A MISSIONARY'S XMAS GIFT.

Auckland Star, Volume 304, Issue 304, 23 December 1926, Page 5 (Supplement)

A MISSIONARY'S XMAS GIFT.

THE TOHUNGA SCENTS A RIVAL.

(By ALICE A. KENNY.)

< j > ,_.-^.j....,-;->. 3 ;,......-^<J>.....^»<s>._.K^>.» The missionary sat on a box beside the table in his bare little house and lingered his Bible nervously. He did not look nervous, lor he was a middle-aged man with a reserved and expressionless face, but Ue was in a state of great anxiety. He was well read in the literature of martyrdoms, and at one time, with the unbalanced enthusiasm of youth, had rather inclined towards it as a desirable destiny for himself, but to-day, when it seemed within measurable distance, all he couid do was to turn the pages of his Bible and put up anguished prayers to his Maker. For his young wife sat on the opposite side of the tabic with tiieir child on her knee, very ipiiet. and watching his face, for he was her salvation, as the Lord was his. His own Maoris were scattered about, disaffected, and uneasy, for Tangata Riri. an important chief from up the river, had arrived on the scene. He was head chief to tlie amiable old savage who was tiie missionary's protector, and wiiu had been absorbing quite intelligently the good tidings of great joy which tlie white man had brought to his village, and if he, Tangata Riri, chose to condemn the new teaching, there was .—<s>■

..-.KgKg>....^^>...... <^^.,....< t^ > ....^ X 4 > .., X » X g > ... The messenger departed and the missionary bowed his head for a moment on his hands. "Lord, open their eyes!" he prayed. "Lord give them sight. Grant that they be men of pious hearts and search TinWord diligently." The whaling ship Lafayette hailed from Boston, U.S.A., but she had trafficked and adventured more or less successfully all over the seven seas, and this Christmas Day found her hove down on the beach at Tangione for repairs, while her captain waited for a consort there. Their Christmas was marked by no special festivities, nor did religious ceremonial enter into it, although the skipper was the son of a New England Congregationalist minister. A little less work and a little more grog was the only respect the festival received, until the extraordinary event of a Christmas present from a little mission station up the river broke the monotony of the day. It was a well worn Bible, wrapped in a piece of matting, and was brought to Captain Smart by a Maori from the neighbouring village. In answer to Smart's questions, he could tell no more than that it was given to him by a ■^.-.^.....<^.~*<&&....&5....,.<5>5 > ....<5,

«.<«><^_._KgxS>»-.KgxS>-»»»-<s><^»~»Kj><»>..-»-<S>«>-»-»-<8>.»-< nothing for the missionary to do but 1 retreat to the coast stripped of all his i belongings, and lucky to have his wife 1 safe. i It had reached Tangata Riri's ears i that a white magician, versed in many ; strange rites, had had the temerity to ; state that his God was angry when - Tangata Riri and his tribe ate men's ' flesh, and he was transported with rage i at the impudence of the man. He said i in effect: "I'll show him and this God ; of his. An upstart stranger, from no 1 one knows where, to try and interfere ] with the immemorial custom of the j country. If it had not been a good tiling to do, would our parents and , grandparents have done it? Certainly not! Where is this man?" He collected a small but highly effiV j cient war party, and came down the' i river by canoe at once. ■, The missionary, having heard that there was a ship lying at the river mouth, had intended going down to meet < the white men on Christmas Day, when this sudden hostile visit prevented him. . All polite conversation had ceased, presents had been contemptuously re- 1 fused with a plain intimation that . everything in sight was the property of ] the visitor if he chose to take it, and it seemed to the wretched missionary • that he had been listening to Tangata Riri's savage harangue for hours. The chief was working himself and his followers up to the looting and killing " pitch, not a difficult thing to do. | In an interval of comparative quiet ' the missionary attempted some soothing phrases about the inadvertence of his J offence. He would, he said, go away _ down to the coast to his white relations, and he would give the chief his house and goods as a gift. Tangata Riri refused with derision. ' "No—you shall come to my village 1 where my relations are. and I shall take your goods with mc," he said. But he was interested in this matter of a ship, especially as he had heard * that it was a disabled ship. White ! men's ships contained guns and many marvellous things, and white men were often so carelessly trusting that they - would let a band of wily warriors get ' in between them and their arms. This ' thought led him to consent to the mis- ; sionary sending his good book as a gift ] to the white man, since he could not go - himself. j "You will make words to tell them ' to come with guns and kill mc?" he ' said suspiciously, for he had learned ] tilings from some of the missionary's ■ pupils. _ '■ "Look." said the missionary, turning ' the leaves, "it is a hook, not a letter. 1 There is the b"\" 1 have taught. Let | him tell you." ' The voiith confirmed the missionary's ' words, and the old Tangata Riri beckoned i to a man of his own following: "Take 1 thi~ gift from the white man to thi' i other white men, and look well how many they be, and how many guns and other goods they; have."

