Colonel Hulme concluded as night fell that he could not take the pa with the force at his command. He believed that he had punished the enemy in the open; but his own loss was fourteen killed and thirty-two wounded. Having neither ammunition nor food remaining, the colonel marched away, leaving Heke in possession of the field.
The Maori chief some days later received a visit from Archdeacon Williams, who urged him to yield and go into exile for a year, after which his offences might possibly be pardoned. Heke declined the missionary's kind offices, and wrote the Governor a letter which was very far from being that of a fool.
"Friend, the Governor," said Heke, "where is the good will of England? In her great guns? In her Congreve rockets?... Is it shown in Englishmen calling us slaves? Or in their regard for our sacred places?... The Europeans taunt us. They say, 'Port Jackson, China, the Islands are but a precedent for this country. That flag of England which takes your country is the commencement.' The French and, after them, the Americans, told us the same thing.... We said, 'We will die for the country which God has given us.' ... If you demand our land, where are we to go?... Waka Nene's fighting for you is nothing. He is coaxing you for land, that you may say he is faithful.... Were anything to happen to me, the natives would kill in all directions. I alone restrain them. If you say fight, I am agreeable; if you say make peace, I am equally agreeable.... I say to you, leave Waka and me to fight. We are both Maori. You fight your own colour. Peace must be determined by you, the Governor.—From me, John William Pokai[60] (Heke)."
Public confidence in the security of life and property was by no means increased by the retreat of the British from Okaihau, while the Maori not unnaturally assumed airs which intensely irritated the colonists, though they wisely ignored them.
The Governor, standing at bay between the scornful Maori and the indignant colonists, who gave him a large share of the blame for the misfortunes which had befallen the colony, made vigorous efforts to organise another expedition which must crush Heke and Kawiti. While this was preparing, Heke kept his hand in by attacking Waka Nene's pa, where he received a bullet in the thigh. The British, not to be outdone, went in boats up the Waikari river, to find the fort they designed to attack deserted by the nimble foe.
All was ready by the 16th of June, and Colonel Despard of the 99th Regiment began the second campaign against Heke, who had withdrawn to a pa of immense strength at Oheawai, sixteen miles inland from the Bay of Islands. The colonel, an experienced soldier, commanded a force of six hundred and forty regulars from the 58th, 96th, and 99th Regiments; sailors from the Hazard; a company of one hundred volunteers, and two hundred and fifty friendly Maori. Four guns were with infinite pains hauled along the difficult track, through mud of a depth rarely seen in Britain, and over creeks and rivers with steep, defiant banks, between which the water often rushed in flood. June is midwinter in New Zealand, and no worse time could have been chosen for the expedition. Yet, in the judgment of those most deeply concerned with the colony's fortunes, it had to be undertaken.
The force encamped near the mission-station on the Waimate or River of Tears, and on the 23rd of June marched to Oheawai, where a small garrison under Kawiti and Pene awaited their attack. Heke was still incapacitated.
The night was spent in preparing batteries for the "potato pots," as the Maori styled the mortars with which it was intended on the morrow to breach the palisades of the pa,—four barricades of massive logs,[61] twenty feet in height, with a broad ditch between the first and the second. Some heavy hammering would be necessary before a path could be smashed through those tremendous defences. Yet it was confidently expected that the mortars would accomplish their part of the programme of attack.
When they had turned in, the experience of the rest of the night must have been weird to the unseasoned British. Throughout the long, dark watches the comforting "All's well!" of the sentinels was drowned by the oft-repeated challenge, thundered by the guards in the pa, "Come on, O hoia![62] Come on and revenge your dead of Okaihau! Come on! Come on!" And the deep-toned, defiant watch-cry of Waka Nene's men from their hill, "Come on, O Nga-Puhi! Come on for your revenge! We have slain you in heaps ere now! Come on! Come on!"
The bombardment began on the morning of the 24th, and for six days thereafter was continued. The round shot bowled through palisades one, two, three and four, or stuck fast in the giant posts; but never a trunk was shaken down, never one so hopelessly smashed as to open the door of that much-desired way. The enemy, safe in their cunningly contrived rifle-pits, meantime kept up a galling fire, which more than once caused a shifting of the positions of the batteries.