The Government force outnumbered the Hauhaus in the _pa_ by more than five to one. Of this, however, McDonnell and his officers and men were ignorant, otherwise there might have been a very different story to tell. In the obscurity of the dense bush, where the savage forest-men were in their familiar haunts, everything was strange and terrible to the recruits, and the imagination magnified the numbers of the foe, who poured bullets from their well-masked fastnesses. Yet many of the whites were old and seasoned bushmen, who had served in the Forest Rangers and other corps; they had carried their carbines on many a dangerous forest trail, and fought the Hauhaus again and again, and they were led by officers of ability, coolness, and bravery. Under McDonnell there was, for one, that soldier of fortune, Major Gustavus von Tempsky, most picturesque of guerilla fighters, the central figure in many stories of daring and adventure, the adored of his bush-whackers and the terror of the Maoris. [Illustration: MAJOR VON TEMPSKY (_From a photo, 1865._)] "Wawahi-waka," the Waikato Maoris called him--"The Splitter-of-Canoes"--because of his exploits in war. "Manu-rau"--"Hundred Birds"--was the name by which he was known amongst the Taranaki Hauhaus. The name had been given him because of his activity in rushing from place to place, fighting here and fighting there, as swiftly as the forest-birds that flitted from tree to tree. Every Maori knew of "Manu-rau," and many of those in arms had been chased by him at one time or another during the three years of war since he led his Forest Rangers to the assault at Otapawa stockade. Von Tempsky was of aristocratic Polish blood. He had begun soldiering life as a Prussian chasseur, had served under the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian in Mexico, and fought in several little wars in Central America; had been a gold-digger on the great tented fields of Victoria and the Hauraki; he was a clever artist in water-colours and a good miniature painter, and he had written a book of travels in Mexico, "Mitla," illustrated with his own sketches. In the Waikato War he and Captain William Jackson had led their Forest Rangers in several sharp skirmishes, and in Taranaki he was in the thick of the bush-fighting, and had tramped with his veterans through the forest in General Chute's great march from Ketemarae northwards to Mataitawa and New Plymouth, round the back of the Mountain.[7] He was a good shot, a finished swordsman, and could throw a bowie-knife with deadly accuracy. It was in Mexico that he learned the use of the knife, and he never tired of impressing on his men its advantages in bush fighting.