Читать книгу The Book of Missionary Heroes - Basil Mathews - Страница 28

(Date of Incident, 1796)

A ship crept quietly down the River Thames on an ebb-tide. She was slipping out from the river into the estuary when suddenly a challenge rang out across the grey water.

"What ship is that?"

"The Duff," was the answer that came back from the little ship whose captain had passed through a hundred hairsbreadth escapes in his life but was now starting on the strangest adventure of them all.

"Whither bound?" came the challenge again from the man-o'-war that had hailed them.

"Otaheite," came the answer, which would startle the Government officer. For Tahiti[11] (as we now call it) was many thousands of miles away in the heart of the South Pacific Ocean. Indeed it had only been discovered by Captain Cook twenty-eight years earlier in 1768. The Duff was a small sailing-ship such as one of our American ocean liners of to-day could put into her dining saloon.

"What cargo?" The question came again from the officer on the man-o'-war.

"Missionaries and provisions," was Captain Wilson's answer.

The man-o'-war's captain was puzzled. He did not know what strange beings might be meant by missionaries. He was suspicious. Were they pirates, perhaps, in disguise!

We can understand how curious it would sound to him when we remember that (although Wilfrid and Augustine and Columba had gone to Britain as missionaries over a thousand years before The Duff started down the Thames) no cargo of missionaries had ever before sailed from those North Sea Islands of Britain to the savages of other lands like the South Sea Islands.

There was a hurried order and a scurry on board the Government ship. A boat was let down into the Thames, and half a dozen sailors tumbled into her and rowed to The Duff. What did the officer find?

He was met at the rail by a man who had been through scores of adventures, Captain Wilson. The son of the captain of a Newcastle collier, Wilson had grown up a dare-devil sailor boy. He enlisted as a soldier in the American war, became captain of a vessel trading with India, and was then captured and imprisoned by the French in India. He escaped from prison by climbing a great wall, and dropping down forty feet on the other side. He plunged into a river full of alligators, and swam across, escaping the jaws of alligators only to be captured on the other bank by Indians, chained and made to march barefoot for 500 miles. Then he was thrust into Hyder Ali's loathsome prison, starved and loaded with irons, and at last at the end of two years was set free.

This was the daring hero who had now undertaken to captain the little Duff across the oceans of the world to the South Seas. With Captain Wilson, the man-o'-war officer found also six carpenters, two shoemakers, two bricklayers, two sailors, two smiths, two weavers, a surgeon, a hatter, a shopkeeper, a cotton factor, a cabinet-maker, a draper, a harness maker, a tin worker, a butcher and four ministers. But they were all of them missionaries. With them were six children.

All up and down the English Channel French frigates sailed like hawks waiting to pounce upon their prey; for England was at war with France in those days. So for five weary weeks The Duff anchored in the roadstead of Spithead till, as one of a fleet of fifty-seven vessels, she could sail down the channel and across the Bay of Biscay protected by British men-o'-war. Safely clear of the French cruisers, The Duff held on alone till the cloud-capped mountain-heights of Madeira hove in sight.

Across the Atlantic she stood, for the intention was to sail round South America into the Pacific. But on trying to round the Cape Horn The Duff met such violent gales that Captain Wilson turned her in her tracks and headed back across the Atlantic for the Cape of Good Hope.

Week after week for thousands and thousands of miles she sailed. She had travelled from Rio de Janiero over 10,000 miles and had only sighted a single sail—a longer journey than any ship had ever sailed without seeing land.

"Shall we see the island to-day?" the boys on board would ask Captain Wilson. Day after day he shook his head. But one night he said:

"If the wind holds good to-night we shall see an island in the morning, but not the island where we shall stop."

"Land ho!" shouted a sailor from the masthead in the morning, and, sure enough, they saw away on the horizon, like a cloud on the edge of the sea, the island of Toobonai.[12]

As they passed Toobonai the wind rose and howled through the rigging. It tore at the sail of The Duff, and the great Pacific waves rolled swiftly by, rushing and hissing along the sides of the little ship and tossing her on their foaming crests. But she weathered the storm, and, as the wind dropped, and they looked ahead, they saw, cutting into the sky-line, the mountain tops of Tahiti.

It was Saturday night when the island came in sight. Early on the Sunday morning by seven o'clock The Duff swung round under a gentle breeze into Matavai[13] Bay and dropped anchor. But before she could even anchor the whole bay had become alive with Tahitians. They thronged the beach, and, leaping into canoes, sent them skimming across the bay to the ship.

Captain Wilson, scanning the canoes swiftly and anxiously, saw with relief that the men were not armed. But the missionaries were startled when the savages climbed up the sides of the ship, and with wondering eyes rolling in their wild heads peered over the rail of the deck. They then leapt on board and began dancing like mad on the deck with their bare feet. From the canoes the Tahitians hauled up pigs, fowl, fish, bananas, and held them for the white men to buy. But Captain Wilson and all his company would not buy on that day—for it was Sunday.

The missionaries gathered together on deck to hold their Sunday morning service. The Tahitians stopped dancing and looked on with amazement, as the company of white men with their children knelt to pray and then read from the Bible.

The Tahitians could not understand this strange worship, with no god that could be seen. But when the white fathers and mothers and children sang, the savages stood around with wonder and delight on their faces as they listened to the strange and beautiful sounds.

But the startling events of the day were not over. For out from the beach came a canoe across the bay, and in it two Swedish sailors, named, like some fishermen of long ago, Peter and Andrew. These white men knew some English, but lived, not as Christians, but as the natives lived.

And after them came a great and aged chief named Haamanemane.[14] This great chief went up to the "chief" of the ship, Captain Wilson, and called out to him "Taio."[15]

They did not know what this meant, till Peter the Swede explained that Haamanemane wished to be the brother—the troth-friend of Captain Wilson. They were even to change names. Captain Wilson would be called Haamanemane, and Haamanemane would be called Wilson.

So Captain Wilson said "Taio," and he and the chief, who was also high priest of the gods of Tahiti, were brothers.

Captain Wilson said to Haamanemane, through Peter, who translated each to the other:

"We wish to come and live in this island."

Haamanemane said that he would speak to the king and queen of Tahiti about it. So he got down again over the side of the vessel into the canoe, and the paddles of his boatman flashed as they swept along over the breakers to the beach to tell the king of the great white chief who had come to visit them.

All these things happened on the Sunday. On Tuesday word came that the king and the queen would receive them. So Captain Wilson and all his missionaries got into the whale-boat and pulled for the shore. The natives rushed into the water, seized the boat and hauled her aground out of reach of the great waves.

They were startled to see the king and queen come riding on the shoulders of men. Even when one bearer grew tired and the king or the queen must get upon another, they were not allowed to touch the ground. The reason was that all the land they touched became their own, and the people carried them about so that they themselves might not lose their land and houses by the king and queen touching them.

So at that place, under the palm trees of Tahiti, with the beating of the surf on the shore before them, and the great mountain forests behind, these brown islanders of the South Seas gave a part of their land to Captain Wilson and his men that they might live there.

The sons of the wild men of the North Sea Islands had met their first great adventure in bringing to the men of the South Sea Islands the story of the love of the Father of all.