Papeiha and his brown friends, with their wives, went ashore.  Night fell, and they were preparing to sleep, when, above the thud and hiss of the waves they heard the noise of approaching crowds.  The footsteps and the talking came nearer, while the little group of Christians listened intently.  At last a chief, carried by his warriors, came near.  He was the fiercest and most powerful chief on the island.

When he came close to Papeiha and his friends, the chief demanded that the wife of one of the Christian teachers should be given to him, so that he might take her away with him as his twentieth wife.  The teachers argued with the chief, the woman wept; but he ordered the woman to be seized and taken off.  She resisted, as did the others.  Their clothes were torn to tatters by the ferocious Rarotongans.  All would have been over with the Christians, had not Tapairu,[20] a brave Rarotongan woman and the cousin of the king, opposed the chiefs and even fought with her hands to save the teacher’s wife.  At last the fierce chief gave in, and Papeiha and his friends, before the sun had risen, hurried to the beach, leapt into their canoe and paddled swiftly to the ship.

“We must wait and come to this island another day when the people are more friendly,” said every one—­except Papeiha, who never would turn back.  “Let me stay with them,” said he.

He knew that he might be slain and eaten by the savage cannibals on the island.  But without fuss, leaving everything he had upon the ship except his clothes and his native Testament, he dropped into his canoe, seized the paddle, and with swift, strong strokes that never faltered, drove the canoe skimming over the rolling waves till it leapt to the summit of a breaking wave and ground upon the shore.

The savages came jostling and waving spears and clubs as they crowded round him.

“Let us take him to Makea.”

So Papeiha was led to the chief.  As he walked he heard them shouting to one another, “I’ll have his hat,” “I’ll have his jacket,” “I’ll have his shirt.”

At length he reached the chief, who looked and said, “Speak to us, O man, that we may know why you persist in coming.”

“I come,” he answered, looking round on all the people, “so that you may all learn of the true God, and that you, like all the people in the far-off islands of the sea, may take your gods made of wood, of birds’ feathers and of cloth, and burn them.”

A roar of anger and horror burst from the people.  “What!” they cried, “burn the gods!  What gods shall we then have?  What shall we do without the gods?”

They were angry, but there was something in the bold face of Papeiha that kept them from slaying him.  They allowed him to stay, and did not kill him.

Soon after this, Papeiha one day heard shrieking and shouting and wild roars as of men in a frenzy.  He saw crowds of people round the gods offering food to them; the priests with faces blackened with charcoal and with bodies painted with stripes of red and yellow, the warriors with great waving head-dresses of birds’ feathers and white sea-shells.  Papeiha, without taking any thought of the peril that he rushed into, went into the midst of the people and said: