ehind, for Ropata gave no quarter, and had not his men loitered to
plunder, Te Kooti, who, still lame, was carried off on a woman's back,
must have been among their prizes. Pushing on to Ngatapa, Ropata found
it a very formidable stronghold. The _pa_ was on the summit of
an abrupt hill, steep and scarped on two sides, narrowing to a
razor-backed ridge in the rear. In front three lines of earthwork rose
one above another, the highest fourteen feet high, aided and connected
by the usual rifle-pits and covered way. Most of Ropata's men refused
to follow him against such a robbers' nest, and though the fearless
chief tried to take it with the faithful minority, he had to fall
back, under cover of darkness, and return home in a towering passion.
A month later his turn came. Whitmore arrived. Joining their forces,
he and Ropata invested Ngatapa closely, attacked it in front and
rear, and took the lowest of the three lines of intrenchment. A final
assault was to come next morning. The Hau Haus were short of food
and water, and in a desperate plight. But one cliff had been left
unwatched, and over that they lowered themselves by ropes as the
storming party outside sat waiting for the grey dawn. They were not,
however, to escape unscathed. Ropata at once sent his men in chase.
Hungry and thirsty, the fugitives straggled loosely, and were cut down
by scores or brought back. Short shrift was theirs. The Government
had decided that Poverty Bay must be revenged, and the prisoners were
forthwith shot, and their bodies stripped and tossed over a cliff.
From first to last at Ngatapa the loss to the Hau Haus was 136 killed
outright, ours but 22, half of whom were wounded only. It was the last
important engagement fought in New Zealand, and ended all fear of a
general rising. Yet in one respect the success was incomplete: Te
Kooti once more escaped. This time he reached the fastnesses of the
wild Urewera tribe, and made more than one bloodstained raid thence.
In April he pounced on Mohaka, at the northern end of the Hawkes Bay
Province, killed seven whites, fooled the occupants of a Native _pa_
into opening their gates to him, and then massacred 57 of them. But
the collapse of the insurrection on the West Coast enabled attention
to be concentrated upon the marauder. He fell back on the plateau
round Lake Taupo. There, in June, 1869, he outwitted a party of
militia-men by making his men enter their camp, pretending to be
friendlies. When t