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Only two of the Ngapuhi were spared, and as the blind soothsayer's blood was too sacred to be shed, the victors pounded him to death with their fists. Never again did the Ngapuhi come southwards. So for the remaining years of his life Waharoa was free to turn upon the Arawas, the men who had slain his father and mother.
In the Hauraki country he could neither crush nor entrap the chief Te Waharoa, as cunning a captain and as bloodthirsty a savage as himself. His enemies, indeed, getting muskets and gaining courage, came once far north of the Auckland isthmus to meet him; and though he beat them there in a pitched battle, it cost him the life of his eldest son.
Chief among these was that Tamihana Tarapipipi who appeared before us in an earlier chapter. From the light-hearted youthfulness of the "bonnet" episode, this young son of the great Waharoa had passed into a grave and thoughtful manhood. After his father's death, his ability had led to his being elected chief instead of his elder brother.
For some days longer the journey up the river continued, the object being to gain an interview with the chief potentate of the region, the celebrated Waharoa. On leaving the river a dreary march began through woods and swamps. Henry Williams was carried on two poles by native bearers who often sank in mud up to their chests.
In the early dawn, after a night spent in war dances and hideous yelling, some of them burst out by the side towards the lake, and rushed past or jumped over the soldiers who were resting there. A heavy fire, poured into them from their rear, killed a great many of them. Seeing this, a large party of the Maoris, and among them Te Waharoa and the Maori king, stayed in the redoubt.
"Oh! that I had not saved him!" groaned the old chief, when, nearly two generations later, Te Waharoa exacted ample vengeance from the Rotorua people. After twenty years of a slave's life, Te Waharoa was allowed to go back to his people.
But it had Tamihana Waharoa with his model pa, and its graveyard contained the grave of Tarore, "who, being dead, yet spake." Her father, Ngakuku, did not indulge in useless grief, but in 1839 accompanied Wilson from Tauranga along the Bay of Plenty to Opotiki near its eastern end, and there they founded a station amid a people more savage than any yet encountered.
Hongi once dead and the Ngapuhi beaten off, the always formidable Waikato tribes began in turn to play the part of raiders. At their head was Te Whero Whero, whom in the rout at Mataki-taki a friendly hand had dragged out of the suffocating ditch of death. Without the skill of Hongi, or the craft of Te Waharoa, he was a keen and active fighter.
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