For some time, Nouka and his wife and daughter—a handsome girl, his only child—and Miaki’s principal wife and her two sons, and nine Chiefs attended Worship regularly at the Mission House, on Sabbaths and on the afternoon of every Wednesday. In all, about sixty persons somewhat regularly waited on our ministrations at this time; and amidst all perils I was encouraged, and my heart was full of hope. Yet one evening, when feeling more consoled and hopeful than ever before, a musket was discharged at my very door, and I was constrained to realize that we were in the midst of death. Father, our times are in Thy hand. As my work became more encouraging, I urgently applied to the Missionaries on Aneityum for more Teachers, but none could be found willing to return to Tanna. The plague of measles had almost demoralized them. Even on Aneityum, where they had medicine and would follow the Missionaries’ advice, no fewer than eleven hundred had been cut off; and the mortality was very much greater on such islands as Tanna, Aniwa, etc., where they were still Heathen, and either had not or would not follow medical counsels. Of my Teachers and their wives ten were swept away in the epidemic, and the few that were left were so disheartened that they escaped to their own land at the first opportunity, as before recorded, excepting only dear old faithful Abraham. But I need not wonder; smaller perils deter God’s people at home from many a call of duty. In my Mission School, I offered as a prize a red shirt for the first Chief who knew the whole Alphabet without a mistake. It was won by an Inakaki Chief, who was once a terror to the whole community. Afterwards, when trying to teach the A B C to others, he proceeded in something like this graphic style:— “A is a man’s legs with the body cut off; B is like two eyes; C is a three-quarters moon; D is like one eye; E is a man with one club under his feet and another over his head; F is a man with a large club and a smaller one,” etc., etc.; L was like a man’s foot; Q was the talk of the dove, etc. Then he would say, “Remember these things; you will soon get hold of the letters and be able to read. I have taught my little child, who can scarcely walk, the names of them all. They are not hard to hold, but soft and easy. You will soon learn to read the book, if you try it with all your heart!”