For some weeks the fugitives remained in their well-hidden camp by the Tangahoé's stream. When the wounded were able to travel, "Ringiringi" and his Maori companions took them a few miles through the bush to a place called Rimatoto, the overgrown site of an olden village. All the able-bodied men of the tribe now set to work to build a new settlement. Thatched _nikau_-palm houses were quickly run up, and the forest rang day after day with the axes of the bush-fellers, clearing the ground for potato-planting. As it was intended to make this a permanent _kainga_--always providing Kepa's dusky forest-rangers did not find their way to it in their scouting expeditions--a large clearing was made. The felled trees were allowed to lie for about three months until they were dry enough to be fired; then the potatoes were set in amongst the half-burned stumps and logs. In the meantime the forest was scoured for food, and foraging parties were sent out to Turangaréré and other villages on the outskirts of the forest and returned laden with pork and potatoes, strapped across their shoulders in the usual Maori _pikau_ fashion. Four miles away by a rough bush track, a track hardly discernible to any but a Maori, was the Maha village. There the white man was taken by his _rangatira_ Tito, after the bush-felling work was over, and three or four peaceful months were passed, varied only by occasional armed scouting expeditions to the forest edge, and by long fishing, birding, and pig-hunting trips into the great wilderness of jungle-matted timber that hemmed in the lonely village on every side. Bent had now been a year with the Maoris, and had thoroughly settled into the native life. He had quickly picked up the language of his adopted people, and there was nothing of the _pakeha_ about him but the colour of his skin, and that was browning with constant exposure and outdoor labour. A waist-shawl or a flax kilt was his single article of everyday clothing; in cold weather a shoulder-mat or a blanket was added. In this village of the woods there were few emblems of civilisation except the weapons of the warriors. Stories of battle and skirmish now and again reached the bushmen by messengers from the plains; and the white general's great march through the forest from Ketemarae by the Whakaahurangi track around the eastern side of Mount Egmont to Mataitawa and New Plymouth--when the soldiers fell so short of food that they had to shoot and eat their pack-horses--was discussed many a night in the village _wharepuni_, the communal council-room and sleeping-house.