Bent tells of a curious _matakité_, or prophetic dream, which Te Waka-tapa-ruru had on the night before the battle. The old man was a close friend of the white runaway, and they were accustomed to sleep side by side on the _whariki_-spread floor of one of the huts. He dreamed that he saw his face reflected in a _pakeha_ looking-glass, and that he was combing his hair. This vision disturbed the old man, and deeming it a warning from the unseen world, he asked Titokowaru--just when the approach of the troops was first announced--what it might portend. The war-chief interpreted the dream as an omen of death, and warned Te Waka not to leave the shelter of the stockade during the impending engagement or he would be killed. But he disregarded this in his fit of _whakamomori_, and ran amok, and so he fell. Finding it impossible to take such a strong and well-defended position by storm, the white colonel withdrew his forces. There were dead and wounded lying all over the place. The _pakehas_ succeeded in carrying off the wounded and some of the dead, including the gallant Major Hunter. A number of dead, however, had to be left where they were lying, for it was death to attempt their removal from under the very muzzles of the Hauhau guns. The rescue of Hunter's body from the Hauhau tomahawks, under a heavy fire, was a gallant piece of work. Captain Gudgeon was one of those who brought the dead officer out; one of his comrades was Captain Edward McDonnell, and troopers Foote and Kelly were amongst the others. Two or three men were shot in the attempt. Kepa (Major Kemp) was there, too, but he was pretty well engaged in looking after his own men and extricating them from that place of death. [Illustration: MAJOR KEMP (KEPA TE RANGIHIWINUI.)] The Colonial soldiers retired, fighting a hard rear-guard action, out to the edge of the bush. Each division of Armed Constabulary in turn halted, knelt down facing the enemy, and covered the retreat of the other divisions, thus giving time for those of the dead and wounded who had been recovered to be carried off the field. Out to the fern-lands the Hauhaus followed the troops, sometimes engaging them so closely that the fighting was hand-to-hand, and it was carbine and revolver against long-handled tomahawk. The skirmishing lasted until the whites were well clear of the bush; the Maoris would have followed them out even to their camp, the Wairoa Redoubt, had not they been recalled by orders from Titokowaru. The battle of Papa-tihakehake was over. It was a more severe repulse for the Government men than even the engagement at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu a bare two months before. One man out of every four in the force actually engaged was on the casualty list--more than twenty killed and quite thirty wounded.[11] [Illustration: THE FIGHT AT MOTUROA, 1869. This sketch, with the one opposite, drawn by an eye-witness shortly after the engagement, depicts the defeat of the Government A.C. Force by the Maoris.]