180 ADVENTURES IN THE SOUTH SEAS 
“It was not till four days after the death of Fisher that the 
fatal symptoms came on in Edwin’s case. It was not so 
acute, but far more trying to him. For eight days his jaw 
was locked; for five days and nights he never slept one in- 
stant, spasms continually recurring. He may be said almost 
literally to have spent the whole time in unwearied prayer 
and praise. Lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in death 
they were not divided.” 
The loss of these two lads was a bitter grief to the bishop, 
who loved them both with the deep and lasting affection of 
a parent. He went on with his work with his wonted zeal, 
but he was changed. Months afterward he wrote: “I am 
an older man since this sorrow. Not that I feel altogether 
unhappy, and I trust that I am not murmuring at God’s will, 
nor desirous that these two dear ones should be given back. 
No, no, I don’t wish that; but simply I have had a succes- 
sion of hard knocks, and they have taken something out of 
me, and I am not altogether, as I can’t expect to be, the man 
that I was before. Dear Edwin and Fisher! their patient 
endurance of great suffering, and simple, loving thoughts 
and prayers about their poor Santa Cruz people are, and 
I trust ever will be, a holy example before my eyes.” 
Although Bishop Patteson began to feel his health im- 
paired, and he was advised to return to England for rest 
and change, he was never persuaded to do so. At last he 
began to acknowledge himself “far from well,” and though 
he admitted a constant feeling of discomfort, a sense of 
something not right, he steadily refused to leave his work 
and go home. “I cannot look forward to much more native 
work—knocking about,” he said, “and I begin to hear the 
natives talk of me as the “‘Tamuragai’ [the old man], and I 
do creep about rather old-man fashion.” 
At this time his father was still living, the father who had 
been so much to him in his boyhood and youth, and in re- 
fusing to go home he was really denying himself the only 
opportunity he was ever likely to have of again meeting his 
