John G. Paton · 15 of 48

Chapter IX. Deepening Shadows · Part 2

Hurricane and tempest also fought against us at that time. On the 3rd, and again on the 10th March, 1861, we had severe and destructive storms. They tore up and smashed bread-fruit, chestnut, cocoa-nut, and all kinds of fruit trees. The ground 263was strewn thick with half-ripe and wasted fruits. Yam plantations and bananas were riven to pieces, and fences and houses lay piled in a common ruin. My Mission House was also greatly injured; and the Church, on which I had spent many weeks of labour, was nearly levelled with the ground. Trees of forty years’ growth were broken like straws, or lifted by the roots and blown away. At the other Station, all Mr. Mathieson’s premises except one bedroom were swept off in the breath of the hurricane. The sea rose alarmingly and its waves rolled far inland, causing terrible destruction. Had not the merciful Lord left one bedroom at my Station and one at Mr. Mathieson’s partly habitable, I know not what in the circumstances we could have done. Men of fifty years declared that never such a tempest had shaken their Islands. Canoes were shivered on the coral rocks, and Villages were left with nothing but ruins to mark where they had been. Though rain poured in torrents, I had to keep near my fallen house for hours and hours to prevent the Natives from carrying away everything I had in this world; and after the second storm, all my earthly belongings had to be secured in the one still-standing room.

Following upon this came another spate of thirst for our blood, which was increased in the following manner. Miaki the war Chief had an infant son, who had just died. They told us that four men were slain at the same time, that their spirits might serve and accompany him in the other world; and that our 264death also was again resolved upon. For four days they surrounded our diminished premises. We locked ourselves all up in that single bedroom, and armed savages kept prowling about to take our lives. What but the restraining pity of the Lord kept them from breaking in upon us? They killed our fowls. They cut down and destroyed all our remaining bananas. They broke down the fence around the plantation, and tried to burn it, but failed. They speared and killed some of the few goats—my sole supply of milk. We were helpless, and kept breathing out our souls in prayer; and God did preserve us, but, oh, what a trying time!

The horror grew, when shortly thereafter we learned that our people near the Harbour had killed four men and presented their bodies to certain Chiefs who feasted on them; and that they in return had given large fat hogs to our people, one for each of ten bodies which our people had formerly presented to them. Within a few months, thirteen or fourteen persons, nearly all refugees or prisoners of war, were reported to us as killed and feasted upon. We generally heard nothing of these murders till all was over, but in any case, I would have been helpless against their bloodthirst, even had I exposed myself to their savage enmity. They sent two dead bodies to our nearest village, where still we conducted Worship every Sabbath when we durst appear amongst them; but our people refused to receive them, saying, “Now we know that it is wrong to kill and eat our fellow-creatures.” 265A Chief from another village, being present, eagerly received them and carried them off to a great feast for which he was preparing.

At this juncture, our friendly Chief Nowar seemed to become afraid. His life also had been threatened; and our life had been often attempted of late. Society around was all in turmoil, and Nowar urged us all to leave and take refuge in Aneityum till these dangers blew past, and he himself would accompany us. I refused, however, to leave. Indeed, there was no immediate means of escape, except my boat,—which would have been almost madness in an open sea voyage of fifty miles, with only Nowar and the Teachers, all inexperienced hands. Nowar, being angry and afraid, took his revenge by laying aside his shirt and kilt, returning to his heathen nakedness and paint, attending the meetings of the savages, and absenting himself from the Sabbath Worship. But after about three weeks he resumed the Christian garments, and, feeling that the danger had for the time passed over, he returned to us as friendly as ever. Poor Nowar! if he only knew what thousands of Christians at home do every day just to save their skins; and then if he only knew how hardly these Christians can speak against Heathen converts!

