Von Tempsky, describing what he then saw, says that a circle of soldiers of all regiments surrounded at some distance a nearly solitary whare with a very narrow and low door; in the open doorway lay the body of a soldier of the 65th, shot through the head. A constant firing of rifles into the house was carried on with little regard to the effects of cross-fire, and the narrator formed his men in a half-circle, in the safe radius of the “dead angle” of the house. It seemed that after the house had been first surrounded Colonel Nixon sent Lieut. T. McDonnell and Mr Mair, the interpreter, to ask the Maoris in it to surrender, assuring them of good treatment. A volley was the concise answer. Then the firing into the house commenced, but as the floor was below the level of the outside ground the Maoris were comparatively secure for some time. Then of a sudden an excited trooper of the Defence Corps dismounted, and dashed, sword and revolver in hand, into the whare. Some quick shots were heard, and nothing more was seen or heard of him. A man of the 65th rushed forward to ascertain the fate of the trooper, but, being covered and hampered by his roll of blankets and other paraphernalia, he stuck in the door and was shot in the head. The firing into the whare now became a perfect cannonade, and even Colonel Nixon could not abstain from firing with his revolver at the open door. Stepping incautiously from behind the corner of a neighbouring whare, he received a bullet, fired from that open door. “When we arrived,” resumes Von Tempsky, “some neighbouring whares had been set fire to with the view to communicating the fire to the all-dreaded one. But somehow this seemed to me an uncertain process, and unfair. So, looking round at my nearest men, I said, ‘We will rush the whare, boys.’ “‘Aye! Rush it, rush it!’ was echoed, and with one ‘Forward!’ about a dozen of us were round the door in an instant. Sergeant Carron had got ahead of me, and had poked his head into the low doorway. I stood impatiently behind him, just on one side of the door, thinking that we ought to take the body of the 65th man out of the way first. Carron then drew back his head and said to me: “‘There is only one dead man inside, sir.’ “I could not quite understand this, though I could see that it was pitch dark inside, and so Carron might have been mistaken. “At this moment Corporal Alexander, of the Defence Corps, had pushed his way between myself and Carron, and, squatting down in the low doorway, commenced to arrange his carbine for taking aim, evidently puzzled by the darkness—I urging him either to make room for us or jump in.