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There was now very little time to spare, as the time of an ordination at Auckland was fixed, and two important visits had yet to be paid, so the two Fate guests were sent ashore in the canoes of some of their friends, and the 'Southern Cross' reached Nengone on the 1st of September. The Bishop had left a boat there some years before, and the Samoan teacher, Mark, who had been Mrs.
"We must cast off," said Atkins in a low voice, "we can do no more." As he spoke a bullet from Chard's Snider struck the water about thirty yards away, and springing up, he seized his own rifle again. Huka placed his hand on the officer's arm, and then turned to Harvey and spoke in Samoan, gravely and with solemn emphasis, though his brown cheeks were wetted with tears.
They bake this in the form of little cakes, when the bread-fruit is out of season, and especially when there is a scarcity of taro. The odour of these cakes is offensive in the extreme to a European; but a Samoan turns from a bit of English cheese with far more disgust than we do from his fermented bread-fruit.
It is a marvel with the many demands made upon him, his varied interests, and frequent visits to neighboring islands, Stevenson still found time to write stories, poems, prayers, notes of the South Sea Islands, Samoan history, and many, many letters. "It is a life that suits me but absorbs me like an ocean," he said. Through it all his health continued fairly good.
And with a wave of his arm he knocked down a whole battalion, with the scornful remark, "All white men are cowards." After Mr. Stevenson's death so many of his Samoan friends begged for his photograph that we sent to Sydney for a supply, which was soon exhausted. One afternoon Pola came in and remarked, in a very hurt and aggrieved manner, that he had been neglected in the way of photographs.
She glanced round as he came and noiselessly slid into the water. She vanished like a naiad startled by the approach of a mortal. He was surprised and amused. He wondered where she had hidden herself. He swam downstream and presently saw her sitting on a rock. She looked at him with uncurious eyes. He called out a greeting in Samoan. "Talofa."
"Moreover," continued Jack, "I find that she belongs to one of the Samoan Islands, where Christianity had been introduced long before her capture by the heathens of a neighbouring island; and the very day after she was taken, she was to have joined the church which had been planted there by that excellent body, the London Missionary Society.
A Vailima tartan was adopted for special occasions and Stevenson encouraged them to think of the household as a family, to take interest and pride in all its doings. On Sunday evenings the entire household was assembled. A chapter of the Samoan Bible was read and Samoan hymns sung. Then a prayer in English written by Stevenson was read, concluding with the Lord's Prayer in Samoan.
Thus, one of the dusky sailors hailed from Easter Island, a second from the Carolines, a third from the Paumotus, while the fourth was a gigantic Samoan. At sea, Boyd Duncan, himself a navigator, stood a mate's watch with Captain Dettmar, and both of them took a wheel or lookout occasionally.
After touching at several islands to the south and west of Tahiti, where not a single heathen remains, the ships steered for a harbour in one of the islands of the Samoan group. It was here that a boat's crew of the French navigator, La Perouse, were massacred.