On the other hand, when the besiegers resolved on a last and grand assault they sent notice thereof the day before to the garrison.  Yet, after that, the latter lay down like tired animals to sleep the night through, while Barrett and his comrades watched and waited anxiously.  The stormers came with the dawn, and were over the stockade before the Whites could rouse the sleepers.  Then, however, after a desperate tussle—­one of those sturdy hand-to-hand combats in which the Maori fighter shone—­the assailants were cut down or driven headlong out.  With heavy loss the astonished Waikatos recoiled in disgust, and their retreat did not cease till they reached their own country.

Even this victory could not save Taranaki.  With the fear of fresh raids in their mind the survivors of its people, together with their White allies, elected to follow where so many of their tribes had already gone—­to Cook’s Straits, in the footsteps of Rauparaha.  So they, too, chanted their farewells to their home, and turning southward, marched away.  When the Waikatos had once more swept down the coast, and had finally withdrawn, it was left empty and desolate.  A remnant, a little handful, built themselves a pa on one of the Sugar-Loaves.  A few more lurked in the recesses of Mount Egmont.  Otherwise the fertile land was a desert.  A man might toil along the harbourless beaches for days with naught for company but the sea-gulls and the thunder of the surf; while inland,—­save for a few birds,—­the rush of streams and pattering of mountain-showers on the leaves were all that broke the silence of lifeless forests.

To the three warrior chiefs, whose feuds and fights have now been outlined, must be added a fourth and even more interesting figure.  Rauparaha, fierce among the fierce, cunning among the cunning, was not only perhaps the most skilful captain of his time, not only a devastator second only to Hongi, but was fated to live on into another era and to come into sharp and fatal collision with the early colonists.  One result among others is that we have several portraits of him with both pen and pencil.  Like Waharoa and Hongi he was small, spare and sinewy; an active man even after three-score years and ten.  In repose his aquiline features were placid and his manners dignified.  But in excitement, his small, keen, deep-sunken eyes glared like a wild beast’s, and an overhanging upper lip curled back over long teeth which suggested to colonists—­his enemies—­the fangs of a wolf.  Born near the picturesque inlet of Kawhia, he first won fame as a youth by laying a clever ambuscade for a Waikato war-party.  When later the chief of his tribe was dying and asked doubt-fully of his councillors who there was to take his place, Rauparaha calmly stepped forward and announced himself as the man for the office.  His daring seemed an omen, and he was chosen.  In 1819 he did a remarkable thing.  He had been on a raid to Cook’s Straits, and when there had