* * * * *

“A ship!  A ship!” The cry was taken up through the island, and the people running down the beach saw a large sailing vessel.  Boats put down and sculls flashed as sailors pulled swiftly to the shore.

They landed and the people gathered round to see and to hear what they would say.

“Come onto our ship,” said these men, who had sailed there from Peru, “and we will show you how you can be rich with many knives and much calico.”

But the islanders shook their heads and said they would stay where they were.  Then a wicked white man named Tom Rose, who lived on the island and knew how much the people were looking forward to the day when Elikana would come back to teach them, went to the traders and whispered what he knew to them.

So the Peruvian traders, with craft shining in their eyes, turned again to the islanders and said:  “If you will come with us, we will take you where you will be taught all that men can know about God.”

At this the islanders broke out into glad cries and speaking to one another said:  “Let us go and learn these things.”

The day came for sailing, and as the sun rose, hundreds of brown feet were running to the beach, children dancing with excitement, women saying “Goodbye” to their husbands—­men, who for the first time in all their lives were to leave their tiny islet for the wonderful world beyond the ocean.

So two hundred of them went on board.  The sails were hoisted and they went away never to return; sailed away not to learn of Jesus, but to the sting of the lash and the shattering bullet, the bondage of the plantations, and to death at the hands of those merciless beasts of prey, the Peruvian slavers.

* * * * *

Years passed and a little fifty-ton trading vessel came to anchor outside the reef.  One man and then another and another got down into the little boat and pulled for the shore.  Elikana had returned.  The women and children ran down to meet him—­but few men were there, for nearly all had gone.

“Where is this one?  Where is the other?” cried Elikana, with sad face as he looked around on them.

“Gone, gone,” came the answer; “carried away by the man-stealing ships.”

Elikana turned to the white missionary who had come with him, to ask what they could do.

“We will leave Joane and his wife here,” replied Mr. Murray.

* * * * *

So a teacher from Samoa stayed there and taught the people, while Elikana went to begin work in an island near by.

To-day a white lady missionary has gone to live in the Ellice Islands, and the people are Christians, and no slave-trader can come to snatch them away.

So there sailed over the waters of the wondrous isles first the boat of sunrise and then the ship of darkness, and last of all the ship of the Peace of God.  The ship of darkness had seemed for a time to conquer, but her day is now over; and to-day on that beach, as the sunlight brims over the edge of the sea, and a new Lord’s Day dawns, you may hear the islanders sing their praise to the Light of the World, Who shines upon them and keeps them safe.