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 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-meat--white man--back into the cask and stayed their hunger on good honest potatoes.