 21 Father Damien of Molokai. Of the many archipelagos scattered over the broad Pacific Ocean, none is more intimately associated with names which have gained a lasting and worldwide fame than the sandwich or to give them their native name, the Hawaiian Islands. It was on one of this group that Captain Cook, the illustrious navigator, was murdered on February 14, 1779. It was on another that Father Damien, the humble Belgian priest, made his great renunciation, as Robert Louis Stevenson called it, shutting too with his own hand the doors of his own sepulcher, that he might minister to the forsaken lepers of Molokai. No episode of modern missions has thrilled the civilized world more deeply than Father Damien's self-sacrifice. From the Pacific to the Atlantic, by Protestants no less than by Catholics, he has been admiringly crowned as one of the very foremost in the long bead-roll of the martyr-heroes of the Christian faith. He was born in 1840 of peasant parents at a little village on the River Leak, not far from the ancient city of Louvain, in Belgium. His real name was Joseph de Vuster, Damien being a new name which he adopted according to the custom of the religious orders when he was admitted to the congregation of the Pickpuss Fathers. In 1864 he joined on the shortest notice as a substitute for his elder brother, who had suddenly fallen ill, a band of missionaries for the Hawaiian Islands, and his life's labors were begun in the very island on which Captain Cook met his tragic end so long before. Here for nine years he toiled unsparingly, endearing himself to the natives and earning from his bishop the title of The Intrepid, because nothing ever seemed to daunt him. He had many adventures both on the sea and among the volcanic mountains, for like Bishop Hannington, whom he frequently recalls, he was a bold cliff climber and a strong swimmer. Visiting the people in the remote parts of the island he thought nothing of scaling precipitous rocks on hands and knees till his boots were torn to shreds and the blood flowed freely from feet as well as hands. Once when his canoe capsized he had to save his life by a long swim in his clothes. On another occasion, as he was riding along a lonely coast, he observed the ship's boat with several persons in it drifting helplessly towards the rocks. Going from his horse he plunged into the sea and succeeded in reaching the boat and bringing to land eight shipwrecked sailors, three Americans, four Englishmen, and a Dutchman. Their vessel had taken fire in mid-ocean, for more than a week they had drifted about in the Pacific till their strength was utterly exhausted and death was already staring them in the eyes when the brave young priest came with deliverance. But we must pass from deeds of courage and daring in which Damien has been equaled by many others to speak of that great deed of sacrifice in which he stands alone. The lovely Hawaiian islands have long suffered from a terrible scourge, the scourge of leprosy. Some years after Father Damien's arrival the government determined on the use of drastic measures to stamp out the evil. There is in the archipelago an island called Molokai, which along its northern side presents to the sea an awful front of precipice. At one spot, however, in this frowning battlement of rock and bearing to it in R. L. Stevenson's vivid comparison, the same relation as a bracket to a wall there projects into the ocean a rugged triangular piece of land known as Kalawao, which is thus cut off between the surf and the precipice. To this desolate tongue of wind swept down it was resolved to deport every person, young or old, rich or poor, prince or commoner, in whom the slightest taint of leprosy should be found. The law was carried into effect with the utmost rigor. All over the islands lepers and those suspected of having leprosy were hunted out by the police, dragged away from their homes, and if certified by a doctor as touched by the disease, at once shipped off to the leper settlement as if to a state prison. Children were torn from their parents and parents from their children. Islands and wives were separated for ever. In no case was any respect of persons shown, and a near relative of the Hawaiian queen was among the first to be seized and transported. Awful indeed was the lot of these poor creatures, thus gathered together from all parts of the islands and shot out like rubbish on that dismal wedge of land between cliff and sea, parted for ever from their friends, outcasts of society, with no man to care for their bodies or their souls, with nothing to hope for but a horrible, unpityed death that gave themselves up to a life like that of the beasts of the field, and even to this day things might have been no better on the peninsula of Kalawao had it not been for the coming of Father Damien. For some time Damien had felt the dreadful lot of those unfortunates pressing heavily upon his heart, all the more as several of his own flock had been carried away to the settlement. In a letter written about this time he says that when he saw his own beloved people dragged away, he felt a presentiment that he should see them again. Such a presentiment could only point to one thing. From Molokai no leper was ever permitted to return. Above the beach of Kalawao, as above the arched portal of Dante's inferno, the awful words might have stood, abandon hope all ye who enter here. If Father Damien was to see his poor smitten children again, it must be by going to them, for nevermore should they return to him. One day there was a gathering of the Roman Catholic clergy at the dedication of a church on the island of Maui, which lies not far from Molokai. After the ceremony was over the bishop was holding a familiar conversation with his missionaries, and in the course of it he spoke of the distress he felt for the poor lepers of Molokai, brick and sheep without a shepherd. At once Damien spoke out, my Lord, he says, on the day when I was admitted to the order of the Pickpus Fathers I was placed under the Paul that I might learn that voluntary death is the beginning of a new life, and I wish to declare now that I am ready to bury myself alive among the lepers of Molokai, some of whom are well known to me. It shows the stuff of which those Roman Catholic missionaries were made that the bishop accepted Damien's proposal as simply and readily as it was uttered. I could not have imposed this task upon any one, he said, but I gladly accept the offer you have made. At once Damien was ready to start, for, like General Gordon when he started for cartoom, he required no time for preparations. A few days afterwards, on May 11, 1873, he was landed on the beach of Calliwau along with a batch of fifty miserable lepers whom the authorities had just collected from various parts of Hawaii. The sights that met the eye of the devoted missionary must have been revolting beyond expression, though Damien himself says little about them, for it was not his habit to dwell on these details. Stevenson visited Molokai after Damien was dead, and after the place had been purged, bettered, beautified by his influence and example, but he describes the experience as grinding and harrowing. The princess regent of Hawaii once paid a state visit to the settlement while Damien was there, and after his presence had wrought a marvelous transformation. The lepers were dressed in their best, triumphal arches adorned the beach, flowers were strewn in profusion along the path that led to the place of reception. But when the royal lady looked around her on that awful crowd, the tears rolled down her cheeks, and though it had been arranged that she should speak to the people, her lips trembled so helplessly that she was unable to utter a single word. Damien came to Kalawa'u when the settlement was at its worst. He saw it, too, not as a passing visitor, but as one who knew that henceforth this was to be his only home on earth. He confesses that for a moment, as he stepped ashore, his heart sank within him. But he said to himself, now, Joseph, my boy, this is your life work! And never during the sixteen years that followed did he go back upon his resolve. For several weeks, until he found time to build himself a hut, he had no shelter but a large pandanus tree. This pandanus tree he called his house, and under its branches he lay down on the ground to sleep at night. Meanwhile from the very first he spent his days in trying to teach and help and comfort his leper flock, in a letter to his brother, Father Pumphil, in substitution for whom, as mentioned already, he had become a Hawaiian missionary, he admits that at first he almost grew sick in the presence of so much physical corruption. On Sundays especially, when the people crowded closely round him in the little building which served as a chapel, he often felt as if he must rush out of the lonesome atmosphere into the open air. But he deliberately crushed these sensations down. He sought to make himself as one of the lepers, and carried