These led them such a life that they tried running away once more, and lived for a time in a cave, subsisting chiefly on fern-root.

A period of this diet, joined to their ever-present fear of being found out and killed, drove them back to Maori slavery.

From this they finally escaped to the _Active_--more like walking spectres than men, says an eye-witness--and resigned, if needs must, to endure once more the tender mercies of convict life in Botany Bay.
More valuable whites were admitted into the tribes, and married to one, sometimes two or three, wives.

The relatives of these last occasionally resorted to an effectual method of securing their fidelity by tattooing them.

One of them, John Rutherford, survived and describes the process.