But a mightier coadjutor was at hand. Many prayers were offered as the
_Ann_ was about to sail, and it must surely have been in answer to these
that, when the vessel with her freight of convicts had already reached
Gravesend, there appeared a boat in which were a half-naked Maori
together with a seafaring Englishman. These were Ruatara and his
employer who had robbed him of his wages and had now no further use for
him. "Will you take him back to Australia?" said the heartless master.
"Not unless you find him some clothes," said the captain of the _Ann_.
The clothes were procured, and the Maori was allowed to go below. There
he lay sick in body and mind. He had tried to play the part of the
Russian Peter, but he was bringing back nothing for the benefit of his
country. What was left but to die?

When the ship reached Portsmouth, Marsden came on board, and on August
25th she finally started on her six months' voyage. Not for some days
did the chaplain know of the Maori's presence, but, as the ship entered
warmer latitudes, Marsden observed on the forecastle among the sailors a
man whose dark skin and forlorn condition appealed strongly to his
sympathy. Ruatara was wrapped in an old great coat, racked with a
violent cough, and was bleeding from the lungs. Though young, he seemed
to have but a few days to live. Marsden at once went to him and found in
the miserable stranger the nephew of his old acquaintance Te Pahi.
Kindness and attention soon had their effect; the health of the invalid
rapidly improved; the remembrance of past injuries melted away before
the sunshine of Christian love; and, before the ship reached Australia,
Ruatara was once again a man, and now almost a Christian.

This meeting was momentous in its results. "Mr. Marsden and Ruatara," as
Carleton says, "were each necessary to the other; each furnished means
without which the labour of his associate must have been thrown away.
But for the determined support which Ruatara as a high chief was able
to afford, Marsden could never have gained a footing in the land; and
without the sustained labour of the civilised European, the work of the
Maori innovator, too much in advance of its time, would have withered
like Jonah's gourd, and have come to an end with the premature decease
of Ruatara."

For a few days after the arrival of the _Ann_ at Port Jackson, it seemed
as though Marsden's project were going to be helped by another
unexpected agency. The Sydney merc