’How you will wonder at the news of my consecration, and, indeed, well you may!  I would, indeed, that there were a dozen men out here under whom I was working, if only they were such men as the Primate would have chosen to the work.

’But it is done now, and I know I must not shrink from it.  Never did I need the love and prayers of my dear relations and friends as I do now.  Already difficulties are rising up around me, and I am so little fit to be a leader of work like this.  Don’t forget, dear Tutor, your old pupil, who used to copy the dear Bishop’s letters in your study from Anaiteum, Erromango, &c.; and little thought that he would write from these islands to you, himself the Missionary Bishop.

’With kind love to all,

’Your loving old Pupil and Nephew,

‘J.  C. Patteson, Missionary Bishop.’

This thoughtful and beautiful letter was written in sight of Erromango, a sandal-wood station, whence a trader might be found to take charge of it.  The ink was scarcely dry before the full cost of carrying the Gospel among the heathen was brought before the writer.  Not only houses and brethren must be given up, but the ’yea and his own life also’ was now to be exemplified almost before his eyes.

The Erromaugo Mission, like that of Anaiteum, came from the Scottish Kirk.  Mr. and Mrs. Gordon, as has been seen, had been visited on every voyage of the ‘Southern Cross’ during their three years’ residence there, and there was a warm regard between them and the Bishop.  It was then a great shock to hear a Nengone man call out from a sandal-wood vessel, lying in Dillon’s Bay, that they had both been killed!

It was but too true.  The Erromango people had been little inclined to listen to Mr. Gordon’s warnings, and he, a young and eager man, had told them that to persevere in their murders and idolatries would bring a judgment upon them.  When therefore the scourge of sickness came, as at Anaiteum, they connected him with it; and it was plain from his diary that he had for some months known his life to be in danger, but he had gone about them fearlessly, like a brave man, doing his best for the sick.

On May 20 he was in a little wood, putting up a house instead of one that had been blown down by a hurricane, and he had sent his few faithful pupils to get grass for the thatch.  Nine natives from a village about three hours’ walk distant came to the house where his wife was, and asked for him.  She said he was in the little wood.  They went thither, and while eight hid themselves in the bush, one went forward and asked for some calico.  Mr. Gordon took a bit of charcoal and wrote on a bit of wood directions to his wife to give the bearer some cotton, but the man insisted that he must come himself to give out some medicine for a sick man.  Mr. Gordon complied, walking in front as far as the place where lay the ambush, when the man struck him with a tomahawk on the spine, and he fell, with a loud scream, while the others leaping out fell upon him with blows that must have destroyed life at once, yelling and screaming over him.  Another went up to the house.  Mrs. Gordon had come out, asking what the shouts meant.  ‘Look there!’ he said, and as she turned her head, he struck her between the shoulders, and killed her as soon as she had fallen.