It was but too true. The Erromango people had been little inclined to listen to Mr. Gordon's warnings, and he, a young and eager man, had told them that to persevere in their murders and idolatries would bring a judgment upon them. When therefore the scourge of sickness came, as at Anaiteum, they connected him with it; and it was plain from his diary that he had for some months known his life to be in danger, but he had gone about them fearlessly, like a brave man, doing his best for the sick. On May 20 he was in a little wood, putting up a house instead of one that had been blown down by a hurricane, and he had sent his few faithful pupils to get grass for the thatch. Nine natives from a village about three hours' walk distant came to the house where his wife was, and asked for him. She said he was in the little wood. They went thither, and while eight hid themselves in the bush, one went forward and asked for some calico. Mr. Gordon took a bit of charcoal and wrote on a bit of wood directions to his wife to give the bearer some cotton, but the man insisted that he must come himself to give out some medicine for a sick man. Mr. Gordon complied, walking in front as far as the place where lay the ambush, when the man struck him with a tomahawk on the spine, and he fell, with a loud scream, while the others leaping out fell upon him with blows that must have destroyed life at once, yelling and screaming over him. Another went up to the house. Mrs. Gordon had come out, asking what the shouts meant. 'Look there!' he said, and as she turned her head, he struck her between the shoulders, and killed her as soon as she had fallen. Another native had in the meantime rushed down the hill to the sandal-wood station half a mile off on the beach, and the trader, arming his natives, came up too late to do more than prevent the murderers from carrying off the bodies or destroying the house. The husband and wife were buried in the same grave; the natives fenced it round; and now, on June 7, eighteen days after, Bishop Patteson read the Burial Service over it, with many solemn and anxious thoughts respecting the population, now reduced to 2,500, and in a very wild condition. At Mai the Bishop spent two hours the next day, and brought away one old scholar and one new one. At Tariko, where he had been three years before with the Primate, the Episcopal hat brought the greeting 'Bishop,' as the people no doubt thought the wearer identical. Of Ambrym there is a characteristic sentence: 'As we left the little rock pool where I had jumped ashore, leaving, for prudence sake, the rest behind me in the boat, one man raised his bow and drew it, then unbent it, then bent it again, but apparently others were dissuading him from letting fly the arrow. The boat was not ten yards off, I don't know why he did so; but we must try to effect more frequent landings.'