THE ARROWS OF SANTA CRUZ
_Bishop Patteson_
(Date of Incident--August 15th, 1864)
The brown crew of _The Southern Cross_ breathed freely again as the
anchor swung into place and the schooner began to nose her way out
into the open Pacific. They were hardened to dangers, but the Island
of Tawny Cannibals had strained their nerve, by its hourly perils
from club and flying arrow. The men were glad to see their ship's bows
plunge freely again through the long-backed rollers.
As they set her course to the Island of Santa Cruz the crew talked
together of the men of the island they had left. In his cabin sat a
great bronzed bearded man writing a letter to his own people far away
on the other side of the world. Here are the very words that he wrote
as he told the story of one of the dangers through which they had just
passed on the island:
"As I sat on the beach with a crowd about me, most of them
suddenly jumped up and ran off. Turning my head I saw a man (from
the boat they saw two) coming to me with club uplifted. I remained
sitting and held out a few fish-hooks to him, but one or two men
jumped up and, seizing him by the waist, forced him off.
"After a few minutes I went back to the boat. I found out that
a poor fellow called Moliteum was shot dead two months ago by a
white trader for stealing a bit of calico. The wonder was, not
that they wanted to avenge the death of their kinsman, but that
others should have prevented it. How could they possibly know that
I was not one of the wicked set? Yet they did.... The plan of
going among the people unarmed makes them regard me as a friend."
Then he says of these men who had just tried to kill him: "The people,
though constantly fighting, and cannibals and the rest of it, are to
me very attractive."
The ship sailed on till they heard ahead of them the beating of the
surf on the reef of Santa Cruz. Behind the silver line of the breakers
the waving fronds of her palms came into sight. They put _The Southern
Cross_ in, cast anchor, and let a boat down from her side. Into the
boat tumbled a British sailor named Pearce, a young twenty-year-old
Englishman named Atkin, and three brown South-Sea Island boys from the
missionary training college for native teachers on Norfolk Island,
and their leader, Bishop Patteson, the white man who, having faced the
clubs of savages on a score of islands, never flinched from walking
into peril again to lead them to know of "the best Man in the world,
Jesus Christ." These brown boys were young helpers of Bishop Patteson.
And one of them especially, Fisher Young, would have died for his
great white leader gladly. They were like father and son.
The reef, covered at mid-tide with curling waters mottled with the
foam of the broken waves, was alive with men; while the beach beyond
was black with crowds of the wild islanders who had come down to see
the strange visitors from the ship. The four men sculled the boat
on to the edge of the reef and then rested on their oars as Patteson
swung himself over the side into the cool water. He waded across the
reef between the hosts of savages, and in every hand was a club or
spear or a six-foot wooden bow with an arrow ready to notch in its
bamboo string.
Patteson had come to make friends with them. So he entered a dark
wattled house and sat down to talk. The doorway was filled with
the faces of wondering men. As he looked on them a strange gleam of
longing came into his eyes and a smile of great tenderness softened
the strength of his brown face--the longing and the tenderness of
a shepherd looking for wandering sheep who are lost on the wild
mountains of the world.
Then he rose, left the house, and went back to the boat. The water was
now one seething cauldron of men--walking, splashing, swimming. Some,
as Patteson climbed into his boat, caught hold of the gunwale and
could hardly be made to loosen their hold. The four young fellows in
the boat swung their oars and got her under way, but they had made
barely half a dozen strokes when, without warning, an arrow whizzed
through the air into the boat. A cloud of arrows followed.
Six canoes were now filled with savage Santa Cruzans, who surrounded
the boat and joined in the shooting. Patteson, who was in the stern
between his boys and the bowmen, had not shipped the rudder, so
he held it up, as the boat shot ahead of the canoes, to shield off
arrows.
Turning round to see whither his now rudderless boat was being pulled,
he saw that they were heading for a little bay in the reef, which
would have wrecked their hopes of safety.
"Pull, port oars, pull on steadily," shouted Patteson; and they made
for _The Southern Cross_.
As he called to them he saw Pearce, the young British sailor, lying
between the thwarts with the long shaft of an arrow in his chest, and
a young Norfolk Islander with an arrow under his left eye. The
arrows flew around them in clouds, and suddenly Fisher Young--the
nineteen-year-old Polynesian whom he loved as a son--who was pulling
stroke, gave a faint scream. He was shot through the left wrist.
"Look out, sir! close to you," cried one of his crew. But the arrows
were all around him. All the way to the schooner the canoes skimmed
over the water chasing the boat. The four youths, including the
wounded, pulled on bravely and steadily. At last they reached the ship
and climbed on board, while the canoes--fearing vengeance from the men
on the schooner--turned and fled.
Once aboard, Bishop Patteson knelt by the side of Pearce, drew out
the arrow which had run more than five inches deep into his chest,
and bound up his wound. Turning to Fisher, he found that the arrow had
gone through the wrist and had broken off in the wound. Taking hold
of the point of the arrow where it stood out on the lower side of the
wrist, Patteson pulled it through, though the agony of the boy was
very great.
The arrows were wooden-headed and not poisoned. The wounds seemed to
be healing, but a few days later Fisher said, "I can't make out what
makes my jaws feel so stiff."
Fisher Young was the grandson of fierce, foul Pitcairn Island
cannibals, and was himself a brave and pure Christian lad. He had
faced death with his master many times on coral reefs, in savage
villages, on wild seas and under the clubs of Pacific islanders. Now
he was face to face with something more difficult than a swift
and dangerous adventure--the slow, dying agony of lockjaw. He grew
steadily worse in spite of everything that Patteson could do.
Near to the end he said faintly, "Kiss me; I am very glad I was doing
my duty. Tell my father that I was in the path of duty, and he will be
so glad. Poor Santa Cruz people!"
He spoke in that way of the people who had killed him. The young brown
hero lies to-day, as he would have wished, in the port that was named
after the Bishop whom he loved, and who was his hero, Port Patteson.
"I loved him," said Patteson, "as I think I never loved anyone else."
Fisher's love to his Bishop had been that of a youth to the hero whom
he worships, but Patteson had led that brown islander still further,
for he had taught the boy to love the Hero of all heroes, Jesus
Christ.