this so far that in his preaching he did not use the conventional, my brethren, but employed the expression, we lepers, instead, and by and by the spirit of sympathy grew so strong that even in the presence of what was most disgusting all feeling of repugnance passed entirely away. It was not only the souls of the lepers for which Father Damian cared, at that time there was no doctor in the settlement, so he set himself to soothe their bodily sufferings as best he could, cleansing their open wounds and binding up their stumps and sores. Death was constantly busy, indeed, someone died almost every day, and whether at noon or at midnight the good father was there to perform the last offices of his church. And as he sought to comfort the lepers in dying, his care for them continued after they were dead. Before his arrival no one had thought of burying a dead leper with any sort of decency. No coffin was provided, the corpse at best was shoveled hastily into a shallow hole, but Father Damian's reverence for a human being forbade him to acquiesce in such arrangements. As there was no one else to make coffins he made them himself, and it is estimated that during his years on Molokai he had made not less than fifteen hundred with his own hands, more than this. When no other could be got to dig a proper grave Damian did not hesitate to seize his spade and act the part of the grave-digger. To most people such toils as pastor and preacher, doctor and undertaker would seem more than enough even for the strongest of men, but they were far from summing up the labors of Damian. He induced the people to build themselves houses, and as few of them knew how to begin, he became head mason and carpenter-in-chief to the whole settlement. He next got them to give him their assistance in erecting suitable chapels at different points of the peninsula. He built two orphanages, one for boys and one for girls, into which he gathered all the fatherless and motherless children, and to the instruction of these young people he gave special attention. Above all he sought by constant cheerfulness and unflagging energy to infuse a new spirit into that forlorn collection of doomed men and women. By teaching them to work he brought a fresh and healthy interest into their lives. By creating a Christian public opinion he lifted them out of the condition of filth and saltishness into which they had sunk, but above all he wiped off from their souls the soiling of despair by the assurance he gave them of human sympathy and divine love. What was Father Damian like, many will ask? He was tall and strong, indeed of an imposing presence, with a bright and serene countenance and a rich and powerful voice. The very sight of him brought strength and comfort to others, like the master whom he loved and sought to follow, and who also was the friend of the leper. He was possessed of a strange magnetism, a kind of vital virtue, which, though in Damian's case it could not affect miracles, yet had power to lift up the hearts of those who were bowed down by their infirmities. So the years passed on, while day after day was filled up with such tasks as we have described. During the first six months the father was sometimes haunted by the thought that he had contracted the insidious disease. But thereafter he banished the idea from his mind, and lived on in Molokai for many years in perfect health and strength. One day, however, as he was washing his feet in unusually hot water, he noticed that they had been blistered with the heat without his being conscious of any pain. At once he knew what this meant. He had not lived so long in the settlement without learning that the absence of feeling in any part of the body is one of the surest symptoms of leprosy, and now he understood that his doom was sealed. But the fact made very little difference in either his thoughts or his ways. So long as he was able he went on with his duties as before, while he exerted himself with special anxiety to secure that after he was gone the work he had been doing in the settlement should be carried on, and carried on still more efficiently than had been possible for one who labored single-handed. And before he died he had the joy of knowing not only that these deeds of love and mercy would be taken up and continued by other fathers of his order, but that a brand of Franciscan sisters, inspired by his great example, had volunteered to serve as nurses among the lepers of Molokai, and that an adequate hospital with a thoroughly qualified doctor would seek to assuage the sufferings of those who had reached the last stages of the fatal malady. Despite of all that Father Damien accomplished when he was alive, we might almost say that he did more for the Hawaiian lepers by his death than by his life. It was not till after he had passed away that men came to a full knowledge of this hero of the nineteenth century, largely by the help of the burning pin of Robert Louis Stevenson, the story of his willing martyrdom flew round the world and made the name of Molokai illustrious. International sympathy was aroused for the poor sufferers for whom Damien laid down his life. The press of every Christian country resounded with his fame. Princes and peasants sought to do him honour. His royal highness the Prince of Wales, now King Edward the Seventh, placed himself at the head of a movement which had for its object to commemorate the life and labours of this brave soldier saint of Jesus Christ. Money flowed in, by which it became possible to do more for Damien's leper flock than he had ever been able to do himself. The Damien Institute was formed in England for the training of Roman Catholic youths to the laborious life of missionary priests in the South Seas. When Father Damien's end was drawing near, he expressed a desire to be buried at the foot of the pandanus tree beneath which he had lived when he first came to Molokai. The two fathers who were now with him thought it right to comply with his wishes, and so under the very spot which once served him for his bed his body lies awaiting the resurrection, with flowers growing over it and the wide tree spreading above. In one of the streets of Louvain there stands a beautiful statue of Father Damien. His face is uplifted to heaven, his left hand holds a crucifix to his heart, his right arm is thrown in love and protection round the shoulder of a poor leper who crouches to his side for comfort. It is a fine conception, finely executed, and yet its effect upon the beholder can hardly compare with the feelings of those who, like Stevenson and other pilgrims to the island, have stood by that grave in Molokai beneath the old pandanus tree, and seen Father Damien's monument lying all around him in that community of lepers which has been purged, bettered, beautified by his great act of sacrifice. CHAPTER XXII Almost due north of New Zealand, but at a distance of nearly twelve hundred miles, there lies embosomed in the midst of the Pacific Ocean a British group of islands of surpassing loveliness, one of the fairest jewel clusters in King Edward's Crown. They are about two hundred and fifty in number, ranging from the size of a large English county to barren rocks which disappear all together at the highest tides. To the invariable beauty of all volcanic islands in the tropics, this group adds the peculiar charms of the coral formations of the Pacific. Mountains clothed in the most luxuriant vegetation toss their fretted peaks high into the air. White green breakers dash perpetually on the barrier reefs, sending their snowy foam up to the very roots of the coconut trees that fringed the long shining beaches. Inside of the reefs again, the lagoon lies sleeping, into go blue where its waters are deepest, emerald green nearer to the shore, but always of such crystal clearness that the idle occupant of a canoe can see far down at the bottom of the white sands, the richly tinted seaweeds, the exquisite coral growths branching into innumerable varieties of form and blossoming with all the colors of the rainbow. These are the Fiji Islands, seated by King Thakumbao to Queen Victoria in 1874. King Edward is now the real king of Fiji, but if it had not been for the splendid labors of a band of Wesleyan missionaries, of whom the Reverend James Calvert was the most notable, the possession of Fiji would have brought the British monarch to the questionable honor of being a king of the cannibal islands. It was not of Fiji that Bishop Heber wrote, though every prospect pleases and only man is vile. But to these islands, some sixty years ago, the words might very fitly have been applied. Even among the savage peoples of the South Seas, the Fijians were notorious for every kind of brutal abomination. Man-eating was not only practiced, but gloried in and gloated over. It had become a lust so over-mastering that men were known to murder their nearest relatives in order to gratify the craving for human flesh. To such an extent was it carried on that there were some