Another fighting pa built—Scouting and skirmishing—The watcher on the tower—McDonnell and Titokowaru—How Trooper Lingard won the New Zealand Cross—Hairbreadth escapes—Pairama and the white man's leg.
On the edge of the great forest, some miles to the south of the Waitotara River, was the site of the olden Maori village, Tauranga-ika. In front fern and grass lands stretched away to the sand-dunes of the sea-coast, with here and there a small shallow lake; in the rear was the dense and roadless bush, a perfect and safe retreat for the Hauhaus in the event of defeat. The country hereabouts was dotted with the white man's farmsteads; but the whites had been driven off before Titokowaru's victorious army, leaving their homes, the labour of many years, to go up in smoke, and their sheep and cattle to feed the Hauhau bands. Wanganui town was only a day's march away, and Titokowaru's council of chiefs, eager to follow up their victory at Moturoa, proposed to assault the town and massacre every soul in it.
This old-time village was fixed on by the Hauhau war-chief as the site of his new fighting pa, for he abandoned Papa-tihakehake soon after the repulse of the white forces at that strong stockade. With the wariness of the Maori strategist, he avoided a second attack in any one entrenchment, and sooner than risk another, and possibly disastrous, engagement at Papa-tihakehake, he took the trouble to construct an even stronger fortification, a splendid example of native military engineering genius.
In the building of this new pa, Kimble Bent and his Hauhau comrades toiled early and late until it was completed. It was of large size, fully defended with palisading, trenches, parapet, and rifle-pits. It was between two and three chains in extreme length at the rear, with a somewhat narrower front. The ground in front was bare of forest, but carried high fern cover; on the flanks were burned clearings, dotted with blackened tree-stumps and cumbered with logs; then the forest, with some beautiful groves of mahoé on its outskirts. Two rows of palisades, high and strong, were erected around the position; the posts, solid tree-trunks, were from six to twelve inches thick and ten to fifteen feet high; the rows were four feet apart. The spaces between the larger stockade-posts were filled in with saplings set upright close together, and fastened by cross-rails and supplejack ties; these saplings did not rest in the ground, but hung a few inches above it, so that between them and the ground a space was left for the fire of the defending musketeers, who were enabled to pour volleys from their trenches inside the war-fence on any approaching enemy with perfect safety to themselves. Behind the inner stockading was a parapet about six feet high and four feet wide, formed of the earth thrown out of the trenches. The interior of the pa was pitted everywhere with trenches and covered ways, so that in the event of attack the defenders could literally take to the earth like rabbits, and live underground secure from rifle-fire, and even from artillery. The place was a network of trenches with connecting passages, roofed over with timber, raupo, and toetoe reeds and earth. To any assault that could be delivered by the Government forces then available, the fort was practically impregnable.
At one angle of the pa the Hauhau garrison erected a roughly timbered watch-tower, about thirty-five feet in height. This tower, or taumaihi, was a feature of the ancient pas of Maoridom; on its upper platform a sentinel was posted, day and night, to give warning of the approach of the enemy. In front of the pa, outside the palisades, a tall flagstaff was set up, and on this staff the Hauhau war-flags were hoisted. There were two gateways in the rear stockading, giving access to the bush. In one end of the pa near the rear was a small tent occupied by Titokowaru. Bent, the cartridge-maker, lived in a little rush-built wharé towards the other end, near one of the gateways.
When the stockade was finished the Hauhaus constructed a tekoteko, a great marionette-like figure of a man, cut out of a pukatea-tree. It was so placed that its head stood about fifteen feet above the ground, well above the front stockade, and it had loose-jointed arms, to which flax ropes were fastened, leading down to the trench below. By manipulating these ropes the arms of the wooden warrior were made to move in the actions of the haka, just as if some painted Hauhau were dancing a dance of defiance on the fortress walls.
When the fort was finished the garrison gathered in their food supplies, saw to their arms, and for many weeks waited for the pakeha. Hauhau scouts and small war-parties daily sallied out from the fort, seeking game in the shape of stray pakehas.
One of these savage man-hunters was a Ngati-Maniapoto man from the King Country, whose name was Pairama, and who had married a Nga-Rauru woman. He used to go out by himself, looking for some one or something to kill. Te Pairama returned to the stockade in huge jubilation one day, bearing as a trophy of his prowess on the trail a white man's leg! He had, says Bent, scouted down until he was close to Kai-iwi. There he spied a white settler in a grass paddock, carrying a rifle.
Down he crouched at once, and stealthily stalked the pakeha. Just as the unsuspecting settler came to the paddock gate, the Maori leaped out from behind the fence, with a furious snatch tore the rifle from the man's grasp, and shot him dead with it. He cut off one of the pakeha's legs with his tomahawk, and brought it home as proof of his success on the war-path as proudly as any Indian ever flourished his take of scalps. Up and down the marae of the pa he bounded, exhibiting the captured rifle and severed limb, yelling his war-song, and loudly boasting that he would that night cook the pakeha's leg and eat it all himself.