church.

I write of the service with a smile; yet I was always there--always

with respect for Maka, always with admiration for his deep

seriousness, his burning energy, the fire of his roused eye, the

sincere and various accents of his voice. To see him weekly

flogging a dead horse and blowing a cold fire was a lesson in

fortitude and constancy. It may be a question whether if the

mission were fully supported, and he was set free from business

avocations, more might not result; I think otherwise myself; I

think not neglect but rigour has reduced his flock, that rigour

which has once provoked a revolution, and which to-day, in a man so

lively and engaging, amazes the beholder. No song, no dance, no

tobacco, no liquor, no alleviative of life--only toil and church-

going; so says a voice from his face; and the face is the face of

the Polynesian Esau, but the voice is the voice of a Jacob from a

different world. And a Polynesian at the best makes a singular

missionary in the Gilberts, coming from a country recklessly

unchaste to one conspicuously strict; from a race hag-ridden with

bogies to one comparatively bold against the terrors of the dark.

The thought was stamped one morning in my mind, when I chanced to

be abroad by moonlight, and saw all the town lightless, but the

lamp faithfully burning by the missionary's bed. It requires no

law, no fire, and no scouting police, to withhold Maka and his

countrymen from wandering in the night unlighted.

CHAPTER IV--A TALE OF A TAPU

On the morrow of our arrival (Sunday, 14th July 1889) our

photographers were early stirring. Once more we traversed a silent

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