Tito laughed. "Ringiringi is going to be useful to us," he said. "Besides, he is a Maori now."
Next morning Tito despatched the white man and an old Maori named Te Waka-tapa-ruru through the forest to Te Putahi, a stockaded village some ten miles away, on the banks of the Whenuakura River, with a message to the people of that pa requesting them to return the colours for which the king had sent. This mission accomplished. Bent stayed a while in Te Putahi, where he was treated with much kindness, because of his association with Tito.
On the morning after his arrival a man came to his sleeping-hut and, without saying a word, placed on the mat before him a couple of blankets and a watch.
The history of the watch was afterards explained to him by Te Waka-tapa-ruru. This warrior was a typical old bush-fighter. He had a very big head; he was tattooed on the cheeks; he was wiry and wonderfully quick on his legs. He told Bent, with a devilish grin on his corrugated face, that the watch had belonged to a white man, called Paratene, whom he—Te Waka—had shot the previous year at Otoia, on the Patea River. This pakeha was Mr. C. Broughton, a native interpreter who had been sent on a special Government mission to the Hauhaus, and was barbarously
