tribes almost as great as that which Te Kooti, the Chatham Islands escapee, commanded a few years later amongst the warriors of the East Coast.