My first baptism on Tanna was that of a Teacher’s child. About fifty persons were present, and Miaki the war Chief was there also. Alas, that child died in the plague of measles, and of course the Worship was blamed. Deaths, hurricanes all seemed to be 266turned against us. A thunderstorm came in the wake of the last hurricane. A man and a woman were killed. Not far from my house, the hill was struck, a large mass was dislodged from its shoulder and hurled into the valley below. This was the manifest token to them that the Gods were angry and that we were the cause! God’s grace alone kept us from sinking, and the hope of yet seeing them delivered from their Heathenism, and brought to love and serve Jesus Christ. For that everything could be borne; and I knew that this was the post of duty, for it was the Lord undoubtedly that placed me there.

One day, about this time, I heard an unusual bleating amongst my few remaining goats, as if they were being killed or tortured. I rushed to the goathouse, and found myself instantly surrounded by a band of armed men. The snare had caught me, their weapons were raised, and I expected next instant to die. But God moved me to talk to them firmly and kindly; I warned them of their sin and its punishment; I showed them that only my love and pity led me to remain there seeking their good, and that if they killed me they killed their best friend. I further assured them that I was not afraid to die, for at death my Saviour would take me to be with Himself in Heaven, and to be far happier than I had ever been on Earth; and that my only desire to live was to make them all as happy, by teaching them to love and serve my Lord Jesus. I then lifted up my hands and eyes to the Heavens, and prayed aloud for 267Jesus to bless all my dear Tannese, and either to protect me or to take me home to Glory as He saw to be for the best. One after another they slipped away from me, and Jesus restrained them once again. Did ever mother run more quickly to protect her crying child in danger’s hour, than the Lord Jesus hastens to answer believing prayer, and send help to His servants in His own good time and way, so far as it shall be for His glory and their good? A woman may forget her child, yet will not I forget thee, saith the Lord. Oh, that all my readers knew and felt this, as in those days and ever since I have felt that His promise is a reality, and that He is with His servants to support and bless them even unto the end of the world!

May, 1861, brought with it a sorrowful and tragic event, which fell as the very shadow of doom across our path; I mean the martyrdom of the Gordons on Erromanga. Rev. G. N. Gordon was a native of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and was born in 1822. He was educated at the Free Church College, Halifax, and placed as Missionary on Erromanga, in June, 1857. Much troubled and opposed by the Sandal-wooders, he had yet acquired the language and was making progress by inroads on Heathenism. A considerable number of young men and women embraced the Christian Faith, lived at the Mission House, and devotedly helped him and his excellent wife in all their work. But the hurricanes and the measles, already referred to, caused great 268mortality in Erromanga also; and the degraded Traders, who had introduced the plague, in order to save themselves from revenge, stimulated the superstitions of the Heathen, and charged the Missionaries with causing sickness and all other calamities. The Sandal-wooders hated him for fearlessly denouncing and exposing their hideous atrocities.

When Mr. Copeland and I placed the Native Teachers at Black Beach, Tanna, we ran across to Erromanga in the John Knox, taking a harmonium to Mrs. Gordon, just come to their order from Sydney. When it was opened out at the Mission House, and Mrs. Gordon began playing on it and singing sweet hymns, the native women were in ecstasies. They at once proposed to go off to the bush and cut each a burden of long grass, to thatch the printing-office which Mr. Gordon was building in order to print the Scriptures in their own tongue, if only Mrs. Gordon would play to them at night and teach them to sing God’s praises. They joyfully did so, and then spent a happy evening singing those hymns. Next day being Sabbath, we had a delightful season there, about thirty attending Church and listening eagerly. The young men and women, living at the Mission House, were being trained to become Teachers. They were reading a small book in their own language, telling them the story of Joseph; and the work every way seemed most hopeful. The Mission House had been removed a mile or so up a hill, partly for Mrs. Gordon’s health, and partly to 269escape the annoying and contaminating influence of the Sandal-wooders on his Christian Natives.

