Mr. Atkin gives a touching description of Taroniara’s arrival:—­

’Stephen was not long in finding his little girl, Paraiteka.  She was soon in his arms.  The old fellow just held her up for the Bishop to see, and then turned away with her, and I saw a handkerchief come out privately and brush quickly across his eyes, and in a few minutes he came back to us.’

The little girl’s mother, for whose sake Taroniara had once refused to return to school, had been carried off by a Maran man; and as the heathen connection had been so slight, and a proper marriage so entirely beyond the ideas of the native state, it was thought advisable to leave this as a thing of heathen darkness, and let him select a girl to be educated into becoming fit for his true wife.

Besides Stephen, Joseph Wate and two other Christian lads were with Mr. Atkin, and he made an expedition of two days’ visit to Wate’s father.  At Ulava he found that dysentery had swept off nearly all the natives, and he thought these races, even while left to themselves, were dying out.  ‘But,’ adds the brave man in his journal, ’I will never, I hope, allow that because these people are dying out, it is of no use or a waste of time carrying the Gospel to them.  It is, I should rather say, a case where we ought to be the more anxious to gather up the fragments.’

So he worked on bravely, making it an object, if he could do no more, to teach enough to give new scholars a start in the school, and to see who were most worth choosing there.  He suffered a little loss of popularity when it was found that he was not a perpetual fountain of beads, hatchets, and tobacco, but he did the good work of effecting a reconciliation between Wango and another village named Hane, where he made a visit, and heard a song in honour of Taroniara.  He was invited to a great reconciliation feast; which he thus describes, beginning with his walk to Hane by short marches:—­

’We waited where we overtook Taki, until the main body from Wango came up.  They charged past in fine style, looking very well in their holiday dress, each with his left hand full of spears, and one brandished in the right.  It looked much more like a fighting party than a peace party; but it is the custom to make peace with the whole army, to convince the enemy that it is only for his accommodation that they are making peace, and not because they are afraid to fight him.  It was about 12 o’clock when we reached the rendezvous.  There was a fine charge of all, except a dozen of the more sedate of the party; they rattled their spears, and ran, and shouted, and jumped, even crossing the stream which was the neutral ground.  We halted by the stream for some time; at last some Hane people came to their side; there was a charge again almost up to them, but they took it coolly.  At about 10 o’clock the whole body of the Hane men came, and two or three from Wango went across to them.  I was tired of waiting, and asked Taki if I should go.  “Yes, and tell them to bring the money,” he said.