The forest rang with the sharp cracking of the rifles and the bang-banging of the heavily charged muzzle-loaders, and within the stockade the women that remained encouraged their warriors with shrill yells.
"Kill them! Eat them!" they screamed, as they waved their shawls and mats. "Fight on, fight on! Let not one escape!"
White men dropped quickly, wounded or shot dead. McDonnell evidently over-estimated the strength of the enemy, for he concluded that it would be impossible to rush the _pa_ or to hold it if it was successfully rushed, for the enemy were now all round him. Had he only known the real state of affairs, that there were barely sixty armed Hauhaus, of whom only about twenty remained within the stockade, the story of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu would have been far less saddening, at any rate to the _pakeha_.
McDonnell, considering the position too strong to be carried by assault, determined to strike out to the left through the forest and retire. Von Tempsky and Major Hunter pleaded with him to let them charge the stockade, but the Colonel would not consent, and presently ordered the retreat. Moving off, he sent a message to von Tempsky telling him to collect his men and form a rear-guard. He sent the wounded on with Major Hunter and Captain Newland, and followed with about eighty men, cutting a way through the undergrowth.
Von Tempsky remained, angry and disgusted at being refused permission to storm the _pa_, but too good a soldier to disobey orders. With him were most of the men of his two Armed Constabulary Divisions, No. 2 and No. 5, with Sub-Inspectors (Captains) Brown and J. M. Roberts, a few Patea Rifle Volunteers under Captain Palmer, the Wellington Rangers under Lieutenants Hastings and Hunter, and about twenty-five Taranaki Volunteers under Lieutenant Rowan.
Sword in hand, von Tempsky moved restlessly to and fro, regardless of the bullets that hummed about him. He ordered those nearest him to take cover but himself remained erect, angrily cutting at the undergrowth with his sword. And there he was when a Hauhau bullet found him.
Now I will let the Maoris tell their story of how von Tempsky and his comrades fell. Tutangé Waionui says:
"When the attack on our _pa_ began, two or three of us, including Hotu and Tihirua, climbed up on an old partly hollow _rata_-tree that grew in a slanting position near the centre of the stockade, in order to see whether it would be a good place from which to fire at the _pakehas_. A little way up it forked into two large branches, and it was from this fork that we intended to fire. However, we found that it did not suit us, as we could not see anything of the soldiers who were hidden in the thick bush outside the stockade, so we rushed out into the forest, seeking our enemy.