“If you try to kill him,” he said, “you must kill me first.”
That was why the mainland chief said he would kill the men of Suau with the strangers!
CHAPTER V
THE SPIRITS OF THE HEIGHT
IN time the natives grew friendly again. Then Tamate thought of other places. He had not come to New Guinea to teach and help the people of one little island on its shore only.
He wished to go here and there and everywhere, that far and wide he might let men know that he and those who followed him meant peace and friendship. So he would open the way. Later he would go back to leave teachers with the chiefs whose friendship he had won. In many villages his students would have been killed at once if they had gone alone. It needed a man of strong courage, quick wit, and great heart to go first. All these he had.
When he went away to make peace with new tribes he would have liked to take his wife with him, and she wished very much to go. But she was as eager as Tamate was to think of others first. She was a strong woman. She did not say much, but whenever she saw what was the right thing to do she did it. She knew that the teachers would be lonely if they both went, and that the natives might not be so willing to please them as they now were to please her husband and herself. So when Tamate went away she stayed at Suau.
It was very hard to say good-bye, because each of them knew that they might never meet again, and that either of them might need the other more than they had ever needed any one.
One time it was more hard than it had been before. Tamate wished to visit the village of Tepauri. The tribe who lived there were at war with Suau. In the last battle the people of Suau had killed a great many of the others. Tamate wished to make peace between the two tribes.
One afternoon he said: “I am going to Tepauri to-morrow; will you go with me?” Even Kirikeu refused to go with him.