CHAPTER X.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8758, 22 October 1906, Page 4

CHAPTER K.

The Attack on Turuturu-mokai Redoubt — A Heroic Defehoe — The Heart of the Captain—The Killing of Kane: A Traitor's End. One biting cold evening in July, 1868, the whole population of the " Birds-Beak" pa gathered .in the marae to watch the departure of a fighting-column "launched by Titokowaru against the whites. It was a night fitter for the snug raupo whare than for the warpath, but the omens were propitious for the expedition, and the war-god's eacred breeze, the "whakarau," breathed of Uenuku, blew across the forest. The sixty warriors of the "Tekau-ma-rua" took the trail with the hit of the dance-girls' poi-cbant in their ears and the warrchoruses yelled by their comrades in the village gritted their battle-«pirit. They were fittingly and thickly " tapu'd " fop the night's work, karakia'd over with many " hardening" and bullet-averting kaTakiae, and, fn short, thoroughly Hauhau-be-devilled for the fight. ; , Some of the warriors, belted and painted, carried long Enfield muzzle-j loaders, some double-barrelled gunß, some stolen or captured carbines. Each rifleman's equipment included a short tomahawk thrust through his flax girdle; a few—the storming partywere armed with long-handled tomahawks, murderously effective weapons in a hand-to-hand combat. Though a winter's night, most of them were Eeantily clad, as befitt«d a war-party. Somo wore shirts and other part-Euro-pean dress; some only flax mats and wateWhawls. Up and down the village square, as the Hauhau captain, Hauwhenua, led nis band out into the forest, strodeTitokowaru, in a blaze of fanatic exaltation, crying his commands to the warriors. Waving his plumpd taiaha, he shouted his savage, "Kill them! Eat them ! Let them not escape you !" And ns they disappeared in the darkness he returned to his place in the great council-house, where on his sacred mat he spent the night in commune with his ancestral spirits and in reciting incantations for the success of ■ his men-at-arms. j In single file the Hauhau soldiers struck into the black woods, following a narrow trail. As they entered the j deeper thicknesses .of the forest, where [ not a 6tar could be seen for the density j and unbroken continuity of the roof of ■ foliage above them, they chanted this brief karakia, a charm invoking supernatural aid to clear their forest-path of obstructions and smooth their way: "Wabi taratara t^-i, < Me tuku ki to Ariki Kia taoro atu c—i,e—i, Nga pukepuke i noa." Away through the bush they tramped, lightening the march with old war-, songs and with latter^ay Hauhau chants, until their objective was neared—the little redoubt of Turuturumokai. Marching with the savages of the " Tekau-ma-rua " was a white man — Charles Kane, called by the Maoris "Kingi," the deserter from the 18th Royal Irish. He was armed with a f;un, intending to assist his Hauhau riends in their attack on his fellow--whites. Kimble Bent, it was reported afterwards in the pakeha camps, also accompanied the warriors, but he denies this. "Kingi," he says, was a fiercely vindictive man, and swore to have a shot at the white men from whom he had cut himself off for ever. Emerging from the forest, the warriors stole quietly down over the fernslopes, and worked round to the front of the little parapeted fort that stood in a singularly unstrategic position on a gently rising hillside, close to the celebrated ancient pa, Turuturu-mokai. Hauwhenua passed round the word to hide in the fern, and remain in cover there as close up to the redoubt as pofcible, until he yelled the "Kokiri" cry—the signal' for the charge. The Turuturu-mokai redoubt was but a tiny work, so sn^all that the officer in charge, Captain Ross, had to live in a raupo hut built outside the walls. The entrenchment, consisting of earth Earapet and a surrounding trench, was eing strengthened by its garrison of twenty-five Armed Constabulary, and the work was not quite finished when the Maori attack was delivered. The nicht dragged on too 6lowly for the impatient and shivering warriors. Some wislnnJ to rush the white men's pa at once, but Hauwhenua and his Bub-chiefs forbnde it till there was a little more lieht. Several of the , younecer men besjan to crawl up throuprh the fern towards the wall of the little fort. The form of a solitary sentry was seen pacing up and down outside the walls. He could easily have been shot, but the Hauhaus waited. Suddenly the sentry stopped, alarmed by some movement in the fern, then quickly raised his carbine and fired. The darkness^— it was not yet dawnwas instantly lit up by the blaze of a return volley, and with a fearful yell the host of half-naked Maoris leaped from the fern and rushed for the redoubt. The white soldiers, roused by t-n< firing, rushed from their sleeping quar ters and manned the parapets and an ides of the work, so furiously assailec Dy the swarming forest-men. tfneir captain ran out from hii whare, armed with his sword and re volver, and clothed only in his shirt • He juat managed to cress the ditch b: the narrow plank-bridge and get insidi the gateway, which he defended unti he was killed. A Haullau charge* right into the redoubt after him, torn ahawked him, and, making a clean cv in his breast, pulled out the heart, i trophy for the terrible ceremony of th "mawe" offering, but a lucky bulle knocked him over, , and the captain' heart was discover^ after the figh lying on the blood joined ground out

