THE FIGHT AT MOTUROA STOCKADE Kātené's vigil--Attack on the stockade--Major Hunter's death--A Hauhau warrior's desperate feat--Over the palisades--Government forces repulsed--A rear-guard fight--An unanswered prayer--Scenes of terror--Tihirua's burnt-offering--A soldier's body eaten. Just within the stockade of the Moturoa, or Papa-tihakehake _pa_,[10] there was a small, roughly built _taumaihi_, or look-out stage, ten or twelve feet above the ground, high enough to allow a sentinel to see well over the sharp-pointed palisades, and scan the approaches to the fort. In this bush watch-tower there stood, at misty dawn on a grey November morning, the Hauhau scout and warrior Kātené Tu-Whakaruru. Kātené was cold, and he stamped his bare feet upon the unbarked logs that floored the sentry-box, and he chanted softly to himself a little _waiata_ to Kopu, the morning star, which he had looked for in vain, for a heavy drizzling mist obscured everything. The thin, persistent rain penetrated the blanket that he held closely wrapped about him. Presently a faint light began to steal over the forest, and Kātené could see the outlines of the black charred stumps and burned trees in front of the _pa_, then beyond the gloomy woods, through which a narrow winding path led to the open fern-lands of the Wairoa. Suddenly Kātené's murmured chant ceased, and he strained his eyes into the mist. To a Maori forester the slightest sound was enough to set every faculty on the alert, asking suspiciously, "_He aha tena!_" He had heard a faint sound in the direction of the track beyond the black tree-stumps, a sound that he fancied resembled the striking of steel against steel. Kātené hardly breathed. His eyes glared fixedly through the mist. In a few minutes his vision confirmed the evidence of his keen ears. He saw, just for a moment, a dark figure, then another, come hazily out of the wet fog where the track from the Wairoa emerged on the clearing, then disappear, as if they had suddenly dropped to the ground or vanished behind a tree. That glimpse was enough for Kātené. He dropped from his sentry-perch, and ran from _wharé_ to _wharé_ and tent to tent giving the alarm. "The soldiers are coming!" he said to those whom he awakened. "The soldiers are on us! They are by now entering the clearing. Get your arms quickly! Man the trenches! But don't make a sound!" The fighting-men poured out of their sleeping huts, snatching up their weapons and accoutrements, and ran to their places in the pits and ditches behind the stockade. They hastily loaded their _tuparas_, their rifles, and their carbines, and, peering eagerly through the defence-works, sought to penetrate the raw, damp morning mist that shrouded their front. The whole bush-castle was alive and ready. Every man and boy who could shoulder a gun was in the well-hidden firing lines.