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To Porter's amazement, the Tai-o-hae men, surmounting incredible difficulties, laid the gun in position, and as the Hapaas scorned the futile-looking contrivance and declared that they would not make peace with the whites, Porter sent his first assistant with forty men, armed with muskets and accompanied by natives carrying these weapons and ammunition for the cannon.
He saw that if he had tried that entrance to the valley again, he would have failed as before. Only heavy artillery could have conquered that mighty stronghold. From the beach the Americans climbed by an easier ascent into the mountains, leaving a desolated valley behind them, and after feasting with the Hapaas, they marched back to Tai-o-hae almost dead with fatigue.
They heard the echo in the blowing of war-conches, shouts of defiance, and the squealings of the pigs which the Typees began to catch for removal to the rear. The Hapaas were none too pleasant to the whites, and had to be forced by threats to bringing and cooking hogs and breadfruit.
In response, Porter landed a six-pound gun, tremendously heavy, and said that if the Tai-o-hae tribe would carry it to the top of a high mountain overlooking the Hapaa valley, he would drive the Hapaas from the hills where they stood and threatened to descend.
First he built a strong fort, assisted by the Tai-o-haes and Hapaas, and there he took possession of the Marquesas in the name of the United States. On November 19, 1813, the American flag was run up over the fort, a salute of seventeen guns was fired from the artillery mounted there and answered from the ships in the bay.
At daybreak they found half the ammunition useless, and themselves wearied, while the steepness of the track to the valley, and its treacherous condition after the rain made it wise to seek the Hapaas for rest and food. But, first, they fired a volley to let friendly tribes know they still had serviceable weapons, and as threat and warning to the Typees.
He listened and repeated, however, with patriotic protests unuttered, and prepared to assist Porter in his contemplated war against the Typees. A week later one of the warships, with five boats and ten war-canoes, sailed for the Typee beach. Ten canoes of Hapaas joined them there.
The Hapaas and other allies came down from the hills and began to discuss the victory of the Typees, with fear in their voices and a certain disdain of the whites. Porter ordered his men into the boats to return to the ship, but scarcely had they reached it when the Typees rushed on the Hapaas and drove them into the water. Porter returned to Tai-o-hae.
In the afternoon the victorious forces descended, carrying five dead. The Hapaas, fighting with stones flung from slings and with spears, had taken refuge, to the number of four or five thousand, in a fortress on the brow of a hill. Not one of them had been wounded, and from their impassable heights they threw down jeers and showers of stones upon the retiring Tai-o-haes and their white allies.
The battle began with a great roar of exploding gunpowder, and from the ships the Americans saw their men driving from height to height the Hapaas, who fought as they retreated, daring the enemy to follow them. A friendly native bore the American flag and waved it in triumph as he skipped from crag to crag, well in the rear of the white men who pursued the fleeing enemy.
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