the sixth day, and religiously rested on the seventh—and for many days thereafter. The Wharé-kura was consecrated by Titokowaru in the ancient heathen fashion; it was the temple of the Hauhau ritual, and here the high chief assembled his men when he wished to select war-parties for assaults and ambuscades. At the rear end of the great house was his sacred seat and sleeping-place, laid with finely woven flax mats and hedged by the invisible but potent barriers of tapu.
As often happened in Maori warfare, the first intimation the Hauhaus gave of their intention to renew the fighting was the murder of two or three incautious pakehas on the frontier.
Titokowaru's war-parties despatched on special missions usually numbered sixty men. Though consisting of this number they were termed the Tekau-ma-rua, or "The Twelve."
This term, though applied to the whole war-party, really belonged to the first twelve men, the advance-guard, who were usually the most daring and active warriors of all, but who had been selected in a peculiar manner which will be described. These twelve were tapu, and were all tino toa—tried and practised fighting-men. They numbered twelve because of the mystic force or prestige supposed to attach to that number. Titokowaru and all his Hauhaus were students of the pakeha Scriptures—Titokowaru when a young man had been a pupil in a mission
