It was a curious interview. The white man no longer appeared in the soldier's uniform, which he had worn for some time after deserting, but had taken to the garb of the savage. He was bare-headed and bare-footed. His sole garments were a shirt made of pieces of blanket and a flax mat tied round his waist. He entered the crowded council-house and stood before the prophet. [Illustration: PATARA, A HAUHAU PROPHET.] "_E noho ki raro_" ("Sit down"), said Te Ua, pointing to the floor-mat in front of him. By the prophet's side was a flax basket containing some potatoes and pork, with which he had been breaking his fast after his journey. This food being appropriated to his use was, of course, _tapu_ in the eyes of the assemblage. Te Ua took a potato from the basket, broke it into two pieces, and gave one piece to Bent and told him to eat it; the other half he ate himself. "Now," said the prophet, "you are _tapu_--your life is safe; no man may harm you now that you have eaten of my sacred food. Men of Tangahoé! This _pakeha_ is my _pakeha_; and if any other white men should come to us as this man has done, fleeing from their people and forsaking the _pakeha_ camps for our _pas_, you must protect them, for the gods have sent them to us." "You are a Maori now," added Te Ua to Bent, "and you must have a woman to cook your food for you." Bent, in his imperfect Maori, informed the prophet that he had already been supplied with a wife by the Maoris, but, like a prudent man, made no comment on her imperfections. "That's all right then," said the prophet. And he gave Bent a large cloak of dressed flax, called a _tatara_. "Wear this," he said; "it is a _tapu_ garment and sacred to you; no other man may wear it." During the next few days, before Te Ua returned to his home at Opunake, on the coast, Bent had further interviews with the prophet, who treated him with kindness, and gave him what was to the runaway a very welcome present--some _pakeha_ tobacco. Though something of a madman, like most Maori prophets, Te Ua was of more benevolent spirit than his acolytes, Kereopa and Patara, and their kin, who had been sent to preach the gospel of _Pai mariré_ to the outer tribes. Had Kereopa, for instance, come to Otapawa, Bent would, in all probability, have fallen under the tomahawk as a sacrifice for the savage ritual of the _Niu_, and his head would have been smoke-dried and carried over forest-trails from distant tribe to tribe, or stuck up like a scarecrow on a palisade-pole. Bent learnt a good deal of the personal history of the prophet, and of his peculiar delusions. Te Ua had fought the white soldiers at Nukumaru about a year before this, when a force of Hauhaus made a desperate attack on the camp of two thousand British troops, under General Cameron, and killed and wounded nearly fifty soldiers before they were driven off with the loss of about thirty killed.