And here Bent was an eye-witness of the most desperately daring deed he had ever seen.
A fiery old tattooed warrior, by name Te Waka-tapa-ruru—the Hauhau mentioned in an earlier chapter as the man who had killed Charles Broughton, Government Native Agent, on the Patea River, in 1865—was in a quiver of excitement while the garrison awaited the assault, and could hardly be silenced until the attack was delivered.
When the pakeha storming party rushed up at the double, the old man was one of the first to open fire on them with his tupara. And then, when the order "Kokiritia!" ("Charge!") was given, and the Hauhaus rushed out to engage the Government men who were trying to work round to the rear of the pa, he led the wild charge.
Perfectly naked, except for the broad flax waist-girdle, which held his short-handled tomahawk, and gripping his double-barrelled gun, the tall old savage took a great running jump at the stockade from the inner parapet, and leaped clean over it!
Yelling a Pai-mariré battle-cry as he rose from the ground after his extraordinary leap, he snatched the tomahawk from his belt, and charged straight for the advancing whites.
It was a fit of whakamomori—sheer blind desperation, utter recklessness of death.
Possibly the furious old fanatic imagined that his Hauhau angel and his mesmeric password, "Hapa!
