The singular march suddenly ceased, at an order from the shawl-kilted _tohunga_ in the centre, and then the people filed into the village meeting-house, a large _raupo_-reed-built structure, taking Bent with them. He was motioned to a seat beside a Maori, whose name, he afterwards found, was Hori Kerei (George Grey), and who could speak English fairly well.
Sitting opposite Bent was a white-bearded old fighting-man, a dour-faced savage, his brown face deeply scored with the marks of blue-black tattoo; his sole attire was a blanket; in his right hand, and partly concealed by the blanket, he held a tomahawk. His hand twitched now and then, as if he were about to flash out the tomahawk and use it on the _pakeha_, from whose face he never withdrew his fierce old eyes. He was the chief, Te Rangi-tutaki.
A long talk began. Hori Kerei interpreted. The Maoris asked Bent why he had come to them, why had he run away from his own people. The deserter frankly told them that he was tired of being a soldier, that he had been ill-treated and imprisoned, and that he came to them for protection.
"_Pakeha_," said Kerei, "they want to know if you will ever leave the Maori and go back to the soldiers."
"No," said Bent; "tell them I'll never run away from the Hauhaus. I want to live with them always; I don't ever want to see a white man again!"
"_Kapai!_" said Grey good-humouredly. "That the talk! All right, I tell them true."
When Kerei had interpreted the white man's reply, the old man with the tomahawk leaned over and said, very earnestly, tapping the blade of the weapon with his left hand as he spoke:
"_Whakarongo mai!_ Listen, _pakeha_! You see this _patiti_ in my hand? Yes. If you had not at once replied that you would never return to the white soldiers I would have killed you. I would have sunk this into your skull!"
After this brief speech, delivered with a fierceness of mien and glitter of eye that made the refugee tremble in spite of his efforts to appear calm, the old barbarian shook hands with him.
Then Tito te Hanataua--the man who had brought the soldier to the _pa_--rose and said:
"O my tribe, listen to me! Take good care of the _pakeha_, and harm him not, because our prophet has told us that if any white men come to us as this man has done, and leave their own tribe for ours, we must not injure them, but must keep them with us and protect them."