More often a fastness was reduced by stratagem. The favourite method was the _lawa_, or net, which seldom failed, for all it was so well known. Posting a strong body of warriors in ambush on either flank, a handful of men would approach the fort with simulated fury. Seeing their small numbers, the defenders left their defences and fell upon them, whereupon they took to flight and led the pursuit right into the belly of the "net." Then the horns closed in upon them, and they were surrounded. It was such a trap as this that compassed the destruction of the landing party from the East Indiaman _Hunter_ at Wailea in 1813, when even that crafty and experienced warrior Charles Savage expiated his crimes. Cunning was more esteemed than courage; the craft of Odysseus more than the battle-fire of Achilles. There is no equivalent in the Fijian language for the word "treachery," for _lawaki_, the nearest synonym, signifies a virtue rather than a crime, and a successful act of treachery evoked the same admiration as triumphant slimness is said to do among the Boers. It is such differences in moral ethics that make the gulf between the East and West. Williams records how a Rakiraki chief, Wangkawai, who had contracted to assist the chief of Nakorovatu in war, brained him with his club during the ceremony of the _mbole_, and massacred his people in cold blood--an act which the treacherous ally had been planning for years; how Namosimalua, chief of Viwa, having undertaken to protect the people of Naingani against Mbau, led them into the jaws of the enemy, and helped to slaughter them; but the annals of every village will supply from recent history instances quite as striking as these. If loss of life in open fight was small, treachery often resulted in considerable slaughter. Williams thought that the casualties in a native war commonly amounted to from twenty to one hundred. The largest number within his own experience was at the sack of Rewa in 1846, when about 400, chiefly women and children, were slaughtered.