astern of us, while the exact part of it which came down upon us was only a black wall of water, over which we rode lightly and dry.  I think that it might have swamped us had it broken upon the boat.  My boat is an open four-oared one, 26 feet long, and about five wide, strong but light.  She sails admirably with a common lug sail.  I had one made last summer, very large, with two reefs, so that I can reduce it to as small a sail as I please.  By 4 or 5 P.M.  I neared Aruas, in the bay on the west side of Vanua Lava; the same crowd as usual on the beach, but I did not haul the boat up.  I had a grapnel, and dropped it some fifty yards from the beach.

’Somehow I did not much like the manner of some of the people; they did not at night come into the Ogamal, or men’s common eating and sleeping house, as before, and I overheard some few remarks which I did not quite like—­something about the unusual sickness being connected with this new teaching—­I could not be quite sure, as I do not know the dialect of Aruas.  There were, however, several who were very friendly, and the great majority were at least quiet, and left us to ourselves.  The next morning I started at about eight, buying two small pigs for two hatchets, and yams and taro and dried bread-fruit for fish-hooks.  I gave one young man a piece of iron for his attention to us.  As we pulled away, one elderly man drew his bow, and the women and children ran off into the bush, here, as everywhere almost in these islands, growing quite thickly some twenty yards above high-water mark.  The man did not let fly his arrow:  I cannot tell why this small demonstration took place.’

When an arrow was pointed at him, it was Bishop Patteson’s custom to look the archer full in the face with his bright smile, and in many more cases than are here hinted at, that look of cheery confidence and good-will made the weapon drop.

After a few more visits to the coasts of this archipelago the boat returned to Mota, where Mr. Pritt and Mr. Kerr had kept school every day, besides getting the station into excellent order and beauty.  Their presence at the head-quarters left the Bishop free to circulate in the villages, sleeping in the Ogamals, where he could collect the men.  They always seemed pleased and interested, and their pugnacious habits were decidedly diminishing, though their superstitious practices and observances were by no means dropped.

The Diary, on July 24, thus speaks of the way of life; which, however, was again telling on the health of the party:—­

’I am so accustomed to sleeping about anywhere that I take little or no account of thirty, forty, fifty naked fellows, lying, sitting, sleeping round me.  Someone brings me a native mat, someone else a bit of yam; a third brings a cocoa-nut; so I get my supper, put down the mat (like a very thin door-mat) on the earth, roll up my coat for a pillow, and make a very good night of it.  I have had deafness in my right ear again for some days; no pain with it, but it is inconvenient.