Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu was now the headquarters of the Ngati-Ruanui and Nga-Ruahiné belligerents, and all hands were set to work to fortify the village and to gather in food-supplies for the _hapus_ who crowded the "Bird's-Beak" _pa_. The front of the village faced a cleared stretch of fern-land, but the forest surrounded it on the other sides; at the rear ran a little creek. There were no trenches or earth-parapets; the principal defences were stout palisades, solid tree-trunks and split timber, eight to ten feet high, sunk firmly in the ground, and connected by cross-ties of saplings, fastened to the posts with forest vines. Close to the palisades were some great _rata_-trees, very ancient and hollow; several of these the Hauhaus converted into miniature redoubts. Some of the hollow trees were cunningly loopholed for rifle-fire, and within them stagings were made for the musketeers; rough stages, too, were constructed up among the _rata_ branches, where the dense foliage and the interlacing boughs formed a perfect shelter for the brown-skinned snipers. One of the tree-platforms, just inside the _pa_ walls, was used as a _taumaihi_, or look-out tower. At one end of the village was the large Hauhau meeting-hall and praying-house called _Wharé-kura_ ("House of Learning," or "Red-painted House"), after the olden Maori sacred lodges of priestly instruction. This building, built of sawn timber in semi-European style, was about seventy feet in length. It was erected by Titokowaru's working-party in six days--in obedience to the Scriptural command "Six days shalt thou labour"; they finished it on the sixth day, and religiously rested on the seventh--and for many days thereafter. The _Wharé-kura_ was consecrated by Titokowaru in the ancient heathen fashion; it was the temple of the Hauhau ritual, and here the high chief assembled his men when he wished to select war-parties for assaults and ambuscades. At the rear end of the great house was his sacred seat and sleeping-place, laid with finely woven flax mats and hedged by the invisible but potent barriers of _tapu_. As often happened in Maori warfare, the first intimation the Hauhaus gave of their intention to renew the fighting was the murder of two or three incautious _pakehas_ on the frontier. Titokowaru's war-parties despatched on special missions usually numbered sixty men. Though consisting of this number they were termed the _Tekau-ma-rua_, or "The Twelve."