“What fellow name belong you?”
“Chalmers.”
Natives were crowding on the shore to see the stranger and to hear who he was. The man who carried him wished to be the first to find out and to tell the others. But the “Ch” and the “s” were too harsh for him to say, so instead of “Chalmers,” he shouted, “Tamate!” And Mr. Chalmers was called “Tamate” to the end of his life. Mrs. Chalmers was called “Tamate Vaine,” which was the native way of saying “the wife of Chalmers.”
CHAPTER III
RAROTONGA
RAROTONGA is one of the fairest islands in the world. It has a white sandy beach; within that lies a belt of rich land. On this land, and even on the lower slopes of the mountains that tower one above the other in the centre of the island, banana trees, chestnuts, and cocoanut palms grow in clumps.
Tamate and Tamate Vaine quickly settled down to their work in Rarotonga. The life there was very quiet after the constant change and danger of the voyage.
The people who lived in Rarotonga called themselves Christians. They had given up fighting and the worship of the strange wild spirits whom their fathers had thought to be full of power. But though they had done this, many of them were still selfish and lazy.
Tamate would have liked to go at once amongst men who were much wilder, and who had never heard of the God who is love.
When he saw what his work in Rarotonga would be, he wrote to England to those who had sent him. He asked them to send some one else to Rarotonga, some one who would like to work quietly and to teach; and to let him go to a more dangerous place, where he could make it easier for others to follow him. But no one else could be sent then, and he could not leave his post.