In single file the Hauhau soldiers struck into the black woods. As they entered the deeper thicknesses of the forest, where not a star could be seen for the density and unbroken continuity of the roof of foliage above them, they chanted this brief _karakia_, a charm invoking supernatural aid to clear their forest-path of obstructions and smooth their way: "Wahi taratara e i Me tuku ki te Ariki Kia taoro atu e--i, Nga puke puke i noa." Away through the bush they tramped, lightening the march with Hauhau chants, until their objective was neared--the little redoubt of Turuturu-Mokai. One word of warning Titokowaru had given the _Tekau-ma-rua_ when he chose them for this expedition. Kimble Bent, squatting with his fellows in the big house, had watched the divination-by-_taiaha_ and the demon-like red tongue of the high priest's sacred weapon turning now to one silent warrior, now to another. He heard Titokowaru's injunction to the chosen of the war-god: "_Kaua e haere ki te kuwaha o te pa; kei reira te raiana e tu ana! Ka pokanoa koutou, ka ngaua te raiana ia koutou!_" ("Do not charge at the gate way of the fort; there stands the lion! Should you disregard this command, the lion will devour you!") This caution was designed to restrain the more impetuous of the young warriors, for Titokowaru was a crafty general, and did not believe in wasting good fighting-men. He had learned by dear experience at Sentry Hill in 1864 that to dash straight and blindly at the foe, though valiant enough, was not always sound tactics. The leader of the _taua_, old Hauwhenua, must have been nearly seventy, but he was as active and agile and keen-witted as any young man of his fighting band. He was a product of the ferocious old cannibal times when every tribe's hand was against its neighbour's, and when year after year Waikato armies besieged the stockaded holds of Taranaki. In person he was not the ideal of a Maori warrior, for he was short of stature, a stoutly built man, with short grey beard and no tattoo-marks on his face. But he had fought against Maoris and against whites for many years of his life, and no war-captain surpassed him in the many stratagems of bush-warfare, and particularly in the artful laying of ambuscades. Marching with the savages of the _Tekau-ma-rua_ was the white man--Charles Kane, or King, called by the Maoris "Kingi," the deserter from the 18th Royal Irish. He was armed with a gun, intending to assist his Hauhau friends in their attack on his fellow-whites. Kimble Bent, it was reported afterwards in the _pakeha_ camps, also accompanied the warriors, but he denies this, asserting that he did not stir from the _pa_ all night; this is confirmed by the Maoris. "Kingi," he says, was a fiercely vindictive man, and swore to have a shot at the white men from whom he had cut himself off for ever.