Being entirely at the mercy of such doubtful and vacillating friends, I, though perplexed, felt it best to obey. I climbed into the tree, and was left there alone in the bush. The hours I spent there live all before me as if it were but of yesterday. I heard the frequent discharging of muskets, and the yells of the savages. Yet I sat there among the branches, as safe in the arms of Jesus! Never, in all my sorrows, did my Lord draw nearer to me, and speak more soothingly in my soul, than when the moonlight flickered among these chestnut leaves, and the night air played on my throbbing brow, as I told all my heart to Jesus. Alone, yet not alone! If it be to glorify my God, I will not grudge to spend many nights alone in such a tree, to feel again my Saviour’s spiritual presence, to enjoy His consoling fellowship. If thus thrown back upon your own soul, alone, all, all alone, in the midnight, in the bush, in the very embrace of death itself, have you a Friend that will not fail you then? Gladly would I have lingered there for one night of comparative peace! But, about midnight, Nowar sent his son to call me down from the tree, and to guide me to the shore where he himself was, as it was now time to take to sea in the canoe. Pleading for my Lord’s continuing presence, I had to obey. My life and the lives of my Aneityumese now hung upon a very slender thread, and was almost equally at risk from our friends so-called, and from our enemies. Had I been a stranger to Jesus and to prayer, my reason would verily have given way, but my comfort and joy sprang up out of these: “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee; lo, I am with you alway!” Pleading these promises, I followed my guide. We reached the beach, just inside the Harbour, at a beautiful white sandy bay on Nowar’s ground, from which our canoe was to start. A good number of the Natives had assembled there to see us off. Arkurat, having got a large roll of calico from me for the loan of his canoe, hid it away, and then refused the canoe, saying that if he had to escape with his family he would require it. He demanded, for the loan of his canoe, an axe, a sail for his canoe, and a pair of blankets. As Karis had the axe and another had the quilt, I gave the quilt to him for a sail, and the axe and blankets for the canoe. In fact, these few relics of our earthly all at Nowar’s were coveted by the savages and endangered our lives, and it was as well to get rid of them altogether. He cruelly proposed a small canoe for two; but I had hired the canoe for five, and insisted upon getting it, as he had been well paid for it. As he only laughed and mocked us, I prepared to start and travel overland to Mr. Mathieson’s Station. He then said,— “My wrath is over! You may take it and go.”