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Chapter XVII
Skirmishing and Fort-Building

The famous “Bird's-Beak” pa, made so memorable by the terrible scenes enacted around and within its stockade, was soon deserted.

Titokowaru, not long after the Hauhau victory and the savage rites narrated in the last chapter, issued an order that the village must be evacuated, and a new position selected for a bush-fort in which to withstand the attack that must inevitably be delivered against him by the Government. So one day the whole of the inhabitants of the Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu—men, women, and children, and the solitary white man—having gathered together their belongings, marched out of their village and tramped away through the bush eastwards. The armed men of the Tekau-ma-rua preceded them, to make sure that the way was clear of the pakeha enemy.

At the village of Turangaréré and at Taiporohenui page 196 they dwelt for a while, and the warriors scouted out day after day in the vicinity of the European redoubts. A little skirmishing occurred; some shots were fired at the Turuturu-Mokai redoubt, now regarrisoned, and a sniping party amused themselves, with the Manawapou Camp as a target. Before very long Bent and his companions were once more on the move, swagging through the bush to the Patea Valley. The scene of war was now to be the Lower Patea and the Waitotara, whence Titokowaru, it was believed, intended to raid the town of Wanganui.

For some weeks Titoko and his Hauhaus camped in the Oruatihi pa. Then they shifted to Otoia, near the banks of the Patea, where they built a redoubt, from which they could fire into the European position at Manutahi. The fortification was finished in a day and a night, all hands, men and women, toiling at it, Bent amongst them. Some dug the trenches with their spades, some carried earth in flax baskets, and others piles of flax and fern, with which they built up the parapets.

Early in the morning the day after the pa was completed there was a brush with the Government forces. A column of Armed Constabulary and Wanganui Maoris made a reconnaissance up the cliffy, forest-fringed banks of the Patea in the direction of the Hauhau redoubt. Titoko's men attacked them, lining both sides of the river. The troops page 197 retired to their tea after a pretty little skirmish; and the Hauhaus marched back to the pa in high jubilation, singing war-songs, waving their guns, and bounding about and grimacing like a company of fiends. Then the steaming pork and potatoes, and speech-making and howling hakas around the great camp-fires. From the Maori point of view, quite a pleasant day's sport.

During the two months following the bush fight at Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu no serious engagement occurred, but Titokowaru's war-parties scoured the district for many miles, laid ambuscades on the tracks between the European redoubts, burned settlers' houses, and bagged a stray pakeha or two.

One incident of this period illustrates the peculiar ghoulish humour of the Hauhau savage. Two friendly Maoris—Nga-hina and another—who were mail-carriers in the Government service, halted awhile at Manawapou one day, while on their way to Patea, and searched the settlement there for the wherewithal for a dinner. A cask stood beside one of the wharés, and on taking the top off they found it to be a barrel of brine, containing meat—apparently pork.

Anticipating a good meal of salt pork, they fished up some of the meat. They found to their disgust that it was human flesh!—“Long-pig!” Not being Hauhaus or cannibals, they dropped the man- page 198 meat—white man—back into the cask and stayed their hunger on good honest potatoes.

The question was, who pickled the pakeha? A Hauhau prisoner some time later enlightened the Government Maoris. A scouting party from Titoko's camp had dodged down to Manawapou, and discovered there, not far from the redoubt—which had been temporarily vacated by the troops—a new-made grave. Opening it, they disinterred a white man's corpse. In sheer devilment they cut it up, put it into a cask of brine that stood handy, and then re-covered the cask and left it.

It would have been an exquisite joke, from the cannibal Hauhau view-point, had the Government soldiers unknowingly helped themselves to a joint of white man!

Titokowaru's entrenched position at Otoia was not a strong one, and shortly he, after a council of war with his principal men, decided to abandon it and build a new bush pa, which should be as nearly impregnable as a Maori fort could be.

So one morning a long line of Hauhaus of all ages and both sexes—the armed men in front and rear—bearing their simple belongings in flaxbasket pikaus on their backs, left the Otoia redoubt, and marched away through the bush to a spot about twelve miles from the mouth of the Patea River and a mile and a half from the old Okotuku pa, which had been attacked by the page 199 troops two years previously. At this place, Moturoa—the “Song Bush,” so called because of a long strip of forest which covered the plain here—the war-chief ordered that the new fort should be constructed.

The position was on partially cleared land, nearly level, surrounded by the forest. The men, after hastily constructing huts, roofed with the fronds of tree-fern and nikau, set to work with their axes to hew out a large clearing. Titoko marked out the lines of the entrenchments and palisades. The forest-trees quickly fell before the practised assault of many bushmen, and the shrubby cover in front of the pa was carefully burned.

Then came the setting up of the stockade. Tawa and other trees of small size were cut into suitable lengths for the palisade-posts. There were two rows of palisades; the outside one was the largest and strongest. For the heavy outside row of stockading, timbers from eight to twelve inches in diameter were sunk solidly in the ground, forming a wall some ten feet high. Saplings were cut to serve as cross-ties or rails to lash across the posts, and with supplejack and aka vines the whole were bound strongly and closely together.

Kimble Bent worked with the Hauhaus—toiling like a navvy, cutting timber, setting up the great posts, lashing the palisading, and digging trenches. He wore nothing but a rough flax mat round his page 200 waist—trouserless, bootless, hatless. In everything but skin a Maori.

“It was exciting,” says the white man, “but none the less it was slavery. Many a night those times, when I lay down on my flax whariki, though I was dog-tired, I could not sleep—thinking, thinking over the past, and dreading what the future might bring me. Many and many a time I wished myself dead and out of it all.”

What furious, what Homeric toil was that pa-building! Those wild brown men, spurred by the reports of speedy attack, laboured with incredible energy and swiftness. The Moturoa fortified hold—which later became known as Papa-tihakehake, because of the battle which befell here—was completed in three days—stockaded, trenched, parapeted, and rifle-pitted—ready for the enemy!

Behind the strong tree-trunk stockade there were trenches and casemated rifle-pits from which the defenders could fire between the lower interstices in the great war-fence; behind the trenches again was a parapet from which a second line of Hauhaus could deliver their fire over the top of the palisade. It was one of the strongest works yet constructed by the Maoris, and one that was not likely to be stormed except at the cost of many lives.