On 20th May, 1861, he was still working at the roofing of the printing-office, and had sent his lads to bring each a load of the long grass to finish the thatching. Meantime, a party of Erromangans from a district called Bunk-Hill, under a Chief named Lovu, had been watching him. They had been to the Mission House inquiring, and they had seen him send away his Christian lads. They then hid in the bush, and sent two of their men to the Missionary to ask for calico. On a piece of wood he wrote a note to Mrs. Gordon to give them two yards each. They asked him to go with them to the Mission House, as they needed medicine for a sick boy, and Lovu their Chief wanted to see him. He tied up in a napkin a meal of food, which had been brought to him but not eaten, and started to go with them. He requested the native Narubulet to go on before, with his companion; but they insisted upon his going in front. In crossing a streamlet, which I visited shortly afterwards, his foot slipped. A blow was aimed at him with a tomahawk which he caught; the other man struck, but his weapon was also caught. One of the tomahawks was then wrenched out of his grasp. Next moment, a blow on the spine laid the dear Missionary low, and a second on the neck almost severed the head from the body. The other Natives then rushed from their ambush, and slashed him to pieces, and began dancing round him with frantic 270shoutings. Mrs. Gordon, hearing the noise, came out and stood in front of the Mission House, looking in the direction of her husband’s working place and wondering what had happened. Ouben, one of the party, who had run towards the Station the moment that Mr. Gordon fell, now approached her. A merciful clump of trees had hid from her eyes all that had occurred, and she said to Ouben,—

“What’s the cause of that noise?”

He replied, “Oh, nothing! only the boys amusing themselves!”

Saying, “Where are the boys?” she turned round.

Ouben slipped stealthily behind her, sank his tomahawk into her back, and with another blow almost severed her head!

Such was the fate of those two devoted servants of the Lord; loving in their lives, and in their deaths scarcely divided—their spirits, in the crown of martyrdom, entered Glory together, to be welcomed by Williams and Harris, whose blood was shed on the same dark isle for the name and cause of Jesus. They had laboured four years on Erromanga, amidst trials and dangers manifold, and had not been without tokens of blessing in the Lord’s work. Never more earnest and devoted Missionaries lived or died in the Heathen field. Other accounts, indeed, have been published, and another was reported to me by Mr. Gordon’s Christian lads; but the above combines faithfully the principal facts in the story. One young Christian lad from a distance saw Mr. Gordon 271murdered; and a woman saw Mrs. Gordon fall. The above facts are vouched for by a Mr. Milne, one of the few respectable Sandal-wooders, who was there at the time, and helped the Christian Natives to bury the remains, which he says were painfully mutilated.

Some severe criticisms, of course, were written and published by those angelic creatures who judge all things from their own safe and easy distance. Mr. Gordon’s lack of prudence was sorely blamed, forsooth! One would so like to see these people just for one week in such trying circumstances. As my near fellow-labourer and dearest friend, I know what was the whole spirit of the man’s life, his watchful care, his ceaseless anxiety to do everything that in his judgment was for God’s glory and the prosperity of the Mission, and my estimate of him and of his action to the last fills me with supreme regard to his memory. The Rev. Dr. Inglis of Aneityum, best qualified of all men living to form an opinion, wrote:—

“Mr. Gordon was a strong, bold, fearless, energetic, self-denying, and laborious Missionary; eager, earnest, and unwearied in seeking the salvation of the Heathen.... Even if Mr. Gordon was to blame for any imprudence, no blame of this kind could be attached to Mrs. Gordon. Hers was a weak, gentle, loving spirit; quiet and uncomplaining, prudent, earnest, and devoted to Christ. She was esteemed and beloved by all who knew her.”

My Amen follows, soft and deep, on all that he has 272written; and I add, Mr. Gordon was doing what any faithful and devoted Missionary would in all probability for the Master’s sake in similar circumstances have done. Those who charge him with imprudence would, doubtless, grievously blame Stephen for bringing that stoning upon himself, which he could so easily have escaped!

