This peaceful state of things did not endure for long. In a few days--it was early in the year 1866--the long-expected attack on Otapawa was delivered. Before the troops came, however, the prophet of the _pa_ ordered all the old people and most of the women and children to retire to the forest in rear of the fort, and told "Ringiringi" to accompany them. News had just been brought in that the scouts out in the fern country had noticed signs of an impending movement in the British camp. The white man and the tribal encumbrances pushed back into the bush for about three miles, and camped in a quiet little nook by a creek-side, with high, forested hills towering around. The weather now became cold and bleak, and there was little food to sustain the refugees, for the principal stores of _kai_ had been left in the _pa_. Early one morning the sound of cannon was heard in the distance, then heavy rifle-volleying, followed by desultory firing. The Queen's soldiers were storming the fort. Here I may give a more detailed description of the defences of Otapawa than has appeared in the preceding pages, to enable the reader to realise the sort of place the white general was attacking. Curving round under the rear of the _pa_ and partly protecting it on the flanks, flowed the Tangahoé River. The hill-top where the _pa_ stood was flat, and the rear dropped precipitously to the Tangahoé. The only access to the interior of the stockade was through a low and narrow gateway. Just within, the entrance was blinded by a short fence, so that an enemy could not charge straight, even if the gate were open, but would have to turn first to the left for a short distance and then to the right, exposed to a fire from between the palisades, before the open _marae_ was reached. The _pa_ was defended by two rows of palisading, with a ditch between, and another shallow trench inside the inner stockade. The outer stockade, the _pekerangi_, was about eight feet high, and was the lighter fence of the two. The principal timbers were six or eight inches thick, but the stakes between were smaller and did not quite reach the ground; they were fastened with bush-vines and supplejack to the sapling rails that ran along the stockade. The open spaces at the bottom of the fence were for the defenders in the outer trench to fire through. The inner fence, the _tuwatawata_, was a stouter structure, of strong, green tree-trunks set solidly in the ground, and with openings here and there for rifle-fire. And finally--an important thing in Maori eyes--there was the "luck-stone" of the fort, the greenstone _whatu_. This was buried under the foot of a large stockade post, close to the right-hand corner nearest the river, as one approached from the _pa_ gate.