At Gera there was also a great assembly of canoes, and as all hands were wanted on board, Patteson went ashore in a canoe with the brother of one of the scholars.  He was told that he was the first white man who had ever landed there, and the people showed a good deal of surprise, but were quite peaceable, and the presence of women and children was a sign that there was no danger.  When he tried to return to the ship, a heavy sea came on, and the canoes were forced to put back, and he thus found himself obliged to spend the night on the island.  He was taken into a house with two rooms, in each of which numbers of men were lying on the ground, a small wood fire burning in the midst of each group of three or four.

A grass mat was brought him, and a bit of wood for a pillow, and as he was wet through, cold, and very tired, he lay down; but sleep was impossible, from tormenting vermin, as well as because it seemed to be the custom of the people to be going backwards and forwards all night, sitting over the fire talking, then dropping asleep and waking to talk again.  A yam was brought him after about an hour, and long before dawn he escaped into the open air, and sat over a tire there till at high tide, at six o’clock in the morning, he was able to put off again and reach the ship, where forty-five natives had slept, and behaved well.

‘The sense of cold and dirt and weariness was not pleasing,’ he confesses, and certainly the contrast to the Eton and Oxford habits was great.  There was a grand exchange of presents; hatchets, adzes, hooks and empty bottles on one side, and a pig and yams on the other.  Immediately after follows a perilous adventure, which, as we shall find, made a deep impression.  It is thus related in a letter for the benefit of Thorverton Rectory:—­

‘At Sea:  Lat. 19° 50’ S.; long. 167° 41’ E.

’My dearest Uncle,—­May is a month specially connected henceforward in my mind with a merciful deliverance from great peril, which God vouchsafed to us on May 2nd.  We touched on a reef at the Isle of Guadalcanar, one of the Solomon Islands, in lat. 9° 50’, and but for God’s mercy in blessing our exertions, we might have incurred fearful danger of losing the Mission vessel.  As it was, in a couple of minutes we were off the reef and in deep safe water—­to Him be the praise and the glory!  I have written all particulars as usual to my father, and now that the danger has been averted, you will rejoice to hear how great a door is opened to us in that part of the world.  Personal safety ensured, and, so far as can be judged of, no apparent obstacle in the way of the Mission in that quarter.  Had this great peril not occurred—­and it was to human eyes and in human language the mere “chance” of a minute—­I might have dwelt with too much satisfaction on the bright side of the picture.  As it is, it is a lesson to me “to think soberly.”  I can hardly trust myself to write yet with my usual freedom of