The Death of Von Tempsky.

Four years later, after a return for a time to farming work at the Hunua, we find Roberts holding a commission as Sub-Inspector in the newly-organised Armed Constabulary Field Force, of which Mr. Commissioner St. John Brannigan was the head (though he did not take the field himself). Sub-Inspector was equivalent to Captain, and it was by the military title rather than the official police term that the blueuniformed soldiers preferred to be called. Roberts was with his old comrade Von Tempsky, now Major, in Lieut.-Colonel McDonnell's force which made the attack on the Hauhau bush stockade at Te Ngutu-o-te-manu, on the South Taranaki plain, in 1868. Many accounts have been given of that disastrous affair, and scarcely any two stories agree, and naturally so, for in the confusion of skirmishing in the tangled bush, amidst smoke and din and the striking down of men by bullets from unseen foes, every man sees a battle from his own point of view and has a very circumscribed area of observation.

It was here that Von Tempsky was killed. When Roberts last saw him he was cutting away rather listlessly with his sword at a hanging tree-vine, and expressing his disgust at the mismanagement of the attack. He and Roberts waited in vain for the order to rush the Hauhau stockade, which could have been taken. It was after Roberts moved away to get a view of the position that the fatal bullet found a target in his friend.