The Colonial soldiers retired, fighting a hard rear-guard action, out to the edge of the bush. Each division of Armed Constabulary in turn halted, knelt down facing the enemy, and covered the retreat of the other divisions, thus giving time for those of the dead and wounded who had been recovered to be carried off the field. Out to the fern-lands the Hauhaus followed the troops, sometimes engaging them so closely that the fighting was hand-to-hand, and it was carbine and revolver against long-handled tomahawk. The skirmishing lasted until the whites were well clear of the bush; the Maoris would have followed them out even to their camp, the Wairoa Redoubt, had not they been recalled by orders from Titokowaru. The battle of Papa-tihakehake was over. It was a more severe repulse for the Government men than even the engagement at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu a bare two months before. One man out of every four in the force actually engaged was on the casualty list—more than twenty killed and quite thirty wounded. [11]
THE FIGHT AT MOTUROA, 1869.
This sketch, with the one opposite, drawn by an eye-witness shortly after the engagement, depicts the defeat of the Government A.C. Force by the Maoris.
THE FIGHT AT MOTUROA, 1869.
A grim story of that hard-fought retreat through the bush is told by Kimble Bent.
After the kokiri, the rush out in pursuit, had been ordered by the Maori war-chief, one of the Nga-Rauru men came across a white soldier lying on the ground, with his head pillowed against a fallen pukatea-tree. He had been cut off from his division by the foremost of the pursuing Hauhaus, and was lying there feigning death, hoping that the rest of the Maoris would pass on and not notice him.