Page:Adventures of Kimble Bent.djvu/228

200 waist—trouserless, bootless, hatless. In everything but skin a Maori.

"It was exciting," says the white man, "but none the less it was slavery. Many a night those times, when I lay down on my flax whariki, though I was dog-tired, I could not sleep—thinking, thinking over the past, and dreading what the future might bring me. Many and many a time I wished myself dead and out of it all."

What furious, what Homeric toil was that pa-building! Those wild brown men, spurred by the reports of speedy attack, laboured with incredible energy and swiftness. The Moturoa fortified hold—which later became known as Papa-tihakehake, because of the battle which befell here—was completed in three days—stockaded, trenched, parapeted, and rifle-pitted—ready for the enemy!

Behind the strong tree-trunk stockade there were trenches and casemated rifle-pits from which the defenders could fire between the lower interstices in the great war-fence; behind the trenches again was a parapet from which a second line of Hauhaus could deliver their fire over the top of the palisade. It was one of the strongest works yet constructed by the Maoris, and one that was not likely to be stormed except at the cost of many lives.