When all was ready, Captain Brooke and all the principal English inhabitants met the Bishop at the church door, and presented a petition that he would consecrate the building. He then entered, and walked up and down the church repeating psalms, etc. Then came morning service; afterwards, the Bishop preached, and as he was very energetic and struck the desk with his hand, our gentle Datu Bandar thought he was angry, and slipped quickly out of church. There was a confirmation of a Chinese teacher and my little maid Susan after the celebration of Holy Communion, and then, after three hours and a half service, we returned home. The next morning, early, the Bishop consecrated the burial-ground. He was carried round it in a chair, for he was unable to walk much; and though he was a hale old man of seventy-two, his many years' residence at Calcutta had, I imagine, spoilt his walking powers.
He was very kind and friendly to us all, and admired the church very much. His visit was a boon to the mission. It impressed the native mind with the importance Christians attach to their churches and to public worship. When our church bell called us to prayers twice every day, the Mahometans revived the daily muezzin at the mosque; and the sight of the public practice of religion amongst us quickened the Malays in the performance of their own religious rites, and from that time there were many more pilgrims to Mecca from Sarawak.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GIRLS.
Having said so much about the schoolboys, it would be unfair not to mention the girls. Mary, Julia, and Phoebe, the half-caste children, grew up beside us, and so did Polly, who was a Dyak baby brought to me after the pirate expedition of 1849. Her mother fled, and dropped her baby in the long grass, where it was found by an English sailor, who carried it to the boats and gave it to one of the women captives to bring to me—a poor little, skinny thing, with long yellow hair, like a fairy changeling. I got a wet nurse for her and fed her with baby food, but she got thinner and more elfish-looking. One day her nurse was standing by while the other children were eating their dinner, and Polly stretched out her arms to the rice and salt fish, and began to cry. "Oh," said I, "perhaps she can eat;" and from that day the little one ate her rice and discarded the nurse, growing fat and merry like the rest.
Polly had a great talent for languages. Of course she learnt English and Malay at once, hearing both languages from her earliest years. But how she learnt Chinese as well used to surprise me. In 1866 I took Polly to Hongkong. She was then nurse to our youngest child. The lady of the house where we were staying accosted Polly in the pigeon English of the place—a jargon mysterious to unaccustomed ears. It must be allowed that Polly was not unlike a Chinese in appearance. She stared at the lady, and then at me, upon hearing directions she could not understand. I laughed. "Speak to Polly in English," I said, "and she will understand what you mean." "Impossible," answered Mrs. M——; "my servants tell me she must be Chinese, for she can talk in two dialects."
Polly married a Christian Chinaman afterwards, so her taste lay in that direction. When I last heard of her, she was teaching in the day-schools at Sarawak.
Mary married the schoolmaster, Mr. Owen. We brought Julia home with us in 1869, and put her into a training-school for teachers in Dublin, where she was much beloved. When we returned to Sarawak, in 1861, she became the schoolmistress to the girls I then had in the house, and others who came as day-scholars. She was a thoroughly good girl, and a great comfort to me, but of course she married, a young man employed as mate in the Rainbow, a Government vessel running between Sarawak and Singapore. Some years afterwards Forrest died, and Julia married again, an older man very well off. I have no doubt she is bringing up her family in the fear of God, but I have not heard of her lately. I had many trials with the girls, more than I like to recount. All the first little family of Chinese girls we received in 1850 belonged to the tribe who rebelled in 1857, and their relations carried them off when we were driven from the mission-house. They were taken to Bau where their relations lived, but what became of them in the terrible flight to the Dutch country, when many were killed, and still more died of the privations of the jungle, we never could hear.