who could boast of having eaten hundreds of their fellow creatures. Miss Gordon Cumming, in her most interesting book, At Home in Fiji, tells of a row of stones she saw extending to a distance of two hundred yards, which was nothing else than a cannibal register formerly kept by two chiefs, to represent the number of persons they had themselves eaten, each stone standing for a human body. Woe betide the unfortunate crew whose ship drifted on to the reefs of a Fiji island. If they escaped from the cruel breakers, it was only to be dispatched by a club as soon as they reached the shore and cooked forthwith in a huge cannibal oven. But cannibalism was only one of the many forms of Fijian cruelty. In these fair islands, one might say, the air was always tainted with the smell of blood, for without the sacrifice of human blood nothing of importance could be undertaken. If a war canoe was to be launched, it was dragged down to the water over the prostrate bodies of living men and women who were always mangled and often crushed to death in the process. When a chief's house was being built, deep holes were dug for the wooden pillars on which the house was to rest. A man was thrown into each hole, and he was compelled to stand clasping the pillar with his arms while the earth was filled in right over his head. At the death of a Fijian of any consequence all his wives were strangled and buried beside him, to furnish what was called lining for his grave. His mother also, if still alive, suffered the same fate, and it was the duty of the eldest son to take the leading part in the strangling of both his mother and grandmother. The lives of more distant female relatives and connections were spared, but they had to express their grief by sawing off one of their fingers with a sharp shell, joint by joint, so that it was hardly possible to see a woman in the islands who had not suffered mutilation in both her hands. In spite of their cruelty, however, the Fijians were a race much superior, both in physique and intelligence, to the majority of the South Sea Islanders. Usually tall and muscular, both men and women sometimes displayed proportions that were quite magnificent. Their social laws were elaborate, and they possessed some of the arts of civilization. As manufacturers of cloth and especially of pottery, they were famous far and wide in the Pacific, and canoes came hundreds of miles from other island groups to purchase their wear. They also enjoyed a unique reputation as wig makers and hairdressers. Every chief had his own private hair artist, who spent hours each day over his master's head. With all kinds of fantastic variations in the particular style, the general idea was to get the hair to stick out as far as possible from the skull, and specially skillful operators were able to produce a coiffure five feet in circumference. Like everything else in this world, however, this elaborate top dressing had to be paid for, and the payment came at bedtime. It was impossible to lay such a head upon a pillow, much more upon the ground. The Fijian had to rest his neck all night long on a bar of bamboo raised above the floor by two short legs. It was between the thirties and the forties that the first pioneers of Christianity came to Fiji. About two hundred fifty miles to the east lay the friendly islands inhabited by a race called Tongans. These Tongans were much bolder sailors than most of the South Sea races, and were in the habit of visiting Fiji periodically for purposes of trade. Eventually some of them settled in the most easterly islands of the group, a fact which led to still closer intercourse. In the friendly islands the Wesleyan missionaries had met with remarkable success. The Tongans nearly all became Christians, including their king, King George, as he was called after his baptism. In his heathen days this man had been a famous fighter, digging out his war canoes like some viking of the Pacific and spreading death and devastation far and near. Now that he was a Christian he was no less zealous in seeking to spread the gospel of peace. Both he and his people were especially anxious that Christianity should be carried to Fiji, and they persuaded the Wesleyans to make the attempt. The Reverend James Calvert was among the pioneers in this dangerous enterprise, the only one who was spared to see the marvelous transformation, which passed over the archipelago within the course of a single generation, and can only be compared to the transition that takes place within a single hour in those same tropical regions from the darkness of the night to the glory of the morning. It was in La Kimba, one of the eastern or windward islands, as they are called, that Mr. and Mrs. Calvert first landed. It was a suitable place in which to begin, for here they were in the neighborhood of the Tongan colonies where King George's influence was felt. All the same they were subjected to a great deal of unkindness, and had to face constant dangers and hardships, especially as Mr. Calvert's district covered not La Kimba only, but twenty-four surrounding islands. Many days and nights had to be spent on the ocean in frail canoes. Many an anxious hour Mrs. Calvert had in La Kimba, alone in the midst of fierce savages, thinking too of her absent husband, who might be battling with the storm in a sea full of coral reefs or standing unarmed in the midst of a throng of excited cannibals. After some years of labor in their first sphere, it was decided that the Calvert's should leave the eastern outskirts of the Archipelago and make for the very citadel of Fijian heathenism and savagery. In the island of Bao, which lies near the heart of the whole group, there lived at that time an old king called Tanoa, one of the most ferocious of man-eaters, and his son Thakombao, a prince of almost gigantic size and at the same time of unusual intelligence and character. Both the king of Bao and his son were celebrated warriors. In case of need, they could summon to their banner many scores of war canoes, and their power to strike was felt all over Fiji. Thakombao was capable of mildness, but with Tanoa, blood-thirstiness had become a kind of mania. When he went forth in his huge sailing canoe, to demand tribute from surrounding islands, nothing delighted him so much as to exact little children and to sail back to harbour with their bodies dangling from his yard-arms. Once a near kinsman had offended him, and though the culprit begged his pardon most humbly, Tanoa only responded by cutting off the arm of the poor wretch at the elbow and drinking the warm blood as it flowed. Next he cooked the arm and ate it in the presence of his victim, and finally had him cut to pieces limb by limb. He was no more merciful to his own children than to those of other people, and on one occasion compelled one of his sons to club a younger brother to death. With characteristic courage the Wesleyan missionaries determined to strike at the very centre of Fijian cruelty, for they knew that if heathenism could be cast down in Bao, the effects of its downfall would be felt in every island of the archipelago. On Bao itself Tanoa would by no means permit them to settle, nor would he allow any Christian services to be held in that island. He made no objections, however, to Mr. Calvert's building a house on an islet called Viva, which is separated from Bao by only two miles of water, and he was quite willing to receive personal visits. Mr. Calvert had many a conversation with the old king and his son. On Tanoa he made not the slightest impression, but over Thakom Bao he gradually gained an influence which was to lead in due course both to the Christianization of the Fiji Islands and to their incorporation in Britain's Worldwide Empire. But it was Mrs. Calvert, not her husband, who gained the first victory in the fight. Hospitality was a thing on which King Tanoa prided himself, and he never failed to entertain important guests with a banquet of human flesh. If enemies could be secured for the table so much the better, but if not, he had no hesitation in sacrificing his own subjects. On one occasion a party of envoys from a piratical tribe had come to Bao to offer the king a share of their spoil by way of tribute. At once a hunting party was sent out under the leadership of Nga Vindi, a notable chief, which soon returned with fourteen captures all women, woman being considered an even greater delicacy than man. In those days the fishing in Fiji was nearly all done by the gentler sex, and these unfortunates were wading in the sea with their nets when the hunters sighted them. Creeping up with his men under the cover of a fringe of mangrove bushes which ran along the shore, Nga Vindi dashed suddenly into the water, and seized the screaming women, who knew only too well what sort of fate awaited them. Word of the occurrence came to Viva almost immediately. Mr. Calvert was absent at the time on one of his numerous expeditions, but his wife and another lady who was with her resolved