The Maori war was a constant grief and anxiety to all the friends on shore, and there was thus evidently much less elasticity left to meet the great shock that was preparing for the voyagers in the expedition of 1864. Mr. Codrington was not of the party, having been obliged to go to England to decide whether it was possible to give himself wholly to the Mission; and the staff therefore consisted of Mr. Pritt, Mr. Kerr, and Mr. Palmer, with Mr. Joseph Atkin, whose journal his family have kindly put at my disposal.
The endeavour was to start after the Ascension Day Communion, but things were not forward enough. May was not, however, very far advanced before the 'Southern Cross' was at sea.
On May 17, Norfolk Island was visited, and Edwin Nobbs and Fisher Young had what proved to be their last sight, of their home and friends. The plan was to go on to Nengone and Erromango, take up the stores sent to the latter place from Sydney, drop the two clergymen at Mota, and after a stay there, go to the New Hebrides, and then take up the party, and if possible leave them to make experiment of Curtis Island, while going to those Santa Cruz islands for which he always seems to have had such a yearning.
'I feel as usual,' he finishes the letter sent from Norfolk Island, 'that no one can tell what may be the issue of such voyages. I pray and trust that God will mercifully reveal to me "what I ought to do, and give me grace and power to fulfil the same."
'I have now been for some time out of the way of this kind of work, but I hope that all may be safely ordered for us. It is all in His hands; and you all feel, as I try to do, that there should be no cause for anxiety or trouble.
'Yet there are moments when one has such an overwhelming sense of one's sins and negligences provoking God to chastise one. I know that His merciful intention towards men must be accomplished, and on the whole I rest thankfully in that, and feel that He will not suffer my utter unworthiness to hinder His work of love and goodness.'
At Mota, Mr. Atkin's journal shows to what work a real helper needed to be trained:—
'The Mission-house had lost its roof in a gale of wind. The epidemic that was raging last year did not seem to have continued long after with such violence; some more of the people were dead, but not very many. We took off all the Mota boys, and things that were wanted in three boat-loads, the last time leaving the Bishop. There was, fortunately, very little surf, and we got nothing wet, but as the tide was high, we had to carry the things over the coral reefs with the water a little above our knees.
'About an hour later we dropped anchor at Vanua Lava. On Saturday morning I went ashore with the boat, and got water for washing and sand for scrubbing decks, and several tons of taro and yams discharged on board the vessel. Then made another trip, left all the boys on shore for a holiday, and took off twelve or fourteen cwt. of yams, taro, and cocoa-nuts. After dinner and washing up, went to fetch boys back. Where we bought the yams there was such a surf breaking that we could not haul the boat on the beach, and we had to wade and carry them out. After we got on board, we had a bathe. Two of the Solomon Islanders distinguished themselves by jumping off the fore-yard, and diving under the ship. Mr. Tilly and the mates had been stowing, and the rest of us had been getting yams all day, and if our friends could have seen us then, haggard-looking and dirty, singing choruses to nigger melodies, how shocked they would have been!
'Next Thursday went across to Mota, took the Bishop on board, and sailed south as fast as possible.