FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 31:  F[)a]-ee-v[)a] t[)a] l[=a].]

CHAPTER X

THE ARROWS OF SANTA CRUZ

Bishop Patteson

(Date of Incident—­August 15th, 1864)

The brown crew of The Southern Cross breathed freely again as the anchor swung into place and the schooner began to nose her way out into the open Pacific.  They were hardened to dangers, but the Island of Tawny Cannibals had strained their nerve, by its hourly perils from club and flying arrow.  The men were glad to see their ship’s bows plunge freely again through the long-backed rollers.

As they set her course to the Island of Santa Cruz the crew talked together of the men of the island they had left.  In his cabin sat a great bronzed bearded man writing a letter to his own people far away on the other side of the world.  Here are the very words that he wrote as he told the story of one of the dangers through which they had just passed on the island: 

“As I sat on the beach with a crowd about me, most of them suddenly jumped up and ran off.  Turning my head I saw a man (from the boat they saw two) coming to me with club uplifted.  I remained sitting and held out a few fish-hooks to him, but one or two men jumped up and, seizing him by the waist, forced him off.

“After a few minutes I went back to the boat.  I found out that a poor fellow called Moliteum was shot dead two months ago by a white trader for stealing a bit of calico.  The wonder was, not that they wanted to avenge the death of their kinsman, but that others should have prevented it.  How could they possibly know that I was not one of the wicked set?  Yet they did....  The plan of going among the people unarmed makes them regard me as a friend.”

Then he says of these men who had just tried to kill him:  “The people, though constantly fighting, and cannibals and the rest of it, are to me very attractive.”

The ship sailed on till they heard ahead of them the beating of the surf on the reef of Santa Cruz.  Behind the silver line of the breakers the waving fronds of her palms came into sight.  They put The Southern Cross in, cast anchor, and let a boat down from her side.  Into the boat tumbled a British sailor named Pearce, a young twenty-year-old Englishman named Atkin, and three brown South-Sea Island boys from the missionary training college for native teachers on Norfolk Island, and their leader, Bishop Patteson, the white man who, having faced the clubs of savages on a score of islands, never flinched from walking into peril again to lead them to know of “the best Man in the world, Jesus Christ.”  These brown boys were young helpers of Bishop Patteson.  And one of them especially, Fisher Young, would have died for his great white leader gladly.  They were like father and son.