to do what they could to save the doomed wretches. They jumped into a canoe and paddled hastily across the strait, before they reached the shore the din of the death-drums told them that the work of butchery had already begun. Every moment was precious now, and when they got to land they took to their heels and ran towards the king's house. By the laws of Bao no woman was at liberty to cross Tanoa's threshold on pain of her life, unless he sent for her, but these two ladies thought nothing of their own danger. They rushed headlong into the king's presence, and with arms outstretched besought him to spare the remaining victims. The very boldness of their action made it successful. Tanoa seemed quite dumbfounded by their audacity, but he at once ordered the work of slaughter to cease. Nine of the poor women had already been killed and carried off to the ovens, but the remaining five were immediately set at liberty. There was another custom not less cruel than cannibalism and even more difficult to uproot, since it was deeply intertwined with the religious idea of the people, and especially with their thoughts about the future life. This was the practice already referred to of strangling a man's wives and even his mother on the occasion of his funeral, so that their spirits might accompany him into the invisible world. As King Tanoa was an old man whose end seemed to be drawing near, the prospect of his death and what might happen in connection with it gave Mr. Calvert the deepest concern. He knew that if Fijian usage was adhered to, the departure of so great a chieftain from the world was sure to be attended by a whole sale emulation of his womenfolk. He also saw that if the practice could be broken down at Tanoa's obsequies, a deadly blow would be struck at such abominations. He therefore visited Tecombao, the heir apparent, again and urged him by every consideration in his power to abandon the idea of slaughtering his father's wives. He tried to appeal to his better feelings. He promised to give him a very handsome present if he would refrain from blood. He even went so far as to offer to cut off his own finger after the Fijian fashion of mourning if the women might be spared. But though Tecombao was evidently impressed by Mr. Calvert's pleadings, he would give no assurance, and Mr. Calvert learned afterwards that all the while Tanoa himself had been privately instructing his son that his wives must on no account be kept from accompanying him on his journey into the unseen. The old king's death took place rather suddenly in the end, and on this occasion too Mr. Calvert happened to be absent on duty in a distant island, so that it fell to a younger missionary, Mr. Watsford, to take action. As soon as he heard of the death, he made for bow with all possible haste. Within Tanoa's house and in the very presence of the corpse the work of massacre had begun. Two wives were lying dead, and a third had been summoned when the missionary burst in. When Tecombao saw him enter he became greatly excited, and trembling from head to foot he cried out, What about it, Mr. Watsford? Refrain, sir, Mr. Watsford exclaimed, speaking with great difficulty, for his emotions almost overpowered him. I mean, that is plenty, two are dead. But though Tecombao was moved he would not yield. They are not many, he said, only five, but for you missionaries many more would have accompanied my father. And so the other three victims were brought in, newly bathed, anointed with oil, dressed in their vest as if going to a joyous feast, and there, in the very presence of the white man as he kept pleading for their lives, they were put to death in the usual way. They were made to kneel down on the floor, a cord was fastened round their necks, and this cord was gradually drawn tighter and tighter till life was extinct. But though King Tecombao had not the courage at this time to defy the ancient traditions of his people, the influence of a higher teaching had been slowly telling upon him, and the day dawn in Fiji was about to begin. Soon after Tanoha's funeral a bow chief died, and Mr. Calvert was able in this case to persuade Tecombao to forbid any sacrifice of the women of the house. The usual preparations for murder had already been made, and the royal command gave great offense to many. The chief executioner flung down his strangling cord and exclaimed, Then I suppose we ought to die like anybody now. But a great victory had been won for humanity and Christianity. A precedent against a brutal custom had been established, which made it much easier for all time coming to rescue the proposed victims of superstition and cruelty. But the greatest triumph of all came when Tecombao resolved to renounce heathenism altogether and take his stand on the Christian side. In the presence of a vast crowd, summoned by the beating of the very death-drums which had formerly rolled out their invitation to the islanders to be present at a cannibal feast, the King of Bao renounced his past, proclaimed his faith, and declared his intention to live henceforth as a follower of Christ. That day of 1857 was not only a day of gratitude and thanksgiving in the experience of Mr. Calvert and his colleagues, but one of the most important days in the history of Fiji. It was the precursor, indeed, of another day some seventeen years later when Tecombao, having applied to be taken under the protection of the British crown, formally ceded the Fiji Islands to Queen Victoria, handing over at the same time to the British envoy, his old war club, in token of the fact that his people were now abandoning club law and adopting the forms and principles of civilized society. Tecombao's magnificent club, together with his drinking bowl, of which he made a present to our Queen, may now be seen by interested visitors in the British Museum. Innocent as they now look in their museum case, it requires some exercise of the imagination to picture forth the awful scenes of massacre, and the loathsome cannibal orgies in which that same club and drinking bowl once had their share. This book is called The Romance of Missionary Heroism. To those who read his story afterwards, the heroism and romance of a missionary's life often lies in the faith and courage and tenacity with which he faced toils and dangers, even though his endeavors did not result in great outward achievements. But there are other cases in which the romance of the missionary adventurer's life appears not only in the trials and difficulties he faces, but in the wonderful victories he wins. Now and then there comes a fortunate night of Christ before whom embattled hosts go down, and who wins his way into the city of Jerusalem and claims it in his Lord's name. James Calvert was such a happy night. When he and his young wife reached Fiji, one of his first tasks was to gather up and bury the skulls, hands, and feet of eighty men and women who had been sacrificed at a single feast. All around them, day by day, deeds of horror went on which might well have frozen the blood of any one who was not sustained by faith in God. Men and women bound with ropes were dragged past their door, going literally like oxen to the slaughter. The very air they breathed was foul at times with the sickening odor of roasting human flesh, yet they hardly dared to express their disgust and loathing. A brother missionary and his wife narrowly escaped from being themselves burnt alive because the lady had ventured to close the window and draw down the blind in order to shut out the sight and smell of what was going on in front of their house. On his visits to strange islands, too, Mr. Calvert always went with his life in his hand, and more than once had marvelous escapes from a death that seemed certain. But this same missionary, who had seen Fiji in its midnight gloom, was spared to see it in the light of the sun rising. He was spared to see the islands provided with thirteen-hundred Christian churches, crowded Sunday after Sunday by devout congregations. And where once the stillness of the night had been often broken by the death shriek of the victim or the cannibals' exultant death song, he was spared to hear, as he passed along the village paths after dark had fallen, the voices of fathers, mothers, and little children rising together from many a home in sweet evening hymns. CHAPTER XXIII The Apostle of the New Hebrides Of all the many island clusters of the South Pacific, there is none, perhaps, which has so good a claim as the New Hebrides to be regarded as a classic ground in the history of Christian missions. It was on Aromanga, one of this group, that John Williams, the greatest of all the missionaries of Oceania, the apostle of the South Seas, as he has justly been called, fell in death under the club of a fierce cannibal, and it was on Tana, an adjacent island, that the veteran Dr. John G. Peyton, a man not less apostolic than John Williams, began a career so full of intrepid action and hair-breadth escape of thrilling adventure and