Page:Tales-of-Banks-Peninsula Jacobson 2ed 1893 cropped.pdf/24
was quiet, he passed through the sleeping warriors and reached his father’s house. The door was open, and, looking in, he saw a fire burning on the hearth, and his wife, Puna hikoia, sitting beside it with her back towards him. Stepping in, he touched her gently on the shoulder, and placing his finger on his lips as a signal to keep silence, he beckoned her to come outside. Then he questioned her about what had happened, and finding that she and his children had been kindly treated, he told his wife to wake Moki after he was gone, and give him this message: “Your life was in my hands, but I gave it back to you,” Then, taking off his dogskin mat, he re entered the house, and placed it gently across Moki’s knees, and then hurried away to the citadel of Waikakahi, which stood on the hill between Birdling’s and Price's Valley, a few chains from the point where the coach road passes. The spot is still marked by the ditch and bank of the old fortress. When Puna hikoia thought her husband was safe from pursuit, she woke Moki and gave him Te Rangi tamau’s message. Moki felt the mat, and was then convinced the woman spoke the truth. He was greatly mortified at having been caught asleep, as it was always injurious to a warrior’s reputation to be caught off his guard. Issuing from the house, he roused his sleeping warriors with a mighty shout, and the expression used upon the occasion has since become proverbial—“Ngai tu whaitara mata hori,” O unbelieving Tu whaitara! The next day negotiations were entered into with Te Rangi tamau, and peace restored between him and his Ngai Tahu relations.
Ngai Tahu Taking Possession.
After the destruction of Parakakariki and the death of Tu te kawa, the various chiefs of Ngai Tahu engaged in Moki’s expedition, who had not already