’Good-bye, my dearest Uncle.  Should God spare your life, my letters will be more frequent to you now.

’My kindest love to Aunt.

’Your affectionate and grateful Nephew,

‘J.  C. Patteson, Missionary Bishop.’

There is little more record of this voyage.  There was less heart and spirit than usual for the regular journalizing letter; but the five weeks’ voyage had been most beneficial in restoring health and energy, and it had one very important effect upon the Mission, for it was here that Lieutenant Capel Tilly, R.N., became so interested in the Mission and its head, as to undertake the charge of the future ‘Southern Cross.’  The ‘Cordelia’ was about to return to England, where, after she was paid off, Mr. Tilly would watch over the building of the new vessel on a slightly larger scale than the first, would bring her out to Kohimarama, and act as her captain.

So great a boon as his assistance did much to cheer and encourage the Bishop, who was quite well again when he landed at Mota on September 17, and found Mr. Pritt convalescent after a touch of ague, and Mr. Kerr so ill as to be glad to avail himself of Captain Hume’s kind offer to take him back to Auckland in the ‘Cordelia.’

Probably all were acclimatised by this time, for we hear of no more illness before the ‘Sea Breeze,’ with Mr. Dudley, came, on the 10th of October, to take the party off.

He says:—­’The Bishop and Mr. Pritt both looked pale and worn.  There were, however, signs in the island of a great advance in the state of things of the previous year.  An admirable schoolroom had been built; and in the open space cleared in front of it, every evening some hundred people would gather, the older ones chatting, the younger ones being initiated in the mysteries of leap-frog, wrestling, and other English games, until prayer time, when all stood in a circle, singing a Mota hymn, and the Bishop prayed with and for them.

’That voyage was not a long one.  We did not go to the Solomon Islands and the groups to the north, but we worked back through the New Hebrides, carefully visiting them.’

Mr. Dudley had brought letters that filled the Bishop’s heart to overflowing, and still it was to his father that he wrote:  ’It seems as if you had lived to see us all, as it were, fixed in our several positions, and could now “depart in peace, according to His word."’

The agony and bitterness seem to have been met and struggled through, as it were, in those first days on board the ‘Cordelia.’  In this second letter there is infinite peace and thankfulness; and so there still was, when, at Norfolk Island, the tidings of the good old man’s death met him, as described in the ensuing letter:—­

’"Sea Breeze,” one hundred miles south-east of Norfolk Island:  8 A.M.

’My dearest Sisters,—­Joy and grief were strangely mingled together while I was on shore in Norfolk Island, from 6 P.M.  Saturday to 8 P.M.  Sunday (yesterday).