The adventures of Kimble Bent: A story of wild life in the New Zealand bushCowan, James
History
The adventures of Kimble Bent: A story of wild life in the New Zealand bush
Cowan, James
Bent, Kimble, 1837-1916; New Zealand -- Description and travel
All through the fighting Titokowaru remained within the stockade,
directing the defence and reciting incantations and chanting sacred
_waiatas_ to his gods for success in the fight. With him was the
priestess Tangamoko, the woman who had that morning garbed the young
warrior Tutangé with the sacred war-mat.
When von Tempsky fell and the retreat of the survivors began,
Titokowaru ordered a _kokiri_, or charge, in pursuit, which, as Tutangé
has mentioned, was led by the warrior Kātené Tu-Whakaruru.
Those of the Hauhaus who were in or near the stockade gathered under
Kātené and danced in their ferocious joy a dance of victory, and
this is the _ngeri_ (war-song) they shouted all together as they leaped
in that terrifying _tutu-waewae_:
"_Kia kutia--
Au--au!
Kia wherahia--
Au--au!
A kia rere atu
Te Kawana ki tawhiti,
Titiro mai ai!
Ae--ae--au!_"
("Squeeze close--
_Au--au!_ (imitating the bark of a dog)
Spread out--
_Au--au!_
See the Government soldiers flee away,
And turn and fearfully gaze at me.
Yes, yes--_au_!")
The puffy clouds of smoke now drew away from the _pa_, as the Hauhaus
followed their defeated foes into the dark forest. With appalling yells
they rushed at their white enemies, tomahawking those who had fallen to
make sure of them, as Tutangé had done with von Tempsky.
[Illustration: MAJOR VON TEMPSKY.]
"_Ka horo! Ka horo!_" they yelled. "They are beaten!" And thrusting
their bloody tomahawks into their belts they recharged their guns, and,
leaping from tree to tree, fired heavily and incessantly at the gallant
little rear-guard who were struggling through the tangled bush, caps
gone, uniforms torn, nearly every man either wounded or blood-stained
from his comrades' wounds.
The sun had just set. The ghostly tree-shadows lengthened, and it was
already dark in the deeper thicknesses of the bush.
Just after the retreat commenced one of Captain Roberts' steadiest men,
Corporal Russell, dropped his carbine and fell; a big-calibre bullet
had smashed his thigh-bone.
"Shoot me, boys--shoot me!" he begged his comrades. "Don't leave me to
be tomahawked."
He knew as well as they did that his smashed leg meant death. The
rear-guard was already encumbered with wounded and could carry no more.
"No, we can't shoot you, old man," said a big, tall volunteer sergeant,
who was a tower of strength to Roberts' little band, shooting with
deadly aim from his post in the rear of the retreat. "Take this," and
he shoved into the wounded man's hand a loaded revolver.
Then the sergeant (James Livingston) picked up the corporal's empty
carbine, and swinging it by the barrel, hot with much firing, smashed
it against a tree-butt. "Old Tito'll never use that gun, anyhow," he
said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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