The bombardment began long before all the guns were up. Moses Tawhai, one of the allied chiefs, just before daylight on the 29th of December stole through the thick bush with his men to a position six hundred yards from the pa. Ere the enemy detected their daring approach, they had "rushed up" a temporary stockade, and into this two hundred soldiers and a couple of guns were promptly conveyed.
Two days later, even as the enemy, as if inviting a beginning, hoisted their standard, every British gun in position—big guns, brass guns, little guns, mortars, rockets—roared, banged, cracked and fizzed an instant response. When the very first shot—fired from the gun served by the contingent from H.M.S. Racehorse, under Lieutenant Bland—cut the flagstaff in two and brought down the flag, "even the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear to cheer." Which is to say, the chivalrous gentlemen defending the pa were as ungrudging in their admiration of the successful marksman as were the besiegers.
Next day, the 1st of January, 1846, the guns again roared out in chorus, this time in salute to the New Year; and old Kawiti, on the 2nd, tried one of his famous flank rushes. But the British were ready for him and drove him back with loss, so that he kept behind his defences for the remainder of the siege.
So the days wore on until the 10th, by which time every gun, heavy and light, was in position. All day long they thundered and crashed, and shot and shell thumped and smacked against the wooden walls with much more visible effect than at Oheawai, so that two very obvious breaches had been made by nightfall.
Heke arrived that night with a reinforcement, having dodged a column of friendlies who were blocking him in his home at Okerangi. When he saw the condition of things, he gave the very sound advice that the pa should be evacuated before further mischief was done. "There is no sense in remaining here to be killed," he urged. "Let them have the pa and, if they follow us into the bush, we shall have them; for they cannot bring their big guns there."
People who have for nearly a fortnight endured a bombardment do not require much persuasion to change their quarters, and the majority then and there followed Heke out into the dense bush in rear of the pa.
But it was different with old Kawiti. Ruapekapeka was his very own, the offspring of his own science and skill. He would not leave the pa while hope remained of saving it. So he threw his oratory into the scale against Heke's arguments, and prevailed upon a few devoted adherents to share his fortune for good or ill.
So the 10th of January closed without the British being aware that Heke and the bulk of the garrison had slipped away to safety.
The end came on the next day, and from one point of view rather pathetically. It was Sunday, and if there was one principle more than another which the mihonari had impressed upon their converts, it was that no work of any kind must be done upon God's Day of Rest. Most of those who were left in Ruapekapeka were Christians, and these, believing that the British would be similarly employed, assembled for divine service under cover of some rising ground outside, and in rear of the pa. Kawiti and the few who remained inside were asleep in the trenches; for they, too, had assumed that no attack would be delivered on that Day of days. Heke might have warned them; for he had read the lives of Wellington and Napoleon, and knew that Sunday never yet stopped a fight. But Heke and his people were also busy at their devotions in the shelter of the forest.
Had the British been alone nothing might have happened; but the friendlies made a shrewd guess at the cause of the unusual quietude within the pa, and Wiremu Waka Turau (William Walker), Waka Nene's brother, stole up to the breaches and cautiously peeped through. As he had expected, he could see no one; so signalled his brother.