But the black islanders were wild men who covered their dark faces with soot and painted their lips with flaming red, yet their cruel hearts were blacker than their faces, and their anger more fiery than their scarlet lips.  They were treacherous and violent savages who would smash a skull by one blow with a great club; or leaping on a man from behind, would cut through his spine with a single stroke of their tomahawks, and then drag him off to their cannibal oven.

John Williams cared so much for his work of telling the islanders about God their Father, that he lay awake wondering how he could carry it on among these wild people.  It never crossed his mind that he should hold back to save himself from danger.  It was for this work that he had crossed the world.

“Let down the whale-boat.”  His voice rang out without a tremor of fear.  His eyes were on the canoe in which three black Erromangans were paddling across the bay.  As the boat touched the water, he and the crew of four dropped into her, with Captain Morgan and two friends, Harris and Cunningham.  The oars dipped and flashed in the morning sun as the whale-boat flew along towards the canoe.  When they reached it, Williams spoke in the dialects of his other islands, but none could the three savages in the canoe understand.  So he gave them some beads and fish-hooks as a present to show that he was a friend and again his boat shot away toward the beach.

They pulled to a creek where a brook ran down in a lovely valley between two mountains.  On the beach stood some Erromangan natives, with their eyes (half fierce, half frightened) looking out under their matted jungle of hair.

Picking up a bucket from the boat, Williams held it out to the chief and made signs to show that he wished for water from the brook.  The chief took the bucket, and, turning, ran up the beach and disappeared.  For a quarter of an hour they waited; and for half an hour.  At last, when the sun was now high in the sky, the chief returned with the water.

Williams drank from the water to show his friendliness.  Then his friend, Harris, swinging himself over the side of the boat, waded ashore through the cool, sparkling, shallow water and sat down.  The natives ran away, but soon came back with cocoa-nuts and opened them for him to drink.

* * * * *

“See,” said Williams, “there are boys playing on the beach; that is a good sign.”

“Yes,” answered Captain Morgan, “but there are no women, and when the savages mean mischief they send their women away.”

Williams now waded ashore and Cunningham followed him.  Captain Morgan stopped to throw out the anchor of his little boat and then stepped out and went ashore, leaving his crew of four brown islanders resting on their oars.

Williams and his two companions scrambled up the stony beach over the grey stones and boulders alongside the tumbling brook for over a hundred yards.  Turning to the right they were lost to sight from the water-edge.  Captain Morgan was just following them when he heard a terrified yell from the crew in the boat.