and got into the canoe again: the paddles flashed as she drove swiftly
through the water toward the launch. As they climbed her side, the
anchor was weighed, the _Miro_ swung round, her engines started, and,
carried down by the swift stream, she slipped past the packed masses
of silent men who lined the banks.

It is a great thing to be a pathfinder through a country which no
man has penetrated before. But it is a greater thing to do as these
missionary-scouts did on their journey up the Aivai and find a path
of friendship into savage lives. To do that was the greatest joy in
Tamate's life. For he 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