32 ADVENTURES IN THE SOUTH SEAS 
and were forced to subsist on arrowroot and yam. The fol- 
lowing year a ship was chartered to carry supplies to the 
mission, but the captain, being afraid to navigate his ship 
among the treacherous coral shoals of the group, and in 
terror of the Fijian people, sailed to the Tonga Islands, 
and there landed the whole of the stores which the mis- 
sionaries in Fiji so sorely needed. Presently a canoe from 
Tonga reached Lakemba, bearing information that the stores 
for the mission were lying four hundred miles away, but no 
means were at hand to transport them to Lakemba. This 
failure to bring supplies fell with severity upon the mission- 
aries, at a time, too, of great scarcity on the island. 
Articles of barter were all gone, and even the cloth so 
greatly needed for their own clothing was exchanged for 
food. This state of things continued for some time, until 
at last help was sent from Tonga. Communication between 
Fiji and the homeland was very slow and uncertain. Mr. 
Cross just about this time received a supply of clothing for 
which he had written three years earlier. It was seldom that 
letters reached them within from fifteen to eighteen months 
from the time they were written. “Surrounded with diff- 
culties, and suffering many things, the missionaries toiled 
on, often prostrated by overworking, while their families 
were rarely free from sickness. Mr. Cross became so ill as 
to make his removal to Australia seem necessary; but before 
arrangements to that effect could be completed, he got much 
better, and resolved to continue in Fiji.” 
Sick though he was, Mr. Cross, when the opportunity 
occurred, resolved to advance farther into the heart of Fijian 
heathenism, and in 1837 took ship from Lakemba for Mbau, 
the seat of cannibal power in the group, and reached there 
just “when seven years of civil war had passed its crisis.” 
This war had brought to the front rank of leadership a 
young chief whose name was Seru, and who afterward 
became the dreaded Thakombau, king of all Fiji. So great 
was the excitement on the island of Mbau, consequent upon 
