Page:Adventures of Kimble Bent.djvu/215

Rh tahu ki te ahi!" ("Oh, friends, men and women—I salute you! Bury the sacred bodies of the slain, lying before us here. And burn them with fire! It is not well that they should be left to offend. They must be consumed in fire!")

At this command the people dispersed to collect fuel for a funeral pyre. They brought logs and branches of dry tawa timber from the surrounding bush and from the firewood piles in the rear of the wharés, and a huge pile of wood was built in the centre of the marae. Even the little naked children came running up with their little hands full of sticks to cast upon the heap.

All the mutilated bodies of the white soldiers—except the one that had been dragged away—were lifted up and placed on the roughly levelled top of the pyre, which was about four feet high and about fifteen feet long.

Titokowaru ordered his men to place von Tempsky's body on the fire-pile first, and then lay the others on top of it. The chief suspected, perhaps, that some of the Hauhaus wished to cook and eat Manu-rau's body, and he so far respected his gallant foeman even in death that he resolved to spare it that last degradation.

So the major's body went on first, and then around and above it were heaped the other soldiers. On top of the bodies more wood was thrown.

Bent's hut door was now unfastened, and the