Mr. Gordon, in his last letter to me, of date 15th February, 1861, says:—

“I have news of the best and of the worst character to communicate. A young man died in December, in the Lord, as we believe. We are still preserved in health at our work by the God of all grace, whose power alone could have preserved us in all our troubles, which have come upon us by the measles per the Blue Bell. Ah, this is a season which we will not soon forget. Some settlements are nearly depopulated, and the principal Chiefs are nearly all dead! And oh, the indescribable fiendish hatred that exists against us! There is quite a famine here. The distress is awful, and the cry of mourning perpetual. A few on both sides of the Island who did not flee from the Worship of God are living, which is now greatly impressing some and exciting the enmity of others. I cannot now write of perils. We feel very anxious to hear from you. If you have to flee, Aneityum of course is the nearest and best place to which you can go. Confidence in us is being restored. Mana, 273a native Teacher, remains with us for safety from the fury of his enemies. I cannot visit as usual. The persecution cannot be much worse on Tanna. I hope the worst is past. Mrs. G. unites in love to you, and to Mr. and Mrs. Johnston. In great haste,

Let every reader, in view of this epistle, like a voice from the World Unseen, judge of the spirit of the man of God who penned it, and of the causes that were even then at work and were bringing about his sorrowful death. Cruel superstition, measles, and the malignant influences of the godless Traders,—these on Erromanga, as elsewhere, were the forces at work that brought hatred and murder in their train.

Immediately thereafter, a Sandal-wood Trader brought in his boat a party of Erromangans by night to Tanna. They assembled our Harbour Chiefs and people, and urged them to kill us and Mr. and Mrs. Mathieson and the Teachers, or allow them to do so, as they had killed Mr. and Mrs. Gordon. Then they proposed to go to Aneityum and kill the Missionaries there, as the Aneityumese Natives had burned their Church, and thus they would sweep away the Worship and the servants of Jehovah from all the New Hebrides. Our Chiefs, however, refused, restrained by the Merciful One, and the Erromangans returned to their own island in a sulky mood. Notwithstanding this refusal, as if they wished to reserve the murder and 274plunder for themselves, our Mission House was next day thronged with armed men, some from Inland, others from Mr. Mathieson’s Station. They loudly praised the Erromangans! The leaders said again and again in my hearing,—

“The men of Erromanga killed Missi Williams long ago. We killed the Rarotongan and Samoan Teachers. We fought Missi Turner and Missi Nisbet, and drove them from our island. We killed the Aneityumese Teachers on Aniwa, and one of Missi Paton’s Teachers too. We killed several white men, and no Man-of-war punished us. Let us talk over this, about killing Missi Paton and the Aneityumese, till we see if any Man-of-war comes to punish the Erromangans. If not, let us unite, let us kill these Missionaries, let us drive the worship of Jehovah from our land!”

An Inland Chief said or rather shouted in my hearing,—

“My love to the Erromangans! They are strong and brave men, the Erromangans. They have killed their Missi and his wife, while we only talk about it. They have destroyed the Worship and driven away Jehovah!”

I stood amongst them and protested,—

“God will yet punish the Erromangans for such wicked deeds. God has heard all your bad talk, and will punish it in His own time and way.”

But they shouted me down, amidst great excitement, with the cry,—

275“Our love to the Erromangans! Our love to the Erromangans!”

After I left them, Abraham heard them say,—

“Miaki is lazy. Let us meet in every village, and talk with each other. Let us all agree to kill Missi and the Aneityumese for the first of our Chiefs that dies.”

On Tanna, as on Erromanga, the Natives have no idea of death coming to any one naturally, or sickness or any disease; everything comes by Nahak, or sorcery. When one person grows sick or dies, they meet to talk over it and find out who has bewitched or killed him, and this ends in fixing upon some individual upon whom they take revenge, or whom they murder outright. Thus many wars arise on Tanna, for the friends or the tribe of the murdered man generally seek a counter-revenge; and so the blood-fiend is let loose over all the island, and from island to island throughout the whole of the New Hebrides.