side the trench, some yar<3~ away from the brave officer's corpse. For two hours it was desperate work. The Hauhaus. charged up to the parapets, and many of them jumped into the ditch, whence they attempted to Bwarm over the walls, but were beaten off again and again by the little garrison. An endeavour to rush in force through the gateway, of the redoubt did not succeed; several of the Hauhaus were shot in the attempt. Titokowaru had warned his men not to assault the entrance, which was certain to be stubbornly defended; "if you do," said he, "the lion will close his mouth on you." The impulsive young men, however, did not heed this advice, and it was in this tomahawk charge at the fort-gate that most of those who were killed fell. : Failing in their first attempt to take the redoubt by assault, 6ome of the Hauhaus took post on rising ground a little distance off, where they could fire into the work, and one after another the defenders dropped, shot dead or badly wounded. The ditch was full of Maoris. Only the narrow parapet separated them from the whites, and they yelled at the defenders, and shouted all the English \ " swear-wordfe " in their vocabulary. The pakehas " talked back^" at them (says one of the few of the heroic garrison) and called out " Look out ! The cavalry are coming !" But the Hauhau® only laughed and 6aid, "Gammon, pakeha, gammon!" Finding that any man who showed hie head 1 above the parapets was- quickly shot down, they started to dig away at the wall with their, tomahawks, and succeeded in undermining the parapet in several places. Ten white men were lying dead, and six more were wounded. One young soldier, Private Beamish, who fell mortally wounded while helping to defend an angle of the fort, told his brother/ John Beamish (now a resident of Patea), who was fighting by his side, just before he died, that he believed it was a white man who shot him. Bent says that the deserter Kane, while taking ] part in the attack, was wounded in the right cheek by a pakeha bullet, and then retired from the fight. John Beamish was struck by an Enfield bul- . let and severely wounded about the time hi© brother was shot, but though then unable to shoulder his carbine, he passed cartridges to Gill, the only unwounded man in his angle of the re'doubtfc until the end of the combat. Grey morning broke on the battlehill, and those of the garrison whe could still shoulder a carbine were wondering if help would ever reach them. They knew the flashing of -the guns must have been seen, and the reports heard at Waihi redoubt, onlj three miles away. Suddenly the Maoris ceased^ firing and retired into the bush. Their sentries had given them warning thai troops were coming. As the Hauhaus dropped back th< survivors of the garrison rushed out oi the redoubt after them and gave then > a parting shot or two, and then Voi Tempsky and his A.C.'s arrived at thi double and the fight was over. Th< , redoubt had been saved by the valiani work of a little handful cf colonia soldiers. A few minutes more and th< i Hauhaus would have succeeded in un ■ derininin'g the parapets sufficiently t< force an entrance, and the defender j would have fallen to the last man, an< j the. whole of their arms and the pest i supplies have been carried off to Tito • kowaru's fort in the forest. Hauwhenua withdrew his disappoint I ed " Tekau-tna-rua," carrying those o their wounded who were unable to wali * and marched back to Te Ngutu-o-te ? manu. t The "lion" of Titoko's speed s though 6ore wounded, had in trut. b closed his mouth on some of their mos - daring braves.

