“I thought I was doing right to bring you,” he went on; “but now--now--”
“You feel,” she interposed, “that we are in real danger?”
“We shall be if the natives rise,” he replied. “I think you should know the truth, dear.”
Her blue eyes darkened, but there was no fear in them.
“But the people have come to feel we are their friends,” she protested. “Some of them love us. Surely they will not harm us.”
By this time they had reached the hut. He put her gently into a camp-chair before the door, and flung himself upon the white sand at her feet.
“A trading-ship touched on the other side of the island yesterday,” he told her.
“And paid for five hundred pounds’ worth of sandalwood with a barrel of rum, I suppose,” she commented.
“They were a little more generous this time,” he replied grimly. “They left several barrels.”
“No wonder then,” she said, “that the people are mad to-day.”
“They also left,” he continued, “in the mind of the old chief the impression that we missionaries are responsible for the drought.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Old Namakei informed me just now that if another moon passes without rain the island will have no more of our God or of us.”
“I told him,” and he smiled, “that I would dig in the earth and reveal a place where God’s rain is buried. He scoffed at first, but finally agreed to come with his warriors and help with the digging.”
“But, John,” she queried, “will you really be able to dig a well on this island?”
“Of course, I can’t be certain,” he answered; “but I’ve been studying the soil, and it seems probable. Anyway, it’s our one chance to appease the old chief’s ire and continue our work.”
John Gibson Paton had come out to the New Hebrides some years before, and settled on the cannibal island of Tanna.
He had begun at once to teach the people and had succeeded in greatly improving their condition, when a trading vessel had brought measles to the island. An epidemic followed, and the natives died like flies.
They were so bitterly angry against those who had brought the plague that they became suspicious of all white men, even the missionary who had always helped them, and he was finally obliged to flee for his life.
With great difficulty he escaped to a passing ship bound for Australia. From Australia, he went to his homeland, Scotland.