Laid out in a low row in the centre of the _marae_, side by side, were bodies of many white soldiers, nearly twenty of them, all stripped naked--the fallen heroes of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu. Just a glimpse the white man had as he entered the blood-stained square. The next moment he was surrounded by a howling mob of Hauhaus, grinning, yelling, laughing fiendishly, shaking their weapons in his face, all in sheer hate and contempt of anything with a white skin. Two or three of the _Tekau-ma-rua_ men whom Bent knew came bounding up. One of them said to him: "Tu-nui, you must come with me. It is Titoko's command." The Maori led Bent to a small thatched hut on one side of the _marae_. Here he shut the white man in, and fastened the low sliding-door on the outside. For a little while the white man sat in the gloom of the windowless _wharé_, listening to the demoniac shouts of the Hauhaus outside, and wondering what would come next--whether, indeed, his own body would not soon be added to the terrible pile of slain soldiers on the _marae_. At last, hearing Titokowaru's great voice raised in commanding tones, Bent's mingled curiosity and fear impelled him to search for a loophole from which he could see what was going on. Discovering a small crack in the reed-thatched walls of the hut, he enlarged it sufficiently to gain a good view of the assemblage on the village square. There they squatted, men, women, and children, their faces smudged with charcoal or with red ochre, the paint of the war-path. They were seated on the ground in a great half-circle, facing the staring white corpses of the slain _pakehas_. The frightful clamour of the savages had given place with strange suddenness to a dead silence, as they listened to their war-chief's harangue, and watched him pacing quickly to and fro, with his sacred _taiaha_ in his hand, now carrying it at the trail in the _taki_ attitude, now dandling it high in the air as he intoned a chant to his battle-god Uenuku. "Bring out my _pakeha_ Tu-nui-a-moa!" cried Titokowaru, when he had ended his speech. A Maori rose, and, unfastening the _wharé_ door, led Bent out on to the assembly-ground. He was taken up to the corpses of the slain soldiers, and one of the Hauhau chiefs asked him if he knew any of them. Bent walked slowly past the dead, scrutinising each body carefully. He recognised two of them. One was an old soldier who had been a comrade of his in the 57th Regiment, and who had afterwards joined the Colonial forces. The other dead soldier he identified was von Tempsky. The major's body lay there naked, with a deep tomahawk cut on the right temple, and the long, curly black hair matted with blood. The other bodies were hacked about the head with tomahawks; this was the work of the Maori women, who delighted in mutilating the dead in revenge for those of their relatives who had fallen.