Only then was the full story of the repulse pieced together--a story of a fight that in point of numbers was only a skirmish, as battles go, but that was the most serious set-back the white man had yet suffered at the hands of the brown warriors of the Taranaki bush. Of the twenty-four whites killed five were officers, men who could badly be spared in that frontier warfare. The wounded numbered twenty-six, whose rescue from the tomahawks of the Hauhau was carried out in a way truly heroic.
After the battle--The slain heroes of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu--A terrible scene on the _marae_--What Bent saw from his prison-hut--The sword of "Manu-rau"--A funeral pyre--Priestly incantations--A soldier's body eaten--Why the Hauhaus became cannibals.
On the morning after the battle, Kimble Bent and his companions, who had been informed by a messenger the previous night of the result of the forest engagement, hurried back to the stockade.
The news of the repulse of the white troops had spread with incredible swiftness all over the Maori country-side, and the Hauhaus from the neighbouring villages gathered in Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu to hear the story of the fight and to share in the distribution of the loot taken on the battle-field.
The village was crowded with Hauhaus, all in a fearful state of excitement, a delirium of triumphant savagery.
Yelling like furies, shouting ferocious battle-songs, waving their weapons in the air, the victorious warriors were there with their spoils--carbines, swords, revolvers, soldiers' caps and belts.
More frightful still was the sight of which Bent had just a glimpse as he entered the gateway of the _pa_.
Laid out in a low row in the centre of the _marae_, side by side, were bodies of many white soldiers, nearly twenty of them, all stripped naked--the fallen heroes of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu.
Just a glimpse the white man had as he entered the blood-stained square. The next moment he was surrounded by a howling mob of Hauhaus, grinning, yelling, laughing fiendishly, shaking their weapons in his face, all in sheer hate and contempt of anything with a white skin.
Two or three of the _Tekau-ma-rua_ men whom Bent knew came bounding up. One of them said to him:
"Tu-nui, you must come with me. It is Titoko's command." The Maori led Bent to a small thatched hut on one side of the _marae_. Here he shut the white man in, and fastened the low sliding-door on the outside.