So five chiefs were selected as a body-guard for the young Angadhohua, who was prince of all the isle, but on an insecure tenure, for the French, in New Caledonia, were showing a manifest inclination to annex the Loyalty group.
The heavily loaded boat had a perilous strife with the surf before the ship was reached, and it was a very rough passage to Anaiteum, where some goods had to be left for Mr. Inglis, and he asked that four Fate visitors might be taken home. This was done, and Mr. Grordon was visited at Erromango on the way, and found well and prosperous.
At Mai, the reception of Petere and Laure was ecstatic. There was a crowd on shore to meet them, and on the two miles' walk to the village parties met, hugged, and wept over them. At the village Mr. Patteson addressed the people for ten minutes, and Petere made an animated exposition of what he had learnt, and his speeches evidently had great effect. His younger brother and two little boys all came in his stead, and would form part of the winter school at Lifu.
The Espiritu Santo boy, the dunce of the party, was set down at home, and the Banks Islanders were again found pleasant, honest, and courteous, thinking, as it appeared afterwards, that the white men were the departed spirits of deceased friends. A walk inland at Vanua Lava disclosed pretty villages nestling under banyan trees, one of them provided with a guest-chamber for visitors from other islands. Two boys, Sarawia and another, came away to be scholars at Lifu, as well as his masters in the language, of which he as yet scarcely knew anything, but which he afterwards found the most serviceable of all these various dialects.
The 26th of May brought the vessel to Bauro, where poor old Iri was told of the death of his son, and had a long talk with Mr. Patteson, beginning with, 'Do you think I shall see him again?' It was a talk worth having, though it was purchased by spending a night in the house with the rats.
It seemed as though the time were come for calling on the Baurese to cease to be passive, and sixty or seventy men and women having come together, Mr. Patteson told them that he did not mean to go on merely taking their boys to return them with heaps of fish-hooks and knives, but that, unless they cared for good teaching, to make them good and happy here and hereafter, he should not come like a trader or a whaler. That their sons should go backwards and forwards and learn, but to teach at home; and that they ought to build a holy house, where they might meet to pray to God and learn His will.
Much of this was evidently distasteful, though they agreed to build a room.
'I think,' he writes, 'that the trial stage of the work has arrived. This has less to attract outwardly than the first beginning of all, and as here they must take a definite part, they (the great majority who are not yet disposed to decide for good) are made manifest, and the difficulty of displacing evil customs is more apparent.'
In fact, these amiable, docile Baurese seemed to have little manliness or resolution of character, and Sumaro, a scholar of 1857, was especially disappointing, for he pretended to wish to come and learn at Lifu, but only in order to get a passage to Gera, where he deserted, and was well lectured for his deceit.
The Gera people were much more warlike and turbulent, and seemed to have more substance in them, though less apt at learning. Patteson spent the night on shore at Perua, a subsidiary islet in the bay, sleeping in a kind of shed, upon two boards, more comfortably than was usual on these occasions. Showing confidence was one great point, and the want of safe anchorage in the bay was much regretted, because the people could not understand why the vessel would not come in, and thought it betokened mistrust. Many lads wished to join the scholars, but of those who were chosen, two were forced violently overboard by their friends, and only two eventually remained, making a total of twelve pupils for the winter school at Lifu, with five languages between them—seven with the addition of the Nengone and Lifu scholars.