The christening ceremony--Kenneth Kapaa'a Blair and Alison Kaapa'a Evans--was an occasion of high festival throughout the islands, and Blair, with his life-work always large in his mind, turned it to account. Aunt Harvey was not present at that high ceremony, to her very great regret but more greatly to her honour. And this is how it came about. Intercourse with the other islands had been constantly maintained by the regular visitations of the _Torch_ and the quondam _Blackbird_ schooner--renamed the _Jean Arnot_ and captained by Jim Gregor, first officer of the _Torch_; but, compared with what had been done on Kapaa'a, the advances had been small. Blair had, for a long while past, recognised the fact that the greatest object-lesson he could possibly offer the other chiefs was the sight of what was being done on Kapaa'a. But at the first suggestion of taking them over in the ship to see for themselves, their suspicions were in arms. That was an old trick of the white men's. They had all heard how the brown men were decoyed on board the white men's ships under wonderful promises, and never heard of again. They accepted all he gave them, they listened to all he had to say, but sail away in the big ship they would not. Here was a chance not to be missed. Surely never in this world was there seen a younger pair of missionaries than Master Kenneth Kapaa'a Blair--Kenni-Kenni to the natives--and Miss Alison Kapaa'a Evans--Alivani--when they set out, in their frills and furbelows, to wile the hearts of the brown men and women of the outer islands. Ha'o and Nai went with them, to add their persuasions and the argument of their presence to the rest, and Aunt Jannet went because she knew something untoward would happen to those babies unless her eye was on them. Blair knew it would be no easy matter at best, and it was not. At Kanele, the first island they came to, the largest of the group after Kapaa'a, about thirty miles away, the old chief Maru received them with the heartiest of welcomes, and his old wife and her daughter-in-law and all the other women went into raptures over the blue-eyed babies. But when the subject of the visit was cautiously broached, the old man stiffened at once with his natural suspicion and declined the invitation on the spot, and nothing they could say would persuade him to it. They stayed the night, however, and Ha'o had much talk with the old man's son, a bright stalwart fellow over six feet high whose name was Kahili. In the morning Kahili announced his intention of going with the white men. Whereupon loud lamentations from his father and mother and wife and children, who clung to him wherever they could grip, and expressed their intention of anchoring him to his native soil at cost of their lives. He reasoned with them good-humouredly at first, but finally began to get angry at the exhibition, and the more they tried to dissuade him the more determined was he to go.