128 ADVENTURES IN THE SOUTH SEAS 
upon it.” Those who accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Gordon 
to their field wrote as they sailed homeward to Samoa, “We 
left Erromango indulging the hope that the darkness of that 
terrible night in which her degraded sons have wandered 
so long and sunk so low in the scale of civilization, would 
erelong be scattered by the Sun of Righteousness, and their 
dark abodes lighted up by the dayspring from on high!” 
After two years of stern struggle with the powers of dark- 
ness, with their hearts fluctuating between high hope and 
deep despair, the heathen meanwhile warring, and worship- 
ing at their idol shrines, and with all the abominable prac- 
tices that distinguish New Hebridean paganism, the Gordons 
were forced to recognize that the forces of right seemed to 
be losing in the struggle. Reports had come from a neigh- 
boring island that the inhabitants who had accepted the gos- 
pel were all dying. The Erromangons held the new religion 
to be responsible for this, and their chiefs forbade the people 
to attend the mission services. 
Just then the mission ship again visited the island, and 
a good impression was made by the visit, but two months 
later Mr. Gordon wrote that the hopeful appearances con- 
nected with the visit had passed away like a morning cloud, 
and troubles had arisen which had brought the mission to 
a period of great gloom, and were to prove the precursors 
of darker days than any that had gone before. 
“The ship had not left us a week,” he wrote, “when the 
flames of war were spreading destruction on the south side 
of Dillon’s Bay. The results are the total ruin of some 
villages and large plantations, some natives wounded and 
others killed, and prospective sickness from want of food. 
. .. Idolatry has still a strong hold upon the natives, even 
those who come to worship on the Sabbath, especially a 
species of idolatry connected with the worship of the moon, 
the image of which they exhibit at their idolatrous feasts, 
which are regulated by the moon, and are great abomina- 
tions.”’ 
