FOOTNOTES:
[31] Fă-ee-vă tă lā.
CHAPTER X
THE ARROWS OF SANTA CRUZ
Bishop Patteson
(Date of Incident—August 15th, 1864)
The brown crew of The Southern Cross breathed freely again as the anchor swung into place and the schooner began to nose her way out into the open Pacific. They were hardened to dangers, but the Island of Tawny Cannibals had strained their nerve, by its hourly perils from club and flying arrow. The men were glad to see their ship's bows plunge freely again through the long-backed rollers.
As they set her course to the Island of Santa Cruz the crew talked together of the men of the island they had left. In his cabin sat a great bronzed bearded man writing a letter to his own people far away on the other side of the world. Here are the very words that he wrote as he told the story of one of the dangers through which they had just passed on the island:
"As I sat on the beach with a crowd about me, most of them suddenly jumped up and ran off. Turning my head I saw a man (from the boat they saw two) coming to me with club uplifted. I remained sitting and held out a few fish-hooks to him, but one or two men jumped up and, seizing him by the waist, forced him off.
"After a few minutes I went back to the boat. I found out that a poor fellow called Moliteum was shot dead two months ago by a white trader for stealing a bit of calico. The wonder was, not that they wanted to avenge the death of their kinsman, but that others should have prevented it. How could they possibly know that I was not one of the wicked set? Yet they did.... The plan of going among the people unarmed makes them regard me as a friend."
Then he says of these men who had just tried to kill him: "The people, though constantly fighting, and cannibals and the rest of it, are to me very attractive."
The ship sailed on till they heard ahead of them the beating of the surf on the reef of Santa Cruz. Behind the silver line of the breakers the waving fronds of her palms came into sight. They put The Southern Cross in, cast anchor, and let a boat down from her side. Into the boat tumbled a British sailor named Pearce, a young twenty-year-old Englishman named Atkin, and three brown South-Sea Island boys from the missionary training college for native teachers on Norfolk Island, and their leader, Bishop Patteson, the white man who, having faced the clubs of savages on a score of islands, never flinched from walking into peril again to lead them to know of "the best Man in the world, Jesus Christ." These brown boys were young helpers of Bishop Patteson. And one of them especially, Fisher Young, would have died for his great white leader gladly. They were like father and son.
The reef, covered at mid-tide with curling waters mottled with the foam of the broken waves, was alive with men; while the beach beyond was black with crowds of the wild islanders who had come down to see the strange visitors from the ship. The four men sculled the boat on to the edge of the reef and then rested on their oars as Patteson swung himself over the side into the cool water. He waded across the reef between the hosts of savages, and in every hand was a club or spear or a six-foot wooden bow with an arrow ready to notch in its bamboo string.
Patteson had come to make friends with them. So he entered a dark wattled house and sat down to talk. The doorway was filled with the faces of wondering men. As he looked on them a strange gleam of longing came into his eyes and a smile of great tenderness softened the strength of his brown face—the longing and the tenderness of a shepherd looking for wandering sheep who are lost on the wild mountains of the world.
Then he rose, left the house, and went back to the boat. The water was now one seething cauldron of men—walking, splashing, swimming. Some, as Patteson climbed into his boat, caught hold of the gunwale and could hardly be made to loosen their hold. The four young fellows in the boat swung their oars and got her under way, but they had made barely half a dozen strokes when, without warning, an arrow whizzed through the air into the boat. A cloud of arrows followed.
Six canoes were now filled with savage Santa Cruzans, who surrounded the boat and joined in the shooting. Patteson, who was in the stern between his boys and the bowmen, had not shipped the rudder, so he held it up, as the boat shot ahead of the canoes, to shield off arrows.
Turning round to see whither his now rudderless boat was being pulled, he saw that they were heading for a little bay in the reef, which would have wrecked their hopes of safety.
"Pull, port oars, pull on steadily," shouted Patteson; and they made for The Southern Cross.
As he called to them he saw Pearce, the young British sailor, lying between the thwarts with the long shaft of an arrow in his chest, and a young Norfolk Islander with an arrow under his left eye. The arrows flew around them in clouds, and suddenly Fisher Young—the nineteen-year-old Polynesian whom he loved as a son—who was pulling stroke, gave a faint scream. He was shot through the left wrist.
"Look out, sir! close to you," cried one of his crew. But the arrows were all around him. All the way to the schooner the canoes skimmed over the water chasing the boat. The four youths, including the wounded, pulled on bravely and steadily. At last they reached the ship and climbed on board, while the canoes—fearing vengeance from the men on the schooner—turned and fled.
