They had long to wait till the tide was high enough to carry them across the reef, and they could see people on shore, at whom they gazed anxiously with a glass.

About half-past four it became possible to cross the reef, and then two canoes rowed towards them:  one cast off the other and went back; the other, with a heap in the middle, drifted towards them, and they rowed towards it.

‘But’ (says Wate), ’when we came near we two were afraid, and I said to Joe, “If there is a man inside to attack us, when he rises up, we shall see him."’

Then the mate took up his pistol, but the sailor said, ’Those are the Bishop’s shoes.’

As they came up with it, and lifted the bundle wrapped in matting into the boat, a shout or yell arose from the shore.  Wate says four canoes put off in pursuit; but the others think their only object was to secure the now empty canoe as it drifted away.  The boat came alongside, and two words passed, ‘The body!’ Then it was lifted up, and laid across the skylight, rolled in the native mat, which was secured at the head and feet.  The placid smile was still on the face; there was a palm leaf fastened over the breast, and when the mat was opened there were five wounds, no more.

The strange mysterious beauty, as it may be called, of these circumstances almost makes one feel as if this were the legend of a martyr of the Primitive Church; but the fact is literally true, and can be interpreted, though probably no account will ever be obtained from the actors in the scene.

The wounds were, one evidently given with a club, which had shattered the right side of the skull at the back, and probably was the first, and had destroyed life instantly, and almost painlessly; another stroke of some sharp weapon had cloven the top of the head; the body was also pierced in one place; and there were two arrow wounds in the legs, but apparently not shot at the living man, but stuck in after his fall, and after he had been stripped, for the clothing was gone, all but the boots and socks.  In the front of the cocoa-nut palm, there were five knots made in the long leaflets.  All this is an almost certain indication that his death was the vengeance for five of the natives.  ‘Blood for blood’ is a sacred law, almost of nature, wherever Christianity has not prevailed, and a whole tribe is held responsible for the crime of one.  Five men in Fiji are known to have been stolen from Nukapu; and probably their families believed them to have been killed, and believed themselves to be performing a sacred duty when they dipped their weapons in the blood of the Bisope, whom they did not know well enough to understand that he was their protector.  Nay, it is likely that there had been some such discussion as had saved him before at Mai from suffering for Petere’s death; and, indeed, one party seem to have wished to keep him from landing, and to have thus solemnly and reverently treated his body.