In his own little thatched _wharé_ that day sat Kimble Bent, the _pakeha_-Maori. He, too, was busy, squatting there on an old flax _whariki_ mat. By his side were a keg of gunpowder and a bag of bullets, and in front of him a pile of old _pakeha_ newspapers and leaves torn from looted books. He was making cartridges for the Hauhaus. Round a wooden cartridge-filler he deftly rolled a scrap of paper, forming a cylinder, which he tied securely with thread or with fine strips of flax; then, withdrawing the filler, he poured in the gunpowder. The cartridges loaded, he slipped them into the cartouche-boxes and holders, a number of which had been brought to the _wharé_ by the men of the _Tekau-ma-rua_; when the boxes were full, the remainder of the ammunition he stored carefully in a large flax basket. Most of the receptacles for the ammunition--_hamanu_ the Maoris called them--were primitive affairs smacking of the bush. In size and shape they resembled the ordinary military leather cartouche-boxes, but they were simply blocks of light wood, generally _pukatea_ timber, slightly curved in shape so as to sit well on the body when strapped, and neatly bored with from ten to eighteen holes, each of which held a cartridge. A flap of leather or skin--in the earlier days it was often a piece of tattooed human skin--covered the cartridges; and straps of leather or of dressed and ornamented flax were attached to the _hamanu_, which were buckled or tied round the waist or over the shoulders. A well-equipped fighting-man usually wore two _hamanu_, by belts over the shoulders; and at his girdle he carried his pouches for bullets and percussion-caps. Such was the lone white man's occupation in the forest stockade that day before the looming battle. * * * * * Next morning, after the first meal of the day had been set before the warriors by their women and had been quickly eaten, the war-chief came out of his house, _taiaha_ in hand, and walked out on to the village square in front of the sacred praying-house. "Friends," he cried, as he stood there on the _marae_, "I salute you! You have eaten and are content; for the proverb says, 'When the stomach is filled, then man is happy and satisfied' ('_Ka ki te puku, ka ora te tangata_'). Now, rise up and grasp your weapons, for I wish to see you dance the _haka_ and the _tutu-waewae_ of war." When the men were assembled on the parade ground, in their dancing costume of a scanty waist-mat, Titokowaru cried in a loud voice and prophesied, saying: "_Kaore e tu te ra, kaore e titaha te ra, ka tupono tatou kia to tatou whanaunga_"--of which the meaning is, "The sun will not have reached its zenith, the sun will not have declined, before we have joined issue with our relatives"--the white soldiers.