The night after the visit of the Erromangan boat, and the sad news of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon’s death the Tannese met on their village dancing-grounds and held high festival in praise of the Erromangans. Our best friend, old Nowar, the Chief, who had worn shirt and kilt for some time and had come regularly to, the Worship, relapsed once more; he painted his face, threw off his clothing, resumed his bow and arrows, and his tomahawk, of which he boasted that it had killed very many men and at least one woman! On 276my shaming him for professing to worship Jehovah and yet uniting with the Heathen in rejoicing over the murder of His servants on Erromanga, he replied to this effect,—

“Truly, Missi, they have done well. If the people of Erromanga are severely punished for this by the Man-of-war, we will all hear of it; and our people will then fear to kill you and the other Missionaries, so as to destroy the Worship of Jehovah. Now, they say, the Erromangans killed Missi Williams and the Samoan, Rarotongan, and Aneityumese Teachers, besides other white men, and no Man-of-war has punished either them or us. If they are not punished for what has been done on Erromanga, nothing else can keep them here from killing you and me and all who worship at the Mission House!”

I answered,—“Nowar, let us all be strong to love and serve Jehovah Jesus. If it be for our good and His glory, He will protect us; if not, He will take us to be with Himself. We will not be killed by their bad talk. Besides, what avails it to us, when dead and gone, if even a Man-of-war should come and punish our murderers?”

He shrugged his shoulders, answering,—“Missi, by-and-by you will see. Mind, I tell you the truth. I know our Tannese people. How is it that Jehovah did not protect the Gordons and the Erromangan worshippers? If the Erromangans are not punished, neither will our Tannese be punished, though they murder all Jehovah’s people!”

277I felt for Nowar’s struggling faith, just trembling on the verge of cannibalism yet, and knowing so little of the true Jehovah.

Groups of Natives assembled suspiciously near us and sat whispering together. They urged old Abraham to return to Aneityum by the very first opportunity, as our lives were certain to be taken, but he replied,—

“I will not leave Missi.”

Abraham and I were thrown much into each other’s company, and he stood by me in every danger. We conducted family prayers alternately; and that evening he said during the prayer in Tannese, in which language alone we understood each other,—

“O Lord, our Heavenly Father, they have murdered Thy servants on Erromanga. They have banished the Aneityumese from dark Tanna. And now they want to kill Missi Paton and me! Our great King, protect us, and make their hearts soft and sweet to Thy Worship. Or, if they are permitted to kill us, do not Thou hate us, but wash us in the blood of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ. He came down to Earth and shed His blood for sinners; through Him forgive us our sins and take us to Heaven—that good place where Missi Gordon the man and Missi Gordon the woman and all Thy dear servants now are singing Thy praise and seeing Thy face. Our Lord, our hearts are pained just now, and we weep over the death of Thy dear servants; but make our hearts good and strong for Thy cause, and take 278Thou away all our fears. Make us two and all Thy servants strong for Thee and for Thy Worship; and if they kill us two, let us die together in Thy good work, like Thy servants Missi Gordon the man and Missi Gordon the woman.”

In this manner his great simple soul poured itself out to God, and my heart melted within me as it had never done under any prayer poured from the lips of cultured Christian men!

Under the strain of these events, Miaki came to our house, and attacked me in hearing of his men to this effect:—

“You and the Worship are the cause of all the sickness and death now taking place on Tanna! The Erromanga men killed Missi Gordon the man and also the woman, and they are all well long ago. The Worship is killing us all; and the Inland people will kill us for keeping you and the Worship here; for we love the conduct of Tanna, but we hate the Worship. We must kill you and it, and we shall all be well again.”

I tried to reason firmly and kindly with them, showing them that their own conduct was destroying them, and that our presence and the Worship could only be a blessing to them in every way, if only they would accept of it and give up their evil ways. I referred to a poor girl, whom Miaki and his men had stolen and abused, that they knew such conduct to be bad, and that God would certainly punish them for it.

279He replied, “Such is the conduct of Tanna. Our fathers loved and followed it, we love and follow it, and if the Worship condemns it, we will kill you and destroy the Worship.”

