"hundred-eyed" ruru, the bush-owl, was heard, as the bird-sentry of the night hours cried his watchword from the forest or a perch on some tall palisade-post. Yet not all eyes were closed in the pa, for the Hauhaus, grown wise by much hard experience, did not neglect the posting of sentries, and a sentinel watched from the platform in the angle-tower. At intervals he cried his watch-cry, or raised his voice in a night-song that rose and fell in measured cadences like a tangi wail.
The most dreaded hour in Maori warfare was the dark, dank hour just before the dawn, and then it was well to be on the qui vive, for Kepa's dusky forest-rangers and their white comrades the A.C.'s had a truly unpleasant fashion of attacking their enemies at most unholy, shivery times, when man slept soundest. So the watchmen in the tower were enjoined to extra vigilance in the early morning hours. And, as in the olden Maori days, out rang the voice of the high sentinel, chanting his ancient "Whakaara-pa," his "All's well" song, to Tarioa and Kopu, the first and morning stars.
This is one of the songs he cried, an old watchchant of the Ngati-Toa tribe of Kawhia:
Translation. | ||
Kia hiwa e! Kia hiwa! Kia hia e tenei tuku, Kia hiwa e tera tuku; Kia whakarongo koe |
Now watchful be, O watchful be, On this side and on that! Bend ears to every sound. High up, high up |