With the chief aboard, the Endeavour sailed to the nearby island of Mitiaro, over which Roma-Tane also ruled. There Roma-Tane exhorted the people to tear down their maraes, destroy their idols, and listen to what the missionaries they would be leaving on their island said to them.
From Mitiaro they sailed on to Mauke, where Roma-Tane told the people the same thing. As he set foot on the beach, he said, “I am come to advise you to receive the word of Jehovah, the true God, and to leave with you a teacher and his wife, who will instruct you. Let us destroy our maraes and burn all the evil spirits with fire. Never let us worship them again. They are wood, which we have carved and decorated and called gods. Here is a teacher to instruct you in the word of the true God. The true God is Jehovah, and the true sacrifice is His Son, Jesus Christ.”
After Mauke they returned Roma-Tane to Atiu, where John presented the chief with an axe so that he could cut down trees to make posts for a “house of God.”
Before they left Atiu, John asked Roma-Tane whether he had ever heard of Rarotonga. “Oh yes,” the chief replied. “It is just one day and one night’s sail from Atiu. Wait until the stars shine, and I will show you which way to go.”
The following morning the Endeavour set sail in the direction that Roma-Tane had indicated. Everyone aboard was feeling jubilant over all that had happened in just a few days on Atiu and the other two islands.
Even with Roma-Tane’s directions, Rarotonga did not appear on the horizon. The Endeavour battled contrary winds for five days, until nearly all the ship’s provisions were used up. Glumly John spoke to all on board at dinner one night. “We will have to give up our hunt for the island if we do not spot it by eight o’clock tonight.”
Everyone stayed on deck, squinting their eyes into the setting sun in an attempt to catch a glimpse of a mountain peak jutting from the ocean.
At seven-thirty John had all but given up hope of finding the island. He asked one of the Polynesian men to climb the mast for one last search of the horizon. “Teie, teie, taua fenua, nei!” the man yelled excitedly a few minutes later.
“Thank God!” John called back. The island had been spotted.
The following morning Captain Henry cautiously navigated the Endeavour toward the reef. Finding no obvious passage through it, he brought the ship to a halt about three miles off the coast and announced that that was as close to the island as it was safe to take the vessel. The canoe was lowered over the side of the ship into the ocean, and Papeiha, Vahineino, and one of the Rarotongan women on board volunteered to go ashore.
Everyone on board the Endeavour prayed hard as the two missionaries climbed into the canoe and paddled toward the island. No one on the ship could see what happened once they reached the shore. After two long hours, Papeiha and Vahineino returned, bringing with them a tall young man tattooed from his shoulders to his feet in swirling lines.
“This is Makea, chief of Rarotonga,” Papeiha announced.
John stepped forward, and he and Makea rubbed noses, the traditional Polynesian greeting.
The ship then came alive as Makea recognized various Rarotongans on board, including his cousin Tapairu. “You are alive!” he shouted. “We thought the waters had swallowed you up!”
While this was going on, John and Papeiha talked quietly.
“An amazing thing has happened here already,” Papeiha told John. “When I told Makea that I was here to tell him about our powerful God and His Son, Jesus Christ, he said, ‘We already know about Jesus Christ. A canoe was blown off course and landed on our island. In it was a Tahitian woman, and she told us many things. She said there were white people in the world and that she had met one called Captain Cook, and that after he visited, the servants of another God came to the island. She said this God was a very powerful God—much more powerful than our gods—and that His name was Jehovah and His Son was Jesus Christ. I named two of my sons those names so that I would not forget them, and we made an altar to this big God. Many of our people pray to it, and they come from other islands too because Jehovah is the healer of our diseases.’”
For once John could not think of anything to say! It amazed him to see the way the gospel had spread out ahead of them.
All did not go well for the missionaries in Rarotonga, however. Chief Makea may have named two of his sons Jehovah and Jesus Christ, but he understood little about Christianity. That evening he invited the Rarotongans on board ship to bring their friends and come ashore. He assured them they would be welcome to teach the people about the ways of Jehovah. John and the other Europeans stayed on the ship, not wanting their “strange” appearance to distract the islanders from hearing the gospel.
The Polynesian missionaries were back on board the Endeavour as soon as the sun rose the following morning. They had a sad tale to tell. It was almost identical to the problems they had encountered on Mangaia. The Rarotongan men had attacked the missionaries’ wives, trying to drag them off into the bushes. The women’s tattered clothes told the story.
“What can we do?” John asked the group. He had been certain in his heart that Rarotonga was the key to spreading the gospel throughout the Cook Islands, and now that dream was looking impossible to realize.
Everyone stood silently for a while, and then Papeiha spoke. “It is not good for the men to stay without their wives, and it is too dangerous for the women to stay. But I have no wife, so I will stay and urge Makea to give up his idols and turn to the one true God.”
“Are you sure?” John asked, touched but not surprised by the bravery of his Raiatean Christian brother.
“I am sure,” Papeiha replied. “When you return to Raiatea, urge Tiberio to join me, and we shall trust ourselves to the will of God in this place.”
