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Rh announced that he had been sent to fetch the strange pakeha to that settlement.

"What do they want with me?" asked Bent, when Tito told him that the envoy was waiting for him.

"They want to see the colour of your skin," replied Tito.

Bent, in alarm, begged Tito not to send him to Keteonetea, for he greatly feared that he would be killed.

Tito reassured his white man, telling him that the Keteonetea people were his relatives, and that he was not to be alarmed at their demeanour, because they would not harm him.

The messenger and his white charge tramped away through the bush to the village, a lonely little spot hemmed in by the dense forests—long since hewn away and replaced by grassy fields and dairy farms. A palisade surrounded the kainga; within were clusters of large well-built reed wharés, and the inevitable Niu pole stood in the middle of the marae.

Bent found a large number of Maoris, about three hundred, assembled on the marae, the village parade ground. The scene still lives vividly in his memory—an even wilder, more savage spectacle than that of his first day at Tito's pa. The men's faces were painted red, in token of war—red smudges of ochre on their cheeks and red lines drawn across