"Cease travelling on the roads, cease entirely travelling on the roads that lead to Mangamanga (Camp Waihi), lest ye be left upon the roads as food for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the field, or for me. Because I have eaten the white man; he was cooked like a piece of beef in the pot. I have begun to eat human flesh, and my throat is continually open for the flesh of man. Kua hamama tonu toku korokoro ki te kai i te tangata. I shall not die, I shall not die. When death itself shall be dead, I shall be alive (Ka mate ano te mate, ka ora ano ahau).—From Titoko."
[CHAPTER XII]
THE ATTACK ON TURUTURU-MOKAI REDOUBT
Hauwhenua's war-party—A night march—Attack on Turuturu-Mokai Redoubt—A heroic defence—The heart of the captain—Touch-and-go—Relief at last.
One biting cold evening in July, 1868, the whole population of the "Bird's-Beak" pa gathered on the marae to watch the departure of a fighting-column launched by Titokowaru against the whites. It was a night fitter for the snug wharé than for the war-path, but the omens were propitious for the expedition, and the war-god's sacred breeze, the whakarua, breathed of Uenuku, blew across the forest.
The sixty warriors of the Tekau-ma-rua took the trail with the lilt of the dance-girls' poi-chant in their ears, and the war-choruses yelled by their comrades in the village gritted their battle-spirit. They were fittingly and thickly tapu'd for the night's work, karakia'd over with many hardening and bullet-averting karakias, and thoroughly Hauhau-bedevilled for the fight. Some of the warriors, belted and painted, carried long Enfield muzzle-loaders, some double-barrelled guns, some stolen or captured carbines, and a variety of other firearms. Each rifleman's equipment included a short tomahawk thrust through his flax girdle; a few—the storming-party—were armed with long-handled tomahawks, murderously effective weapons in a hand-to-hand combat. Though a winter's night, most of them were scantily clad, as befitted a war-party. Some wore shirts and other part-European dress; some only flax mats and waist-shawls.
Up and down the village square, as the Hauhau captain, Hauwhenua, led his band out into the forest, strode Titokowaru, in a blaze of fanatic exaltation, crying his commands to the warriors. Waving his plumed taiaha, he shouted, "Kill them! Eat them! Let them not escape you!" And as they disappeared in the darkness he returned to his place in the great council-house, where on his sacred mat he spent the night in commune with his ancestral spirits and in reciting incantations for the success of his men-at-arms.
In single file the Hauhau soldiers struck into the black woods. As they entered the deeper thicknesses of the forest, where not a star could be seen for the density and unbroken continuity of the roof of foliage above them, they chanted this brief karakia, a charm invoking supernatural aid to clear their forest-path of obstructions and smooth their way: