All this time Kimble Bent was walking to and fro on the _parepare_, the inner breastwork, the bullets screaming _zssh! zssh!_ over his head and all about him. The air seemed filled with flying lead, yet very few Maoris were hit. One woman he saw shot dead through the head as she rose to wave her shawl and yell a fighting cry to the men at the palisades. And here Bent was an eye-witness of the most desperately daring deed he had ever seen. A fiery old tattooed warrior, by name Te Waka-tapa-ruru--the Hauhau mentioned in an earlier chapter as the man who had killed Charles Broughton, Government Native Agent, on the Patea River, in 1865--was in a quiver of excitement while the garrison awaited the assault, and could hardly be silenced until the attack was delivered. When the _pakeha_ storming party rushed up at the double, the old man was one of the first to open fire on them with his _tupara_. And then, when the order "_Kokiritia!_" ("Charge!") was given, and the Hauhaus rushed out to engage the Government men who were trying to work round to the rear of the _pa_, he led the wild charge. Perfectly naked, except for the broad flax waist-girdle, which held his short-handled tomahawk, and gripping his double-barrelled gun, the tall old savage took a great running jump at the stockade from the inner parapet, and leaped clean over it! Yelling a _Pai-mariré_ battle-cry as he rose from the ground after his extraordinary leap, he snatched the tomahawk from his belt, and charged straight for the advancing whites. It was a fit of _whakamomori_--sheer blind desperation, utter recklessness of death. Possibly the furious old fanatic imagined that his Hauhau angel and his mesmeric password, "_Hapa! Pai-mariré! Hau!_" would avert the bullets of the _pakeha_. But he was killed in the very charge--the only Maori fighting-man killed that day. Two white soldiers met him. He was in the act of striking a desperate blow when a _pakeha_ ball took him square in the forehead, and with a huge convulsive bound and a half-choked barking "_Hau!_" on his lips, the old tattooed brave fell dead amongst the foremost of his enemies. It was just the death that he desired--face to the foe, with his war-axe in his hand--the death of a true Maori _toa_! This savage hero's son, Ratoia--now living in the village of Taiporohenui--a young boy at the time of the fight, saw his father's great leap over the palisade, and saw him killed.