'The day comes to me in the midst of one of the deepest sorrows I have ever known—perhaps I have never felt such sorrow...perhaps I have never been so mercifully supported under it. It is a good and profitable sorrow I trust for me: it has made so much in me reveal itself as hollow, worldly, selfish, vainglorious. It has, I hope, helped to strip away the veil, and may be by God's blessing the beginning of more earnest life-long repentance and preparation for death.
'On August 15 I was at Santa Cruz. You know that I had a very remarkable day there three years ago. I felt very anxious to renew acquaintance with the people, who are very numerous and strong.
'I went off in the boat with Atkin (twenty), Pearce (twenty-three or twenty-four years old), Edwin Nobbs, Fisher Young, and Hunt Christian, the last three Norfolk Islanders. Atkin, Edwin and Fisher have been with me for two or three years—all young fellows of great promise, Fisher perhaps the dearest of all to me, about eighteen, and oh! so good, so thoroughly truthful, conscientious, and unselfish!
'I landed at two places among many people, and after a while came back as usual to the boat. All seemed pleasant and hopeful. At the third place I landed amidst a great crowd, waded over the broad reef (partially uncovered at low water), went into a house, sat down for some time, then returned among a great crowd to the boat and got into it. I had some difficulty in detaching the hands of some men swimming in the water.
'Well, when the boat was about fifteen yards from the reef, on which crowds were standing, they began (why I know not) to shoot at us.—(Another letter adds) 300 or 400 people on the reef, and five or six canoes being round us, they began to shoot at us.—I had not shipped the rudder, so I held it up, hoping it might shield off any arrows that came straight, the boat being end on, and the stern, having been backed into the reef, was nearest to them.
'When I looked round after a minute, providentially indeed, for the boat was being pulled right into a small bay on the reef, and would have grounded, I saw Pearce lying between the thwarts, with the long shaft of an arrow in his chest, Edwin Nobbs with an arrow as it seemed in his left eye, many arrows flying close to us from many quarters. Suddenly Fisher Young, pulling the stroke oar, gave a faint scream; he was shot through the left wrist. Not a word was spoken, only my "Pull! port oars, pull on steadily." Once dear Edwin, with the fragment of the arrow sticking in his cheek, and the blood streaming down, called out, thinking even then more of me than of himself, "Look out, sir! close to you!" But indeed, on all sides they were close to us!
'How we any of us escaped I can't tell; Fisher and Edward pulled on, Atkin had taken Pearce's oar, Hunt pulled the fourth oar. By God's mercy no one else was hit, but the canoes chased us to the schooner. In about twenty minutes we were on board, the people in the canoes round the vessel seeing the wounded paddled off as hard as they could, expecting of course that we should take vengeance on them. But I don't at all think that they were cognisant of the attack on shore.'
Several letters were written about this adventure; but I have thought it better to put them together, every word being Bishop Patteson's own, because such a scene is better realised thus than by reading several descriptions for the most part identical. What a scene it is! The palm-clad island, the reef and sea full of the blacks, the storm of long arrows through the air, the four youths pulling bravely and steadily, and their Bishop standing over them, trying to ward off the blows with the rudder, and gazing with the deep eyes and steadfast smile that had caused many a weapon to fall harmless!
Pearce, it should be observed, was a volunteer for the Mission then on a trial-trip.
There was an even more trying time to come on board. The Bishop continues:—