During the next week, Florence and the other missionaries helped Peter where they could. They ran several Bible classes and began reading lessons for the people of the village. They also taught them some new hymns from a hymnal that Owen had brought with him. Florence was impressed by the way Peter and the other Christian leaders in the community were overseeing the village.
By the end of their week in Malu, all of the missionaries had contracted malaria. They were supposed to continue on with their voyage around the island of Malaita to find the most suitable site for another mission station, but the illness prevented them from doing this. And even if they had wanted to continue on, they could not find a crew of island men to sail the Daphne. The men who had sailed the vessel from Gavutu had disappeared into the bush.
Finally some saltwater men, as those who lived near the ocean were called, offered to sail the Daphne back to Gavutu the next day. That night, however, Florence could not sleep. She felt something was amiss and spent the night praying that God would show her what was wrong. By morning she was convinced that they should not employ the saltwater men to sail the ketch.
That same morning an elderly Christian man named Charley Lofia came to see Florence. Charley explained that he had overheard the would-be sailors talking among themselves. The sailors planned to run the Daphne aground on a reef, murder the missionaries, and loot the vessel.
“I no sleep,” Charley explained. “God He been talking along my heart. He been say, ‘You go along Daphne and look out for Miss Young.’”
Florence looked at the faithful old man with gratitude. He had probably saved their lives, and although he was a bushman, he was prepared to take his chances on a white man’s ship. Tears slid down her cheeks as she thought of his devotion to them.
Charley convinced two other Christian men to sign up as crew on the Daphne. One was a bushman and the other a saltwater man who knew how to sail.
The next day Florence and the other missionaries and the three island crew members said good-bye to Peter Ambuofa and the Christians of Malu and sailed off. The plan, when they reached Gavutu, was for Florence and Helen to connect with the Ysabel, a steamer that would transport them back to Australia, while Hedley, Owen, and James would return to Malu to help the Christians there. On the way back to Gavutu, they stopped in at Taravania to deliver gifts to the people there from the church at Malu. Then they set out in a westerly direction for Gavutu.
The journey to Gavutu was grueling and treacherous. The Daphne was constantly becalmed, and on several occasions the ocean current pushed the ketch dangerously close to the jagged coral reefs. To make matters worse, the Solomon Islands were situated eight degrees from the equator, and the hot tropical sun baked down mercilessly on those in the boat, burning their skin and further weakening their malaria-wracked bodies.
Soon Helen was lying on the deck on one side of the boat while Hedley lay on the other side, both with dangerously high temperatures. Florence herself felt weak and wanted to lie down on the deck with the others, but she pushed herself on, cooking rice and boiling drinking water for the crew. Finally, on the fifth day, Gavutu appeared on the horizon, but by then Owen had lapsed into unconsciousness at the wheel. James, who had no sailing experience, and the makeshift crew of three island men were forced to guide the Daphne in failing light amid the reefs that guarded the entrance to the harbor on Gavutu. Eventually, after grazing a reef with the keel of the boat they managed to moor it alongside the dock.
Florence could hardly believe that they had arrived at all, between the becalmings, the heat, and malaria. It was ten o’clock in the evening by then, and everyone aboard the Daphne was too exhausted to transfer to land, so they all collapsed onto the deck of the boat, where they slept one more night.
In the morning the missionaries made a supreme effort to get themselves ashore. James went first, taking Helen by the arm and guiding her off the boat, while the men from Malu helped Owen and Hedley ashore. Florence stayed behind for a few more minutes to gather the clothes and utensils they would need over the next several days. When she climbed up on deck, she saw that James and Helen had gone only a few feet along the dock before they had both fainted. She left the pile of clothes and utensils on deck and went to their aid. She managed to rouse James, and together he and Florence managed to get Helen to Captain Svenson’s house and into bed.
For the next seven weeks the missionaries took turns nursing each other as their malarial fevers came and went. At the end of seven weeks, the HMS Pylades stopped at Gavutu to take on coal. The vessel had a British doctor aboard who advised Florence that Owen was so sick that he should be taken back to Australia as quickly as possible. However, this was not easily done. The Ysabel, the ship they had been waiting for to take them to Australia, had failed to arrive at Gavutu, leaving Florence stranded. Finally a whaleboat appeared in the harbor, bringing the news that the Ysabel had lost its propeller near the northern end of Malaita and lay at anchor waiting for help to arrive. There was nothing to do but wait for some other ship headed south to arrive at Gavutu. Eventually the SS Morseby stopped at the island to take on more coal for its trip to Sydney, and the captain agreed to take Florence, Helen, and Owen on board. The three of them stood on deck, bracing themselves against the railing as they watched the Daphne fade from view.
Once at sea Owen began to feel a little better, though Helen and Florence were both very ill. By the time they arrived back in Sydney sixteen days later, Florence was glad to put herself into the hands of her doctor nephew, Northcote Deck. She had lost thirty pounds in the weeks she’d been away, and her temperature was spiking to 106 degrees.
As she lay between the smooth white cotton sheets at her nephew’s house, Florence wondered how the men on board the Daphne back in the Solomon Islands were faring. She had no idea that it would be six months before the two men would be well enough and able to engage a new crew to make it back to Malu.
Chapter 12
The Eastern Side of the Island
Six weeks after leaving Gavutu, Florence stood in the doorway of a neatly though sparsely furnished seven-room cottage.
“It’s perfect!” she declared, turning to Ernest. “Really, I can’t thank you and Arthur enough.”
