Bent was now ordered to return to his hut, and the door was again fastened on him. The proposal to cook and eat the bodies of von Tempsky and his comrades was debated in a wild korero. Bent, from his eye-hole in the wall of the wharé, saw Hauhau after Hauhau, the orators of the tribes, jump up, tomahawk or gun or sword in hand, and furiously declaim as they went leaping and trotting backward and forward in the open space between the ranks of the victors and the dead; and the deeds of the battle-field were told again and again in great boasting words.
Von Tempsky's body, the pakeha-Maori had observed while on the marae, had not been mutilated, except for that tomahawk cut. His heart had not been cut out, though Bent half expected it would have been. The rite of the Whangai-hau, the ceremony of propitiation and burnt sacrifice following a battle, had not, however, been omitted. On the previous night, Tihirua, the young war-priest, had cut open a soldier's body and had torn out the heart, which he had offered in smoke and fire as oblation to Uenuku, the God of War, chanting a karakia as he watched the heart of the hated white man smoking in the flames.
"Manu-rau's" famous sword, too, was set apart as a sacred gift to the gods; it was a parakia, or taumahatanga, a thank-offering for victory. It became a tapu relic, and was religiously preserved by the Hauhaus. It is in their possession to this day.
Presently the bodies of the slain—the "Fish-of-Tu"—were ceremoniously apportioned amongst the several tribes represented in the village, as Bent again watched from his eye-hole in the wall.
One of the chiefs paced up and down past the pile of dead, with a stick in his hand. Pointing to a soldier's corpse, he cried:
"This is for Taranaki! Take it away!"
Pointing to the others, he said:
"This is for Ngati-Ruanui—take it away! This is for Nga-Rauru—take it away"—and so on until the whole of the dead men had been portioned out to the Hauhau clans to deal with as they deemed fit—subject always, however, to Titokowaru's approval.
The Nga-Rauru, the wild tribe of the Waitotara River, were the only men who actually took a body from the line of dead.