'Let go!' panted George. 'I can run faster alone.'
'No tricks then, Hortoni,' growled one of the guards. 'Try to escape and we will brain you.'
Stimulated by the occasional shots which followed them, they swept along in fine style. As they neared the coveted hill, Te Karearea's Maoris converged upon it from all sides, and simply over-ran a score or so of whites who opposed them, braining one and wounding half a dozen others.
The hill gained, George flung himself upon his back, too blown to heed the bullets which whistled over him; but, as one of them passed uncomfortably close to his head, he crawled behind a rock to watch the progress of operations.
But the sharp excitement was over for the time, and the long day wore to an end with nothing but desultory fire upon either side, for the whites refused to cross a ravine, over which it would have been death to charge. The fine marksman of the morning was now conspicuous by his absence, and George wondered regretfully whether he was the man who had been carried feet first towards the camp of the whites after their one ineffectual charge upon the hill.
But towards evening the captain of the white force was startled by the sound of a Maori bugle in his rear, and, caught thus between two fires, resolved upon a desperate charge. He encountered no resistance as he led his men across the dangerous ravine; but, as he ran on, a stream of fire belched from the heart of a bush, and he had, literally, a close shave, for one of his whiskers was singed completely off. So he retired a sadder and less hirsute man, only to find that the astute Te Karearea had raided his camp and annexed his reserve of ammunition, along with all his horses, accoutrements, stores, and baggage.
This calamity finished the gallant officer, who retreated throughout the night over terrible country, with his weary and dispirited column at his heels, ammunitionless and supperless.
They were not pursued; for the Maoris themselves were tired and hungry, and preferred to set about the preparation of a well-earned meal. For even though a man fight in a bad cause, he yet gets up appetite enough to enjoy his dinner.
Wrath and disappointment at the result of the fight had made George unusually sullen, but when the pretty maid who had so deftly bandaged him, and whose musical name was Kawainga, or Star of the Dawn, brought him supper, his sufferings, less poignant than his appetite, did not compel him to refuse.
A hungry man is an angry man, and certainly when George had eaten all the good things set before him, and smoked a looted cigar—Te Karearea with generous irony had sent him a handful—his temporary irritation vanished, and his usual cool temper reasserted itself. He had plenty of common-sense, and recognising that there was nothing to be gained by quarrelling with the chief, presently accepted the latter's invitation to stroll round the camp and visit the pickets. For Te Karearea observed all proper military precautions, and maintained an iron discipline in camp and field.