"Wawahi-waka," the Waikato Maoris called him—"The Splitter-of-Canoes"—because of his exploits in war. "Manu-rau"—"Hundred Birds"—was the name by which he was known amongst the Taranaki Hauhaus. The name had been given him because of his activity in rushing from place to place, fighting here and fighting there, as swiftly as the forest-birds that flitted from tree to tree. Every Maori knew of "Manu-rau," and many of those in arms had been chased by him at one time or another during the three years of war since he led his Forest Rangers to the assault at Otapawa stockade.
Von Tempsky was of aristocratic Polish blood. He had begun soldiering life as a Prussian chasseur, had served under the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian in Mexico, and fought in several little wars in Central America; had been a gold-digger on the great tented fields of Victoria and the Hauraki; he was a clever artist in water-colours and a good miniature painter, and he had written a book of travels in Mexico, "Mitla," illustrated with his own sketches. In the Waikato War he and Captain William Jackson had led their Forest Rangers in several sharp skirmishes, and in Taranaki he was in the thick of the bush-fighting, and had tramped with his veterans through the forest in General Chute's great march from Ketemarae northwards to Mataitawa and New Plymouth, round the back of the Mountain. [7]
He was a good shot, a finished swordsman, and could throw a bowie-knife with deadly accuracy. It was in Mexico that he learned the use of the knife, and he never tired of impressing on his men its advantages in bush fighting.
Swarthy of visage, with long, black, curling hair, upon which a forage cap was cocked at a defiant angle, his grey flannel shirt carelessly open at the neck, his trousers tucked into long boots that came nearly up to his knees, a bowie-knife in a sheath and a revolver at his belt, a naked sword, long and curved, in his hand—this was von Tempsky on the war-path, a picturesquely brigand-like figure, upon whom the soldiers' eyes rested with wonder and a good deal of admiration.
Of that disastrous attack on "The Beak-of-the-Bird" stockade many accounts have been given, but the many discrepancies in detail that an examination of each account reveals are hardly to be wondered at, considering the confusion and misunderstandings that arose and that largely wrought the defeat of Colonel McDonnell's column. The dense and roadless forest, with its intricacies of undergrowth and interlacings of supplejack, and the inequalities of the ground made it difficult for the Colonial soldiers to keep in touch with each other, and the extraordinary activity and mobility of their savage assailants, who were perfectly at home in their jungly woods, more than compensated for the difference in numbers. The forest trees were the Hauhau redoubts. Amongst these trees, their naked brown skins nearly blending in colour with the trunks, they were almost invisible, and in most cases only the puffs of smoke, or brown arms moving up and down using the ramrods, indicated their lurking places. They darted from one cover to another with the quickness of monkeys, and though their weapons were mostly muzzle-loading smooth-bores, they managed to fire and reload with astonishing celerity. Too many of McDonnell's force were newly joined, raw young fellows, who now for the first time met the Maori warrior in the bush, and the hidden foe, with their merciless fire and their terrible yells of hate and defiance, struck terror to many a recruit's heart.
Some of the large rata and pukatea trees growing close to the stockade were hollow, and in several of these the Maoris had cut loopholes, which they used for musketry fire. Some of the trees, too, spat leaden death. Brown figures flitted like forest-demons from cover to cover. At these and at the naked arms and shaggy heads that showed themselves for a moment the coolest and best shots of the Constabulary sent their bullets, and every now and then a Hauhau came crashing to the ground; but for every Maori that was hit five white men fell.
The forest rang with the sharp cracking of the rifles and the bang-banging of the heavily charged muzzle-loaders, and within the stockade the women that remained encouraged their warriors with shrill yells.
"Kill them! Eat them!" they screamed, as they waved their shawls and mats. "Fight on, fight on! Let not one escape!"
White men dropped quickly, wounded or shot dead. McDonnell evidently over-estimated the strength of the enemy, for he concluded that it would be impossible to rush the pa or to hold it if it was successfully rushed, for the enemy were now all round him. Had he only known the real state of affairs, that there were barely sixty armed Hauhaus, of whom only about twenty remained within the stockade, the story of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu would have been far less saddening, at any rate to the pakeha.