The refugees in the bush-camp with Bent waited anxiously for news of the fight. Was it a victory or a defeat? Soon, the first of the defenders of the _pa_ dropped into camp, blood-stained and angry. And then, as the afternoon went on, the rest straggled in. Many were wounded, and seven dead bodies were carried in on hastily made litters of supplejack vines lashed to poles. Then the full story of the battle was told.
It was a sad and angry camp, that remote pocket between the hills. Most of the Hauhaus came in nearly naked, just as they had jumped up when the first shot was fired in the grey dawn. They were desperately sullen and grief-stricken over their dead and the loss of their stronghold, which to them had seemed almost impregnable, for it was the strongest stockaded position they had yet built. Many a dark look was bent upon the white man as he sat by one of the fires, not daring to speak a word.
That night the camp was suddenly abandoned by order of the Hauhau leader, who feared pursuit, not by the Imperial soldiers, who had no relish for "bush-whacking" at night--or, indeed, at any other time--but by Kepa's Government warriors, hereditary enemies of the Taranaki men. Hurriedly packing on their shoulders what few belongings they had managed to save from the _pa_, they set off in single file through the thick forest, making for the banks of the Tangahoé River, which they reached before daylight, and there halted. The wounded who were unable to walk were carried with difficulty through the tangled bush, where it was often necessary to cut away at the supplejacks and _aka_ vines, so intricately interlaced and festooned across their path, before a passage could be made for the litter-bearers. There was no moon; it was an intensely dark night, rendered more Cimmerian still by the unbroken roof of foliage overhead. The Hauhaus made torches of pieces of dry pinewood, bound together with scraps of flax torn from their scanty mat garments, and with these they managed to dimly light their way through the forest--a wild and savage band; the warriors in front and rear, their cartouche-belts over their naked shoulders, and guns slung across their backs, or carried in their left hands; in their right they gripped their tomahawks and slashed away at the twining impediments of the jungle.
