My second visit to these islands was made under very different circumstances to the first. On my first visit I was an entire stranger to the people, and they were strangers to the gospel, but upon my second I met many Saints who had received the gospel, and who hailed me, and my companion also, with glad hearts.
On Sunday, the 5th of November, I met with a large assembly of Saints and friends, and again commenced baptizing such as would receive my testimony.
After visiting the North Island and holding meetings with the Saints there, and baptizing two after meeting, I embarked on board a sloop, with Captain Coombs, for another island called the Isle of Holt. We arrived at noon, and I preached to the people at night in their school-house, and had an attentive audience. I spent the night with John Turner, Esq., who purchased a copy of the Book of Mormon.
On the following day we returned to Fox Islands, and as St. Paul once had to row hard to make the land in a storm, we had to row hard to make it in a calm.
After preaching on the North Island again and baptizing two persons at the close of the meeting, I returned again to the mainland in company with Mrs. Woodruff and others, where I spent fifteen days, during which time I visited among the people, held twelve meetings and baptized several persons.
On the 13th of December I returned again to the North Island, where I held several meetings, and then crossed over to South Island.
On the 20th of December I spent an hour with Mr. Isaac Crockett in clearing away large blocks of ice from the water in a cove, in order to baptize him, which I did when the tide came in. I also baptized two more in the same place on the 26th, and again two others on the 27th.
On the 28th I held a meeting at a school-house, when William Douglass, the Methodist minister, came and wanted me to work a miracle, that he might believe, and otherwise railed against me.
I told him what class of men asked for signs, and that he was a wicked and adulterous man, and predicted that the curse of God would rest upon him, and that his wickedness would be made manifest in the eyes of the people. (While visiting these islands several years afterwards I learned that the prediction had really been fulfilled, and that he was serving out a fourteen years' term of imprisonment for a beastly crime.)
Mrs. Woodruff crossed the thoroughfare in a boat and walked ten miles, the length of the island, to meet me, on the last day of the year. I held a meeting the same day in the school-house, and at the close of the meeting baptized two persons in the sea, at full tide before a large assembly.