“You miss the secular side a little.  You cannot expect those grand, good-humoured fellows of yours to be always content with devotional excitement.”

“But we don’t.  Our secular work, our care for the men’s bodies, is just as great as our care for their souls,” said Fullerton, warmly.  “We simply cannot do everything; we lack means, and that must be our plea, no matter how sordid it may seem to you.  But you must clearly understand that for my part, while I hold tenaciously to the primary duty of ’holding forth the Word of Life’—­for it is ’the entrance of Thy Word giveth light and understanding to the simple’—­yet I am entirely with you in feeling that we need to cultivate the intellect of these men.  Go on, Ferrier.”

“Well; I meant to say that you must let the men know something of the beauty of the world, and the wonder of it as well.  Look here, Blair:  do you mean to say that I couldn’t make a regular fairy tale out of the geology of these Banks?  Pray, ladies, excuse just a little shop; I can’t help it.  Give me just one tooth of an elephant, dredged up off Scarborough, and if I don’t make those men delighted, then I may leave the Royal Society.”

“But, my good Bashaw,” said Blair, “if you blindfold one of the skippers, and tell him the soundings from time to time, he’ll take you from point to point, and pick up his marks just as surely as you could touch your bedroom-door in the dark.”

“Exactly.  That’s empirical knowledge; but when you explain causes, you give a man a new pleasure.  It clinches his knowledge.  Then, again, supposing I were to tell those men something accurate about the movement of the stars?  Don’t you think that would be interesting?  If I could not make it like a romance, then all the years I spent in learning were thrown away.”

“Could you get them to care for anything of the kind?  Do you know that a seaman is the most absolutely conservative of the human race?”

“We must begin.  You give the men light, and I’ll be bound that some of us will make them like sweetness.  If Miss Dearsley were to read ‘Rizpah,’ or ‘Big Tom,’ or any other story of pathos or self-sacrifice, she would do the men good.  Why, if I had the chance, I’d bring off my friend Tom Gale, and let him make them laugh till they cried by reading about Mr. Peggotty of Great Yarmouth and the lobster; or Mrs. Gummidge and the drown-ded old-’un.”

Mrs. Walton had been very quiet.  She turned to the staid and taciturn Mrs. Hellier and asked, “How do you find your readings suit at your mission-room?”

“They please the women, and I suppose they would please men.  Our people are quite happy when we have a good reader.  I’m a failure, because I always begin to cry at the critical points; but Lena has no feelings at all, and she can keep the room hushed for a whole hour.”

Mrs. Walton smiled placidly.