Moreover the side in the field had to pick up their carbines when they changed places at the call of “Over!” and the umpires held the batsmen’s guns as in this country they sometimes hold their coats. In fact the whole get-up was _outré_ in the extreme, and I fear ordinary spectators of English cricket would not have been highly gratified unless they had regarded it as a charity burlesque. Now the main bush, in which the gay and festive Hau Hau lived and gambolled, was about one thousand yards away from the fort, but there were big patches of bush up to within four hundred yards of it, and any amount of manuka and fern scrub, that afforded good cover to an enemy wishing to pass from one to the other of these patches, so that, notwithstanding all our vigilance, scouts, or even considerable numbers of Hau Haus, could get quite close up to the stockade. Well, the game commenced, and of course attracted the attention of the gentle savage. Word was quickly passed into the recesses of the bush that the white man was up to some new and inexplicable devilment, so before long we had a highly interested if not appreciative gallery, who, emerging from the bush, squatted down, and for a time behaved itself with decorum. To this we did not object, and had they continued to behave they might have remained there to the end, but perhaps they were over-critical, and the play, as I have already stated, not being first class, they may have considered they were entitled to show their disapproval of it. Now we could have made allowances for their ignorance or their want of appreciation, although they were self-invited and had paid no gate money, even should they have gone so far as to hiss, but I maintain that paying spectators should restrain themselves from heaving at the players such things as dead cats, antiquated eggs, or ginger-beer bottles, but when it comes to expressing dissatisfaction with tuparas (double-barrelled guns) and Enfield rifles it is high time for the performers to skip or clear the ground. Now the play was not good, that I allow, and also it is very doubtful what the Hau Haus thought had occasioned this entertainment and extravagant display of energy on the part of the hated white man. As most of them had been Christians they knew it was not a religious ceremony, neither was it a war-dance, white men not being civilised up to the merits of the war-dance. Perhaps they put it down to witchcraft, or some sort of an extra insulting challenge issued by men who had just built a pah in spite of the lavish expenditure of powder they had seen fit to waste in their attempts to obstruct its completion. Anyhow it was something important, or wherefore those cheers and hand-clapping from the other white men who lined the parapet or reclined on the ground, and as such must be counteracted. First of all they danced a war-dance, and as no attention was paid to that they proceeded to take more active measures.