SUSPENSION OF HOSTILITIES. 59 
spot by Pomare ; whose followers, according to 
their savage rules of war, treated their bodies with 
the most wanton brutality. 
Pomare and his English allies marched the next 
morning to the strong-hold of the natives, and 
were much disappointed at finding it filled with men 
determined to defend it to the last. A female was 
sent, as a herald, with a flag of truce to the war¬ 
riors in the fortress, informing them of the number 
slain, and proposing to them the king’s terms of 
peace. Taatahee, the remaining chief of the 
rebels, who was related to Pomare, directed her 
to tell him, that when they had done to him, as 
they had done to Rua the slain chief, then, and 
not till then, there would be peace. As it ap¬ 
peared improbable that the place could be attacked 
with advantage to the assailants, and equally im¬ 
probable that its occupants would accept any terms 
of capitulation that the king would offer, Captain 
Bishop returned to Matavai, and on the day fol¬ 
lowing Pomare sailed about twelve miles towards 
Pare. Here he fixed his encampment; and, al¬ 
though peace was not concluded, hostilities appear 
to have been for some time suspended. 
Soon after the return of Captain Bishop, the 
Nautilus sailed; and the Venus having revisited 
Tahiti, on the 19th of the following month Capt. 
Bishop with his men left the island. 
Dreadful and alarming as these superstitious and 
bloody contests had been, and though still exposed 
to the horrors of savage war, the Missionaries, 
protected in their work by the care of Providence, 
felt that they were 
u .devote to God and truth, 
And sworn to man’s eternal weal, beyond 
Repentance sworn, or thought of turning back,” 
