? What shall we do without
the gods?"

They were angry, but there was something in the bold face of Papeiha
that kept them from slaying him. They allowed him to stay, and did not
kill him.

Soon after this, Papeiha one day heard shrieking and shouting and wild
roars as of men in a frenzy. He saw crowds of people round the gods
offering food to them; the priests with faces blackened with charcoal
and with bodies painted with stripes of red and yellow, the
warriors with great waving head-dresses of birds' feathers and white
sea-shells. Papeiha, without taking any thought of the peril that he
rushed into, went into the midst of the people and said:

"Why do you act so foolishly? Why do you take a log of wood and carve
it, and then offer it food? It is only fit to be burned. Some day soon
you shall make these very gods fuel for fire." So with the companion
who came to help him, brown Papeiha went in and out of the island just
as brave Paul went in and out in the island of Cyprus and Wilfrid in
Britain. He would take his stand, now under a grove of bananas on
a great stone, and now in a village, where the people from the huts
gathered round, and again on the beach, where he would lift up his
voice above the boom of the ocean breakers to tell the story of Jesus.
And some of those degraded savages became Christians.

One day he was surprised to see one of the priests come to him leading
his ten-year-old boy.

"Take care of my boy," said the priest. "I am going to burn my god,
and I do not want my god's anger to hurt the boy. Ask your God to
protect him." So the priest went home.

Next morning quite early, before the heat of the sun was great,
Papeiha looked out and saw the priest tottering along with bent and
aching shoulders. On his back was his cumbrous wooden god. Behind the
priest came a furious crowd, waving their arms and crying out:

"Madman, madman, the god will kill you."

"You may shout," answered the priest, "but you will not change me.
I am going to worship Jehovah, the God of Papeiha." And with that he
threw down the god at the feet of the teachers. One of them ran and
brought a saw, and first cut off its head and then sawed it into logs.
Some of the Rarotongans rushed away in dread. Others--even some of
the newly converted Christians--hid in the bush and peered through
the leaves to see what would happen. Papeiha lit a fire; the logs were
thrown on; the first Rarotongan idol was burned.

"You will die