Page:Adventures of Kimble Bent.djvu/148

120 Some of the warriors, belted and painted, carried long Enfield muzzle-loaders, some double-barrelled guns, some stolen or captured carbines, and a variety of other fire-arms. Each rifleman's equipment included a short tomahawk thrust through his flax girdle; a few—the storming-party—were armed with long-handled tomahawks, murderously effective weapons in a hand-to-hand combat. Though a Winter's night, most of them were scantily clad, as befitted a war-party. Some wore shirts and other part-European dress; some only flax mats and waist-shawls.

Up and down the village square, as the Hauhau captain, Hauwhenua, led his band out into the forest, strode Titokowaru, in a blaze of fanatic exaltation, crying his commands to the warriors. Waving his plumed taiaha, he shouted, "Kill them! Eat them! Let them not escape you!" And as 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.

In single file the Hauhau soldiers struck into the black woods. As they entered the deeper thicknesses of the forest, where not a star could be seen for the density and unbroken continuity of the roof of foliage above them, they chanted this brief karakia, a charm invoking supernatural aid to clear