Fire Prepared to Roast the Missionary—Sentenced to Death.
Dear reader, it is impossible for me to describe the power, the cool resignation, the unshaken confidence, and the might that overshadowed my soul and body, that thrilled through every fibre of my existence. For there was absolutely not one particle of fear or tremor in my whole being. But I did feel thankful for that great and marvelous deliverance, because in the very moment that I defied the host the spirit of division rested upon the judge who had passed the sentence, his counselors, and the executioners, insomuch that the counselors faced the executioners, and they grappled with each other in a sharp tussle. From that ensued a fight, until the whole people were mixed up in it.
Even two of our old tottering Mormons, Tautene and Hauty, came in with their clubs, and were so enraged that they actually champed their teeth together till the froth filled the corners of their mouths, as I have seen it with mad dogs. Both of them had been great warriors in their time, and could boast of having eaten human flesh, but at this time they were so old and feeble that I took each of them by the arms and forced them from the fight into the house, where I had ordered all the Mormons to go. I told them to stay in the house or I would excommunicate them from the Church. As they seemed to be almost ungovernable, I gave Fute, a priest and a stout man, a club, and told him to keep them in the house if he had to knock them down to do it, while I went back to the battleground, picked up my Bible and hat, and returned to find my party reconciled to their fate, and feeling more like rejoicing than fighting. In an effort to free himself from her clinging embrace Hauty had struck his wife with a club. This was before I had got hold of him. She was trying to keep him out of the melee. The woman was very lame for weeks after receiving the blow.
During all this time our enemies quarreled and fought with clubs and stones, pulled hair and screamed. They did not cease fighting till sundown. Then, with many sore heads, and more sore limbs, they dispersed, and I doubt very much if the majority of them knew what they had been fighting for. After they left, a feeling of quiet and safety pervaded the village, especially in and about our residence, such as we had not before known on the island, and for weeks everything was strangely peaceful. People who once seemed surly and defiant, now had a tame and subdued expression in their countenances, and appeared to prefer passing by unnoticed rather than otherwise.
Some two months later, I was traveling alone in the timber, and at a short turn in the road I chanced to meet one of the old counselors who decided that I should be burned. We were close together before we saw each other. At sight of me he turned and ran as hard as he could, and I, without any particular object in view, gave chase and ran him down. I seized him by the neck, and asked why he ran from me and why he was afraid of me. Said he: "Your God is a God of power, and I was afraid to meet His servant." I inquired how he knew that my God was a God of power, and why they had not burned me when they had decided to do so. He answered: "At the moment that you defied us there was a brilliant light, or pillar of fire, bore down close over your head. It was as bright as the sun. We remembered reading in the Bible about Elijah calling fire down from heaven so that it consumed the captains and their fifties, and we thought that you had prayed to your God of power, and that He had sent that fire to burn us and our people if we harmed you. The young men did not see the light. They were going to burn you, and we tried to stop them. So we got into a fight. Now we all know that you are a true servant of God, and we do not like to meet you, out of fear."
From what I was able to learn, that feeling was shared by the whole community, and I was treated with great respect ever afterwards. I felt freer and safer when alone than ever before. Indeed, there never was another council meeting called to devise a way to get rid of the Mormons from that island, while I remained there. But for all that, the islanders did not want to learn the Gospel. Yet ever afterward, when they feasted I was always remembered with a very liberal portion of the very best they had. I do not remember baptizing another soul there after that event. There I remained, and part of the time I fished, also hunted the wild chickens that abounded in the mountains—fowls of the common Dominique variety, which had grown wild in the fastnesses of the hills, and could fly equal to the sagehen or prairie chicken.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
LONG TIME WITHOUT NEWS FROM HOME—LETTER FROM ELDER B. F. GROUARD—RELEASED FROM MY MISSIONARY LABORS IN THE ISLANDS—LITTLE OPPORTUNITY TO LEAVE RAIVAVAI—NATIVES BUILD A SCHOONER—FAST AND PRAY TO LEARN WHETHER I SHOULD SAIL ON THE VESSEL—THE ANSWER—SAIL FOR RAPIA—DRIVEN BACK TO RAIVAVAI—MAKE A NEW START—ARRIVE AT RAPIA—RIDICULOUS IDEA OF THE PEOPLE CONCERNING A MORMON ELDER—I AM FORBIDDEN TO GO ASHORE, ON PAIN OF DEATH—FEELING IS MODIFIED SOMEWHAT, AND I GO ASHORE—BATTLE BETWEEN THE NATIVES—AN OLD MAN GIVES ME FOOD—ATTEND A MEETING, GET PERMISSION TO SPEAK A FEW WORDS AND AM ORDERED FROM THE ISLAND—INCREASE OF SENTIMENT OF TOLERATION—INVITED TO SUPPER AT THE GOVERNOR'S—STRANGE CUSTOM OF WOMEN WAITING ON MEN—RATHER THAN FOLLOW IT, I SUBMIT TO BEING CALLED A HEATHEN.
WHEN I had spent seven months alone on the island of Raivavai, without any news from the outer world or perhaps it would be more proper to say inner world—for this island and Rapia are as near out of the world as any portion of it can be—I began to wonder when I could hear some tidings of the brethren on the other islands. I had not had an opportunity to leave Raivavai in all the time that I had been there; nor did I have the slightest idea when it would be possible for me to return to the land of my nativity, for the natives told me that within their memory there had been seven years at a time when they had not so much as seen a sail, and it was not infrequent for from one to three years to pass without a vessel calling. Therefore it will not be thought strange when I say that the time became very monotonous.
Here is an extract from a letter received just before I did leave the island; it was from Elder B. F. Grouard, counselor to President Pratt in the presidency of the mission, and bears date of Papeete, Tahiti, April 18, 1852: