For years he worked steadily away at his studies, and in 1861 he was appointed to a position in the Glasgow City Mission. His good work brought him recognition, and finally he applied to the London Missionary Society for a position as missionary. The application was accepted, and Chalmers then went into training and was ordained as a missionary in 1865. He sailed almost immediately afterwards in the missionary boat _John Williams II._ for Raratonga island. {200} Prior to leaving England James Chalmers married, and to his wife he gives the credit of half the successes of his life. The passage out to the South Seas was a terrible one, as the following extract shows:— Whilst still in the English Channel the vessel encountered a terrific storm, memorable as being that in which the _London_ was lost. Three passengers were thrown out of their bunks, the pilot was knocked insensible, the compass binnacle was damaged, the whale-boat was carried away, and the seamen were constrained to ask the missionaries to pray for a change of wind. With difficulty the _John Williams II._ made the Portland Roads, and escaped the fate of some twenty-one vessels which foundered in the storm. But this was only the beginning of the trials of that journey. Another storm met them in the Bay of Biscay, and a third one off the Cape of Good Hope, but they reached Adelaide eventually, and were there able to rest. On the 21st of August the missionary ship which was to carry them to the islands left Sydney, and was in less than a fortnight high and dry on a reef, but she did not become a total wreck. She was taken back to Sydney for repair, leaving there again on the 15th of November, to become a total wreck on the 8th of January; her passengers were landed, minus all their belongings, on an almost unknown {201} and uninhabited island. The notorious _Bully Hayes_, however, rescued them from this spot and took them to Samoa. Eventually James Chalmers and his wife reached Raratonga safely after a voyage extending over seventeen months—the passage now takes about six weeks. “Tamate’s” life in the South Seas was a life of sheer hard work, but he always felt, and properly so, that he was making headway. At the beginning of his career at Raratonga he set to work on the young men, as he thought in them lay the future hopes of the civilisation of the islands. When one knows the risks he ran in going back into the bush, where white men were so dreaded that they were often shot on sight, one cannot help feeling that a special providence was looking after him. He took no half measures and made few concessions, but went boldly to work at the start as he intended to go on to the end. Many of the natives had been in the habit of fancying that the missionaries were weak men, but in “Tamate” they met one who was their equal in most things and could beat them at many.