It was well on in the afternoon before the first shots were heard. The Maoris had expected attack from the seaward or Waihi side, but to their surprise the sound of the firing came from inland, indicating that the troops had worked round to the rear of "The Beak-of-the-Bird." The Maori advance-guard of Colonel McDonnell's column had encountered the Hauhaus in the bush and fired into them. When the first sharp rifle-cracks echoed through the forest, Titokowaru went up to his _pakeha_, with a flax kit in his hand. "Friend," said the stern old captain, "take this _kété_ of mine in your charge. It contains some of my _tapu_ treasures; take great care of it, for I may not see you again; I may fall with my tribe. Take it and leave the _pa_, and join Te Waka-tākere-nui if you can find his camp in the forest." The white man took the carefully strapped kit and hurried out of the stockade. Te Waka's camp, he knew, was somewhere away in the rear; the firing was in that direction, and he was in danger of falling into the enemy's hands. However, he struck out into the bush from the rear fence, expecting to steal through the thick timber on the flank of the troops, who, he guessed, were advancing by the track which led in from the east. He managed to elude his fellow-countrymen as it happened, but it was "touch-and-go" with him. Scarcely had he run out from the stockade and entered the hollow, through which a little creek wound through the bush at the rear of the _pa_, than the advance-guard of the white column also reached the creek, and crossed it to attack the _pa_. A heavy fire was at this moment opened on the troops by the Hauhaus, and bullets flew thick around the _pakeha_-Maori. Two or three of the Armed Constabulary came almost upon him just as he mounted the farther bank of the creek, near where a little burial-ground clearing broke the continuity of the thick undergrowth; it was here that the Hauhaus had interred those of their number killed in the previous attack on the _pa_. The Colonial soldiers must have mistaken Bent for a Maori, for they immediately fired at him but missed, and next moment he ducked into the jungle, and on all-fours scrambled down into the creek bed, where he followed down the little stream as hard as he could go. There was small wonder the A.C.'s took Bent for a Maori, for it would have been difficult in the half-light of that bush, at the distance of a few yards, to have detected much resemblance to a white man in the dark, shaggy-headed, bare-footed fellow with an old and dirty blanket strapped around his waist, a ragged jacket about his shoulders, and a red handkerchief tied round his head.