Across the Open Plain.

“After we got out of the bush into the tussock country, we lay down and rested for a few minutes. We could hear nothing, either of the Hauhaus or of our comrades. We rose and continued our flight, making for Fort Galatea, forty miles away to the north. We travelled on all night and after a time found a beaten horse track under foot, leading in the direction of Galatea. We hurried on all the next day, along the left bank of the Rangitaiki. We kept off the open track in the daytime.

“It was very cold, raw weather, but the excitement and the speed at which we were travelling kept me from feeling it as much as I would otherwise have done in my naked condition. My feet suffered most, they were terribly cut about by the fern and the pumice track. We reached Fort Galatea at last that evening and gave the news of the attack on the camp. My feet were quite poisoned by the rough journey and it was a long time before they were right again.

“The other three survivors straggled in long after us. Sergeant Dette and Trooper Lockwood reached the Fort after spending three nights and two days on the Kaingaroa Plain. Neither of them saw the other all that time. Cornet Angus Smith, our officer, did not come in until ten days after his escape form the camp. He was in a very bad way when he was found wandering about outside the redoubt by a search party.

“When we made that dash for the bush, I believe the three half-caste troopers from Tauranga were lying down in their hut and they may have been killed there. Many years afterwards I heard from a Maori in Opotiki who had been one of Te Kooti's men at Opepe that our big Sergeant-Major Slattery was the only one who made much of a fight. He picked up a stick or stone from the ground and was only killed after a struggle. George Stephenson was a very big man, too; it was a wonder that the Maoris missed him, he was so good a target when he ran for the bush.”