After this abortive negotiation fire was reopened on both sides, and some of the troops appear to have lost their heads and attempted to storm the _pah_ without orders.[205] One of these unauthorised assaults was led by a soldier in the XVIIIth, Private Hannon, who, throwing his forage cap over a partially breached spot in the defences, dashed after it with some twenty men, for the most part belonging to New Zealand corps. After clambering over a stout fence they dropped into a ditch, where Hannon and nine other brave men were mown down by a volley fired at point-blank range. But though a similar attack by a party of regulars and volunteers also failed to carry another weak spot in the fortifications, every hour saw the Maoris less able to face the storm of grape-shot, hand-grenades, and rifle-bullets poured upon them on every side. Suddenly Rewi, their war chief, decided to cut his way out or to perish in the attempt. While his followers mustered among the huts round which their works were built, they sang one of the hymns taught them by the missionaries, and then, remembering the old days before white men had settled in New Zealand, chanted invocations to their ancient gods. “Their voices,” says Rusden, “were heard by the wondering English, who were to marvel still more at their daring. At the rear a double line of the investing troops had been thrown back under cover to enable a gun to open fire. Through that opening, about four o’clock in the broad day, chanting their appeal to the God of battles and moving steadily as in scorn of their foes, the Maoris marched towards the narrow neck of swamp between the ridge and mound. Carey (in his official report) said they rushed. Mr Fox writes that an eye-witness told him ‘they were in a great column, the women, the children, and the great chiefs in the centre, and they marched out as cool and steady as if they had been going to Church.’ Rewi ordered that no shot should be fired. The little ammunition left was needed for defence in the desperate course through the swamp.... Some accounts state that as if to deceive the troops and gain time for the fugitives, a Maori, while his countrymen departed, sprang up with a white flag on the parapet and was riddled by bullets. One chief, more successful, diverted the English for a few moments; he walked coolly towards the troops and surrendered.”[206]