[CHAPTER XVIII]
THE FIGHT AT MOTUROA STOCKADE
Kātené's vigil—Attack on the stockade—Major Hunter's death—A Hauhau warrior's desperate feat—Over the palisades—Government forces repulsed—A rear-guard fight—An unanswered prayer—Scenes of terror—Tihirua's burnt-offering—A soldier's body eaten.
Just within the stockade of the Moturoa, or Papa-tihakehake pa, [10] there was a small, roughly built taumaihi, or look-out stage, ten or twelve feet above the ground, high enough to allow a sentinel to see well over the sharp-pointed palisades, and scan the approaches to the fort.
In this bush watch-tower there stood, at misty dawn on a grey November morning, the Hauhau scout and warrior Kātené Tu-Whakaruru.
Kātené was cold, and he stamped his bare feet upon the unbarked logs that floored the sentry-box, and he chanted softly to himself a little waiata to Kopu, the morning star, which he had looked for in vain, for a heavy drizzling mist obscured everything. The thin, persistent rain penetrated the blanket that he held closely wrapped about him.
Presently a faint light began to steal over the forest, and Kātené could see the outlines of the black charred stumps and burned trees in front of the pa, then beyond the gloomy woods, through which a narrow winding path led to the open fern-lands of the Wairoa.
Suddenly Kātené's murmured chant ceased, and he strained his eyes into the mist. To a Maori forester the slightest sound was enough to set every faculty on the alert, asking suspiciously, "He aha tena!" He had heard a faint sound in the direction of the track beyond the black tree-stumps, a sound that he fancied resembled the striking of steel against steel.
Kātené hardly breathed. His eyes glared fixedly through the mist. In a few minutes his vision confirmed the evidence of his keen ears. He saw, just for a moment, a dark figure, then another, come hazily out of the wet fog where the track from the Wairoa emerged on the clearing, then disappear, as if they had suddenly dropped to the ground or vanished behind a tree.
That glimpse was enough for Kātené. He dropped from his sentry-perch, and ran from wharé to wharé and tent to tent giving the alarm.