"I cannot be content," he said,
"within the narrow limits of a single reef."
But the black islanders were wild men who covered their dark faces
with soot and painted their lips with flaming red, yet their cruel
hearts were blacker than their faces, and their anger more fiery than
their scarlet lips. They were treacherous and violent savages who
would smash a skull by one blow with a great club; or leaping on a man
from behind, would cut through his spine with a single stroke of their
tomahawks, and then drag him off to their cannibal oven.
John Williams cared so much for his work of telling the islanders
about God their Father, that he lay awake wondering how he could
carry it on among these wild people. It never crossed his mind that
he should hold back to save himself from danger. It was for this work
that he had crossed the world.
"Let down the whale-boat." His voice rang out without a tremor of
fear. His eyes were on the canoe in which three black Erromangans were
paddling across the bay. As the boat touched the water, he and the
crew of four dropped into her, with Captain Morgan and two friends,
Harris and Cunningham. The oars dipped and flashed in the morning sun
as the whale-boat flew along towards the canoe. When they reached it,
Williams spoke in the dialects of his other islands, but none could
the three savages in the canoe understand.
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