One of them ran and
brought a saw, and first cut off its head and then sawed it into logs.
Some of the Rarotongans rushed away in dread. Others--even some of
the newly converted Christians--hid in the bush and peered through
the leaves to see what would happen. Papeiha lit a fire; the logs were
thrown on; the first Rarotongan idol was burned.
"You will die," cried the priests of the fallen god. But to show that
the god was just a log of wood, the teachers took a bunch of bananas,
placed them on the ashes where the fire had died down, and roasted
them. Then they sat down and ate the bananas.
The watching, awe-struck people looked to see the teachers fall dead,
but nothing happened. The islanders then began to wonder whether,
after all, the God of Papeiha was not the true God. Within a year they
had got together hundreds of their wooden idols, and had burned them
in enormous bonfires which flamed on the beach and lighted up the dark
background of trees. Those bonfires could be seen far out across the
Pacific Ocean, like a beacon light.
To-day the flames of love which Papeiha bravely lighted, through
perils by water and club and cannibal feast, have shone right across
the ocean, and some of the grandchildren of those very Rarotongans who
were cannibals when Papeiha went there, have sailed away, as we shall
see later on, to preach Papeiha's gospel of the love of God to the
far-off cannibal Papuans on the steaming shores of New Guinea.
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