I WISH that those children who bought the Missionary Ship, and who have spent so much in repairing her, could have seen the joy of the teachers on the island of Faté, as they once more saw the John Williams return after eighteen months' absence.

When they went on board, and found themselves again among Christian brethren, they were quite overjoyed. Sobs and tears choked their voices. Their first words were, "Praise be to God-Praise be to God, for His great love !"

It was not considered safe for the missionaries to land, but the people came out in their canoes. At one time there were as many as a hundred canoes round the ship. Many of the natives were admitted on board, and seemed very friendly, though wild and disorderly. At sunset, the captain requested them all to leave the vessel until morning. As soon as they understood this, “In an instant," says Mr Gill, one of the missionaries, 66 scores of these wild unseemly-looking savages were seen scrambling down over the sides of the ship in what was to us "confusion worse confounded," by their hideous yells and shouts; each, however, understood what he was about, and getting into his own canoe, paddled off to the shore."

The teachers remained on board, and gave a full account of all they had been doing. The next morning the missionaries gave notice that they would have

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a public service with the people on board ship. In a very short time the deck was crowded with a company of tall, black, naked, wild, yet attentive people. Many of them listened with eager faces while the strangers spoke to them of God and Christ, of heaven and hell.

At the close of the address, the people asked for more teachers, and they were told that four additional teachers would remain with them.

An old chief, who lived on a small island close to Faté, then came forward and begged that his people too might have a teacher. The missionaries did not know what to say; it was hard to refuse the old chief who seemed so anxious for a teacher. But they had several more islands to visit, and had so few teachers remaining, that they felt they could not spare even one for Ngos, -that was the chief's name.

While they were consulting together, a young man called Tairi came forward and offered himself and wife to go along with Ngos and be a teacher to his people. He said that he had spent the whole of the previous night in prayer to God that He would open a door for himself and his wife to enter on missionary work among this people, and now they were not only willing, but anxious to go with Ngos.

The missionaries had no idea until now, that Tairi or his wife had any wish for missionary labour; for though

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pany them in the ship, they had never said anything on the subject. Tairi said that they had thought much of it before they left Raratonga, their native island, and had made arrangements not to return there. He showed them a basket full of tools for making native "bark-cloth," which he said his wife had brought with her, in order to teach the naked heathen how to make cloth.

The missionaries hesitated to accept him on account of his parents; but he said, "My father understands and approves of our intentions. On bidding him farewell, I said, Father, do not again think of me in reference to our land; give me up to do the work of Jesus among the heathen.' My father said, 'Well, my son, if it be the will of God, I do give you up. I and your fathers before me have done much service for Satan during his reign over our country;-go, my son, I give you up,-go, and may you be a good warrior in the service of Jesus.""

When the missionaries heard this, they gladly accepted Tairi's offer. They knew him well, for he had assisted the mission work in Raratonga, his native

of his Christian character. When he and his wife parted from their friends on board, they were much affected. The heathen thought they were weeping for fear at the thought of being left among them; and one of them, a son of the old chief Ngos, took hold of their hands and mimicked the eating of human flesh, then he looked up in their faces and said, "No fear no cry -me no eat you!"

Tairi had not been very long in his new position, when he was taken ill of fever and died. He would fain have remained at his work, but, in the language of his Saviour, he said, "Not my will, but thine be done."

After his death, the people were for forcing his wife to marry one of the chiefs who had already several wives, but she refused to commit so great a sin. One night a party of men came to carry her off to the chief's house. The poor woman ran into a narrow part of the sea, hoping to get to the other teachers, but soon got beyond her depth, and was drowned; the angry savages followed her into the water uttering horrid cries and yells.

thing he had in the world. Thus God raised up a powerful friend for his servant when he stood in the greatest need of one. The rest of his journey was comparatively easy, and it was well for him that it was so, for he was so

ill that he could hardly sit upon his ox. At last he reached Loanda, a town on the western coast, which belongs to the Portuguese. By this time, he was so ill that he could not sit on his ox for more than ten minutes at a time, and he was worn to a skeleton. But kind friends were waiting for him at Loando. One of them, Mr Gabriel, the only Englishman in the place, took him into his house, and his twentyseven companions too. Dr Livingstone says:

"I shall never forget the delicious pleasure of lying down on a bed, after sleeping six months on the ground; nor the unwearied attention and kindness, through a long sickness, which Mr Gabriel invariably showed. May God reward him!"

While Dr Livingstone was lying on his sick-bed, slowly recovering, how were his twenty-seven companions employing themselves? They were in a new world; they had never seen the sea before, and great was their wonder. When they got back to Linyanti they were never tired of telling their countrymen of the strange things they had

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with on the road, that the white man was taking them to the sea, to sell them for food to those who came there in ships. So when they saw the ships, and were taken on board one of them, they thought it was all over with them. But the honest British sailors gave them such a hearty welcome, shook them by the hand, laughed and chattered away in an unknown tongue, and gave them plenty to eat besides, that the poor Barotse soon forgot all the terrible tales they had heard, and they and the sailors became good friends. They hired themselves out for wages, and helped to unload a coal ship. They worked for a whole month, and then gave it up in despair, saying, "it was impossible to empty that ship of the stones that burn."

Now that Dr Livingstone was at Loanda, how easily he could have come home to England, where his wife and children were, whom he had not seen for two years. I believe most people would have thought they had done quite enough, and would have come home in one of those British ships. And why did not our noble traveller

do so?

For two reasons: First, because he thought it would not be treating his Barotse companions right. He had promised to take them back to Linyanti, and he thought a promise was a very sacred thing. If they had returned alone, they would most likely have been taken for slaves.

Then there was another reason. You know the reason why he was travelling at all. It was to find a way of getting