The surprise of Otautu—An early morning attack—Kimble Bent's dream—"Kia tupato!"—A gallant defence—Brave old Hakopa—Flight of the Hauhaus.
A misty morning in the forest. A little Maori hamlet, just a collection of thatched huts, in a small clearing enclosed on all sides by the dense woods. In the rear a deep ravine, jungly with thick undergrowth, then the winding snag-strewn Patea River. This was Otautu, Titokowaru's refuge-camp. It stood on a plateau—now a richly grassed farm; scattered over the clearing were potato-gardens. There was a frail stockade of stakes, but there were no trenches or rifle pits; it was an ordinary residential kainga; the fugitive Hauhaus trusted to the tangled forest as their best defence.
Grey dawn. The raw morning fog hung low on the sleeping village—a mist so thick that it shrouded from the view objects even a few yards distant. It lay like the winding bank of smoky mist that marks the course of a forest stream early on a summer morning; the black tree-tops stood out clear above the white pall of damp, cold vapour.
Not a sound from the slumbering kainga, where some three or four hundred Hauhaus—Kimble Bent amongst them—lay packed in their nikau-roofed huts.
At the edge of the clearing a solitary Maori sentry, a man armed with a revolver, sat, keeping a semi-somnolent guard.
Suddenly, out of the dark forest, appeared a body of armed men. They came in Indian file; they broke into a stealthy run as they left the shadow of the trees; their bodies were bent eagerly forward; they carried their rifles at the trail; they uttered not a sound.
They were the Maori advance-guard of Colonel Whitmore's expeditionary force of four hundred A.C.'s and Kupapas. After weeks of bush-scouting a Government column had at last happened on the Hauhau hiding-place.
The Maori sentinel—he was a man of the Puketapu tribe named Te Wareo—was all in an instant wide-awake. The moment he jumped up he was fired on by the advance-guard. Leaping into cover he raced for the village, firing his revolver as he ran.
The discharge of the rifles rolled crashing through the forest. Startled kaka parrots flew from their tree-perches, screaming discordantly at their rude awakening. The clear notes of a bugle rang out —it was the "Advance" and "Double!" The active little colonel rushed his men up at top speed, extended them, and advanced on the hidden camp, and a strange combat began.
At the first crack of the firearms the kainga was awake; and what a scurry there was! The Maoris poured out of their wharés just as they leaped from their sleeping-mats—some wearing only a shawl or ragged mat; others entirely naked. Some of the women rushed out of their huts without a shred of clothing on, screaming and shouting, and running for their lives. The men snatched up their guns and tomahawks, and their cartouche-belts; and quickly took post to defend their position, and give time for their women and children to retreat in safety.