basket. Most of the receptacles for the ammunition—hamanu the Maoris called them—were primitive affairs smacking of the bush. In size and shape they resembled the ordinary military leather cartouche-boxes, but they were simply blocks of light wood, generally pukatea timber, slightly curved in shape so as to sit well on the body when strapped, and neatly bored with from ten to eighteen holes, each of which held a cartridge. A flap of leather or skin—in the earlier days it was often a piece of tattooed human skin—covered the cartridges; and straps of leather or of dressed and ornamented flax were attached to the hamanu, which were buckled or tied round the waist or over the shoulders. A well-equipped fighting-man usually wore two hamanu, by belts over the shoulders; and at his girdle he carried his pouches for bullets and percussion-caps.
Such was the lone white man's occupation in the forest stockade that day before the looming battle.
•••••
Next morning, after the first meal of the day had been set before the warriors by their women and had been quickly eaten, the war-chief came out of his house, taiaha in hand, and walked out on to the village square in front of the sacred praying-house.
"Friends," he cried, as he stood there on the marae, "I salute you! You have eaten and are content; for the proverb says, 'When the stomach
