_To mai Niu Kororia, mai My glorious _Niu_, have mercy mariré_; on me; _To mai Niu Kororia, mai My glorious _Niu_, have mercy mariré_; on me; _To mai Niu Kororia, mai My glorious _Niu_, have mercy mariré_; on me; _To riré, riré!_ Have mercy, mercy! The more warlike chants ended in a loudly barked "_Hau!_" the watchword and holy war-cry of the rebel bushmen. Very wild they were, these savage hymns, haunting in rhythm, and stirring the people to a frenzy of fanatic fire. Kimble Bent joined in these Hauhau war-rites like any Maori, and marched, chanting with his wild comrades, round and round the _Niu_. Several skirmishes between the whites and Maoris occurred in the winter and early spring of 1866, and one of these had some concern for the exile. About three miles away from Taiporohenui was a village called Pokaikai, to which "Ringiringi" was sent awhile by his chief. While he was there the prophet Te Ua arrived. He dreamed a dream, one of bad omen, and he straightway counselled "Ringiringi" to return at once to Taiporohenui. "Ringi" obeyed. Three days, or, rather, three nights afterwards, a force of colonial soldiers under Colonel McDonnell unexpectedly attacked Pokaikai and rushed the village, killing several Hauhaus. In some way the Forest Rangers under McDonnell had heard that the deserter Kimble Bent was in Pokaikai, and they were eager to capture or shoot him. Some of them surrounded one of the _wharés_ in which they imagined Bent was sleeping. A young volunteer named Spain had just previously, unnoticed by them, gone into the _wharé_ to bring out a dead Hauhau, and while he was there the Rangers--hearing some one say there was a white man within--fired a volley into the hut, which unfortunately mortally wounded Spain. This young soldier was the only _pakeha_ killed in the fight. [Illustration: THE SCOUT. Tu-Mahuki, a friendly Maori of the Whanganui tribe who served on the British side in the Maori War, with his wife Takiora. (_From a sketch by Major von Tempsky, 1866._)] When "Ringiringi" heard of the Pokaikai affair from the fugitives who fled through the bush to Taiporohenui, he felt that the Hauhau prophet had indeed been his good angel, for it was only Te Ua's injunction to return to the main Hauhau camp that had saved him from the vengeful bullets of his fellow-whites. And thenceforward the white man was a dreamer of many a strange dream, and he came to believe almost as implicitly as the forest-men themselves in the omens that lay in the visions of the night, and in warning voices from the spirit-world.