After another sleepless, feverish night I began to feel better, but decided to remain quiet, whilst Ray and Wilkin went to the village of Mohu on the mainland with Brother Alexis to visit Father Burke, the only “Englishman” (and he is an Irishman) in the Mission.
The day was a sad one for us, as Brother Edmond, who belonged to the station at Pokao on the mainland, and had come here for a visit, became very ill in the morning, and grew worse as the day wore on. Soon after 5 p.m. a little service was held in his room, when the Extreme Unction with the Pontifical Absolution and Benediction was given; the anointing with holy oil, which is performed in the early stages of an illness that may have a fatal termination, had been celebrated in the morning. All through the day we received numerous reports as to the progress of the disease.
The Brother had been in good health the previous day (Friday) and worked hard in the sun, but he drank water copiously, and probably had taken some from an infected source which brought on a malignant enteric disease (hæmaturia).
At 9 p.m., when all lights are put out and the Mission goes to bed, I heard the Sisters who were to keep the night watch arrive, for the patient’s room was next to mine. At eleven o’clock I was awakened by a slight commotion, and turning out found Father Guis reading the prayers for the dying, and whilst they were being read Brother Edmond passed away. I retired again to bed whilst the Brothers and Sisters performed the last secular offices for the dead, and in a few minutes heard the suggestive “pwew, pwew” of the planing of boards, and later the hammering of nails. By 2.15 the body was lying in its last bed.
At 3 a.m., finding a service was about to be held in the chapel, I threw my dark blue bed blanket around me, and in pyjamas and with bare feet I attended the service. It proved to be a Communion service for those who had administered to the deceased. Father Guis, in broken voice, feelingly read the service, with a Brother as acolyte, to a congregation composed of three Sisters clad in their usual blue costume, four Brothers in workaday flannel shirts, and myself, a blanket-clad “heretic.” The moral atmosphere was tense with emotion, and the service appeared to me to be not so much a communion with God, as a sacrament of renewed devotion under the most solemn circumstances. Of course I do not wish to imply that the first sentiment was not present, that is, the essential element in Holy Communion, but the other aspect appeared to predominate. The impressiveness of the ceremony was enhanced by its being held in the depth of night.
Before finally retiring to rest I visited the coffin lying on the verandah of our hostel. Praying beside it were two of the indefatigable Brothers who had worked so hard, and two patient, statuesque Sisters.
The morning bell woke us at 5.30 o’clock, and I dressed in order to attend early morning Mass at six. During that service the sun rose, and a glorious tropical day commenced, joyous physically, but psychically sad. After Mass coffee was served, and at 7.30 the Mass for the Dead was solemnised in the chapel by the Archbishop.
The last time I attended a Catholic Requiem Mass was in Rome sixteen years previously.
There we witnessed the ceremony decked with all the pomp due to the rank of a high functionary of the Holy Catholic Church; here I participated in the same ceremony—the same, but how different!
There, a dignitary trained in ecclesiastical doctrine, dogma, and discipline, had worked his way up in the Church till heaven gave him a preferment. (I wonder whether it was a better one than his last on earth?) Here, a man who for fourteen years was a joint owner with his cousin of a fishing schooner in the North Sea, and who was making money in his venturesome calling, left all, like other fishermen we read of, and became a lay Brother, with no chance of promotion in this world, and volunteered to a fever-stricken country from which he knew he would never return. One day he worked hard, doing his duty heartily and manfully; the next, he was prostrated by a severe illness, and passed away before midnight, dying in perfect peace. His last words were that he was ready to die and be quit of suffering (for death had no terrors for him), or ready to live if God willed, and to continue his labours, although he knew full well that this meant a certainty of renewed sickness and pain.