extraordinary romance, mingled at times with dreadful tragedy, that more almost than any other in the missionary annals of modern times it serves to illustrate the saying, Truth is stranger than fiction. It is nearly fifty years since Dr. Peyton was sent out by the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland to begin his lifework among the cannibals of the New Hebrides. Tana was the island chosen for his sphere, an island hitherto untouched by Christianity, and the Tannies were among the most ferocious savages of those Southern Seas. When he landed, war was afoot between an inland tribe and a tribe of the shore. He tells how, on the very first night that he spent on Tana, five or six men who had been killed in the fighting were cooked and eaten at a neighbouring spring, so that next morning, when he wanted some water to make tea for his breakfast, the spring was so polluted with blood that it could not be used. On the second evening the quiet of the night was broken by a sound more blood-curdling even than the howls of infuriated warriors. A wild wailing cry from the villages around long continued and unearthly. It told of the strangling of the widow that she might accompany her dead husband into the other world and be his servant there as she had been here. At first Mr. Peyton had the companionship of his brave young wife amidst the trials and perils which had daily to be faced, but in a few months she was cut off by fever, together with the little son who had just been born to them. The lonely man had to dig a grave with his own hands and lay the bodies of his beloved ones in the dust. At this time, when he was almost distracted with grief, a providential visit from Bishop Selwyn and Mr. Coleridge Paterson in their missionship brought him the consolation of true Christian sympathy. Standing with me, he writes, beside the grave of mother and child, I weeping aloud on his one hand and Paterson afterwards the martyr Bishop of Nukapu, sobbing silently on the other, the godly Bishop Selwyn poured out his heart to God amidst sobs and tears, during which he laid his hands on my head and invoked heaven's richest consolations and blessings on me and my trying labours. Strengthened by this angel visit from the noble pair of Church of England missionaries, Mr. Peyton set to work once more, though day by day he was made to feel that his life hung by a single thread. Constantly the savages threatened him with death, sometimes during the night they made cowardly attempts upon his life, but in some way or other, the stumbling of an assailant, the barking of his trusty dog, the working of superstitious fear in a heathen heart, the danger was always turned aside. One morning before daybreak Mr. Peyton was wakened by the noise of shots being fired along the beach. He had brought a few native teachers from the Christian island of Anitayim to help him in his work, and one of these men rushed in breathlessly to say that six or seven natives had been shot dead to make a provision for a great cannibal feast, and that the murderers were coming to kill Mr. Peyton and the Anitayimese for the same purpose. At once he called all the teachers into the house, locked the door and barred the window. By and by the tramp of many approaching feet was heard, and all through the morning and the long forenoon the cannibals kept running round the house, whispering to one another, and hovering about the window and the door. But the expected attack was never made. The Tannis knew that Mr. Peyton had a fouling-piece and a revolver in the house. They did not know that he had vowed never to use them to destroy human lives, and the fear of these weapons in a white man's hands must have held them back, for towards noon they stole silently away, and held their gruesome feast without the addition of Christian victims. Amidst scenes like these Mr. Peyton went on steadily with his work, teaching all whom he could get to listen, mastering the language, translating parts of the Bible into Tannis, and printing them with a little printing press that he had got from Scotland, he was greatly cheered at last by the arrival of another missionary, Mr. Johnston, who was accompanied by his wife, but not long after their arrival a painful tragedy befell. It was New Year's night, and the Johnstons had joined Mr. Peyton at family worship. Worship over they retired to their own cabin, which was only a few yards off, but Mr. Johnston came back immediately to inform Mr. Peyton that two men with painted faces were standing just outside his window, armed with huge clubs. Going out Mr. Peyton at once confronted these nocturnal visitors, and asked them what they wanted. Medicine for a sick boy, they replied, he told them to come in and get it, but the agitation they showed, and their evident unwillingness to come into the light of the room, made him suspect that they had some murderous design. He allowed no sign of his thoughts to appear, however, but stepped along with Mr. Johnston into the house, followed by the two men, and keeping a watchful eye on them all the while, quietly prepared the medicine. When he came forward with it the men, instead of taking it, tightened their grasp upon their killing-stones, but his steady gaze seemed to cow them, and when he sternly ordered them to leave the house they turned away. At that moment Mr. Johnston stooped down to lift a little kitten of Mr. Peyton's that was running out at the door, and instantly one of the savages leaped forward and aimed a blow at the stooping man. Mr. Johnston saw it coming, and in trying to avoid it rolled over and fell prostrate on the floor. Quick as thought Mr. Peyton sprang in between his friend and the savages upon which the two men turned on him and raised their stone clubs in the air to strike him down. He was saved by the courage and fidelity of his two dogs. One of them in particular, a little cross-bred retriever with terriers' blood in him, showed the utmost boldness and sprang furiously at the faces of the cannibals. The dog was badly hurt, but the savages were foiled, and at last they took to their heels through the door. Acustomed to such scenes Mr. Peyton retired to rest and slept soundly. With the newly arrived missionary it was otherwise. He had received a nervous shock from which he never recovered, and in three weeks he was dead. Again Mr. Peyton had to make a coffin and dig a grave, and then he says, referring to the heartbroken young widow and himself, we too alone at sunset laid him to rest close by the mission-house, beside my own dear wife and child. Immediately after this a dreadful deed of blood was wrought on Eromanga, where John Williams had been murdered fully twenty years before. The revered Mr. Gordon and his wife, Presbyterian missionaries from Nova Scotia, had been settled on the island, and were making some inroads on its heathendom. But the Sandalwood traders of the New Hebrides, a very debased set of men in those days, hated Mr. Gordon because he denounced their atrocities and warned the natives against their vices. In revenge they excited the superstitions of the Eromangans by persuading them that a plague of measles and a hurricane, both of which had recently visited the island, were brought about by Mr. Gordon. Thus the Sandalwooders were responsible for a calamity which made Eromanga once more a martyr isle, and all but led to a scene of martyrdom on Tana also. One day when Mr. Gordon was hard at work thatching a printing shed, in which he hoped to provide the Eromangans with the word of God in their own tongue, two men came to him and begged for medicine, at once he left his work and started with them towards the mission house, as he was stepping over a streamlet that ran across the path his foot slipped, and that moment the two men were upon him with their tomahawks, a terrible blow on the spine laid him on the ground, a second on the neck almost parted his head from his body, immediately a band of natives who had been hiding in the surrounding bush, rushed out and danced in frantic joy round the dead missionary. Meanwhile Mrs. Gordon, hearing the noise, came out of the house, wondering what had happened, the spot where her murdered husband lay was fortunately concealed from her eyes by a clump of trees. One of the natives approached her, and when she asked him what the noise meant, told her that it was only the boys amusing themselves. Then, as she turned to gaze once more in the direction of the shouting, he crept stealthily behind her, drove his tomahawk into her back, and severed her neck with his next blow. Just after this double murder, a sandalwood trader brought a party of aromangans over to Tana in his boat. These aromangans urged the Tannies to kill Mr. Peyton, as they themselves had killed the Gordon's, and though some of the Tana chiefs refused to have anything to do with the business, the great majority of them began to cry aloud for the missionary's death. Crowds came flocking to the mission house and shouting in Mr. Peyton's