THE CANOE OF ADVENTURE
_Elikana_
(Date of Incident, 1861)
"I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care."
I
Manihiki Island looked like a tiny anchored canoe far away across
the Pacific, as Elikana glanced back from his place at the tiller. He
sang, meantime, quietly to himself an air that still rang in his ears,
the tune that he and his brother islanders had sung in praise of
the Power and Providence of God at the services on Manihiki. For the
Christian people of the Penrhyn group of South Sea Islands had come
together in April, 1861, for their yearly meeting, paddling from the
different quarters in their canoes through the white surge of the
breakers that thunder day and night round the island.
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.
He and his six companions were sailing back over the thirty miles
between Manihiki and Rakahanga, two of the many little lonely ocean
islands that stud the Pacific like stars.
They sailed a strange craft, for it cannot be called raft or canoe
or hut. It was all these and yet was neither. Two canoes, forty-eight
feet long, sailed side by side. Between the canoes were spars,
stretching across from one to the other, lashed to each boat and
making a platform between them six feet wide. On this was built a hut,
roofed with the beautiful braided leaves of the cocoa-nut palm.
Overhead stretched the infinite sky. Underneath lay thousands of
fathoms of blue-green ocean, whose cold, hidden deeps among the
mountains and valleys of the awful ocean under-world held strange
goblin fish-shapes. And on the surface this hut of leaves and bamboo
swung dizzily between sky and ocean on the frail canoes. And in the
canoes and the hut were six brown Rakahangan men, two women, and a
chubby, dark-eyed child, who sat contented and tired, being lapped to
sleep by the swaying waters.
Above them the great sail made of matting of fibre, strained in
the breeze that drove them nearer to the haven where they would be.
Already they could see the gleam of the Rakahanga beach with the rim
of silver where the waves broke into foam. Then the breeze dropped.
The fibre-sail flapped uneasily against the mast, while the two little
canvas sails hung loosely, as the wind, with little warning, swung
round, and smiting them in the face began to drive them back into the
ocean again.
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. In the canoes were enough
cocoa-nuts to feed them for days if need be, and two large calabashes
of water.
The swift night fell, but the wind held strong, and one man sat at
the tiller while two others baled out the water that leaked into the
canoes. They kept a keen watch, expecting to sight Manihiki; but when
the dawn flashed out of the sky in the East, where the island should
have been, there was neither Manihiki nor any other land at all. They
had no chart nor compass; north and south and east and west stretched
the wastes of the Pacific for hundreds of leagues. Only here and there
in the ocean, and all unseen to them, like little groups of mushrooms
on a limitless prairie, lay groups of islets.
They might, indeed, sail for a year without ever sighting any land;
and one storm-driven wave of the great ocean could smite their little
egg-shell craft to the bottom of the sea.
They gathered together in the hut and with anxious faces talked of
what they might do. They knew that far off to the southwest lay the
islands of Samoa, and Rarotonga. So they set the bows of their craft
southward. Morning grew to blazing noon and fell to evening and night,
and nothing did they see save the glittering sparkling waters of the
uncharted ocean, cut here and there by the cruel fin of a waiting
shark. It was Saturday when they started; and night fell seven times
while their wonderful hut-boat crept southward along the water, till
the following Friday. Then the wind changed, and, springing up from
the south, drove them wearily back once more in their tracks, and then
bore them eastward.
For another week they drove before the breeze, feeding on the
cocoa-nuts. But the water in the calabashes was gone. Then on
the morning of the second Friday, the fourteenth day of their
sea-wanderings, just when the sun in mid heaven was blazing its
noon-heat upon them and most of the little crew were lying under
the shade of the hut and the sail to doze away the hours of tedious
hunger, they heard the cry of "Land!" and leaping to their feet gazed
ahead at the welcome sight. With sail and paddle they urged the craft
on toward the island.
Then night fell, and with it squalls of wind and rain came
and buffeted them till they had to forsake the paddles for the
bailing-vessels to keep the boat afloat. Taking down the sails they
spread them flat to catch the pouring rain, and then poured this
precious fresh water--true water of life to them--into their
calabashes. But when morning came no land could be seen anywhere. It
was as though the island had been a land of enchantment and mirage,
and now had faded away. Yet hope sprang in them erect and glad next
day when land was sighted again; but the sea and the wind, as though
driven by the spirits of contrariness, smote them back.
For two more days they guided the canoe with the tiller and tried to
set her in one steady direction. Then, tired and out of heart, after
sixteen days of ceaseless and useless effort, they gave it up and let
her drift, for the winds and currents to take her where they would.
At night each man stood in his canoe almost starving and parched with
thirst, with aching back, stooping to dip the water from the canoe and
rising to pour it over the side. For hour after hour, while the calm
moon slowly climbed the sky, each slaved at his dull task. Lulled by
the heave and fall of the long-backed rollers as they slid under the
keels of the canoes, the men nearly dropped asleep where they
stood. The quiet waters crooned to them like a mother singing an old
lullaby--crooned and called, till a voice deep within them said, "It
is better to lie down and sleep and die than to live and fight and
starve."
Then a moan from the sleeping child, or a sight of a streaming ray
of moonlight on the face of its mother would send that nameless Voice
shivering back to its deep hiding-place--and the man would stoop and
bail again.
Each evening as it fell saw their anxious eyes looking west and north
and south for land, and always there was only the weary waste of
waters. And as the sun rose, they hardly dared open their eyes to the
unbroken rim of blue-grey that circled them like a steel prison. They
saw the thin edge of the moon grow to full blaze and then fade to a
corn sickle again as days and nights grew to weeks and a whole month
had passed.
