at I learned to expect with certainty; the
name of Honolulu, that of Kalakaua, the word Cap'n-man-o'-wa', the word
ship, and a description of a storm at sea, infallibly occurred; and I
was not seldom rewarded with the name of my own Sovereign in the
bargain. The rest was but sound to the ears, silence for the mind; a
plain expanse of tedium, rendered unbearable by heat, a hard chair, and
the sight through the wide doors of the more happy heathen on the
green. Sleep breathed on my joints and eyelids, sleep hummed in my ears;
it reigned in the dim cathedral. The congregation stirred and stretched;
they moaned, they groaned aloud; they yawned upon a singing note, as you
may sometimes hear a dog when he has reached the tragic bitterest of
boredom. In vain the preacher thumped the table; in vain he singled and
addressed by name particular hearers. I was myself perhaps a more
effective excitant; and at least to one old gentleman the spectacle of
my successful struggles against sleep--and I hope they were
successful--cheered the flight of time. He, when he was not catching
flies or playing tricks upon his neighbours, gloated with a fixed,
translucent eye upon the stages of my agony; and once when the service
was drawing towards a close he winked at me across the church.

I write of the service with a smile; yet I was always there--always with
respect for Maka, always with admiration for his deep seriousness, his
burning energy, the fire of his roused eye, the sincere and various
accents of his voice. To see him weekly flogging a dead horse and
blowing a cold fire was a lesson in fortitude and constancy. It may be a
question whether if the mission were fully supported, and he was set
free from business avocations, more might not result; I think otherwise
myself; I think not neglect but rigour has reduced his flock, that
rigour which has once provoked a revolution, and which to-day, in a man
so lively and engaging, amazes the beholder. No song, no dance, no
tobacco, no liquor, no alleviative of life--only toil and church-going;
so says a voice from his face; and the face is the face of the
Polynesian Esau, but the voice is the voice of a Jacob from a different
world. And a Polynesian at the best makes a singular missionary in the
Gilberts, coming from a country recklessly unchaste to one conspicuously
strict; from a race hag-ridden with bogies to one comparatively bold
against the terrors of the dark. The thought was stamped one