washed the blood into the water; they have bathed
there, polluting everything. I cannot get pure water to make your tea.
What shall I do?"

Dr. Inglis told him that he must try for water elsewhere, till the rains
came and cleansed away the pollution; and that meanwhile, instead of
tea, we would drink from the cocoa-nut, as they had often done before.
The lad was quite relieved. It not a little astonished us, however, to
see that his mind regarded their killing and eating each other as a
thing scarcely to be noticed, but that it was horrible that they should
spoil the water! How much are even our deepest instincts the creatures
of mere circumstances! I, if trained like him, would probably have felt
like him.

Next evening, as we sat talking about the people, and the dark scenes
around us, the quiet of the night was broken by a wild wailing cry from
the villages around, long-continued and unearthly. We were informed that
one of the wounded men, carried home from the battle, had just died; and
that they had strangled his widow to death, that her spirit might
accompany him to the other world, and be his servant there, as she had
been here. Now their dead bodies were laid side by side, ready to be
buried in the sea. Our hearts sank to think of all this happening within
ear-shot, and that we knew it not! Every new scene, every fresh
incident, set more clearly before us the benighted condition and
shocking cruelties of these Heathen people, and we longed to be able to
speak to them of Jesus and the love of God. We eagerly tried to pick up
every word of their language, that we might, in their own tongue, unfold
to them the knowledge of the true God and of salvation from all these
sins through Jesus Christ.

CHAPTER XII.
BREAKING GROUND ON TANNA.

OUR small Missionary schooner, the _John Knox_, having no accommodation
for lady passengers, and little for anybody else except the discomfort
of lying on deck, we took advantage of a trader to convey us from
Aneityum to Tanna. The Captain kindly offered to take us and about
thirty casks and boxes to Port Resolution for L5, which we gladly
accepted. After a few hours' sailing we were all safely landed on Tanna
on the 5th November, 1858. Dr. Geddie went for a fortnight to
Umairarekar, now known as Kwamera, on the south side of Tanna, to assist
in the settlement of Mr. and Mrs. Mathieson, and to help in making their
house habitable and comfortable. Mr. Copeland, Mrs. Paton, and