As the light appeared, we anchored as far out as possible, beyond the reach of musket shots; and there without water or food we sat under a tropical sun till midday came, and still there was no sign of the vessel. The mate at last put all the passengers and the poorest seamen into one boat and left her to swing at anchor, while, with a strong crew in the other, he started off in search of the vessel. In the afternoon, Nowar and Miaki came off in a canoe to visit us. Nowar had on a shirt, but Miaki was naked and frowning. He urged me to go and see the Mission House, but as we had seen a body of men near it I refused to go. Miaki declared that everything remained as I had left it, but we knew that he lied. Old Abraham and a party had slipped on shore in a canoe, and had found the windows smashed and everything gone except my books, which were scattered about and torn in pieces. They learned that Miaki had sold everything that he could sell to the Traders. The mate and men of the _Blue Bell_ had on my very clothes. They boasted that they had bought them for a few figs of tobacco and for powder, caps, and balls. But they would not return a single shirt to me, though I was without a change. We had all been without food since the morning before, so Nowar brought us off a cocoanut each, and two very small roasted yams for the ladies. Those, however, only seemed to make our thirst the more severe, and we spent a trying day in that boat under a burning sun. Nowar informed me that only a few nights before this, Miaki and his followers went inland to a village where last year they had killed ten men. Having secretly placed a savage at the door of every house, at a given signal they yelled, and when the terrified inmates tried to escape, they killed almost every man, woman, and child. Some fled into the bush, others rushed to the shore. A number of men got into a canoe to escape, but hearing women and children crying after them they returned, and taking those they could with them, they killed the rest, lest they should fall alive into Miaki's hands. These are surely "they who through fear of death are all their lifetime subject to bondage." The Chief and nearly his whole village were cut off in one night! The dark places of the Earth are "full of the habitations of horrid cruelty." To have actually lived amongst the Heathen and seen their life gives a man a new appreciation of the power and blessings of the Gospel, even where its influence is only very imperfectly allowed to guide and restrain the passions of men. Oh, what it will be when all men in all nations love and serve the glorious Redeemer! CHAPTER XLIII. FAREWELL TO TANNA.