as his practices, Ra Vatu was beginning to emanate light. He even
spoke of becoming Lotu. True, three years before he had expressed a
similar intention, and would have entered the church had not John
Starhurst entered objection to his bringing his four wives along with
him. Ra Vatu had had economic and ethical objections to monogamy.
Besides, the missionary's hair-splitting objection had offended him;
and, to prove that he was a free agent and a man of honor, he had
swung his huge war club over Starhurst's head. Starhurst had escaped
by rushing in under the club and holding on to him until help arrived.
But all that was now forgiven and forgotten. Ra Vatu was coming into
the church, not merely as a converted heathen, but as a converted
polygamist as well. He was only waiting, he assured Starhurst, until
his oldest wife, who was very sick, should die.

John Starhurst journeyed up the sluggish Rewa in one of Ra Vatu's
canoes. This canoe was to carry him for two days, when, the head of
navigation reached, it would return. Far in the distance, lifted into
the sky, could be seen the great smoky mountains that marked the
backbone of the Great Land. All day John Starhurst gazed at them with
eager yearning.

Sometimes he prayed silently. At other times he was joined in prayer
by Narau, a native teacher, who for seven years had been Lotu, ever
since the day he had been saved from the hot oven by Dr. James Ellery
Brown at the trifling expense of one hundred sticks of tobacco, two
cotton blankets, and a large bottle of painkiller. At the last moment,
after twenty hours of solitary supplication and prayer, Narau's ears
had heard the call to go forth with John Starhurst on the mission to
the mountains.