hearing, the men of Aromanga killed Missy Williams long ago, and now they have killed Missy Gordon. Let us kill Missy Peyton, too, and drive the worship of Jehovah from our land. Another favorite cry of the time, and one that boated ill for this much-enduring man, whose constant perils, adventures, and escapes recall the story of old Ulysses, was, I'll love to the aromangans, I'll love to the aromangans. At this juncture, just when Mr. Peyton's life from day to day seemed to be hanging by a single hair, two British warships sailed into the harbour. Seeing the state of matters, the Commodore urged Mr. Peyton to leave Tana at once, and offered to convey him either to New Zealand, or to the island of Anetayam, where Christianity had obtained a firm footing. But though grateful for the Commodore's kindness, he firmly declined to leave his post. He knew that if he did so, his station would immediately be broken up, and all the labours of the past three or four years would go for nothing. Moreover, in spite of all that had happened, in spite of the fact that so many of the people would willingly have put him to death, he loved those cruel savages with that Christian love which seized the latent possibilities of goodness in the very worst of men. To him a troop of howling cannibals, literally thirsting for his blood, were his dear, benighted tannies, after all. It takes a hero to understand a hero, and it may help us to appreciate Mr. Peyton's heroism in standing fast at what he felt to be the post of duty, when we find what Bishop Selwyn thought of it after hearing the whole story of the incident from Commodore Seymour's own lips, describing to a friend how the brave scotchman had declined to leave Tana by HMS Peloris. I like him all the better for so doing. The following words in one of his letters show how high he rated Mr. Peyton's conduct. Talk of bravery, talk of heroism, the man who leads a forlorn hope is a coward in comparison with him, who on Tana, thus alone, without a sustaining look or cheering word from one of his own race, regards it as his duty to hold on in the face of such dangers. We read of the soldier found after the lapse of ages among the ruins of Herculaneum, who stood firm at his post amid the fiery rain destroying all around him, thus manifesting the rigidity of the discipline amongst those armies of ancient Rome which conquered the world. Mr. Peyton was subjected to no such iron law. He might with honour, when offered to him, have sought a temporary asylum in Auckland, where he would have been heartily received. But he was moved by higher considerations. He chose to remain, and God knows whether at this moment he is in the land of the living. After the departure of the men of war, constant attempts were made on Mr. Peyton's life. Sometimes his empty revolver drove away his cowardly assailants. Frequently he was delivered by his perfect faith in the divine protection and the confidence with which he asserted that faith. Once for example, as he was going along a path in the bush, a man sprang suddenly from behind a breadfruit tree, and swinging his tomahawk on high with a fiendish look aimed at it straight for Mr. Peyton's brow. Springing aside, the missionary avoided the blow, and before the Ruffian could raise his weapon a second time, he turned upon him and said in a voice in which there was no fear, If you dare to strike me, my Jehovah God will punish you. He is here to defend me now. At once the man trembled from head to foot and looked all round to see if this Jehovah God might not be standing near among the shadows. Another time it seemed that the end had surely come. A conch-shell was heard peeling out a war-like summons. Evidently it was a pre-concerted signal, for the ominous notes had not died away before there was seen an immense multitude of armed savages advancing at the double down the slopes of a hill some distance off. Abandoning the mission-house, Mr. Peyton with his native teachers escaped through the bush to the village of a half-friendly chief some miles away, but it was not long till the savages were hot foot on their trail. The fugitives saw them coming, and knew that God alone could save them. We prayed, says Dr. Peyton, as one can only pray when in the jaws of death. And then a strange thing happened. In about three hundred yards off the pursuers suddenly stood stock still. The chief with whom he had taken refuge touched Mr. Peyton's knee and said, �Misi, Jehovah is hearing!� and to this day Dr. Peyton can give no other explanation of what took place, that host of warriors to whom no opposition could possibly have been offered, hesitated, turned back, and disappeared into the forest. At length there came what Dr. Peyton's brother and editor describes as �the last awful night�. Driven from his own station Mr. Peyton had succeeded after encountering dreadful risks and hardships by sea and land in joining Mr. and Mrs. Matheson, who occupied another post of the mission at the opposite end of Tana. But soon the cannibals were on his track again, and the crisis came which led to the breaking up for a time of all Christian work on Tana. The mission house was in a state of siege and Mr. Peyton, worn out with fatigue and constant watching, had fallen into a deep sleep. He was wakened by his faithful dog Cluthup pulling at his clothes, feeling sure that the instincts of the animal had not deceived it, and that even in the dead silence of the night it must have scented some danger, Mr. Peyton wakened his companions. Hardly had he done so when a glare of red light fell into the room. Then dark figures were seen flitting to and fro with blazing torches and making for the adjoining church, which was speedily in flames. Next the savages applied their torches to the reed fence by which the mission house was connected with the church, and now the inmates knew that in a very few minutes the house also would be on fire, and that outside in the night armed savages would be waiting to strike them down with coward blows if they tried to make their escape. When it was that Mr. Peyton performed a deed which, if done by a soldier on the field of battle, would be thought worthy of the Victoria Cross, seizing a little American tomahawk with his right hand, and taking his empty revolver in the left, he issued suddenly from the door before the savages had closed in upon the house. Running towards the burning fence, he attacked that part of it which was still untouched by the fire, cutting it down with his tomahawk and a frenzy of haste, and hurling it back into the flames so that it might no longer serve as a conductor between the church and the house. At first the savages were spellbound by his boldness, but soon several of them leaped forward with clubs uplifted. Leveling his harmless revolver at them, Mr. Peyton dared them to strike him, and though they all urged one another to give the first blow, not one of them had the courage to do it. So they stood facing each other in the lurid glow of the burning church, now flaring up through the midnight like a great torch, the intrepid white man and that band of bloodthirsty cannibals. And then there occurred something which the chief actor in this most dramatic scene has never ceased to attribute to the direct interposition of God. A rushing, roaring sound came out of the south like the muttering of approaching thunder. Every head was turned instinctively in that direction, for the natives knew by experience that a tornado was about to burst upon them. In another moment it fell. Had it come from the north no power on earth could have saved the mission house and its inmates, but coming from the quarter exactly opposite it swept the flames backwards and destroyed every chance of the house taking fire, and on the heels of the loud hurricane there came a lashing torrent of tropical rain which before long extinguished the fire altogether, with this furious onset of the elements of panic seized the savages. This is Jehovah's reign! They cried, and in a few moments every one of them had disappeared into the darkness, leaving Mr. Payton free to rejoin Mr. Matheson and his wife in perfect safety. That was Mr. Payton's last night on Tana. Next morning the blue bell, a trading vessel, came sailing into the bay, and by it the missionaries were rescued from their now desperate situation and taken to Anaytayam. With Mr. and Mrs. Matheson died soon after, the strain of their experiences on Tana had been too great. But in Mr. Payton's case those years of trial and apparent defeat proved but his apprenticeship for the extraordinary work he has accomplished since. First by his labors on the island of Aniwa, which lies between Tana and Aromanga, the natives there, though cannibals too, were less violent and brutal than the Tani's. Dr. Payton tells how, in clearing ground to build himself a house on Aniwa, he gathered off that little spot of earth two large baskets of human bones. Pointing to them he said to an Aniwan chief, How do these bones come to be