In those bush-whacking days the Hauhaus made use of some remarkable devices against their enemies. One of these Maori engines of war was called a _tawhiti_, or trap. It was a sapling of some tough and elastic timber, _matipo_ for choice. When a suitable one, about ten feet long or so, was found growing in a likely position outside a _pa_ or alongside a bush-track by which the enemy were expected, it would be stripped of its branches, and bent down and back without breaking it, until it was lying in as near as possible a horizontal position, so that it would sweep the road. The end was fastened with flax in such a way that any unsuspecting person marching along the track or approaching the village and touching the trap, would cause the flax to slip, and release the _tawhiti_. The tree in its rebound could inflict a terrible blow. In 1866 Bent saw ten or twelve of these _tawhiti_ set on the tracks just outside Te Popoia, a small _pa_ near Keteonetea. The place was attacked by the Government forces in the night, and in the darkness several of the _Kupapas_, or Government Maoris, who formed the advance guard, were injured by the unexpected release and rebound of these savage traps.[4] CHAPTER XI "THE BEAK-OF-THE-BIRD" The stockade at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu--In the _Wharé-kura_--Singular Hauhau war-rites--The "Twelve Apostles"--The enchanted _taiaha_--The heart of the _pakeha_: a human burnt-offering--An ambuscade and a cannibal feast. Early in 1868 "Ringiringi" and his Hauhau comrades took up their quarters in the stockaded village of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu ("The Beak-of-the-Bird"), soon to be the scene of the sharpest action of the war. This settlement was deep in the _rata_ forest, about ten miles from where the town of Hawera now stands, in the direction of Mount Egmont. Out on the fern-lands on the edge of the bush were the European redoubts of Waihi and Turuturu-Mokai; the smaller of these, Turuturu, was singled out by Titokowaru as a position which could apparently be easily stormed; he therefore laid his plans to attack it, and gathered in his best fighting-men in the forest-fort.