and the
result was that the latter were driven into their boats. They pulled
off to their vessel, loaded a large brass gun that occupied the centre
of the schooner's deck, and sent a shower of cannister shot among the
savages, killing and wounding not only many of the men, but some of the
women and children who chanced to be on the skirt of the wood. They
then set sail, and, as they coasted along, fired into several villages,
the people of which had nothing to do with their quarrel.

Only a week after this event another little schooner anchored off the
village. It was a missionary ship, sent by the London Missionary
Society to spread the good news of salvation through Christ among the
people. Some time before, a native teacher--one who, on another island,
had embraced Christianity, and been carefully instructed in its leading
truths--had been sent to this island, and was well received; but, war
having broken out, the chief had compelled him to leave. A second
attempt was now being made, and this time an English missionary with his
wife and daughter were about to trust themselves in the hands of the
savages.

They could not have arrived at a worse time. The islanders, still
smarting under a sense of the wrong and cruelty so recently done them,
rushed upon the little boat of the schooner, brandishing clubs and
spears, the instant it touched the land, and it was with the utmost
difficulty that the missionary prevailed on them to stay their hands and
give him a hearing. He soon explained the object of his visit, and, by
distributing a few presents, so far mollified the people that he was
allowed to land, but it was plain that they regarded him with distrust.
The tide was turned in the missionary's favour, however, by the runaway
sailor, Buchanan, or Bukawanga. That worthy happened at the time to be
recovering slowly from the effects of the wound he had received in the
fight, which had so nearly proved to be his last. On hearing of the
arrival of strangers he feared that the savages would kill them out of
revenge, and hastened, weak and ill though he was, to meet, and, if
possible, protect them. His efforts were successful. He managed to
convince the natives that among Christians there were two classes--those
who merely called themselves by the name, and those who really did their
best to practise Christianity; that the sandal-wood traders probably did
not even pretend to the name, but that those who had just arr