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Updated: May 29, 2025
"I'll take the savages as far as I promised, and you two lads shall stay aboard." On the evening of the third day, Captain Grimes said that he had towed the canoe the distance promised, and that she must be cast off. Matua and our other friends were very sorrowful when they parted from us.
It seemed a doubt whether we should have enough to reach one of the islands we had seen. After sleeping for some hours, the crew seized their paddles, and we began to paddle back the way we had come. The next day it was a dead calm, and we saw right ahead a large vessel, barque rigged. Bill and I both thought she was English and Matua agreed to go alongside.
The canoe was kept head to the seas, but we made no way, and it was very clear that we were driving before the gale, not back to Matua's island, though where we were going we could not tell. Matua sat steering as calm as possible. He said that he put his trust in God, and did not fear the storm.
At last I spoke well enough, with the help of signs, to ask him. I should have said that his name was Matua.
He told me also, with signs and words, that the missionary lived in an island some way off, and that he, Matua, had been there several times, and was soon going again to fetch a native missionary, or a preaching man; that one had been on the island, but that he was a very old man, and had died some time before we came. He told me that he had a canoe preparing for the voyage.
The island looked very beautiful as we sailed away from it, and I did not wonder that Matua loved it so much. His love for it made him undertake the voyage to fetch a missionary, for what he loved more than its beauty were the souls of the people in it, over whom he ruled. For two days the sea was smooth and the wind fair, though there was very little of it.
If you wish to serve your friends, you can let your wages go in payment: I can't undertake to help these savages for nothing." The last part of this speech did not please me, but still I did not think we could do better for ourselves or for Matua; so, after talking it over with him, we agreed to Captain Grimes' offer.
Some young Maories, whom he brought back on his last voyage, used to race after his gig to catch his eye, and when they took hold of any book, used to point upwards, as if whatever was associated with Matua, as they called him, must lead to heaven.
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