I said, “Surely, when you had planned all this, and brought them to kill us and steal all our property, Jehovah did protect us, or we would not have been here!”
He replied, “There was no Jehovah to-day! We have no fear of any Man-of-war. They dare not punish us. They durst not punish the Erromangans for murdering the Gordons. They will talk to us and say we must not do so again, and give us a present. That is all. We fear nothing. The talk of all Tanna is that we will kill you and seize all your property to-morrow.”
I warned him that the punishment of a Man-of-war can only reach the body and the land, but that Jehovah’s punishment reached both body and soul in Time and in Eternity.
He replied: “Who fears Jehovah? He was not here to protect you to-day!”
“Yes,” I said, “my Jehovah God is here now. He hears all we say, sees all we do, and will punish the wicked and protect His own people.”
After this, a number of the people sat down around me, and I prayed with them. But I left with a very heavy heart, feeling that Miaki was evidently bent on our destruction.
I sent Abraham to consult Nowar, who had defended us till disabled by a spear in the right knee. He sent a canoe by Abraham, advising me to take some of my goods in it to his house by night, and he would try to protect them and us. The risk was so great, we could only take a very little. Enemies were on every hand to cut off our flight, and Miaki, the worst of all, whose village had to be passed in going to Nowar’s. In the darkness of the Mission House, we durst not light a candle for fear of some one seeing and shooting us. Not one of Nowar’s men durst come to help us. But in the end it made no difference, for Nowar and his men kept what was taken there as their portion of the plunder. Abraham, his wife, and I waited anxiously for the morning light. Miaki, the false and cruel, came to assure us that the Heathen would not return that day. Yet, as daylight came in, Miaki himself stood and blew a great conch not far from our house. I ran out to see why this trumpet-shell had been blown, and found it was the signal for a great company of howling armed savages to rush down the hill on the other side of the bay and make straight for the Mission House. We had not a moment to lose. To have remained would have been certain death to us all, and also to Matthew, a Teacher just arrived from Mr. Mathieson’s Station. Though I am by conviction a strong Calvinist, I am no Fatalist. I held on while one gleam of hope remained. Escape for life was now the only path of duty. I called the Teachers, locked the door, and made quickly for Nowar’s village. There was not a moment left to carry anything with us. In the issue, Abraham, his wife, and I lost all our earthly goods, and all our clothing except what we had on. My Bible, the few translations which I had made into Tannese, and a light pair of blankets I carried with me.
To me the loss was bitter, but as God had so ordered it, I tried to bow with resignation. All my deceased wife’s costly outfit, her piano, silver, cutlery, books, etc., with which her dear parents had provided her, besides all that I had in the world; also a box worth £56, lately arrived, full of men’s clothing and medicine, the gift of my dear friends, Samuel Wilson, Esq., and Mrs. Wilson, of Geelong. The Sandal-wood Traders bought all the stolen property for tobacco, powder, balls, caps, and shot. One Trader gathered together a number of my books in a sadly torn and wasted condition and took them to Aneityum, demanding £10 from Dr. Geddie for his trouble. He had to pay him £7 10s., which I repaid to him on my second return to the Islands. This, by way of digression, only to show how white and black Heathenism meet together.
Let us return to the morning of our flight. We could not take the usual path along the beach, for there our enemies would have quickly overtaken us. We entered the bush in the hope of getting away unobserved. But a cousin of Miaki, evidently secreted to watch us, sprang from behind a bread-fruit tree, and swinging his tomahawk, aimed it at my brow with a fiendish look. Avoiding it, I turned upon him and said in a firm bold voice,—
“If you dare to strike me, my Jehovah God will punish you. He is here to defend me now!”