Unlike most _pas_, theirs was well supplied with food and water, and was covered on three sides by swamps and a lagoon.

A gallant attempt made on a dark night to burn the besiegers' canoes on the sea-beach was foiled by heavy rain.

At last Rauparaha, reaching the stockade by skilful sapping, piled up brushwood against it, albeit many of his men were shot in the process.
For weeks the wind blew the wrong way for the besiegers and they could only watch their piles--could not fire them.

All the while the soothsayers in the beleaguered fort perseveringly chanted incantations and prayed to the wind-god that the breeze might not change.

At length one morning the north-west wind blew so furiously away from the walls that the besieged boldly set alight to the brushwood from their side.
But the wilder the north-west wind of New Zealand, the more sudden and complete may be the change to the south-west.