drew off and returned to the town, leaving the Colonials planted there with their retreat cut off and ammunition nearly all expended. They were in a tight fix, and it would have gone hard with them had not Captain Cracroft, R.N., who with a party of sixty bluejackets had just landed from H.M.S. _Niger_, heard of their predicament. He at once took action, got hold of three young fellows to guide him, and started off with his jacks to do their best to help their stranded countrymen. Captain Cracroft wasted no time over formulating complicated plans or strategy but made straight for the pah; it was pitch dark and when he reached the vicinity of it his party fell across a mob of the enemy. One volley the bluejackets fired, then out cutlass and revolver and charged the astonished natives, who fled for the protection of their works with the sailors in close pursuit. The stockade is reached, but that does not check the shell-backs, who, giving one another a leg up, enter the place, and gut it as clean as a red herring. The Maoris, who had bailed up the Colonials, hearing the row ran to see what was up, and the latter, taking advantage of their absence, retired in safety. So far so good, but the conduct of the soldiers’ O.C. in botching the show caused heaps of ill-feeling. “Subsequently, after an immense amount of talk and preparations, a field force goes out to attack Puketakauere, more combined movements and high-falutin strategy, all of which, when it comes to the point, proved unworkable in the bush, and we have to clear out after losing sixty soldiers, shot down like sheep. Again, look at the game Cameron has played in the Waikato. With an overwhelming force he attacks Rangiriri. Mind he is fully cognisant that the natives have neither food nor water in the pah. He surrounds the place, and instead of waiting for them to be starved out he assaults the pah three times, getting beaten back with the loss of over one hundred and thirty men. “Next day the pah surrendered, as its defenders are dying of thirst. The following year at Orakau he played the same silly game. He knew the enemy had neither food nor water, yet he tries five times to rush the place, loses heaps of men, and the Maoris, unable any longer to endure the pangs of thirst, sally out, break through the surrounding troops, and many of them escape. [Illustration: COL. MCDONNELL.] “During the same month comes the Gate pah. Again over one hundred men are lost, through folly, blind stupidity, nothing else. The General has learnt nothing, is incapable of learning. True, the Tommies caught the same fellows within two months at Te Ranga, and pretty well wiped them out with the bayonet. Then the war breaks out again on the west coast. What is done? General Cameron starts to march up the coast to Taranaki with two thousand men.