here? Ah! replied the native with a shrug worthy of a cynical Frenchman, We are not Tana men, we do not eat the bones. The tale of Mr. Payton's life in Aniwa is as thrilling as any in the annals of the missionary church. But that, as Mr. Kipling would say, is another story and cannot be told here. Nor can we do more than allude to the romance of Mr. Payton's wanderings through the Australian bush and over the cities of England and Scotland in connection with the building of the dayspring, or rather of a succession of daysprings, for shipwreck was a common thing in those coral-studded seas, and the time came besides when for mission work, as for other work, the ship of sales had to give place to the ship of steam. And to come back to Tana again, it can only be said that fruit appeared at length in that hardest field in heathendom. Dr. Payton has had the joy of seeing other men enter into his labours, the peculiar joy of giving his own son, the Reverend Frank Payton, to that same island where he toiled in loneliness and tears, till driven from its shores by the savages themselves. His patient sufferings no less than his unselfish work helped to bring about at last a relenting of the Tani's heart. His early plowshare, we might say, driven through the hard soil, opened the way for the hopeful sowers and glad reapers who came in due season. CHAPTER XXIV One morning in the second decade of the nineteenth century, as some Yale students passed up the college steps on their way to their classrooms, they found sitting at the entrance door a dark-skinned lad who was crying silently. When they asked who he was and what was wrong, he told them in his broken English a story at once strange and sad. He was a native of the Hawaiian islands. In one of the constant and barbarous intertribal fights his home had been destroyed by the victors, and his father and mother cut down before his eyes. Taking his infant brother on his back, he had tried to escape, but was soon noticed pursued and overtaken. A ruthless spear was thrust through the body of the child he bore, while he himself was seized and dragged away into slavery. He had gained his liberty by hiding himself on board an American ship which had called at Hawaii and was homeward bound for New Haven in Connecticut. On the long voyage round Cape Horn he was treated kindly enough, but when the vessel reached its destination he was of no use to any one, and was turned adrift to follow his own devices. Unlike Nisima of Japan, of whom at some points his story reminds us, Opukahaya, or that was the name of this Hawaiian lad, had no Mr. Hardy waiting for him in the strange port. But as he roamed about the town, wondering what was to become of him, he came to Yale College and saw the bands of students passing in and out. In the few words of English which he had picked up from the sailors, he asked to pass her by what that great building was, and why those young men kept coming and going. He was told that this was a school of learning, and that those who entered its walls did so that wise men might teach them all that it was best to know. Now though a Pacific islander and half a savage, Opukahaya had that same thirst for knowledge which delighted Dr. Samuel Johnson so greatly when he discovered it one day in a young waterman who was rowing him across the Thames, and which frequently appears in persons who would hardly be suspected of having any intellectual tastes at all. In this youth from Hawaii, with his dark skin and restless eyes and broken speech, there burned an eager longing to know much more than he did, and especially to learn the secret of the white man's wisdom, it seemed natural to him to turn his feet towards the college, since there it seemed the fountain of truth and knowledge was to be found. But when he climbed the steps and reached the portal his heart had failed him utterly, and that was why the students found him crouching there that morning with the tears rolling down his cheeks. His questioners were half amused by this curious tale, but there were kind men among them, and many kind and Christian hearts among the good folk of the old Puritan town. An interest was awakened in Opukahaya, which led to his being provided for, and taught not only something of the wisdom of the white men but the great saving truths of the Christian faith. After some years had passed Opukahaya felt that he must go back to his own islands and tell his people the good news that he had learned himself, but meanwhile the romantic story of this Hawaiian youth had become widely known, and an interest in him and his country had grown up among the American churches. The American Board of Foreign Missions took up the matter, and decided to begin missionary work in the Hawaiian Islands. The scheme was entered into with a great deal of popular enthusiasm, and when at length in 1820 the pioneers set sail on their long voyage round the South American continent, the party included no fewer than seventeen persons besides Opukahaya himself. In a very real sense Opukahaya may be looked upon as the founder of the American mission in Hawaii, if he had not sat weeping some years before on the doorstep of Yale College, that band of missionaries would never have sailed in the Thaddeus for those far off heathen islands. But here his share in the enterprise comes to an end. He was not destined to carry the gospel to his countrymen. The harsh New England winters had been too much for one born amidst the soft warm breezes of the Pacific Ocean. He died of a decline, and it was left to others to carry out that idea which his mind had been the first to conceive of giving to the Hawaiian people the blessings of a Christian civilization. Beginning so romantically, the story of this American expedition grew even more romantic as time went on. Perhaps there has never been in the whole history of Protestant missions another record of such rapid and wholesale transformation of a degraded heathen race as took place in connection with this enterprise which had been inspired by the strange vision of a sandwich island or knocking at the gates of a Christian college. The Reverend Thaddeus Cohen, for example, one of the leading figures of that stirring period, baptized more than seventeen hundred persons on a single Sunday, and in one year received considerably more than five thousand men and women into the full communion of the church. Persons who, up to the time of their conversion, had lived the lawless life of the savage, robbers, murderers, drunkards, the former high priests of a cruel idolatry, their hands but recently washed from the blood of human victims, all assembled together in Christian peace and love to partake of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. As Dr. A. T. Pearson remarks in his new Acts of the Apostles, the transforming energies which swept through the islands in the early years of the mission find no adequate symbols but those volcanic upheavals with which the Canakas are familiar, and yet sudden as it was, this was no transient emotional result. It was a reconstruction of the community from its very base, the permanent creation of an orderly, decorous, peaceful Christian state. Of all the arresting incidents of this great religious revolution, the most dramatic is one which took place within the very crater of Kilauea, the largest and most awful of the active volcanoes of the world. In this dread amphitheater, on the very brink of the eternal fire-fountains of Hawaii, Kapiolani, the high chieftainess of Kava Roa, openly challenged and defied Pele, the indwelling goddess of the volcano, as every Hawaiian believed. Her act has been likened to that of Boniface at Gaismar, when with his acts he hewed down the venerable oak which had been sacred for centuries to thaw the thunderer while those around looked on with the fascination of horror, expecting every moment to see him struck dead by a bolt from heaven. Still more aptly the incident is compared by Miss Gordon coming to the great scene on Carmel, when Elijah challenged the idolatrous priests of Baal in the name of Israel's God. In 1825 one of the missionaries, the Reverend Mr. Bishop, made a preaching tour right round the main island of Hawaii, an adventurous tour it was, for he constantly had to clamber on hands and knees up the face of precipitous cliffs and to make his way over rugged lava beds or across deep gullies and swollen mountain torrents. At other times it was necessary to skirt the frowning rocky coast in a frail canoe, so as to circumvent those inland barriers which could not be crossed. The native villages were often difficult to find, hidden as they were in almost inaccessible glens, but whenever this brave adventurous preacher stood face to face with the people the most wonderful results followed, and he was amply repaid for all his dangers and toils. Among the converts of that time was Kapiolani, the most noted of all the female chiefs of Hawaii, who ruled over large possessions in the southern part of the