Patusan

“ He was the chief of the second power in Patusan. The immigrants from Celebes (about sixty families that, with dependants and so on, could muster some two hundred men “wearing the kriss”) had elected him years ago for their head. The men of that race are intelligent, enterprising, revengeful, but with a more frank courage than the other Malays, and restless under oppression. They formed the party opposed to the Rajah. ”

“ Many people trust me to do that--for them. Afraid of me! That's just it. Most likely he is afraid of me because I am not afraid of his coffee." Then showing me a place on the north front of the stockade where the pointed tops of several stakes were broken, "This is where I leaped over on my third day in Patusan. They haven't put new stakes there yet. Good leap, eh?" A moment later we passed the mouth of a muddy creek. ”

“ It was generally believed that they had gone in a canoe to Tanna or Erromanga. But one morning, as I began my work at my house alone, the brave Nelwang appeared at my side!
"Hillo!" I said, "where have you come from? and where is Yakin?"
"I must not," he replied, "tell you yet. We are hid. We have lived on cocoanuts gathered at night. Yakin is well and happy. I come now to fulfil my promise: I will help you, and Yakin will help Missi Paton the woman, and we shall be your friends. I have ground to be built upon and fenced, whenever we dare ”

“ As they made their way towards shore a canoe drifted out, and lying in it, wrapped in a native mat, was the body of Bishop Patteson.
A sweet calm smile was on his face, a palm leaf was fastened upon his breast, and upon the body were five wounds—the exact number of the natives who had been kidnapped or killed.
So the good bishop died for the misdeeds of others. The natives but followed their traditions in exacting blood for blood, and their poor dark minds could not distinguish between the good and the bad white men. ”

“ We will all be killed and eaten to-day! See what a host are coming against us.”
Mothers snatched up little children and ran to hide in the bush. Others waded as far as they could into the sea with them, holding their heads above the water. The whole village collapsed in a condition of indescribable terror. Nowar, lame with his wounded knee, got a canoe turned upside-down and sat upon it where he could see the whole approaching multitude. He said,—
“Missi, sit down beside me, and pray to our Jehovah God, for if He does not send deliverance now, we are all dead men. ”

“ Thus the plan of Nasi was favored by their own customs. One night, after Family Worship—for amidst all his madness, when clear moments came, he poured out his soul in faith and love to the Lord—he said, "Litsi, I am melting! My head burns. Let us go out and get cooled in the open air."
She warned him not to go, as she heard voices whispering under the verandah. He answered a little wildly, "I am not afraid to die. Life is a curse and burden. The white men spoiled my head. If there is a hope of dying, let me go quickly and die!" ”

“ The Tannese hate Thee and Thy Worship and Thy servants; but surely, O Lord, Thou canst not forsake Tanna and leave our people to die in the darkness! Oh, make the hearts of this people soft to Thy Word and sweet to Thy Worship; teach them to fear and love Jesus; and oh, restore and spare Missi, dear Missi Paton, that Tanna may be saved!"
Touched to the very fountains of my life by such prayers, from a man once a Cannibal, I began under the breath of God's blessing to revive.
A few days thereafter, Kowia came again to me, and rousing me out of sleep, cried, "Missi, I am very weak; I am dying. ”

“ They are "strong" for the Worship. Her son is being trained up by his cousin, an Elder of the Church, to be "the good Chief of Aniwa"; so she calls him in her prayers, as she cries on God to bless and watch over him, while she is serving the Lord in at once serving the Mission family and ministering to the Natives in that foreign field.
Many years have now passed; and when lately I visited that part of Tanna, Litsi ran to me, clasped my hand, kissed it with many sobs, and cried, "O my father! God has blessed me to see you again. Is my mother, your dear wife, well? ”

“ Our gods will kill him, and we will divide all that he has amongst the men of Aniwa.' But Missi built his house on our most sacred spot. He and his people lived there, and the gods did not strike. He planted bananas there, and we said, 'Now when they eat of these they will all drop down dead, as our fathers assured us, if any one ate fruit from that ground, except only our Sacred Men themselves.' These bananas ripened. They did eat them. We kept watching for days and days, but no one died! Therefore what we say, and what our fathers have said, is not true. Our gods cannot kill them. ”

