said, when he had spent many years in this work:

"Recall the twenty-one years, give me back all its experiences, give
me its shipwrecks, give me its standings in the face of death, give
it me surrounded with savages with spears and clubs, give it me back
again with spears flying about me, with the club knocking me to the
ground, give it me back, and I will still be your missionary."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 35: Pa-poo-[)a].]

[Footnote 36: A-ee-v[)a]-ee.]

[Footnote 37: Poo-r[)a]-ree.]

[Footnote 38: Ee-[)a]-l[)a].]

[Footnote 39: He had spent some sixteen years in the South Sea Island
of Rarotonga and had in 1877 become a pioneer among the cannibals of
Papua (New Guinea).]

[Footnote 40: V[=a][=a]-boo-ree.]

[Footnote 41: Poo-o-t[)a].]

CHAPTER XIV

A SOUTH SEA SAMARITAN

_Ruatoka_ (Date of Incident, about 1878)

It was a dark night and silent. The swish and lapping of the waters on
the Port Moresby beach on the southern shore of the immense island of
New Guinea, filled the air with a quiet hush of expectation.

In a little white house sat a tall, dark man with his wife. The man
was Ruatoka. If you had asked "Who is Ruatoka?" of all the Papuans for
miles around Port Moresby, they would have wondered at your ignorance.
"Ruatoka," they would have told you, was a "Jesus man." He walked
among their villages, and did not fear them when they threatened him
with spears and clubs. He gave them medicines when they were ill, and
nursed them. He spoke strong words to them which made their hearts
turn to water within them when he showed that they did wrong. He often
stopped them from fighting.

Ruatoka, with his wife, had sailed from the South Sea Islands with
Tamate,[42] who was to them their great hero.

"My fathers of old were heathen, savage men on the island of Mangaia,"
he would say. "The white men came to them and brought the story
of Jesus. Now we are happy. But we, too, must go to the men of New
Guinea, just as the white men came to us. To-day the New Guinea
Papuans are savage cannibals and heathen. To-morrow they will know
Jesus and be as happy as we are."

So Ruatoka had been trained as a teacher and preacher as well as a
house-builder and carpenter; and his wife was taught how to teach
children as well as good housekeeping.

This was the brown man, Ruatoka, who sat that night in his little
house at Port Moresby on the shore behind the great reef of Papua.
Suddenly there came a knock at