Prisoners were kept in poor conditions with minimal health care and forced to build roads and barracks and plough cultivations without the aid of animals. In April 1867, a year after their arrival, prisoners were told they would not be repatriated until East Coast land confiscations had been determined. By 1868 the mood of the exiles darkened as they realised there were no plans to return them to New Zealand. On 4 July 1868 Te Kooti led a carefully planned and executed breakout from their internment, overpowering guards, seizing arms and ammunition and commandeering a schooner, the "Rifleman", which was moored at the settlement of Waitangi. A total of 298 people—163 men, 64 women and 71 children—sailed out of the Chatham Islands, arriving at a secluded cove at Whareongaonga, south of Turanga (modern-day Gisborne), on 9 July. During his time of exile Te Kooti claimed he experienced a series of spiritual revelations that formed the basis of what became known as the Ringatū ("Raised hand") faith, which was strongly influenced by Old Testament prophecies of divine direction and deliverance from enemies. The apparently unerring fulfillment of Te Kooti's predictions won him the unwavering support of other "whakarau" (prisoners), and in a letter given to the crew of the "Rifleman" after arrival in New Zealand, he wrote that Jehovah had intervened to deliver his people from their captivity. The letter also asked that they be left in peace and not be pursued as they made their way to the interior of the North Island. While in the Chathams Te Kooti also learned of the sale of disputed Poverty Bay land in which he held an interest. The transactions involved many of those, both Māori and European settler, whom he later killed in his Poverty Bay campaigns. On the morning of 12 July 1868, three emissaries arrived at Whareongaonga, passing on a demand from Major Reginald Biggs, Turanga's resident magistrate and militia commanding officer, that they were to surrender their arms and await the government's decision on their future. Te Kooti rejected the demand, declaring he would fight only if he was pursued and attacked. As Biggs scrambled to assemble a force with which to confront Te Kooti at Whareongaonga—his militia volunteers, the Mounted Rifles under Captain Charles Westrup, as well as other men from Wairoa and Napier—the "whakarau", whose fighting force then numbered about 60, set off on 14 July, bound for the King Country, where Te Kooti hoped to challenge the "mana" of Māori King Tāwhiao, who similarly claimed to be the mouthpiece of God.