Maoris in Ambush.

The Maoris were in cover in the bush somewhere ahead, on the hill of the Puku-o-te-Hau, so we heard, but not a Maori was to be seen. “Will they tire on us?” was the question everyone asked, or thought. “Absurd,” said some knowing ones. Wise old John Webster did not say much, but he did not dismiss the idea as ridiculous. “You never know,” he said to me, “these Mahurehure have always been a touchy people; they still have the old warrior spirit, and they resent any injustice.”

Then he returned to the story of the Wanderer, and he was describing the fight for life that red morning when the savages killed Ben Boyd, its owner, and attacked the schooner—then in Webster's charge—when there was an interruption that quite dramatically fitted the moment—

Bang! A thunderous crash it made— then another, loaded with ball, too, made a noise like a young cannon. That Maori had put heavy charges of powder into his old tupara. It was Wiremu Makara; I saw him next day at Waima when he surrendered; a thorough-going old warrior with a perpetual grin. He had been stationed there in the fern above the road to give the signal to Hone Toia's seventy men when the pakeha column had marched into the ambush.

All this, of course, we did not know ac the time.