Every morning, as the pearl-grey sea turned to pink and then to
gleaming blue, they knelt on the raft between the canoes and turned
their faces up to their Father in prayer, and never did the sun sink
behind the rim of waters without the sound of their voices rising into
the limitless sky with thanks for safe-keeping.
Slowly the pile of cocoa-nuts lessened. Each one of them with its
sweet milk and flesh was more precious to them than a golden chalice
set with rubies. The drops of milk that dripped from them were more
than ropes of pearls.
At last eight Sundays had followed one upon another; and now at the
end of the day there was only the half of one cocoa-nut remaining.
When that was gone--all would be over. So they knelt down under the
cloudless sky on an evening calm and beautiful. They were on that
invisible line in the Great Pacific where the day ends and begins.
Those seven on the tiny craft were, indeed, we cannot but believe, the
last worshippers in all the great world-house of God as Sunday drew
to its end just where they were. 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. But one and another and then all peered out through the swiftly
waning light and saw that indeed it was land.
Then a squall of wind sprang up, blowing them away from the land. Was
this last hope, by a fine ecstasy of torture, to be dangled before
them and then snatched away? But with the danger came the help; with
the wind came the rain; cool, sweet, refreshing, life-giving water.
Then the squall of wind dropped and changed. They hoisted the one sail
that had not blown to tatters, and drove for land.
Yet their most awful danger still lay before them. The roar of the
breakers on the cruel coral reef caught their ears. But there was
nothing for it but to risk the peril. They were among the breakers
which caught and tossed them on like eggshells. The scourge of the
surf swept them; a woman, a man--even the child, were torn from them
and ground on the ghastly teeth of the coral. Five were swept over
with the craft into the still, blue lagoon, and landing they fell
prone upon the shore, just breathing and no more, after the giant
buffeting of the thundering rollers, following the long, slow
starvation of their wonderful journey in the hut on the canoes among
"the waters of the wondrous isles."
"Wake: the silver dusk returning
Up the beach of darkness brims,
And the ship of sunrise burning
Strands upon the eastern rims."
II
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. The five survivors were starving, and the green
cocoa-nuts hung above them, filled with food and drink. But their
bodies, broken and tormented as they were by hunger and the battering
breakers, refused even to rise and climb for the food that meant life.
So they lay there, as though dead.
* * * * *
Over the ridge of the beach came a man. His pale copper skin shone in
the fresh sunlight of the morning. His quick black eyes were caught by
the sight of torn clothing hanging on a bush. Moving swiftly down the
beach of pounded coral, he saw a man lying with arms thrown out, face
downward. Turning the body over Faivaatala[31] found that the man was
dead. Taking the body in his arms he staggered with it up the beach,
and placed it under the shade of the trees. Returning he found the
living five. Their gaunt bodies and the broken craft on the shore told
him without words the story of their long drifting over the wilderness
of the waters.
Without stopping to waste words in empty sympathy with starving men,
Faivaatala ran to the nearest cocoa-nut tree and, climbing it, threw
down luscious nuts. Those below quickly knocked off the tops, drank
deep draughts of the cool milk and then ate. Coming down again,
Faivaatala kindled a fire and soon had some fish grilling for these
strange wanderers thrown up on the tiny islet.
They had no time to thank him before he ran off and swiftly paddled
to Motutala, the island where he lived, to tell the story of these
strange castaways. He came back with other helpers in canoes, and the
five getting aboard were swiftly paddled to Motutala.
As the canoes skimmed over the surface of the great lagoon Elikana
and his friends could see, spread out in a great semi-circle that
stretched to the horizon, the long low coral islets crowned with palms
which form part of the Ellice Islands.
The islanders, men, women, and children, ran down the beach to see the
newcomers and soon had set apart huts for them and made them welcome.
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."
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!" The cry was taken up through the island, and the
people running down the beach saw a large sailing vessel. Boats put
down and sculls flashed as sailors pulled swiftly to the shore.
They landed and the people gathered round to see and to hear what they
would say.
"Come onto our ship," said these men, who had sailed there from Peru,
"and we will show you how you can be rich with many knives and much
calico."
But the islanders shook their heads and said they would stay where
they were. 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.
So the Peruvian traders, with craft shining in their eyes, turned
again to the islanders and said: "If you will come with us, we will
take you where you will be taught all that men can know about God."
At this the islanders broke out into glad cries and speaking to one
another said: "Let us go and learn these things."
The day came for sailing, and as the sun rose, hundreds of brown feet
were running to the beach, children dancing with excitement, women
saying "Goodbye" to their husbands--men, who for the first time in
all their lives were to leave their tiny islet for the wonderful world
beyond the ocean.
So two hundred of them went on board. The sails were hoisted and they
went away never to return; sailed away not to learn of Jesus, but to
the sting of the lash and the shattering bullet, the bondage of the
plantations, and to death at the hands of those merciless beasts of
prey, the Peruvian slavers.
* * * * *
Years passed and a little fifty-ton trading vessel came to anchor
outside the reef. 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 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.
To-day a white lady missionary has gone to live in the Ellice Islands,
and the people are Christians, and no slave-trader can come to snatch
them away.
So there sailed over the waters of the wondrous isles first the boat
of sunrise and then the ship of darkness, and last of all the ship
of the Peace of God. The ship of darkness had seemed for a time to
conquer, but her day is now over; and to-day on that beach, as the
sunlight brims over the edge of the sea, and a new Lord's Day dawns,
you may hear the islanders sing their praise to the Light of the
World, Who shines upon them and keeps them safe.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 31: F[)a]-ee-v[)a] t[)a] l[=a].]