What he saw at that moment was something which had hardly entered into his calculations as a peaceful colonist. But it was strangely in accord with the warning tone of Captain Macdonald's last deliverance. A section of the Ngatiawa tribe, which had visited Auckland on the matter of a petition to the Governor concerning the violation of a reserve, the same being _tapu_ under ceremonies of a particularly awful and sacred nature, were indulging themselves with a war-dance by way of dissipating the tedium necessitated by official delay. A crowd of the townspeople had collected at the corner of Shortland Street, while the tattooed braves were with the utmost gravity going through the evolutions of their horrific performance. Chiefly unclothed, they stamped and roared, grimaced and threatened, as in actual preparation for conflict. Musket in hand, they leaped and yelled like demoniacs; their countenances distorted, the eyes turned inward, their tongues protruded as with wolfish longing. Each man was possessed by a fiend, as it seemed to Massinger, who gazed upon the actors with intense interest. The performance, hardly new to the majority of the spectators, failed to impress one of them with due respect. He remarked upon the pattern tattooed on the thigh of a huge native in front of him to a comrade, ending with a rude jest in the Maori tongue. It was a _mauvaise plaisanterie_ in good sooth. Turning like a wild bull upon the astonished offender, and furious at the insult offered to his _moko_--sacred as the totem of an Indian chief--the Ngatiawa dashed the butt-end of his musket against his breast, sending him on to his back with such violence that he had to be assisted to rise, stunned and bewildered. The Maoris wheeled like one man, and formed in line, while the leader shouted _Kapai!_ as they marched through the crowd to their camp, chanting a refrain which no doubt might have been freely rendered, "Wha daur meddle wi' me?" This incident impressed our Englishman more than weeks of description could have done, with the peculiar characteristics of the strange race among whom he had elected to dwell. Pride and sensitiveness, to the point of frenzy, were evidently among the attributes which had to be considered at risk of personal damage. He was, however, surprised at the cool way in which the crowd had taken their comrade's discomfiture, and said as much to a respectable-looking man who was walking down the street with him. "We're not afraid of the beggars," returned the townsman, "as we'll show 'em by-and-by. But it's no good starting before you're ready. That fellow was half-drunk, and it served him right. There's a big tribe at the back of these chaps, and they're in a dangerous humour about that cursed Waitara block. That's why the crowd wouldn't back the white man up. He's only a wharf-loafer, when all's said and done."