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Updated: June 29, 2025
But they had become so fond of Elikana that they said: "No, you must not leave us," and it was only when he promised to come back with another teacher to help him, that they could bring themselves to part with him. So when a ship came to the island to trade in cocoa-nuts Elikana went aboard and sailed to Samoa to the London Missionary Society's training college there at Malua. "A ship! A ship!"
Was it to be the last time that they would pray to God in this life? Prayer ended; night was falling. Elikana the leader, who had kept their spirits from utterly failing, stood up and gazed out with great anxious eyes before the last light should fail. "Look, there upon the edge of the sea where the sun sets. Is it " He could hardly dare to believe that it was not the mirage of his weary brain.
Elikana gathered them round him, and began to tell them about the love of Jesus and the protecting care of God the Father. It all seemed strange to them, but quickly they learned from him, and he began to teach them and their children. This went on for four months, till one day Elikana said: "I must go away and learn more so that I can teach you more."
The first Christian missionaries landed in 1819. Elikana "I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care." Manihiki Island looked like a tiny anchored canoe far away across the Pacific, as Elikana glanced back from his place at the tiller.
Then a wicked white man named Tom Rose, who lived on the island and knew how much the people were looking forward to the day when Elikana would come back to teach them, went to the traders and whispered what he knew to them.
One man and then another and another got down into the little boat and pulled for the shore. Elikana had returned. The women and children ran down to meet him but few men were there, for nearly all had gone. "Where is this one? Where is the other?" cried Elikana, with sad face as he looked around on them. "Gone, gone," came the answer; "carried away by the man-stealing ships."
Elikana looked ahead to where his own island of Rakahanga grew clearer every moment on the sky-line ahead of them, though each time his craft dropped into the trough of the sea between the green curves of the league-long ocean rollers the island was lost from sight.
Elikana and his friends knew the sea almost like fish, from the time they were babies. And they were little troubled by the turn of the breeze, save that it would delay their homecoming. They tried in vain to make headway. Slowly, but surely they were driven back from land, till they could see that there was no other thing but just to turn about and let her run back to Manihiki.
"Wake: the silver dusk returning Up the beach of darkness brims, And the ship of sunrise burning Strands upon the eastern rims." Thrown up by the ocean in the darkness like driftwood, Elikana and his companions lay on the grey shore. Against the dim light of the stars and beyond the beach of darkness they could see the fronds of the palms waving.
Elikana turned to the white missionary who had come with him, to ask what they could do. "We will leave Joane and his wife here," replied Mr. Murray. So a teacher from Samoa stayed there and taught the people, while Elikana went to begin work in an island near by.
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