"The Society had long been anxious to undertake some reclamation work in the Paumotos, and the possession of the Aphrodite—a vessel that, on account of the ease with which she handled, could venture with comparative safety where the ordinary type of South Sea schooner dared not go—made it possible to attempt to realize this ambition for the first time. After a week of busy preparation we made ready to sail for Makatea, and when the missionary schooner, Southern Cross, glided out of the narrow crack in the reef which constitutes the entrance to Papeete harbour and headed off for the north-east, there was little to differentiate her from the saucy Aphrodite which had come bowling in over an almost identical course a month or so previously. A new set of gold letters across her stern, a crown and anchor flag at the main truck, and a plain set of table covers and bedspreads included about all the changes in sight, and even a search of the lazarette and lockers would have disclosed little (except some bales of Bibles and hymn books and some cases of salmon and barrels of salt beef) which had not been there before.
Weaving the walls of a Fijian house
Interior of Fijian house, showing how it is bound
together with coco fibre
"Fewer still were the old things that had been dispensed with. The name and the house-flag had to be altered, of course, to suit the new character of the vessel, while embroidered silk peacocks and sun-flowers on the coverlets were rather beyond the simple tastes of the Reverend Horatio Loveworth who was in charge of the work in hand. But the punchbowl had been retained as a baptismal fount, the wines—including the 'Extra Spry'—for medicinal purposes, the fancy stores to be presented as a goodwill offering to King Boraki of Makatea, and a gramophone, fortified with a big stack of new bass drum and trombone records of popular hymns, as a music teacher to the expected converts. Loveworth's keen practicality had been the principal factor in his rapid rise to the most important position in the South Pacific missionary service.
"My mate was an Australian of long experience among the Islands, and the crew a well-picked lot of half-castes and Kanakas. We worked well together, and I doubt if the little schooner, even in her sealing days, was ever better handled. After two days of admirable behaviour in baffling winds and treacherous currents, she penetrated to the very heart of the stormy Paumotan Archipelago. Ahead loomed the black mass of Makatea, the half-coral, half-volcanic island of sinister reputation which was our destination, and between stretched ten miles of submerged reefs which the chart made no pretence of outlining.
"Ordering sail to be shortened and a man sent aloft, I was just preparing to begin 'feeling' our way in toward the darker blur that marked the probable entrance to the lagoon, when the mate's keen eye descried a lone sail bearing rapidly down on us from landward. My glass revealed a large out-rigger canoe which, driven by a fair wind and urged by the flashing paddles of its dozen or more occupants, was throwing the foam over its bow so swiftly was it sliding through the water. In less than half an hour it had grated against the side of the schooner and the leader of the party, a magnificently proportioned fellow dressed only in a red pareo and a necklace of sharks' teeth, disdaining the ladder that was lowered for him, leapt lightly over the rail and, saluting the Reverend Horatio with a bow and a sweep of his koui fibre hat, announced himself to be King Boraki.
"Speaking in the Marquesan dialect, he said that Makatea had learned of the great missionary's intended visit from word that had come by Rangaroa; that Makatea was transported with joy at the honour that was being done it; that preparations for a fitting reception had been in progress for a week and were now complete; and, finally, that he had come to pilot the ship of his distinguished visitor by a safe channel to the harbour and to be the first of his people to receive a Christian blessing.