That afternoon Papeiha and one of the ship’s cats he had befriended paddled ashore again. Papeiha had a woven coconut-frond bag with him containing a spare lava-lava, a copy of the New Testament, and five Tahitian grammar books. He turned and waved to John. “Ko Jehova toku tiaki! Tei roto au i tona rima!” (“Jehovah is my shepherd! I am in His hand!”)
John’s eyes filled with tears. He wondered whether he would ever see his brave friend again. Would the people of Rarotonga tire of his teachings and eat him? All John could do was pray for Papeiha and hope for the best as the Endeavour sailed back to Raiatea. As they approached the harbor there, those on board hung the idols they had collected from Aitutaki on the yardarms of the ship. This announced to all of the Christians on shore that their mission had met with success.
At home a letter was waiting for John. It was from the board of directors of LMS in response to the news that he had bought the Endeavour in Sydney. John read it through quickly; the message was unmistakably plain. The board did not approve of his buying the ship, and he must sell it immediately.
John’s heart sank. Would the board ever understand the challenges that their missionaries faced in the Pacific? He doubted they would and knew he had to sell the ship as instructed, though not without a few strong words back to the LMS board.
Satan knows well that this ship was the most fatal weapon ever formed against his interests in the great South Seas; and therefore, as soon as he felt the effects of its first blow, he wrestled it from out of our hands…I am decidedly of the opinion that a vessel is still wanted in the Islands. A missionary was never designed by Jesus to get a congregation of a hundred or two natives and sit down at his ease as contented as if every sinner was converted, while thousands around him are eating each other’s flesh and drinking each other’s blood with a savage delight.… For my own part I cannot content myself within the narrow limits of a single reef and if means are not afforded, a continent to me would be infinitely preferable, for there if you cannot ride you walk.
Reluctantly, John supervised the loading of the Endeavour with coconut oil and sugar cane for the ship’s final voyage to Sydney. It was a sad day as he watched the vessel sail from sight over the horizon. On its way, the Endeavour would drop off Tiberio in Rarotonga as Papeiha had requested.
John continued to work with the church at Raiatea, always on the lookout for an opportunity to visit islands that had not yet heard the gospel. There were now nine hundred committed Christians in the church, with more joining every week, giving the church leaders plenty to do.
In March 1824, seven months after John had returned from Rarotonga, Lancelot Threlkeld’s wife, Martha, became ill, and within a week she was dead. Soon afterward Lancelot decided to take his four children back to England. It was devastating news to John. He and Lancelot had become very close friends, and John relied on his co-worker for a great deal of advice. John sent a letter back to England with Lancelot, asking the London Missionary Society to appoint another man of equal ability to come and work with him.
Chapter 9
Messenger of Peace
In November 1825 the Reverend Charles Pitman and his wife, Elizabeth, stepped off a boat in Raiatea. John and Mary Williams welcomed them into their home as guests until a suitable ship arrived to transport them to Rarotonga, where the LMS had commissioned them to work with Papeiha and Tiberio.
As John waited for a ship to arrive, his level of frustration grew. The Endeavour would easily have done the job of transporting the Pitmans to Rarotonga, but the LMS board had insisted it be sold. So now they all sat and waited for a ship to arrive. Still, John made the most of the time he had with the Pitmans. He helped them learn the language and showed them how to teach Polynesians to read.
Four months after the Pitmans arrived, Mary discovered she was expecting another baby. The previous three children she had given birth to had all died, and so it was with great joy that the couple welcomed a little boy into the world on November 28, 1826. They named him Samuel Tamatoa Williams after the chief of Raiatea.
At last, in April 1827, a suitable ship dropped anchor in the harbor at Raiatea, and the Pitmans packed up their belongings. By now John was more than ready for another adventure, so he persuaded Mary to bring the new baby and join him on a short trip to Rarotonga. He had heard several reports from passing whaling vessels that the missionary work there was going well, and he also had a letter from Papeiha asking him to visit because the work was “so heavy that they could not carry it alone.”
The Pitmans and the Williamses left Raiatea on Sunday, April 25, amid the prayers and good wishes of hundreds of Raiatean Christians who lined the shores. They would need those prayers sooner than they thought. Ominous black clouds gathered on the horizon, and soon the small ship was being relentlessly buffeted about amid the towering waves.
Finally, on Sunday, May 6, the ship arrived off Rarotonga and dropped anchor. The ship’s longboat was lowered over the side, and John and Mary and the Pitmans climbed in. Mary clutched baby Samuel as the men rowed the boat ashore. Unfortunately the longboat proved to be less than seaworthy. Water began pouring in between the hull planks. To stop the boat from sinking, Mary had to sit in the bottom of it, balance the baby on her knee, and frantically bail water. While she did so, John and Charles rowed as hard as they could. Eventually, after a few tense moments, especially when some waves broke around the boat as it passed the reef, they made it ashore. Everyone breathed a prayer of thanks.
Having had to content himself with studying the peaked mountains and lush vegetation of the island from the ship on his previous voyage, John was finally standing on Rarotonga. The first thing he noticed was that, unlike most of the other Pacific islands he had visited, there were no coconut trees. He later learned that a raiding party from another island had attacked Rarotonga two years before and cut down all the coconut palms to punish the locals. The other thing that John noticed about Rarotonga was the rats. They were everywhere. They had arrived on the island on whaling ships, and with no natural predators, they soon overran the place.