messenger from another hapu, who said it was a gift from the Mihanere to his friends, the white men, who had come in a ship. He did not mention that the messenger was now making inquiries about the quality of these white men, and examining into their wealth and war-like provision with eager curiosity. "Wa-al durn him—this British missionary!" drawled Captain Smart. "He thinks our souls want saving, I reckon. If he'd had the decency to send us a basket of yams or a hog it might have helped us to stomach this kind of confounded dumb preachin' at us." "He's like the others of his cloth along at the Bay," said the mate, taking the book in his hand, and reading the missionary's name. "William Saintsbury, Hell! he's a saint already, is he—but them others at the Bay, as I was sayin'. won't have a word to say to sealers or whalers, or traders. We're all scum of the airth, and the coloured folk are God's own critters." They were joined by the second mace and the Bible was handed to him. "Here you are, you Britisher!" said the mate, "here's a Christmas present from the preacher at some little onehorse mission up river. " "I suppose there's a message of some sort in it," said the second mate, speaking with a voice and accent very different from the tones of his companions. He stood still on the beach turning the pages over, and soon found that there was no message anywhere, nothing but the owner's name written in a fine hand, and a carelessly scrawled list of psalms and verses like a memorandum, beginning with Psalm lix. 2. Rather to the amusement of the two other men he threw himself down on a dry bank of sand, and after lighting his pipe, continued to study the volume. "It's something to read," he said, "in this God forsaken place." "This comes of havin' a sight too much edjication," said the mate, regretfully, don't you go and get religion out of it, Air. Brown." Mr. Brown, whose name was not Brown, but Featherstonhaugh, made no reply. He was a stern-looking, youngish man of an origin and upbringing remarkably different from that of the two hardy Yankees, with whom he sailed. But though his early circumstances had been far superior to theirs, his career had been an ignoble tragedy, only recently showing any hope of a final redemption. He was a runaway from Norfolk Island, and had now sailed a season with Smart, finding a great humanity In the Yankee skipjjer who had him so much at his mercy. The Lafayette had been severely battered by gales, in one of which her second mate was lost overboard, and the superior education and general ability of Brown had led to Smart making him second officer. So _Ir. Featherstonhaugh, of Eton and Oxford, was laying his plans, with a hope long unknown to him \to become a citizen

