MARTYRDOM OF THE GORDONS.
MAY 1861 brought with it a sorrowful and tragic event, which fell as the
very shadow of doom across our path; I mean the martyrdom of the Gordons
on Erromanga. Rev. G. N. Gordon was a native of Prince Edward Island,
Nova Scotia, and was born in 1822. He was educated at the Free Church
College, Halifax, and placed as Missionary on Erromanga in June 1857.
Much troubled and opposed by the Sandal-wooders, he had yet acquired the
language and was making progress by inroads on Heathenism. A
considerable number of young men and women embraced the Christian Faith,
lived at the Mission House, and devotedly helped him and his excellent
wife in all their work. But the hurricanes and the measles, already
referred to, caused great mortality in Erromanga also; and the degraded
Traders, who had introduced the plague, in order to save themselves from
revenge, stimulated the superstitions of the Heathen, and charged the
Missionaries there too with causing sickness and all other calamities.
The Sandal-wooders hated him for fearlessly denouncing and exposing
their hideous atrocities.
When Mr. Copeland and I placed the Native Teachers at Black Beach,
Tanna, we ran across to Erromanga in the _John Knox,_ taking a harmonium
to Mrs. Gordon, just come by their order from Sydney. When it was opened
out at the Mission House, and Mrs. Gordon began playing on it and
singing sweet hymns, the native women were in ecstasies. They at once
proposed to go off to the bush and cut each a burden of long grass, to
thatch the printing-office which Mr. Gordon was building in order to
print the Scriptures in their own tongue, if only Mrs. Gordon would play
to them at night and teach them to sing God's praises. They joyfully did
so, and then spent a happy evening singing those hymns. Next day being
Sabbath, we had a delightful season there, about thirty attending Church
and listening eagerly. The young men and women living at the Mission
House were being trained to become Teachers; they were reading a small
book in their own language, telling them the story of Joseph; and the
work every way seemed most hopeful. The Mission House had been removed a
mile or so up a hill, partly for Mrs. Gordon's health, and partly to
escape the annoying and contaminating influence of the Sandal-wooders on
the Christian Natives.
On the 20th May 1861 he was still working at the roofing of the
printing-office, and had sent his lads to bring each a load of the long
grass to finish the thatching. Meantime a party of Erromangans from a
district called Bunk-Hill, under a Chief named Lovu, had been watching
him. They had been to the Mission House inquiring and they had seen him
send away his Christian lads. They then hid in the bush and sent two of
their men to the Missionary to ask for calico. On a piece of wood he
wrote a note to Mrs. Gordon to give them two yards each. They asked him
to go with them to the Mission House, as they needed medicine for a sick
boy, and Lovu their Chief wanted to see him. He tied up in a napkin a
meal of food, which had been brought to him but not eaten, and started
to go with them. He requested the native Narubulet to go on before with
his companion, but they insisted upon his going in front. In crossing a
streamlet, which I visited shortly afterwards, his foot slipped. A blow
was aimed at him with a tomahawk, which he caught; the other man struck,
but his weapon was also caught. One of the tomahawks was then wrenched
out of his grasp. Next moment a blow on the spine laid the dear
Missionary low, and a second on the neck almost severed the head from
the body. The other Natives then rushed from their ambush, and began
dancing round him with frantic shoutings. Mrs. Gordon hearing the noise,
came out and stood in front of the Mission House, looking in the
direction of her husband's working place, and wondering what had
happened. Ouben, one of the party, who had run towards the Station the
moment that Mr. Gordon fell, now approached her. A merciful clump of
trees had hid from her eyes all that had occurred, and she said to
Ouben, "What's the cause of that noise?"
He replied, "Oh, nothing! only the boys amusing themselves!"
Saying, "Where are the boys?" she turned round. Ouben slipped stealthily
behind her, sank his tomahawk into her back, and with another blow
almost severed her head!
Such was the fate of those two devoted servants of the Lord; loving in
their lives, and in their deaths not divided--their spirits, wearing the
crown of martyrdom, entered Glory together to be welcomed by Williams
and Harris, whose blood was shed near the same now hallowed spot for the
name and cause of Jesus. They had labored four years on Erromanga,
amidst trials and dangers manifold, and had not been without tokens of
blessing in the Lord's work. Never more earnest or devoted Missionaries
lived and died in the Heathen field.