Florence meant the words with all her heart. While she had been away in the islands, her brothers had built the cottage for her at Fairymead. The cottage was located in the Bush Paddock, halfway between the plantation house and the huts of the Kanaka workers.
“Living here will cut down so much on Kathleen’s and my workloads,” she continued, walking through the kitchen and noting the indoor water pump in the sink. “A house this size won’t take much running at all, and we have only a few hundred yards to walk to class. When it’s cool enough, we’ll even be able to have classes on the veranda.”
“I thought you’d like it,” Ernest beamed. “And you can thank Kathleen for the water pump. She was the one who insisted on all the latest gadgets.”
Florence turned and put her arm around her niece. “Thanks for that, and so much more. The work here is going so well with you at the helm. There is no way I would have felt comfortable leaving without knowing you were here.”
Kathleen turned red. “We are all doing what we can,” she replied modestly.
As the weeks passed, it seemed as if there was more to do than ever before. While the government was still sticking to its plan to send all the Kanakas back home to the islands, under pressure from the sugarcane growers it had pushed back the deadline to December 31, 1906. And now that she had seen firsthand the situations that the men were going home to, Florence worked harder than ever. She lay in bed at night thinking of new ways to teach the men to read. She knew that reading would help them understand the gospel better so that their faith would remain strong, no matter what happened to them when they returned home.
Every so often a letter arrived from James or Hedley in the Solomons. Florence prayed earnestly for them as she read of the struggles that they were enduring trying to sail back to Malu in the Daphne. They had had difficulty getting together a crew. James wrote that whenever a crew was available, Grant, the seaman they had put in charge of sailing the vessel, declared that the weather was unfavorable. Then the crew would disappear and were nowhere to be found when the weather was declared perfect for sailing.
To compound their frustrations, Hedley had come down with a severe fever and returned to Sydney for medical treatment. The voyage home, however, had improved his health, and he had gone back to Gavutu on the return voyage.
It was not until Christmastime that James and Hedley were finally able to sail the Daphne back to Malu. Letters from the two missionaries then became more positive. Peter Ambuofa helped them find a suitable site for a mission station, and a native hut was erected on the spot and a school started immediately.
Meanwhile, Florence was preparing to make her second visit to the Solomon Islands. She left Australia in early July 1905, along with Jane Foster, a long-time missionary friend from her days in the China Inland Mission. Florence met James and Hedley and a new missionary, Joseph Watkinson, at Aola, on the island of Guadalcanal. She was delighted to find the Daphne in fine condition. Some improvements had even been made to the vessel, which now had a stove in the galley and a ventilator in the cabin. The rice and water no longer needed to be boiled over a fire in a tin on the deck.
The plan during Florence’s visit was to sail the Daphne around to the eastern side of Malaita to scout out a site for another mission station. However, the British official in charge at Aola warned them not to go that way. “The people are worse than ever,” he said. “There are killings all the time. It would be thoroughly unsafe for you to go there.”
Florence found herself in a quandary. She did not want to risk her life and the lives of the others unnecessarily, but she felt strongly that they should expand their mission stations into the most needy areas. And what, she asked herself, could be more needy than people living in utter spiritual darkness? It was at times like this that Florence was grateful that she had been a part of the China Inland Mission. Hudson Taylor’s wise words often came back to her. On this occasion she recalled a time in Shanghai when someone had asked Taylor about the wisdom of sending single women to live alone in inland China.
“Yes,” Taylor had replied, “there may be danger, but you see, they have the Lord of Hosts with them, and that makes all the difference.”
With those words in her heart, Florence decided to visit the eastern side of the island and trust that God would keep them safe. On July 20, 1905, Florence wrote in her diary:
We left…at 3 A.M., and in a few minutes were tossing on a very rough sea. The cabin was an abode of misery. Two seasick passengers clinging frantically to their berths, and a perfect bombardment of tins, pannikins, bottles etc., flying about! Provisions, trade-goods, and crockery are all stored in the cabin….Swarms of cockroaches abound. Every now and then Mr. Abbott’s cheery whistle or a few words of encouragement came to our help; but we were thankful to reach Bia-kwa in the Lagoon. It was some consolation that the trip was reckoned a very rough one. One sea [wave] splashed to the top of the mainsail and the jib was carried away.
The Daphne lay at anchor off Bia-kwa while the ripped sails were repaired, and four days later they sailed into One Pusu, halfway along the west coast of Malaita. Florence continued recording in her journal what she saw.
The entrance [to the harbor] is very narrow; so we anchored outside till the wind lessened, and then rowed into a beautiful harbour, perfectly sheltered from all winds. The Christian village on the northern end of the peninsula contains only three houses with a canoe house and a tiny church, all built under young coconut trees. Barnabas [one of the Kanaka men from Fairymead] was soon on board. He and George [another Kanaka from Queensland] have been working here for four or five years, and have won the friendship of some of the bush people, who have built a village on the mainland just opposite to protect them. It seems a suitable place for the head station; only 35 miles from Aola (where the steamer calls) and well exposed to both NW and SE winds…. About four acres have been cleared for two years, which will save time and health, as the sun and air have sweetened the ground. The land is low, and the soil broken coral, suitable only for coconuts. But sweet potatoes can also be grown.
Florence and the other missionaries were thrilled to find another Christian village established as a direct result of their work among the Kanakas back in Queensland. They held a special church service with Barnabas and George to honor them for their hard work and constant faith. They also visited the bush people, who, even though they were not Christians, were glad to welcome the missionaries to the area and invite them to stay.
