meat—white man—back into the cask and stayed their hunger on good honest potatoes.
The question was, who pickled the pakeha? A Hauhau prisoner some time later enlightened the Government Maoris. A scouting party from Titoko's camp had dodged down to Manawapou, and discovered there, not far from the redoubt—which had been temporarily vacated by the troops—a new-made grave. Opening it, they disinterred a white man's corpse. In sheer devilment they cut it up, put it into a cask of brine that stood handy, and then re-covered the cask and left it.
It would have been an exquisite joke, from the cannibal Hauhau view-point, had the Government soldiers unknowingly helped themselves to a joint of white man!
Titokowaru's entrenched position at Otoia was not a strong one, and shortly he, after a council of war with his principal men, decided to abandon it and build a new bush pa, which should be as nearly impregnable as a Maori fort could be.
So one morning a long line of Hauhaus of all ages and both sexes—the armed men in front and rear—bearing their simple belongings in flax-basket pikaus on their backs, left the Otoia redoubt, and marched away through the bush to a spot about twelve miles from the mouth of the Patea River and a mile and a half from the old Okotuku pa, which had been attacked by the
