“I like you very much, but I love my mother and brothers and sisters much more, and if I have the chance, I shall try to go back to them,” I answered.
“Very right,” he said, “but I shall grieve to lose you.”
The canoe was, at the time we first saw it, nearly finished. It was built like the houses, without a single nail, but all the planks were sewed together with sennit. It was about forty feet long, and scarcely thirty inches wide. It had a gunwale, and ribs and thwarts to keep it in shape. A thick gum was put at the seams to prevent the water getting through. Being so narrow it would have upset, but it had an outrigger, which is a plank, or log, as long as the boat, pointed at the fore end. This rested on the water five or six feet from the canoe, and was kept there by poles, fastened across the canoe. This was always on the lee side, as the canoes can sail both ways, stem or stern first. At one end there was a deck, under which they kept their provisions, and on the top of which the chief sat. The men to move it had short paddles, like sharp-pointed shovels, and sitting with their faces to the bows, dug the paddles into the water, which they sent flying behind them. We were very sorry to part from many of our friends, but still the thoughts of seeing a white man again, and hearing our native tongue spoken, made us glad; besides which, I hoped that somehow or other I should have the chance of getting home.
Story 2—Chapter 6.
We had got a good supply of provisions and water, in the canoe, and I understood that the voyage might take us four or five days, or perhaps more. The island looked very beautiful as we sailed away from it, and I did not wonder that Matua loved it so much. His love for it made him undertake the voyage to fetch a missionary, for what he loved more than its beauty were the souls of the people in it, over whom he ruled. For two days the sea was smooth and the wind fair, though there was very little of it. When it fell calm, we paddled on at a good rate. On the evening of the second day, the sky looked threatening. Soon after the next morning broke it began to blow very hard, and the sea soon got up, and tumbled the canoe about in a way which I thought must upset her, or send her to the bottom. The sail was lowered, and while some paddled lustily, others, helped by Bill and me, baled out the water, of which we shipped a great deal, though none came through the seams. This showed how strongly it was built. The canoe was kept head to the seas, but we made no way, and it was very clear that we were driving before the gale,—not back to Matua’s island,—though where we were going we could not tell. Matua sat steering as calm as possible. He said that he put his trust in God, and did not fear the storm. He and his people were doing all that could be done to preserve their lives, and that if it was God’s will that they should die, they were ready. I should say that they had prayers and sang psalms morning and evening, and that they prayed and sang now, only of course they could not stop paddling or bailing, or kneel down. Yet many white persons would have called these people savages. It gave me an idea of the good the missionaries have done in these seas.
Though I had seen what a storm at sea is on board the Rose, I did not think how terrible it was in a narrow canoe of thin planks just sewn together. My wonder was and is that we did not go down, or break to pieces.
Five days we drove on before the gale. Twice we saw land in the distance, but did not dare to try and reach it, indeed we could not if we had tried. The wind then fell, and the sea went down, and then we lay floating on the water, but the men were too weary to paddle any more. Our food also had grown very short, though we had eaten only just enough to keep life in us. It seemed a doubt whether we should have enough to reach one of the islands we had seen. After sleeping for some hours, the crew seized their paddles, and we began to paddle back the way we had come. The next day it was a dead calm, and we saw right ahead a large vessel, barque rigged. Bill and I both thought she was English and Matua agreed to go alongside. As we drew near, I saw that she was a whaler from the cut of her sails, from her being high out of the water, and the number of boats shaped stem and stern alike. We were now alongside. I told the captain, who asked us what we wanted, how we had been driven out of our course, and begged him to tell me how we could best reach Matua’s island.
“As to that, you have been driven three hundred miles to the westward of it, if it’s the island I fancy from your account,” he answered. “It will take you a pretty long time to get there; but I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll give the canoe a tow for a couple of hundred miles, and then take my advice,—do you ship aboard here; I shall be bound home in six months or so, and you won’t have a better chance of getting there. If you wish to serve your friends, you can let your wages go in payment: I can’t undertake to help these savages for nothing.”