As for the renegade, Charles Kane, or " Kingi," when he fled from the fight, after receiving his bullet wound, he made his way to the Turangarere village, and announced that he would not return to Te Ngutu-o-te-manu. The Maoris, however, took him back to Te Ngutu, and he and Bent were brought before Titokowaru, who was sitting in the " Wharekura." Bent appears, from his own account, to have now wearied of his terrible life amongst the Hauhaus. The war-chief fiercely questioned " Kingi," whom he suspected of an intention to return to the European camps. Then, turning to " Ringiringi," he " E Ritigi, epeak.' 3><> you erer think of leaving us and running away to the pakehas? ' , , ,- , Bent hesitatingly confessed that he now desired to return to the men of his own colour, adding, "but I will never take arms against- you." Titokowaru glared at the white man ; then, rising, he went to the door of the council-house and called to the people in the marae to enter. When they were all in the big whare, Titokowaru ordered them to close the door and the sliding-window. In, the gloom of the praying-house the people sat in terrible silence, and the white men trembled for their heads. Titokowaru, fearfully stern and menacing, addressed the pakehas. " Whakarongo mai I Listen to me. If you persist in saying that you wish to return to the white men it will be your death ! I will kill you both, with my tomahawk, now, in this house, unless you promise that you will never leave the Maoris 1 I will slay you, and your bodies will be cooked in the hangi!" "Ringiringi," in real fear of his life, made answer that he would remain with the Hauhau6 if Titoko would protect him, for he dreaded some of the chief's fiercer followers. " Kingi," too, hastened to give the required promise, but— unlike his fellow-pakeha— broke it at the first opportunity. When the people had left the- " Wharekura," Titoko spoke to " Ringiringi in a more friendly and reassuring tone, saying that he wished the pakeha to remain with him in the pa, and that in order to assure his life against the wilder spirits in the tribe gathered under his command, he would " tapu him, as Te I 7& had done two years before. For his " tapu," he explained, was a, far more effective and binding one than that of the Opunake prophet; a spell that no man dared break en pain of death. , Not many days later the traitor "Kingi" deserted from the pa, taking with him a watch, a revolver, and some clothing which he had "commandeered" from the natives. For eoine little time nothing was heard of him. At length the warriors of the "Tekau-ma-rua/' while out scouting one day in the direction of Turangarere discovered on the track leading to the settlement a note addressed to the white soldiers' commander at Waihi, stating that tne writer (Kane) and Bent were at Te Ngutu-o-te-manu, awaiting a favourable opportunity to tomahawk Titokowaru, cut off his head, and bring it in to the Government camp. Kane was evidently clearing the way for his return to civilisation, and this note— which he had left in a spot where he hoped the white troops would come across it— was obviously intended to serve as a palliative in some measure of his military offences. The deserter's letter was brought to the " Birds-Beak " pa, where it was translated by an English-speaking Maori. "Ringiringi," questioned, disclaimed any knowledge of it, and as to the incriminating reference to himself. he assured Titokowaru that "Kingi" was lying. ■ Titokowaru immediately despatched the white man and four armed Maoris after " Kauri." They found him at Te Paka village, but he disappeared that evening, and was at last caught by a party of 6even Maoris at Taiporohenui. Closely guarded, the traitor of two races was marched through the bush to.Turanparere, where the Hauhau guard confined him in a raupo hut. They killed him there that night. Bent was lying half-asleep in a whare in the settlement, whew the seren Maoris who had brought Kingi in entered, in an intensely excited state, eat down and asked him if he had heard of the judgment on his fel-low-white. Then one of them said, "Kingi" is dead." Another man, leaning forward until his passionate face almost touched Bent's, exclaimed: "Ringi, had you done as Kingi has done, we would not have killed you m the ordinary way. Your fate would have been burning aliye in the oven on the marae!" Then, after a conversation between themselves, in a strange language the white man could not understand, listen as he would— the Maoris sometimes improvise a secret tongue, by eliding certain syllables in words and adding new ones-^the executioners rose a»d left the whare. It was not until next day that "Ringiringi" learned the details of the deserter's end. "Kingi," after being given a meal, was left alone in his hut, but was

watched through crevices in the wall until he sank to sleep fatigued with his enforced tramp. He lay with a blanket partly over his head. One of the Hauhaus stole quietly into the w>are, and attempted to dsal him a fatal blow with a sharp billhook. The blow, however, only gashed his nose, and he leaped up and grappled with his assailant. The Maoris outside, hearing the noise of the scuffle, rushed in. An old man seized the white man by the leg, brought him down, and aimed a terrible blow $V him with an axe, as he lay on the floor. The other Hauhaus completed the work with their tomahawks, and the dead body of. the renegade Irishman almost ciit to pieces, was dragged out, and thrown into a disused potato-pit on the- outskirts of the village. • i i i • 1 i - . .