The wet mist slightly lifting as the morning light came, the musketeers presently saw dim figures moving out from the dark forest on their front and right and left flanks. Moving quickly, half running, in a cautious, crouching gait, they flitted from tree to tree, and burnt stump to stump, and nearer and nearer to the stockade. Not a sound came from the breathlessly waiting warriors, nor from the ghost-like figures that now sank to the ground, each behind a log or a great blackened stump, or the butt of a standing tree. Gun in hand, finger on the trigger, the Hauhaus waited. The apparitions were picked bush-fighters of the New Zealand forces, led by Colonel Whitmore, seeking to surprise Titoko in his forest-den. Advancing silently in skirmishing order through the bush, they took cover, waiting for light enough to fight by. There were detachments of four divisions of the Armed Constabulary, many of them veteran bush-fighters, and men of the Patea Rifles and Patea Cavalry. There, too, came Kepa's Whanganui Maoris, with rifle and tomahawk, old hands on the war-trail, and eager for another brush with their ancient enemies of Taranaki. There were two hundred Government men fronting the fort, but the fighting men behind the palisades did not, according to Maori accounts, number many more than half the number. Amongst Titokowaru's men, however, there were some of the most renowned bush scouts and warriors in Taranaki, including--besides Kātené, the wide-awake sentry--such men as the veteran Te Waka-tapa-ruru, Paraone Tuteré, one of the best Hauhau shots, Timoti, the fiercest of the cannibals of Nga-Rauru, and the active young warrior Tutangé Waionui, he who had despatched von Tempsky on the battle-field of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu. Tutangé says that he was asleep in a tent when Kātené gave the alarm that morning. He was with his tribe, the Nga-Rauru, most ferocious of all Maori bush-fighters, who occupied one end of the _pa_; the other tribes holding the fort were Ngati-Ruanui and Pakakohi. It was the side occupied by the Pakakohi men that was first attacked. All at once, as the Hauhaus crouched behind their palisades squinting for a sight of _pakeha_, with impatient fingers on their gun-triggers, fifty or sixty blue and grey figures sprang from cover and charged for the stockade. Some of the assaulting party ran past the corner of the war-fence, looking for some opening or gateway by which they might charge in. The leading files were within a few paces of the high, solidly set palisading, when suddenly the whole face of the fence flashed fire, and volleys crashed in terrifying reverberations that set flocks of sleepy _kaka_ parrots flying, screaming harsh screams of fright, through the dark forest. Nearly half the storming party of A.C.'s fell before that fearful fire.