cants to-morrow
morning. And all things, God be praised, happy and peaceful about us."
He wrote of the large "family" of 145 Melanesian natives he had around
him; at another time he spoke of his sleeping on a table with some
twelve or more fellows about him; and people coming and going all day
long both in and out of school hours!

In August, 1871, he baptised 248 persons, twenty-five of them adults,
all in a little more than a month, and he rejoiced in the thought that
a blessed change was going on in the hearts of these people.

He had never experienced such cheering success before, and, though his
friends were endeavouring to persuade him to take rest and change for
his health's sake, he determined to labour on while there was so much
need for his exertion and such blessed results followed.

The desire to believe on the part of some of his people was very
touching. One of them said to him: "I don't know how to pray properly,
but I and my wife say, 'God make our hearts light--take away the
darkness. We believe that You love us because You sent Jesus to become
a man and die for us; but we can't understand it all. Make us fit to
be baptised.'"

Some, of course, were not so enlightened as that. After the kidnapping
traders had been harrying the islands, one of the chiefs said that, if
the bishop would only bring a man-of-war and get him vengeance on his
adversaries, he would be exalted like his Father above.

There was indeed serious cause for the anger of the natives. One of
them related how he had been out to a vessel with his companions,
and a white man had come down into the canoe and presently upset it,
seizing him by the belt. Happily this broke, and he swam under the
side of the canoe and finally got on shore, but the other three were
killed--their heads were cut off and taken on board, and their bodies
thrown to the sharks. The assailants were men-stealers, who killed
ruthlessly that they might present heads to the chiefs.

Five natives from the same island were also killed or carried off,
and thus when the bishop visited them they were in a state of sullen
wrath.

On the 20th of September, 1871, Bishop Patteson came to Nukapu. The
island is difficult of approach at low water, and the little ship,
_The Southern Cross_, could not get close in. So the bishop went off
to the shore in a boat and got into one of the canoes, leaving his
four pupils to await his return. They saw him land, and he was then
lost t