give him a warm
reception if he came. Lieutenant Philpott, the commander of the _Hazard_
ship of war, came ashore to drill them, and to mount one or two cannon.
Yet Heke, lurking among the hills, contrived by a sudden dash to capture
Lieutenant Philpott. However, after dealing courteously with him, he
released him.

#5. Kororarika Burnt.#--On 11th March, 1845, at daylight, Heke with 200
men crept up to the flagstaff, surprised the men in the house attached,
and when twenty men came out of the lower block-house to help their
friends on the top of the hill, he attacked them and drove them down to
the town in the hollow beside the shore. Close to the beach was a little
hill, and on the top of this hill stood a house with a garden surrounded
by a high fence. Behind this the soldiers and all the people of
Kororarika took refuge. From the rocky high ground round about the
Maoris fired down upon them, while the white men fired back, and the
guns of the _Hazard_, which had come close in to the shore, kept up a
constant roar. For three hours this lasted, ten white men being killed
as well as a poor little child, while thirty-four of the natives were
shot dead. The Maoris were preparing to retreat when, by some accident,
the whole of the powder that the white men possessed was exploded. Then
they had to save themselves. The women and children were carried out
boat after boat to the three ships in the harbour. Then the men went
off, and the Maoris, greatly surprised, crept cautiously down into the
deserted town. They danced their war dance; sent off to their parents in
the ships some white children who had been left behind, and then set
fire to the town, destroying property to the value of L50,000.

Heke's fame now spread among the Maoris. When the settlers from
Kororarika were landed at Auckland, homeless, desperate, and haggard, a
panic set in, and some settlers sold their houses and land for a trifle,
and departed. Others with more spirit enrolled themselves as volunteers.
Three hundred men were armed and drilled. Fortifications were thrown up
round the town, and sentries posted on all the roads leading to it. At
Wellington and Nelson also men were drilled and stockades were built for
defence.

#6. First Maori War.#--But Honi Heke was afraid of the soldiers, and when
Colonel Hulme arrived from Sydney with several companies he withdrew to
a strong pah of his, eighteen miles inland. Hulme landed at the nearest
point of the