I, however, was not called on to hold the hill, as Lieutenant Northcroft made such a masterly retreat, and his men fought so well, that the enemy, seeing we had possession of the position and rightly judging that their own party, sent to grab it, had been cut to pieces, after harmlessly burning an immense quantity of ammunition at long range, drew off, allowing our men to disentangle themselves from the bush, and to retire back to camp in peace. CHAPTER XI SPORT À LA LOST LEGION I have previously asserted that this yarn is not meant to be a history of New Zealand wars, nor do I wish to harrow the tender hearts of gentle readers, should I be fortunate enough to secure any, by stories of savage bloodshed or by describing gruesome details of war to the knife. Yet, taking into consideration the astounding ignorance of most well-educated English men and women concerning the history of the principal colonies that now form the greater portion of the mighty British Empire, I think I may be pardoned for recounting a few scenes of the events, battles and hardships, willingly endured by the men who actually won those colonies and rendered them habitable for a civilised people. Nor do I think the men, rough, wild, undesirable ne’er-do-wells as they mostly were, who recklessly risked their lives for that purpose, should be entirely forgotten. These scenes are not imaginary ones, evolved from my own brain, but real occurrences; and the men, whom I am trying to describe, actually lived, fought, drank, and were killed in the way I relate; alas, would that I had a more gifted pen and a more artistic touch to depict them, their reckless lives and their hard deaths. However, as my pen is neither artistic nor gifted, nor even a particularly good one to write with, I must jog on as best I can, in the same way my gallant O.C. did, when, short of men and with plenty of malignant, backbiting enemies in both Government and district, he made head against the hostile Hau Haus. After the fight at Pungarehu, fortune seemed for a considerable time to have deserted us, which was not to be wondered at, for although the Government provided more men, and we were reinforced by various parties of volunteers, yet these recruits were, for the most part, new chums of a very inferior quality. Indeed, most of them, having been enlisted from among the scum and riff-raff of the big Australian cities, were naturally very different from those old hands whose services the idiotic Government had so cavalierly dispensed with, or who had been lost through the wastage of war; and I was soon to learn the awful difference of going into action with a lot of untrained, half-baked, raw hands, instead of well-trained, reliable men.