SAVED BY A CURIOUS CUSTOM 173 
Then a very remarkable change came. When the war 
ended and the disease had ceased to carry off the people, 
Pao was once more remembered, and they sent a message 
to Maré for him to return. Not a moment did he wait. At 
once “he sprang into his canoe, and unfurling his little mat 
sail to a favoring breeze, was soon on Lifu.” 
Ten years after his first landing he opened the first church 
building on Lifu, and after eight years longer of continuous 
labors among them, he died in their midst. There had been 
fellow teachers working with him during those years, but 
they figure only in shadowy outline as compared with Pao. 
It is of his daring, his fortitude, his perseverance, that Lifu 
still tells. And when the time came for white missionaries 
to land on Lifu, it was of Pao they heard from all lips. “His 
love, his unselfishness, his piety, had made his name a house- 
hold word,” and they felt in very deed that it was he who 
had brought both light and life in the gospel of Jesus to the 
once-benighted savages of Lifu. 
