"Ka pai koe!" ("You are good!") was all Hiroki said. Turning, he went quickly at a half-trot along the path, with his gun at the trail, and his wild-looking, mongrel dog close on his bare heels, and in a few moments both disappeared in the dark forest.
Bent and Pakanga returned to the pursuing party, who were becoming impatient at the long absence of their guide and were hot with questions.
The white man and his companions managed to quiet the suspicions of the man-hunters. They declared that there were no signs of any one having passed that way, and that it would not be much use going on to the Ngaere, which was a long and very toilsome journey. Fortunately for them, the half-caste and his men had not troubled to go on as far as the big totara on the river-bank, where the tell-tale fire was not yet cold.
After some debate the whole party returned to Rukumoana, and the hunters, giving up the chase in that direction, made out to the open country, and that was the last Bent heard of them.
Three years later Bent met Hiroki in Parihaka, the village of the prophet Te Whiti. The slayer of McLean had had a wild and anxious life of it after his escape from Rukumoana. He told Bent of his lonely existence in the great forests of the back-country, living on eels, wild honey, the young shoots of fern-trees, and such-like rough fare of the bush. After he came out into the open country and was making his way across the Waimate Plains in the direction of Parihaka he was chased by several Government men (one of whom was Mr. William Williams, a Plains settler), and was fired at and wounded, but escaped. Te Whiti sheltered him and condoned his crime, which, being a semi-agrarian one, was counted a patriotic deed by the people of Parihaka. He spoke gratefully of what Bent had done for him, in giving him timely warning that day in the Mangamingi bush, and offered him a money gift as some measure of utu. This Bent promptly refused, saying, "Keep your money, and thank the Atua for your escape, not me."
Hiroki was a wild figure in Parihaka those lawless days of 1878-81. On meeting-days and feast-days, when the faithful of the Maori tribes gathered to hear the prophet expound the Scriptures after his fashion and prophesy many strange happenings, the Lean One used to head the procession of the tuku-kai, the bringing of the food for ceremonious presentation to the visitors. A double line of gaily dressed girls, bearing baskets of potatoes and pork and fish hot from the hangi, marched in time to a lively song into the marae, and in front of them paraded Hiroki, stripped to a loin-mat, a loaded and cocked double-barrelled gun in his hands, white feathers stuck in his hair, red war-paint on his cheeks and forehead, leaping from side to side, eyes rolling, tongue defiantly protruded, the embodiment of Maori savagery and ferocity. But when John Bryce, as native minister, invaded Parihaka in 1881 with his force of 1,700 Armed Constabulary and Volunteers, and arrested the two prophets Te Whiti and Tohu, Hiroki was also captured, and shortly thereafter he was tried for McLean's murder and was hanged.
To this day the Maoris of the Patea tell stories of Hiroki's solitary and savage life in the bush. One place in particular—at Orangimura, between three and four miles above Rukumoana—is pointed out as a hiding-place of the refugee. Here a large, hollow rata-tree grew near the top of a high bank; the Patea River flowed below. Hiroki had camped here in order to get wild honey from a hive in the hollow tree, and after he had filled a couple of calabashes with the honey he lit his nightly fire and went to sleep close to the cliff-top, first tying his dog up to a bush with a flax rope. In the night the dog bit through the flax that held him, and jumping on his master so startled him that he forgot he was so near the verge of the cliff, over which he promptly rolled in the darkness; he fell with a mighty splash in the river below, together with his astonished dog. The spot where this night adventure occurred is called by the Maoris Te Pari-o-Hiroki, which means "Hiroki's Precipice."