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 10_s._, 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!”
The man, trembling, looked all round as if to see the God who was my defender, and the tomahawk gradually lowered at his side. With my eye fixed upon him, I gradually moved backwards in the track of the Teachers, and God mercifully restrained him from following me.
On reaching Nowar’s village unobserved, we found the people terror-stricken, crying, rushing about in despair at such a host of armed savages approaching. I urged them to ply their axes, cut down trees, and blockade the path. For a little they wrought vigorously at this; but when, so far as eye could reach, they saw the shore covered with armed men rushing on towards their village, they were overwhelmed with fear, they threw away their axes and weapons of war, they cast themselves headlong on the ground, and they knocked themselves against the trees as if to court death before it came. They cried,—
“Missi, it’s of no use! We will all be killed and eaten to-day! See what a host are coming against us.”
Mothers snatched up little children and ran to hide in the bush. Others waded as far as they could into the sea with them, holding their heads above the water. The whole village collapsed in a condition of indescribable terror. Nowar, lame with his wounded knee, got a canoe turned upside-down and sat upon it where he could see the whole approaching multitude. He said,—
“Missi, sit down beside me, and pray to our Jehovah God, for if He does not send deliverance now, we are all dead men. They will kill us all on your account, and that quickly. Pray, and I will watch!”
They had gone to the Mission House and broken in the door, and finding that we had escaped, they rushed on to Nowar’s village. For, as they began to plunder the bedroom, Nouka said,—
“Leave everything. Missi will come back for his valuable things at night, and then we will get them and him also!”
So he nailed up the door, and they all marched for Nowar’s. We prayed as one can only pray when in the jaws of death and on the brink of Eternity. We felt that God was near, and omnipotent to do what seemed best in His sight. When the savages were about three hundred yards off, at the foot of a hill leading up to the village, Nowar touched my knee, saying,—