The arrows were wooden-headed and not poisoned.  The wounds seemed to be healing, but a few days later Fisher said, “I can’t make out what makes my jaws feel so stiff.”

Fisher Young was the grandson of fierce, foul Pitcairn Island cannibals, and was himself a brave and pure Christian lad.  He had faced death with his master many times on coral reefs, in savage villages, on wild seas and under the clubs of Pacific islanders.  Now he was face to face with something more difficult than a swift and dangerous adventure—­the slow, dying agony of lockjaw.  He grew steadily worse in spite of everything that Patteson could do.

Near to the end he said faintly, “Kiss me; I am very glad I was doing my duty.  Tell my father that I was in the path of duty, and he will be so glad.  Poor Santa Cruz people!”

He spoke in that way of the people who had killed him.  The young brown hero lies to-day, as he would have wished, in the port that was named after the Bishop whom he loved, and who was his hero, Port Patteson.

“I loved him,” said Patteson, “as I think I never loved anyone else.”  Fisher’s love to his Bishop had been that of a youth to the hero whom he worships, but Patteson had led that brown islander still further, for he had taught the boy to love the Hero of all heroes, Jesus Christ.

CHAPTER XI

FIVE KNOTS IN A PALM LEAF

The Death of Patteson

(Date of Incident, September 20th, 1871)

The masts of the schooner The Southern Cross swung gently to and fro across the darkening sky as the long, calm rollers of the Pacific slipped past her hull.  Her bows spread only a ripple of water as the slight breeze bore her slowly towards the island of Nukapu.[32]

On deck stood a group of men, their brown faces turned to a tall, bearded man.  As the light of the setting sun gleamed on his bronze face, it kindled his brave eyes and showed the grave smile that played about the corners of his mouth.  They all looked on him with that worship which strong men give to a hero, who can be both brave and kindly.  But “he wist not that his face shone” for them.

Patteson read to these young men from a Book; and the words that he read were these:  “And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God and saying, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’  And he knelt down and cried, with a loud voice, ‘Lord, lay not this sin to their charge’; and when he had said this, he fell asleep.”

When he had spoken to them strongly on these words and said how it may come to any man who worships Jesus to suffer so, Bishop Patteson and all except the man on watch went to their sleep.  The South Sea Island men and the young Englishman who were there remembered all their lives what Patteson had said that evening; partly because these men themselves had seen him brave such a death as Stephen’s again and again, and, indeed, they had themselves stood in peril by his side face to face with threatening savages, but even more because of the adventure that came to them on the next day.