Page:Adventures of Kimble Bent.djvu/190

162 he was a clever artist in water-colours and a good miniature painter, and he had written a book of travels in Mexico, "Mitla," illustrated with his own sketches. In the Waikato War he and Captain William Jackson had led their Forest Rangers in several sharp skirmishes, and in Taranaki he was in the thick of the bush-fighting, and had tramped with his veterans through the forest in General Chute's great march from Ketemarae northwards to Mataitawa and New Plymouth, round the back of the Mountain.

He was a good shot, a finished swordsman, and could throw a bowie-knife with deadly accuracy. It was in Mexico that he learned the use of the knife, and he never tired of impressing on his men its advantages in bush fighting.

Swarthy of visage, with long, black, curling hair, upon which a forage cap was cocked at a defiant angle, his grey flannel shirt carelessly open at the neck, his trousers tucked into long boots that came nearly up to his knees, a bowie-knife in a sheath and a revolver at his belt, a naked sword, long and curved, in his hand—this was von Tempsky on the war-path, a picturesquely brigand-like figure, upon whom the soldiers' eyes rested with wonder and a good deal of admiration.

Of that disastrous attack on "The Beak-of-the