Once aboard, Bishop Patteson knelt by the side of Pearce, drew out the arrow which had run more than five inches deep into his chest, and bound up his wound. Turning to Fisher, he found that the arrow had gone through the wrist and had broken off in the wound. Taking hold of the point of the arrow where it stood out on the lower side of the wrist, Patteson pulled it through, though the agony of the boy was very great.
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.
At dawn they sighted land, and by eleven o'clock they were so near that they could see, shimmering in the heat of the midsummer sun, the white beach of coral sand and the drooping palms that make all the island of Nukapu green.[33] Looking out under their hands to the island, the men aboard The Southern Cross could see four great canoes, with their sails set, hovering like hawks about the circling reef which lay between them and the island. On the reef the blue waves beat and broke into a gleaming line of cool white foam.
The slight breeze was hardly strong enough to help the ship to make the island. It was as though she knew the danger of that day and would not carry Patteson and his men into the perils that lay hidden behind the beauty of that island of Nukapu.
Patteson knew the danger. He knew that, but a little time before their visit, white men had come in a ship, had let down their boats and rowed to the men of the island, had pretended to make friends, and then, shooting some and capturing others, had sped back to the ship, carrying off the captives to work for them on the island of Fiji. The law of the savages of the islands was "Blood for blood." And to them all white men belonged to one tribe. The peril that lay before Patteson was that they might attack him in revenge for the foul crime of those white traders.
Just before noon the order was given to lower a boat from The Southern Cross. Patteson went down into it, and sat in the stern, while Mr. Atkin (his English helper), Stephen Taroniara, James Minipa, and John Nonono came with him to row. The boat swung toward the reef. Between the reef and the island lay two miles of the blue and glittering lagoon.
By the time the boat reached the reef six canoes full of warriors had come together there. The tide was not high enough to float the boat across the reef. The Nukapuan natives said they would haul the boat up on to the reef, but the Bishop did not think it wise to consent. Then two of the savages said to "Bisipi," as they called the Bishop:
"Will you come into our canoe?"
Without a moment's hesitation, knowing that confidence was the best way to win them, he stepped into the canoe. As he entered they gave him a basket with yams and other fruit in it.
As the tide was low, the Bishop and the savages were obliged to wade over the reef, dragging the canoe across to the deeper lagoon within. The boat's crew of The Southern Cross stopped in the outer sea, drifting on the tide with the other four Nukapu canoes. They watched the Bishop cross the lagoon in the canoe and land far off upon the beach. Then he went from their sight.
The brown men and the white man in the boat were trying to talk to the islanders in the remaining canoes outside the reef, when suddenly a savage jumped up in the nearest canoe, not ten yards from them, and called out in his native language:
"Have you anything like this?"
He drew his bow to his ear and shot a yard arrow. His companions in the other canoes leapt to their feet and sent showers of arrows whizzing at the men in the boat, shouting as they aimed:
"This for New Zealand man, this for Bernu man, this for Motu man."
Pulling away with all their speed, Patteson's men were soon out of range, but an arrow had nailed John Nonono's cap to his head. Stephen lay in the bottom of the boat with six arrows in his chest and shoulders. Mr. Atkin, the white man, had one in his left shoulder.
They reached the ship and were helped on board. The arrow head was drawn out from Mr. Atkin's shoulder, and was found to be made of a sharpened human bone. No sooner was the arrow head out than Mr. Atkin leapt back into the boat, insisting on going back to find Patteson. He alone knew how and where the reef could be crossed on the tide that was now rising.
So they got a boat's crew from the ship, put a beaker full of water and some food in the boat, and pulled toward the reef.
At half-past four the tide was high enough to carry them across, and they rowed over, looking through their glasses anxiously at the white shore which was lined with brown figures. A canoe rowed out towards them bringing another canoe in tow. As the boat went towards the island, one canoe cast off the other, and went back; the second canoe drifted towards them slowly on the still waters of the blue lagoon.
As it came nearer they saw that in the middle of it lay Something motionless, covered with matting. They pulled alongside, leaned over the canoe, and lifted into their boat—the body of Patteson. The empty canoe now drifted away.
A yell went up from the savages on the shore. The boat was pulled towards the ship and then the body lifted up and laid on the deck. It had been rolled in the native matting as a shroud, tied at the head and feet. They unrolled the mat, and there on the face of the dead Bishop was still that wonderful, patient and winning smile, as of one who at the moment when his head was beneath the uplifted club said, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge," and had then fallen asleep.
There was a palm leaf fastened over his breast. In its long leaflets five knots were made. On the body, in the head, the side, and the legs were five wounds. And five men in Fiji were at work in the plantations—men captured from Nukapu by brutal white traders.
It was the vengeance of the savage—the call of "blood for blood"; and the death of Patteson lies surely upon the head of those white traders who carried death and captivity to the white coral shore of Nukapu.