I said, “The Word of the Holy God condemns all bad conduct, and I must obey my God in trying to lead you to give it up, and to love and serve His Son Jesus our Saviour. If I refuse to obey my God, He will punish me.”

He replied, “Missi, we like many wives to attend us and to do our work. Three of my wives are dead and three are yet alive. The Worship killed them and my children. We hate it. It will kill us all.”

I answered, “Miaki, is it good for you to have so many wives, and many of your men to have none? Who waits on them? Who works for them? They cannot get a wife, and so, having to work for themselves, they are led to hate you and all the Chiefs who have more wives than one. You do not love your wives, else you would not slave them and beat them as you do.”

But he declared that his heart was good, that his conduct was good, and that he hated the teaching of the Worship. He had a party of men staying with him from the other side of the island, and he sent back a present of four large fat hogs to their Chiefs, with a message as to the killing of the Mathiesons. If that were done, his hands would be strengthened in dealing with us.

280Satan seemed to fill that man’s heart. He incited his people to steal everything from us, and to annoy us in every conceivable way. They killed one of my precious watch-dogs, and feasted upon it. So sad was the condition of Tanna, that if a man were desperate enough in wickedness, if he killed a number of men and tyrannized over others, he was dignified with the name and rank of a Chief. This was the secret of Miaki’s influence, and of his being surrounded by the outlaws and refugees, not only of his own but even other islands. It was all founded upon terror and upheld by cruelty. The Sacred Man, for instance, who murdered my Teacher, and a young man who threw three spears at me, which by God’s help I avoided, were both praised and honoured for their deeds. But the moment they were laid aside by measles and unable to retaliate, their flatterers turned upon them and declared that they were punished for their bad conduct against Jehovah and His servants and His Worship!

To know what was best to be done, in such trying circumstances, was an abiding perplexity. To have left altogether, when so surrounded by perils and enemies, at first seemed the wisest course, and was the repeated advice of many friends. But again, I had acquired the language, and had gained a considerable influence amongst the Natives, and there were a number warmly attached both to myself and to the Worship. To have left would have been to lose all, which to me was heart-rending; therefore, 281risking all with Jesus, I held on while the hope of being spared longer had not absolutely and entirely vanished. God only knows how deep and genuine were my pity and affection for the poor Tannese, labouring and longing to bring them from their dark idolatry and heathenism to love and serve and please Jesus Christ as their God and Saviour. True, some of the awfully wise people wrote, as in the case of Mr. Gordon, much nonsense about us and the Tanna Mission. They knew, of course, that I was to blame, and they from safe distances could see that I was not in the path of duty!

Perhaps, to people less omnisciently sure, the following quotation from a letter of the late A. Clark, Esq., J.P., Auckland, New Zealand, will show what Bishop Selwyn thought of my standing fast on Tanna at the post of duty, and he knew what he was writing about. He says,—

“In addition, Bishop Selwyn told us that he had seen the Commodore (Seymour), who told him that at Tanna the Natives were in a very insulting and hostile state of mind; so much so that he felt it his duty to offer Mr. Paton a passage in his ship to Auckland or some other place of safety. He said, ‘Talk of bravery! talk of heroism! The man who leads a forlorn hope is a coward in comparison with him, who, on Tanna, thus alone, without a sustaining look or cheering word from one of his own race, regards it as his duty to hold on in the face of such dangers. We read of the soldier, found after the 282lapse of ages among the ruins of Herculaneum, who stood firm at his post amid the fiery rain destroying all around him, thus manifesting the rigidity of the discipline amongst those armies of ancient Rome which conquered the World. Mr. Paton was subjected to no such iron law. He might, with honour, when offered to him, have sought a temporary asylum in Auckland, where he would have been heartily received. But he was moved by higher considerations. He chose to remain, and God knows whether at this moment he is in the land of the living!’ When the bishop told us that he declined leaving Tanna by H.M.S. Pelorus, he added, ‘And I like him all the better for so doing!’”