What Terence's opinion was, George was not to learn, for just then a spattering volley rattled in the bush, several bullets hummed past them, and they bolted for cover. In a moment the clearing was empty, and the Hau-haus, sheltered behind the great trunks, answered the challenge with a random fire.
Te Karearea had thrown aside his mats, and now, naked like his warriors, save for his waist-cloth and huia plumes, was dodging actively from tree to tree, firing with great coolness whenever he saw a chance. But, owing to the thick bush, little harm was done on either side, and to the interested onlookers the affair seemed very like a stale mate.
But Te Karearea had always to be reckoned with. No sooner had the spies fled, than he dispatched Winata Pakaro with fifty men to make a rapid flanking march and ascertain whether they had to do with a large force or a mere screen of scouts. In either case Winata had his orders, which he carried out to the letter, and in a few moments from the firing of the first shot, the clearing was filled with a mob of yelling combatants, and a hand-to-hand fight in the good old style began. The muskets, useless now, were flung away, or swung by the barrel, while tomahawk and club clashed and jarred and rattled in the shock of their meeting.
Presently the watchers heard Te Karearea's voice raised in a shout of savage triumph. 'Mataika! Mataika!' he yelled, and, grasping a young Arawa chief by the hair with his left hand, dashed out the man's brains with a single blow of the heavy club in his right. 'Mataika!' he yelled again. 'Ki au te Mataika!' and, brandishing the blood-stained mere, dashed into the midst of the foe.
'Is that his battle-cry?' called Terence from behind his tree.
'No. The first to be killed in a fight is called the Mataika,' explained George. '"I have the Mataika" is the cry of the successful slayer, and duels often arise after a battle, owing to disputes among the claimants to the honour.'
The Arawas, taken thus in the rear, and hopelessly outnumbered, had no chance, and the end of the skirmish came when some twenty of the brave, rash fellows—all that were left of fifty—broke through the packed masses of their enemies and fled, unpursued, through the bush.
'The Hawk has all the luck,' grumbled George. 'What a piece of folly for so small a force to attack five hundred!'
'Never mind,' Terence said cheerfully. 'It shows, at all events, that some one is on our trail, and that our sweet chief is not to be allowed to have everything his own way. Here he comes. Lo, what a swelling port!'
Te Karearea stalked up to them, his chest heaving, his eyes still aflame with the fierce light of battle. His scarred visage looked grimmer than ever as he grinned balefully at his 'guests.'