Page:Adventures of Kimble Bent.djvu/85

Rh little clouds of steam curled up as the women, with lively chatter, uncovered the hangis and arranged the well-cooked food in little round flax baskets, which they presently carried off, women and girls in a double line, keeping time with a merry old dance-song—the lilt of the "tuku-kai," the "food-bringing"—as they marched on to the green marae and laid the steaming meal before their lounging lords.

It was all very pleasant and idyllic from the point of view of the brown bushmen. But "Ringiringi," the pakeha-Maori, though he led by no means a hard life now that the heaviest work of the year was over, had an uneasy mind. He was—or had been—a civilised man, and he could not forget; moreover, he often woke from unpleasant dreams. One was a vision of a British regiment charging him with fixed bayonets and pinning him against the palisades of his pa. Fervently he hoped that he would not be in the fort when the troops marched to the assault, and that the Hauhaus would not compel him to level a tupara against his one-time comrades, the old "Die-Hards."

This peaceful state of things did not endure for long. In a few days—it was early in the year 1866—the long-expected attack on Otapawa was delivered. Before the troops came, however, the prophet of the pa ordered all the old people and most of the women and children to retire to the