Page:Adventures of Kimble Bent.djvu/196

168 was one of the rules observed by Titokowaru's war-parties; the spoils of war must be taken to the chief for division. I was given the revolver, and used it afterwards in the war.

"That is the story of how von Tempsky was killed. I hope you will, when the opportunity comes, tell the pakehas that the picture which represents Manu-rau as being shot by a Maori who was perched up in a rata-tree is not correct. You pakehas will not regard my action in tomahawking Manu-rau as a kohuru, a murder? Well, then, as you say, it was in the course of war, and it was quite tika and correct. I was but a very young man then, just a boy, and it was my first battle."

By the side of this I will put Whakawhiria's account. Whakawhiria lives at the big native village of Parihaka, the old-time town of the prophets Te Whiti and Tohu. His narrative was given in May, 1909, to the Rev. T. G. Hammond, of Opunake, Wesleyan missionary to the Taranaki Maoris, who has sent it on to me to supplement the other versions of the fight. Whakawhiria's story is generally accepted as authentic by the Taranaki Maoris; most of the survivors of the fight agree that it was his father Te Rangi-hina-kau, as he says, who shot von Tempsky.

Whakawhiria was a young man of eighteen or so at the time of this engagement, but though so young he was already a veteran on the war-path. He had