‘The natives,’ writes Mr. Atkin, ’held the boat in water up to their knees, but the seas that broke thirty yards outside washed over their shoulders and sometimes their heads.  We might have taken away half the people of the village, and had no trouble in getting two nice-looking little boys.  About 320 miles from Norfolk Island, one of these little boys, Wate, playing, fell overboard:  we were going ten knots at the time, right before the wind; it was a quarter of an hour before we picked him up, as it took five minutes to stop the vessel and ten to get to him.  Wate seemed all the better for his ducking.’  This little Wate became Mr. Atkin’s especial child, his godson and devoted follower.

On October 2, Norfolk Island was reached, and there, a wooden house having been conveyed thither by H.M.S.  ‘Falcon,’ Mr. Palmer and fifteen scholars were placed to spend the winter.  The Pitcairners welcomed the Mission, but were displeased at the Government assuming a right to dispose of the land which they had fancied entirely their own.

One of the letters written separate from the journal during this voyage gives a commission for photographs from the best devotional prints, for the benefit chiefly of his young colonial staff:—­’I have not the heart to send for my Lionardo da Vinci,’ (he says), that much valued engraving, purchased at Florence, and he wishes for no modern ones, save Ary Scheffer’s ‘Christis Consolator,’ mentioning a few of his special favourites to be procured if possible.  For the Melanesians, pictures of ships, fishes, and if possible tropical vegetation, was all the art yet needed, and beads, red and blue, but dull ones; none not exactly like the samples would be of any use.  ’It is no good sending out any “fancy” articles such as you would give English children.  “Toys for savages” are all the fancies of those who manufacture such toys for sale.  Of course, any manufacturer who wishes to give presents of knives, tools, hatchets, &c., would do a great benefit, but then the knives must be really strong and sharp.’

I have concluded the letters of the island voyage, before giving those written on the homeward transit from Norfolk Island, whither the ‘Falcon’ had conveyed the letters telling of the departure of both Mr. and Mrs. Keble.  The first written under this impulse was of course to Sir John Coleridge, the oldest friend:—­

’At Sea, near Norfolk Island:  October 3, 1866.

’My dear, dear Uncle,—­How can I thank you enough for telling me so much of dear saintly Mr. Keble and his wife?  He has been, for my dear father and mother’s sakes, very loving to me, and actually wrote me two short letters, one after his seizure, which I treasure.  How I had grown to reverence and love him more and more you can easily believe; and yesterday at Norfolk Island, whither some letters had been sent, I read with a very full heart of the peaceful close of such a holy life.  And I do love to think too of you and him, if I may speak freely of such as you; and the weight attached to all you say and do (you two I mean) in your several occupations seems at all events one hopeful sign among not a few gloomy ones.  I suppose you and Mr. Keble little estimated the influence which even a casual word or sentence of yours exercises upon a man of my age, predisposed (it is true) to hearken with attention and reverence....