“ Stir up your gods to help you! I am not killed yet; I am perfectly well!"
At last they stood up and said, "We must delay till we have called all our Sacred Men. We will kill Missi before his next Sabbath comes round. Let all watch, for he will soon die and that without fail."
I replied, "Very good! I challenge all your Priests to unite and kill me by Sorcery or Nahak. If on Sabbath next I come again to your village in health, you will all admit that your gods have no power over me, and that I am protected by the true and living Jehovah God!" ”

“ Pointing to his warriors, he cried, "We are many! We are strong! We can always protect you."
"I am not afraid," she calmly replied.
He then led us to that chestnut tree, in the branches of which I had sat during a lonely and memorable night, when all hope had perished of any earthly deliverance, and said to her with a manifest touch of genuine emotion, "The God who protected Missi there will always protect you."
She told him that she had no fear of that kind, but explained to him that we must for the present go to Aniwa, but would return to Tanna, if the Lord opened up our way. ”

“ Now, they say, the Erromangans killed Missi Williams and the Samoan, Rarotongan, and Aneityumese Teachers, besides other white men, and no Man-of-war has punished either them or us. If they are not punished for what has been done on Erromanga, nothing else can keep them here from killing you and me and all who worship at the Mission House!"
I answered, "Nowar, let us all be strong to love and serve Jehovah Jesus. If it be for our good and His glory, He will protect us; if not, He will take us to be with Himself. We will not be killed by their bad talk. ”

“ So I, your Chief, do now firmly believe that when I die, when the bits of coral and the heaps of dust are removed which now blind my old eyes, I shall then see the Invisible Jehovah God with my soul, as Missi tells me, not less surely than I have seen the rain from the earth below. From this day, my people, I must worship the God who has opened for us the well, and who fills us with rain from below. The gods of Aniwa cannot hear, cannot help us, like the God of Missi. ”

“ As we were preparing a foundation for the Church, a huge and singular-looking round stone was dug up, at sight of which the Tannese stood aghast. The eldest Chief said, "Missi, that stone was either brought there by Karapanamun (the Evil Spirit) , or hid there by our great Chief who is dead. That is the Stone God to which our forefathers offered human sacrifices; these holes held the blood of the victim till drunk up by the Spirit. The Spirit of that stone eats up men and women and drinks their blood, as our fathers taught us. We are in greatest fear!" ”

“ Now, you people of Fotuna, you think that if you don't dance and sing and pray to your gods, you will have no crops. We once did so too, sacrificing and doing much abomination to our gods for weeks before our planting season every year. But we saw our Missi only praying to the Invisible Jehovah, and planting his yams, and they grew fairer than ours. You are weak every year before your hard work begins in the fields, with your wild and bad conduct to please your gods. ”

“ For, as they began to plunder the bedroom, Nouka said, "Leave everything. Missi will come back for his valuable things at night, and then we will get them and him also!"
So he nailed up the door, and they all marched for Nowar's. We prayed as one can only pray when in the jaws of death and on the brink of Eternity. We felt that God was near, and omnipotent to do what seemed best in His sight. When the savages were about three hundred yards off, at the foot of a hill leading up to the village, Nowar touched my knee, saying. "Missi, Jehovah is hearing! They are all standing still." ”

“ I ran a narrow risk in approaching them; they thought me an enemy, and I arrested their muskets only by a loud cry—
"I am Missi! Don't shoot; my love to you, my friends!"
Praising God for His preserving care, I reached home, and had a long refreshing sleep. The natives, on hearing next day how I had come all the way in the dark exclaimed—
"Surely any of us would have been killed! Your Jehovah God alone thus protects you and brings you safely home."
With all my heart, I said, "Yes! and He will be your protector and helper too, if only you will obey and trust in Him." ”

