'Stephen is in great pain at times to-night; one of the arrows seems to have entered his lungs, and it is broken in, too deep to be got out. John is wounded in the right shoulder, I in the left. We are both maimed for the time; but, if it were not for the fear of poison, the wounds would not be worth noticing. I do not expect any bad consequences, but they are possible. What would make me cling to life more than anything else is the thought of you at home; but if it be God's will that I am to die, I know He will enable you to bear it, and bring good for you out of it.
'Saturday, 23rd.-We are all doing well. Stephen keeps up his strength, sleeps well, and has no long attacks of pain. We have had good breezes yesterday and to-day-very welcome it is, but the motion makes writing too much labour. Brooke and Edward Wogale are both unwell-ague, I believe, with both of them; and Brooke's nerves are upset. He has slept most of to-day, and will probably be the better for it.'....
His private journal adds:-
'September 21st.-Buried the Bishop in the morning. The wounded all doing well, but Stephen in pain occasionally. Calm day, passed over a reef in the morning, about eighteen miles north of Nukapu, nine fathoms on it. Thermometer ninety-one degrees yesterday and to-day. Began writing home at night. Began reading Miss Yonge's "Chaplet of Pearls."
'Friday, 22nd.-A light breeze came up in the evening, which freshened through the night, and carried us past Tenakulu. Stephen doing very well, had a good night, and has very little pain to-day. A breeze through the day, much cooler. I am dressing my shoulder with brine. Read some sermons of Vaughan's, preached at Doncaster during Passion Week.
'Saturday, 23rd.-Breeze through the day. A few showers of rain. Brooke and Wogale down with ague; gave Wogale ipecacuanha and quinine afterwards. Read Mota prayers in evening. All wounds going on well. Finished "Chaplet of Pearls," and wrote a little.
'Sunday, 24th.-This morning the wind went round to N.E. and N. and then died away. We were 55 miles W. of the Torres Islands at noon. Brooke took English and Mota morning Prayers. I celebrated Holy Communion afterwards. John came into cabin; I went out to Stephen.
'Brooke and Wogale both better, but B-- quite weak.'
During that Celebration, while administering the Sacred Elements, Mr. Atkin's tongue stumbled and hesitated over some of the words.
Then the Mota men looked at one another, and knew what would follow.
He knew it himself too, and called to Joseph Wate, his own special pupil, saying (as the lad wrote to Mr. Atkin the elder), 'Stephen and I again are going to follow the Bishop, and they of your country-! Who is to speak to them?'
'I do not know.'
Then he said again, 'It is all right. Don't grieve about it, because they did not do this thing of themselves, but God allowed them to do it. It is very good, because God would have it so, because He only looks after us, and He understands about us, and now He wills to take away us two, and it is well.'
There was much more for that strong young frame to undergo before the vigorous life could depart. The loss was to be borne. The head of the Mission, who had gone through long sickness, and lain at the gates of the grave so long, died almost painlessly: his followers had deeply to drink of the cup of agony. The night between the 26th and 27th was terrible, the whole nervous system being jerked and strained to pieces, and he wandered too much to send any message home; 'I lost my wits since they shot me,' he said. Towards morning he almost leapt from his berth on the floor, crying 'Good-bye.'
Mr. Brooke asked if he would have a little Sal volatile.
'No.'
'A little brandy?'
'No.'
'Do you want anything?'
'I want nothing but to die.'
Those were his last words. He lay convulsed on a mattress on the floor for about an hour longer, and was released on the morning of the 29th.
Stephen, with an arrow wound in the lungs, and several more of these wounds in the chest, could hardly have lived, even without the terrible tetanus. He had spent his time in reading his Mota Gospel and Prayer-book, praying and speaking earnestly to the other men on board, before the full agony came on. He was a tall, large, powerfully framed man; and the struggles were violent before he too sank into rest on the morning of the 28th, all the time most assiduously nursed by Joseph Wate. On St. Michael's Day, these two teachers of poor Bauro received at the same time their funeral at sea.
John Coleridge Patteson was forty-four years and a half old.
Joseph Atkin, twenty-nine.
Stephen Taroniara probably twenty-five-as he was about eighteen when he joined the Mission in 1864. His little girl will be brought up at Norfolk Island; his wife Tara, to whom he had been married only just before his voyage, became consumptive, and died January, 1873, only twenty minutes after her Baptism. As one of the scholars said, "Had the songs of the angels for joy of her being made a child of God finished before they were again singing to welcome her an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven?'
John Nonono showed no symptoms of tetanus, but was landed at Mota to recover under more favourable circumstances than the crowded cabin could afford.
Calms and baffling winds made the return to this island trying and difficult, and Mota was not reached till the 4th of October. George Sarawia was still perfectly satisfactory; and his community, on the whole, going on hopefully. Want of provisions, which Mota could not supply, made the stay very brief; and after obtaining the necessary supplies at Aurora, the 'Southern Cross' brought her sad tidings to Norfolk Island on the 17th. That day Mrs. Palmer wrote:-
'On Monday afternoon, 15th, Mr. Codrington went for a ride to the other side of the island, and there espied the schooner, eight miles off. He rode home quickly, and soon the shouting and racing of the boys told us that the vessel had come. They were all at arrowroot- making. Never, I think, had the whole party, English and natives, seemed in higher spirits. Mr. Bice walked to the settlement, to see if she was far in enough to land that night; we asked him to call and tell us on his way home.
'Next morning Mr. Bice rode down to see if it really was the schooner, and was back to breakfast, all thinking we should soon see them come up.
'Mr. Codrington and Mr. Bice got their horses ready to ride down, and I got the rooms ready, when, in an hour, a Norfolk Island boy rode up to say the flag was half-mast high.'
'We told the boys and girls something was wrong, to stop their joyous shouting and laughing; and then I waited till Mr. Jackson returned, and all he could say was, "Only Brooke has come!"'
What more shall I tell? Comments on such a life and such a death are superfluous; and to repeat the testimonies of friends, outpourings of grief, and utterances in sermons is but to weaken the impression of the reality!
There is pain too in telling the further fate of Nukapu. H.M.S. 'Rosario,' Commander Markham, then cruising in the Southern Pacific, touched at Norfolk Island, and Captain Markham undertook at once to go to the island and make enquiries.
A protest was drawn up and signed by all the members of the Mission against any attempt to punish the natives for the murder; and Captain Markham, a kind, humane, and conscientious man, as no one can doubt, promised that nothing of the kind should be attempted.
But the natives could not but expect retaliation for what they had done. There was no interpreter. They knew nothing of flags of truce; and when they saw a boat approaching, full of white men, armed, what could they apprehend but vengeance for 'Bisope'? So they discharged a volley of arrows, and a sergeant of marines was killed. This was an attack on the British flag, and it was severely chastised with British firearms. It is very much to be doubted whether Nukapu will ever understand that her natives were shot, not for killing the Bishop, but for firing on the British flag. For the present the way is closed, and we can only echo Fisher Young's sigh, 'Poor Santa Cruz people!'