Page:Adventures of Kimble Bent.djvu/283

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CHAPTER XXI

THE FALL OF TAURANGA-IKA

Shot and shell—The fort abandoned—Flight of the Hauhaus—The chase—The fight at Karaka Flat—Mutilation of the dead—The ambuscade at the peach-grove—The sergeant's leg—Rewards for Hauhau heads.

Skirmishing up over the fern slopes of Tauranga-ika came Whitmore's Armed Constabulary and Kepa's kilted guerillas from the Wanganui. Some of the A.C.'s advanced to within about two hundred yards of the stockade, and took cover in a ditch which ran parallel with the front palisading; here they opened fire. The main body had pitched camp about half a mile from the pa front. At the same time Armstrong guns were brought up and posted on the left front of the stockade, and shell-fire was opened on the rebel position at a range of five hundred yards.

But most of the Hauhaus were safe in their trenches and their covered ways, and the shells and bullets passed harmlessly over them. A few of the young bloods danced and yelled defiance from above-ground. On the stockade was the Hauhau tekoteko, the dummy figure which they worked in marionette-

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