“ None but their Sacred Men durst touch them; and the Natives watched us hewing and digging, certain that their gods would strike us dead! That failing, their thoughts may probably have been turned to reflect that after all the Jehovah God was stronger than they.
In leveling the site, and gently sloping the sides of the ground for good drainage purposes, I had gathered together two large baskets of human bones. I said to a Chief in Tannese, "How do these bones come to be here?"
And he replied, with a shrug worthy of a cynical Frenchman, "Ah, we are not Tanna-men! We don't eat the bones!" ”

“ My friends declared, in every conceivable form of language and of graphic illustration, that they were resolved at any cost to defend me and the Worship of Jehovah, and that they would as one man punish every attempt to injure me or take my life. The orator, Taia, exclaimed, "You think that Missi is here alone, and that you can do with him as you please! No! We are now all Missi's men. We will fight for him and his rather than see him injured. Every one that attacks him attacks us. ”

“ Before his death, Patu-wairua, persuaded that the pa could not hold out much longer, desired to make peace if possible; but his conciliatory views were overruled by the less diplomatic leaders of the tribe. Patu-wairua then sat down and sang a lament for his people, whose impending fate he deplored with all the affection of a father. In the next sally he was killed in the fore-front of the fighting line, bravely sustaining the unequal contest, in which the mere was matched against the musket. ”

“ Miaki and Nouka said, "If you will keep Missi and his Worship, take him with you to your own land, for we will not have him to live at the Harbor."
Ian, the great Inland Chief, rose in wrath and said, "On whose lands does the Missi live, yours or ours? Who fight against the Worship and all good, who are the thieves and murderers, who tell the lies, you or we? We wish peace, but you will have war. We like Missi and the Worship, but you hate them and say, 'Take him to your own land!' It is our land on which he now lives ”

“ Though weak and excited, he scrambled back to his tribe in great exhaustion and terror. He informed the Missionary that they had put him down amongst sick people, red and hot with fever, and that he feared their sickness was upon him. I am ashamed to say that these Sandal-wood and other Traders were our own degraded countrymen; and that they deliberately gloried in thus destroying the poor Heathen. A more fiendish spirit could scarcely be imagined; but most of them were horrible drunkards, and their traffic of every kind amongst these islands was, generally speaking, steeped in human blood. ”

“ Patsy took some thought to answer, and when at last he spoke, his words overwhelmed every one with astonishment and fear. It seemed that the devil was afraid that our village was becoming too good; for being himself so busy in Tonga and Fiji and the White Country, he could not give our place the proper oversight; and was mortified to see that every Aunu’u dead person went straight to heaven. Thereupon he had run this cable from hell, and had hired Patsy for a hundred dollars a month to warn him when anything bad was happening. ”

“ After a while of great anxiety on our part, he returned, saying,—
“Missi, this is a dark land. The people of this land do dark works. At the boiling spring they have cooked and feasted upon the slain. They have washed the blood into the stream; they have bathed there till all the waters are red. I cannot get water to make your tea. What shall I do?”
Dr. Inglis told him that he must try for water elsewhere, till the rains came and cleansed the polluted stream; and that, meanwhile, instead of tea, we would drink from the cocoa-nut, as they had often done before. ”

“ At last old Nouka spoke out for all and said, “Captain Paddan and all the Traders tell us that the Worship causes all our sickness and death. They will not trade with us, nor sell us tobacco, pipes, 298powder, balls, caps, and muskets, till we kill our Missi like the Erromangans, but after that they will send a Trader to live among us and give us plenty of all these things. We love Missi. But when the Traders tell us that the Worship makes us sick, and when they bribe us with tobacco and powder to kill him or drive him away, some believe them and our hearts do bad conduct to Missi. ”

“ We trusted in Jehovah Jesus, and pressed on in flight.
A second hostile party encountered us, and with great difficulty we also got away from them. Soon thereafter a friendly company crossed our path. We learned from them that the enemies had slaughtered other two of Manuman's men, and burned several villages with fire. Another party of the enemy encountered us, and were eager for our lives. But this time Faimungo withstood them firmly, his men encircled us, and he said, "I am not afraid now, Missi; I am feeling stronger near my own land!" ”