When night fell, no appreciable breach had been made by the shell-fire. It was now decided to storm the pa at daybreak. Some of the A.C.'s crept up with their entrenching tools to within fifty yards of the stockade, and dug out shelter-trenches.
The fort was remarkably quiet during the night. It was reconnoitred when daybreak came, and found—empty. The Hauhaus had for some mysterious reason deserted it under cover of darkness, and taken to the bush. So fell to the pakeha the very strong Tauranga-ika pa.
Bent explains this unexpected abandonment of Titokowaru's most formidable entrenchment.
The eternal feminine was at the bottom of it all.
The chief of blood and fire, with all his mana-tapu, was vulnerable to the artillery of a dark wahiné's eyes and soft wahiné blandishments. He was detected in a liaison with another man's wife. This misdemeanour was, in Maori eyes, fatal to his prestige as an ariki and a war-leader. He had trampled on his tapu, and his Hauhau angel, who had so long successfully guided his fortunes, now deserted him. His run of luck had turned.
A council of the people was held to discuss the cause célèbre, and many an angry speech was made. Some of the chiefs went so far as to threaten Titokowaru with death. At length a chieftainess of considerable influence rose and quelled the storm of violent words. She appealed to the aggrieved husband's people not to attempt Titoko's life; but urged that the garrison should leave the pa—it would be disastrous to make a stand there after their tohunga, their spiritual head and their war-leader, had lost his mana-tapu. This met with general approval, and on the night of the attack the people packed their few belongings on their backs and struck quietly into the forest for the Waitotara. Titokowaru, with forty warriors, covered the retreat. "Afterwards," says Bent, "when we had taken safe shelter in the Upper Waitara, Titokowaru regained his tapu by means of incantations and ceremonies performed by another tohunga. But by that time the war was over."
So to the forest fled Titokowaru and all his people, and hard on their trail, when the pa was found deserted, came the A.C. scouts and Kepa's Maoris, in lightest marching order for the chase.
The Government troops overtook the Hauhau rear-guard at Te Karaka flat, on the descent to the Waitotara River. At Te Karaka Major Kepa, the fighting chief of the Whanganuis, was leading the advance-guard of the pursuing force, when he was hotly attacked by the Hauhaus who had planted an ambush in the bush. Kepa was closely pressed. Captain T. Porter, who commanded No. 8 Division of Armed Constabulary—consisting of Arawa and Ngapuhi Maoris, with a few good European bushmen—was close up when Kepa was fired on, and he promptly extended the supports across the flat. Kepa, after a sharp hand-to-hand fight with the enemy, burst through them and fell back on Captain Porter. The Kupapas and their white comrades fought the Hauhaus till dark, and had to leave them dead and wounded on the field. Next morning they found the mutilated bodies minus hearts and livers, which the cannibal enemy had cut out and taken away. The Hauhaus had also beheaded one of the slain, a Whanganui soldier named Hori Raukawa.