AMONG THE CANNIBALS OF SANTA CRUZ 175 
cultured, and in possession of qualities that would have se- 
cured for him a place of distinction in any walk of life for 
which he possessed fitness, he willingly made the exchange 
of all that life promised in the associations of his native land 
for the life of toil, danger, and self-denial upon which he 
really was just entering as the schooner cleared Auckland 
harbor, and set her course to the lands of head-hunting and 
cannibal savagery in dark Melanesia. 
He had heard the call of Bishop Selwyn for “men of mind 
and faith,’ men who were willing and able to work with their 
hands, to “rough it” at all times; who in seasons of extreme 
danger could look death in the face and do their duty with- 
out flinching; and in response to that call he had left all. 
Before leaving England, he acknowledged that his mind 
had long been set toward the South Seas, and touchingly 
expressed his views and feelings in a letter written on the 
eve of his departure. “There shall be no leave-taking,”’ he 
wrote; “I do not like that kind of thing, and a shake of the 
hand tells its story as well as many words. The blessed 
hope that we may all meet again is a real strength, .. . and 
I cannot doubt that all the peacefulness and calmness that 
I enjoy now is a great gift to help me through what is to 
come.” | ; 
As the schooner plowed her way, first to Norfolk Island, 
and then by way of Sydney, Australia, on through the New 
Hebrides, the desire to live only for those benighted island- 
ers intensified in his life. His one fear was that he was not 
yet wholly acceptable to God. 
After many days the shores of Aneityum were sighted, 
and then he passed Erromango, the martyr island. As they 
went by the spot where the great John Williams and his com- 
panion, Mr. Harris, had been martyred, there stood beside 
Mr. Patteson on the deck of the schooner the very man who 
had been the next to land on that wild shore after John Wil- 
liams’ death; and in the very environs of the murder Bishop 
Selwyn touchingly told how kindly and considerately he had 