main island. Previous to this she had been intensely superstitious, and like most of the natives had lived a reckless and intemperate life. Now she was utterly changed, first she set herself to reform her own life, dismissing all her husbands but one who like herself professed Christianity and adopting strictly sober habits. Next she did her utmost to uproot idolatrous notions and customs among her people, putting down infanticide, murder, drunkenness, and robbery with a firm hand, and without counting the possible cost to herself. She soon realized that the great obstacle to the progress of the Gospel among the Hawaiians was their superstitious faith in the divinities of Kilauea, and above all in Pele herself, the grim and terrible goddess who was supposed to have her dwelling place within the crater of the burning mountain. Pele had her retinue of priests and prophets, both male and female, whose hold upon the popular imagination was nothing short of tremendous. Their false teaching seemed to be reinforced by the great volcano with its smoking summit, an ever-present reality in the eyes of all. Thus frequent eruptions revealed the might of the unseen goddess. The deep thunders of Kilauea were Pele's own voice. The long filaments spun by the wind from the liquid lava and tossed over the edge of the crater were Pele's dusky, streaming hair. And those priests and priestesses who offered daily sacrifice to her divinity were the living oracles of her will. Upon their most cruel and licentious dictates and practices there rested the sanctions of the invisible world. Kapiolani saw quite clearly that the power of the fire goddess must be broken before Christianity could spread in Hawaii. She accordingly resolved to challenge that power in its innermost stronghold and sanctuary by defying Pele to her face on the very floor of the crater of Kilauea. When she announced her intention to her followers they did everything they could to hold her back from such a project. Even her husband, though himself a professed Christian, begged her to abstain from a deed so rash and dangerous. But to all expostulations she had one reply. All taboos, she said, are done away. We are safe in the keeping of the Almighty God and no power of earth or hell can harm his servants. When her people saw how determined she was they gave up trying to dissuade her, and about eighty of them were even so bold as to volunteer to accompany her to the summit of the fiery mountain. From Kapiolani's home Kilauea was distant about one hundred miles in a straight line. To reach it was a toilsome journey, a journey which took her and her companions over jagged mountain peaks and rough lava beds. But no detour would she make. She pressed straight on towards the volcano, over which there ever hung a dark pall of smoke by day, a lurid cloud of fire by night. As she advanced the people came in crowds out of the valleys to watch the progress of this strange pilgrimage. Many of them implored her to turn back ere it was too late, and not to draw down upon herself and others the vengeance of the fire gods. But this was her invariable reply. If I am destroyed you may all believe in Pele, but if I am not destroyed you must all turn to the only true God. At length, after a most fatiguing march, this bold champion of the new faith reached the base of Kilauea and began the upward ascent. As she approached the cone, one of Pele's weird profiteases appeared and warned her back in the name of the goddess. In her hand this Hawaiian pythoness held a piece of white bark cloth, and as she waved it above her head she declared it to be a message from Pele herself. Read the message, exclaimed Kapiolani, upon which the woman held the pretended oracle before her and poured out a flood of gibberish which she declared to be an ancient sacred dialect. Kapiolani smiled, You have delivered a message from your God, she said, which none of us can understand. I too have a pala-pala, and I will read you a message from my God which everyone will understand. Thereupon she opened her Hawaiian Bible and read several passages that told of Jehovah's almighty power, and of the heavenly Father's saving love in Jesus Christ. Still pressing on, Kapiolani came at length to the very edge of the vast crater, which lies one thousand feet below the summits of the enclosing cone, and led the way down the precipitous descent towards the black lava bed. On the crater's brink there grew, like the grapes of Vesuvius, clusters of the refreshing oelo berry, sacred to Pele herself, which no Hawaiian of those days would taste till he had first cast a laden branch down the precipice towards the fiery lake, saying as he did so, Pele, here are your oelos, I offer some to you, some I also eat, a formula which was supposed to render the eating safe, but without which an awful taboo would be infringed. Seeing the berries hanging all around her, Kapiolani stopped and ate of them freely without making any acknowledgement to the goddess. She then made her way slowly down into the bowl of the crater, and when she reached the bottom, walked across the undulating crust of lava till she came to the pala maumau itself, the house of everlasting burning. Standing there she picked up broken fragments of lava and flung them defiantly towards the seething cauldron, which rived and moaned and flung out long hissing tongues of red and purple flame. Having thus desecrated Pele's holy of holies in the most dreadful manner of which a Hawaiian imagination could conceive, she now turned to her trembling followers, who stood at some distance behind, and in a loud, clear voice, distinctly heard above all the deep whispers and mutterings of the volcano, she spoke these words, which were engraved forever afterwards on the memories of all who heard them. My God is Jehovah! He it was who kindled these fires. I do not fear Pele. Should I perish by her wrath, then you may fear her power. But if Jehovah saves me while I am breaking her taboos, then you must fear and love him. The gods of Hawaii are vain. Kapiolani then called upon her people to kneel down on that heaving floor and offer a solemn act of adoration to the one almighty God, and thereafter, to join their voices with hers in a hymn of joyful praise, and so by Christian praise and prayer the very crater of Kilauea, formerly the supposed abode of a cruel goddess, was consecrated as a temple to the God of holiness and love. The news of Kapiolani's bold deed soon ran from end to end of Hawaii. It sent a shiver of despair through the hearts of Pele's priests and votaries. Everyone felt that the old dominion of the fire gods must be tottering to its fall. Ere long the people began to turn in crowds from their idolatries. Even the heathen priests and priestesses renounced their allegiance to dark and bloody altars, and made profession of their faith in Christ. One day a sinister figure presented itself before one of the missionaries, among a number of people who were waiting to receive some Christian instruction. It was a man whose gruesome office it had been, in the service of Pele's altar, to hunt and catch the victims that were needed for the human sacrifices demanded by the goddess. This dreadful being had acquired the skill of a wild beast in lurking in the bypads of the forests to leap upon the passer's by, and was possessed of such enormous strength besides that he could break the bones of his victims by simply enfolding them in his iron embrace. No wonder that on seeing him the people shrank back in terror as if from some monster of the jungle, but even this man was conquered by the gospel of love and peace, and turned from serving Pele to follow Jesus Christ. In the larger centers of population the natives gathered in vast multitudes to listen to the missionaries. More than once Mr. Bishop preached to the assemblages that numbered upwards of ten thousand persons. Other chiefs and chieftainesses followed Capiolani's example by openly professing their Christian faith. One chief showed his earnestness and zeal by building a church large enough to accommodate four thousand people. For weeks his whole tribe flung themselves joyously into the task, hewing timber in the forests, dragging it to the appointed place, cutting reeds for the thatch, and binding it carefully to the roof. If ever there were romantic days in the history of a Christian mission, such days were experienced by those who witnessed the sudden glory of the Christian dawn that rose upon the Hawaiian islands, flushing mountain, shore, and ocean with the radiance of the skies. There were giants and heroes moreover in those days, for pioneers like Mr. Bishop and Titus Cohen deserved to be described by no lesser words. But so long as men tell the wonderful story of the spread of Christianity over the islands of Oceania, and recall the heroes and heroines of the past, the figure of Capiolani will stand out bravely, as she is seen in the strength of her newborn faith defying Pele's wrath in the dark crater of Kilauea.