of what Captain Smart called the U-nited States of Ammuriker, and an officer in her mercantile marine. Meanwhile he sat on the sand and examined the missionary's Bible. At first he looked into it carelessly, and then with a deepening interest, turning from page to page with a finger marking the place. At length be took a pencil from his pocket and wrote a little on a blank leaf. "By gad!" he said in an entirely Featherstonhaugh manner. He sprang i up and sought Captain Smart. The Captain, a little homesick for Providence, was re-reading a seven months' old letter from his young daughter. "Captain," said Brown, "do the savages on these islands commonly kill and eat their missionaries?" "It has been done, I believe," answered Smart. . "Likewise in the Feejee Islands, but the practice is dying out, I believe. Why?" "The man that sent tis this book," said Brown, tapping it with his forefinger, "wasn't concerned about our souls but about his own body. He was in such a tight place that he couldn't send a letter and he was reduced to signalling for help by this." "Sho!" said Captain Smart unmoved. "How do you make that out." "It's as plain as a pikestaff, clear as glass." "Plain as a gob of mud, you mean." "Look at this list of psalms and verses." "Wa-al —I'm lookin'." "Those indicate texts in the book to look ii])." "Who's goin' to look them up? I'll be everlastingly gol-darned—" "Captain Smart, this man Saintsbury has been a Penal Settlement chaplain. 1 remember the name." "Wa-al! What in thunder—" "When I was there —in that hell of a place," said Brown earnestly, "there was one book all we poor devils could get to know by heart if we wished to and that was the Bible. Whether it helped any suffering wretch I don't know, but it supplied the cunning and contriving ones with endless codes and passwords, and was useful in many an escape. This is so simple that a child could read it, but by heaven, it's plain. If Saintsbury didn't scribble these figures, Roman and others, down, someone else did when they were in difficulties. It's one long cry for help, all that column." "I wanter know!" exclaimed the captain. "Listen to this: 'Deliver mc from the workers of iniquity and save men from bloody men. Let the sighing of the prisoner come before Thee; according to the greatness of Thy power preserve Thou those that are appointed to die.'" j "But that ain't there." j "No, but I took a glance at the numbers where they occur in the psalms, and | every one of them is about the heathen and danger of death and begging for help to come quickly. Look at this one: 'Make haste to help mc, O Lord, my salvation.'" "But we ain't the Lord." "No, but we're white men. Has this poor devil his wife and child with him?" "I believe so." "Take hold of shield and buckler and stand up for mine help." "Sounds like the old preacher at the meeting house at home to hear you." "No one was going to do such a senseless thing as send along a half-worn Bible to a pack of strangers without so much as a Merry Christmas written in it. This is what he wants: 'Attend unto my cry; for I am brought very low; deliver mc from my persecutors for they are stronger than I.'" "Wa-al, I swan—Abner —Mr. Price, I mean, what do you make of this?" The men consulted together expressing varying degrees of incredulity and interest, and then the captain said: "Maylie it's a wild goose chase. I think likely it is, but I guess we'll hold that mes- | senger for a few hours and celebrate , Christmas by a picnic up-river." The poor little mission house was stripped of all portable articles; the missionary's black coat had been taken roughly from him, and his wife's shawl torn from her. Weary of waiting for his messenger Tangata Riri had decided to return up the river, and it pleased him to have the woman placed in one canoe while her husband was hustled into another. The missionary was pale, struggling for composure. "My dear love," he said in a low, faltering voice, speaking across the dividing water, "try to be calm. God is over us still." Then the child was snached from her arms and at the dreadful cry she uttered he forgot all self-control and struggled to throw himself into the river in a mad effort to

<_^-«sx^^.Ks>^-.-.«s><_-.-.^><S>-»-»-<»>^>«->-^rx»>. get to her. "Kill him" said Tangata Riri from the river-bank. "Xo, pinion his arms and bring him to mc that my sacred mere may bite into his brain. This white tohunga wearies mc. There will be no more power in his magic when I have eaten his flesh." The missionary understood most of this very well and despair for his wife and child made him struggle desperately, his heart filled with a crazed anger that God had so far forgotten him as to let this thing be. A shout rang out behind the canoes and the frantic prisoner recognised the voices of white men. It was followed by a clamour around him, loud outcries of surprise and panic. He was thrown backward into the bottom of the canoe, and as he dizzily raised himself he saw, like a heavenly miracle, a whale-boat lying a little distance off on the river.

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•••••cj>_-»-«-<Jx^«-«^<s>.»..»-s^>.«~«v«><s>»..».<t>^>»-»-<J> Her crew were holding her steady with the long oars while four armed men knelt and stood in the bow and four steady muzzles covered the nearest Maoris. Still dazed from his fall he knelt clasphis hands and lifting his face in prayer. The loud parleying that took place passed him almost unheard, phrases thing to and fro in whalers' Maori and broken English, a strong nasal voice dominating it all. He came fully to himself to realise that Tangata Riri and his party were retreating out of gun shot and the whale boat sliding and bumping along the side of the canoe. A man gripped his arm" to help him get in. "All clear, mister," said the nasal voice. "Yes, yes —here's the lady i and the little fellow. I reckon we took j up shield and buckler just in time."