At last all Hakopa's cartridges but two were gone. A prudent warrior would have retired at this stage—but not Hakopa. He did not like the idea of retreat while he had a shot in his locker, and he determined to bag something in the way of a Kupapa or a pakeha with his last charges. He waited until the leading men of Kepa's party were within close "potting" distance, and, as one of them unsuspectingly approached him, he quickly threw up his gun and put a bullet into his enemy, then turned and bounded into cover, and rejoined his comrades in the defile, unhurt, hugely delighted with his exploit.
"You young men waste your cartridges," he said reprovingly, after the fight, to some of the youthful braves of Ngati-Ruanui. "Look at me! I know the worth of good powder and lead too well to fire them away for nothing. For every cartridge I used I hit a man!"
It was a determined, plucky stand, that defence of the Otautu clearing by Titokowaru's warriors. Every minute they held out, they knew, was giving their women and children and old people a better chance of safety.
At last the fog lifted, swept away from the clearing by the morning breeze, and the sun shone out.
Now for the first time the Government soldiers saw the village. The bugle sounded the "Advance" again, and at the double the A.C.'s swarmed into the empty kainga, to find, to their astonishment, that it was neither rifle-pitted nor parapeted.
The Hauhaus, their resistance broken, took to the forest, racing down the steep gully in rear of the village and up along the banks of the Patea. Kepa's Maoris went in hot pursuit, and shot two or three of the fugitives. The main body crossed the Patea safely, and rejoined their womenfolk and children, camping, hungry, weary, and with limbs and body torn and bruised in their flight, in a well-hidden nook deep in the forest on the north bank of the river.