THE CANOE OF ADVENTURE

_Elikana_

(Date of Incident, 1861)


"I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care."


I

Manihiki Island looked like a tiny anchored canoe far away across
the Pacific, as Elikana glanced back from his place at the tiller. He
sang, meantime, quietly to himself an air that still rang in his ears,
the tune that he and his brother islanders had sung in praise of
the Power and Providence of God at the services on Manihiki. For the
Christian people of the Penrhyn group of South Sea Islands had come
together in April, 1861, for their yearly meeting, paddling from the
different quarters in their canoes through the white surge of the
breakers that thunder day and night round the island.

Elikana looked ahead to where his own island of Rakahanga grew clearer
every moment on the sky-line ahead of them, though each time his craft
dropped into the trough of the sea between the green curves of the
league-long ocean rollers the island was lost from sight.