This in itself was an act of folly; but they went one worse, for, the weather being hot, and meaning only to be absent a very short time, they left their carbines, coats and all their ammunition at the foot of the hill, rather than endure the slight trouble of carrying them, and started the ascent with only their revolvers.
Now they had been spotted by one of these bands of Hau Haus, who, as soon as they saw the two white men go up the hill, crawled up to the horses and captured them, with the arms and ammunition. The boy, however, although fired at, escaped and got away. The Hau Haus, thinking they had their prey secure, tied up the horses to a tree, and went up the hill after the white men, who, having heard the shots, were returning.
As soon as they met, the natives fired a volley, which broke Espic’s arm and wounded Walsh on the forehead and hand. The white men returned the fire, and in the skirmish that followed Walsh was again wounded and, the white men’s revolvers being now empty, the Hau Haus, nine in number, rushed them with the tomahawk, to finish them off.
In the hand-to-hand scrap that ensued Walsh was again twice wounded; but he still fought on, and a Hau Hau, determining to finish him, put his cut-down gun to Walsh’s chest and fired.
Fortunately the bullet must have fallen out of the gun, as Walsh only sustained a bad burn on the chest. Springing in, he felled his assailant with a tremendous blow from the butt-end of his revolver. This was too much for Maori superstition. That a man whom they had badly wounded five times should be able to continue to put up a fight was bad enough; but that he should be able to floor their best man just after that best man had shot him through the chest was more than any decent Hau Hau could understand. Leaving the horses and the stricken man behind them, away they fled, only too anxious to put as great a distance as they could between themselves and the awful tohunga (magician), who refused to be killed. So much for folly and pluck. Now I will go on to endurance.
No sooner had the astonished and affrighted Hau Haus bolted than Walsh and his mate kicked their prisoner into convalescence and proceeded down the hill, where they found their horses tied to a tree, but the carbines, ammunition, and even saddles, taken away. Both men were badly wounded, Walsh in five places; but he would neither kill his prisoner nor let him go. Passing a rope round his neck, they made shift to mount their horses, bare-backed, and, forcing him to accompany them, they led him that long, hot ride of thirty miles, back to Tauranganui, where they arrived that night. Yes, faint though they were with the loss of blood, racked with the pain of untended wounds, without a round of ammunition, and hampered by an evil brute of a Hau Hau, who did everything in his power to retard their progress. Yet they would neither kill him nor let him go.
That I think is a yarn that illustrates folly, pluck and endurance.