As the whole show was now spoilt, the military settlers opened fire and charged, knocking over some of the fugitives, and bayoneting a few of the late starters, but the O.C. had to content himself with the meagre spoil of some dozen women, while, had it not been for the misconduct of the aforesaid infernal idiot, he would have scooped up all the principal Hau Hau chiefs and probably have ended the war: which shows what a tremendous lot of harm one fool can cause. We had, however, made a valuable capture, and one that entailed great loss to the enemy--namely, some forty stand of rifles, together with a large supply of ammunition and other arms that fell into our hands. During this affair we lost only one man, and he was killed in rather a queer way. At the end of the engagement one of the military settlers entered a whare for the purpose of bringing out a dead Hau Hau, and was still inside when a party of Rangers, who were searching the huts for any of the enemy possibly concealed, came up to it. Hearing someone inside the hut they demanded who was there, and received the answer: “A white man.” Now it was believed that the infamous deserter, Kimball Bent, was with this gang of Hau Haus, and the men had all previously been cautioned to this effect, so that the Rangers fancied they had at last hived the scoundrel that every man had sworn should receive no quarter. Had poor Spain (the military settler) answered: “Friend,” more questions would have been asked; but as he simply replied to the challenge, “A white man,” the Rangers, convinced they had the villain in their clutches, fired on him, thereby shooting their own comrade. By this time the loot had been collected and all the huts, with the exception of one, had been destroyed. (_Note._--The principal reason for burning huts was to destroy the large quantities of powder or ammunition concealed in the thatch.) It was broad daylight, and as, thanks to the aforementioned fool, there was no further chance of doing anything, we returned to the camp at Manawapou where, I regret to state, Colonel McDonnell could not see his way clear to hanging the nervous ass who had spoilt our day’s work. I am not writing a history of the New Zealand wars, and it would be only wearisome for people nowadays to read of the forgotten, innumerable skirmishes, night marches and encounters, with their attendant hardships, the colonial irregulars went through. For many years the district over which we then marched and fought has been the most fruitful one in New Zealand, where thousands of smiling homesteads now stand on the sites of our old bivouacs on which we shivered and starved, and I often wonder if a single individual of the happy and peaceful population who now occupy them ever give a thought to the bands of reckless ne’er-do-wells who, by the expenditure of their blood and health, rendered that land safe for their present occupants.