'Then I have been dipping into a little ethnology; yesterday a little Plato; but it is almost too hot for anything that requires a working head-piece. You know I take holiday time this voyage when we are in open water and no land near, and it is great relaxation to me.'
A pretty severe gale of wind followed, a sharp test of Patteson's seamanship.
'Then came one day of calm, when we all got our clothes dry, and the deck and rigging looked like an old clothes' shop. Then we got a fairish breeze; but we can get nothing in moderation. Very soon it blew up into a strong breeze, and here we are lying to with a very heavy sea. Landsmen would call it mountainous, I suppose. I am tired, for I have had an anxious time; and we have had but one quiet night for an age, and then I slept from 9.30 P.M. to 7.30 A.M. continuously. 'It may be that this is very good training for me. Indeed it must give me more coolness and confidence. I felt pleased as well as thankful when we made the exact point of Nengone that I had calculated upon, and at the exact time.'
On the 20th of June, Auckland harbour was safely attained; but the coming back without scholars did not make much of holiday time for their master, who was ready to give help to other clergymen whenever it might be needed, though, in fact, this desultory occupation always tried him most.
On the 25th of July he says:-
'I have had a sixty miles' walk since I wrote last; some part of it over wild country. I lost my way once or twice and got into some swamps, but I had my little pocket-compass.
'My first day was eighteen miles in pouring rain; no road, in your sense of the word; but a good warm room and tea at the end. Next day on the move all day, by land and water, seeing settlers scattered about. Third day, Sunday, services at two different places. Fourth day, walk of some twenty-seven miles through unknown regions baptizing children at different places; and reaching, after divers adventures, a very hospitable resting-place at 8 p.m. in the dark. Next day an easy walk into Auckland and Taurarua. Yesterday, Sunday, very wet day. Man-of-war gig came down for me at 9.15 A.M., took the service on board; 11 A.M. St. Paul's service; afternoon, hospital, a mile or so off; 6 P.M., St. Paul's evening service; 8.30, arrived at Taurarua dripping.'
The same letter replies to one from home:-
'I thank you, my dear father, for writing so fully about yourself, and especially, for seeing and stating so plainly your full conviction that I ought not to think of returning to England. It would, as you say, humanly speaking, interfere most seriously with the prospects of the Mission. Some dear friends write to me differently, but they don't quite understand, as you have taken pains to do, what our position is out here; and they don't see that my absence would involve great probable injury to the whole work.
'It is curious how few there are who know anything of New Zealand and Melanesia!
'Of course it is useless to speculate on the future, but I see nothing at all to make it likely that I shall ever revisit England. I can't very well conceive any such state of things as would make it a duty to gratify my constant inclination. And, my dear father, I don't scruple to say (for you will understand me) that I am happier here than I should be in England, where, even though I were absent only a few months, I should bear about with me the constant weight of knowing that Melanesia was not provided for. And, strange as it may seem, this has quite ceased to be a trial to me. The effort of subduing the longing desire to see you is no longer a great one: I feel that I am cheerful and bright, and light-hearted, and that I have really everything to make a man thankful and contented.
'And if you could see the thankful look of the Bishop, when he is again assured that there is no item of regret or desire to call me home on your part, you would feel, I know, that colonial work does require, especially, an unconditional unreserved surrender of a man to whatever he may find to do.'
But while admiring the noble spirit in which the son held fast his post, and the father forebore to unsettle him there, let not their example he used in the unkind and ignorant popular cry against the occasional return of colonial Bishops. For, be it remembered, that dire necessity was not drawing Coleridge Patteson to demand pecuniary assistance round all the platforms of English towns. The Eton, and the Australian and New Zealand Associations, supplemented by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and his own family, relieved him from the need of having to maintain his Mission by such means. All these letters are occupied with the arrangements for raising means for removing the Melanesian College to a less bleak situation, and it is impossible to read them without feeling what a difference it made to have a father who did not view giving to God's work as robbing his family.
On the 13th of August, Patteson was on board, preparing for the voyage; very cold, and eager for the tropics. The parting voice in his farewell letter is: 'I think I see more fully that work, by the power of God's Spirit, is the condition of us all in this world; tiny and insignificant as the greatest work of the greatest men is, in itself, yet the one talent is to be used.'
It was meant to be a farewell letter, but another followed in the leisure, while waiting for the Bishop to embark, with some strong (not to say fiery) opinions on the stern side of duty:-
'I feel anxious to try to make some of the motives intelligible, upon which we colonial folk act sometimes. First. I think that we get a stronger sense of the necessity for dispensing with that kind of courtesy and good nature which sometimes interferes with duty than people do in England.
'So a man placed as I am (for example) really cannot oftentimes avoid letting it be seen that work must come first; and, by degrees, one sympathises less than one possibly should do with drones and idlers in the hive, and feels it wrong to assent to a scheme which lets a real work suffer for the sake of acquiescing in a conventional recognition of comfort, claims of society,
'Would the general of an army say to his officers, "Pray, gentlemen, don't dirty your boots or fatigue your horses to succour the inhabitants of a distant village"? Or a captain to his mates and middies: "Don't turn out, don't go aloft. It is a thing hard, and you might get wet"?
'And the difference between us and people at home sometimes is, that we don't see why a clergyman is not as much bound as an officer in the army or navy to do what he is pledged of his own act to do; and that at home the 'parsonage and pony-carriage' delusion practically makes men forget this. I forget it as much as any man, and should very likely never have seen the mistake but for my coming to New Zealand; and it is one of the great blessings we enjoy.
'There is a mighty work to be done. God employs human agents, and the Bible tells us what are the rules and conditions of their efficiency.
'"Oh! but, poor man, he has a sickly wife!" Yes, but, "it remaineth that those who have wives be as they that have none."
'True, but the case of a large family? "Whosoever loveth child more than me,"
'Second. The fact that we live almost without servants makes us more independent, and also makes us acquainted with the secrets of each other's housekeeping, All that artificial intercourse which depends a good deal upon a well-fitted servants' hall does not find place here. More simple and more plain and homely in speech and act is our life in the colonies-e.g., you meet me carrying six or seven loaves from town to the college. "Oh, I knew that the Bishop had to meet some persons there to-day, and I felt nearly sure there would be no breakfast then." Of course an English person thinks, "Why didn't he send the bread?" To which I answer, "Who was there to send?."
'I don't mean that I particularly like turning myself into a miller one day and a butcher the next; but that doing it as a matter of course, where there is no one else to do it, one does sometimes think it unreasonable to say, as has been said to the Bishop:-"Two thousand pounds a year you want for your Mission work!" "Yes," said the Bishop, 'and not too much for sailing over ten thousand miles, and for educating, clothing, and feeding some forty young men!"