New Zealand forces, led by Colonel Whitmore, seeking to surprise Titoko in his forest-den.
Advancing silently in skirmishing order through the bush, they took cover, waiting for light enough to fight by. There were detachments of four divisions of the Armed Constabulary, many of them veteran bush-fighters, and men of the Patea Rifles and Patea Cavalry. There, too, came Kepa's Whanganui Maoris, with rifle and tomahawk, old hands on the war-trail, and eager for another brush with their ancient enemies of Taranaki.
There were two hundred Government men fronting the fort, but the fighting men behind the palisades did not, according to Maori accounts, number many more than half the number.
Amongst Titokowaru's men, however, there were some of the most renowned bush scouts and warriors in Taranaki, including—besides Kātené, the wideawake sentry—such men as the veteran Te Wakatapa-ruru, Paraone Tuteré, one of the best Hauhau shots, Timoti, the fiercest of the cannibals of Nga-Rauru, and the active young warrior Tutangé Waionui, he who had despatched von Tempsky on the battle-field of Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu. Tutangé says that he was asleep in a tent when Kātené gave the alarm that morning. He was with his tribe, the Nga-Rauru, most ferocious of all Maori bush-fighters, who occupied one end of the pa; the other tribes holding the fort were Ngati-Ruanui and
