The sun must have been well up, although no one could see a foot in front of his nose, when to our intense surprise crash came a volley, and a storm of bullets swept over our recumbent force that plainly demonstrated to us that instead of our being the attackers the boot was on the other leg, and that Te Kooti was attacking us. Now at first sight this move on his part might appear to have been a very considerate one, as it apparently was undertaken so as to save us the trouble of an early and unpleasant march, but the bounder had no such philanthropic motive, for it was in reality a very cute scheme. Te Kooti had been warned the previous day of our presence, and judging we should start before daylight to beat up his quarters, he had, after dark, altered the position of his own bivouac, and then, by a detour, he had called on ours, expecting to find our camp protected only by a few men whom he hoped to spifflicate, and then capture the reserve ammunition and anything else of value on which he could lay his dirty claws. It was a well-thought-out plan, but the fog coming on as it had done kept us at home, so that instead of his finding a weak camp guard, whom he could easily have destroyed, he found the whole outfit ready and only too willing to entertain him. Well, rip came his first volley which was followed up by others, while we lay dog-o, as what was the use of firing when we could not even see the flash of his men’s rifles to aim at. For some time the above game went on, the Hau Haus occasionally firing a volley, ourselves lying quite silent, hoping that they would charge, and let us get to hand-grips, but this they evidently feared to do, as they were bothered by our silence. At last the fog cleared, and we saw them, when the Colonel ordered us to fire and charge, which we did, the enemy bolting like redshanks, pursued by Topia and his men, but the old chief, although a fine old duke, was not Kepa, so Te Kooti and his riff-raff, although dispersed, scraped clear with but small loss. They were, however, to suffer in another way by having the tables turned on them in a queer manner. Kepa, as I before mentioned, had started the night previous to take up a position to the rear of the Hau Hau camp, but hampered by the fog he missed their old camping-ground, and stumbled by chance on to their new one, and, as the sound of the firing at our bivouac warned him what was going on there, he shrewdly guessed Te Kooti’s game, and that the Hau Hau main body must be fully occupied. He at once took advantage of the situation by surrounding and rushing Te Kooti’s camp, from which he easily drove out or killed the few men left in charge of it, thereby capturing eighty horses and an immense amount of loot. Thus the wily Te Kooti went out to shear, but, thanks to a fog, got shorn himself.