“We mustn’t blame the poor ladies,” said Fullerton:  “how could they know?  Plenty of people told them about Timbuctoo, and Jerusalem, and Madagascar, and North and South America, but this region’s just a trifle out of the way.  A lady may easily sign a cheque or pack a missionary’s medicine-chest, but she could not come out here among dangers and filth and discomfort, and the men ashore are not much pluckier.  No; in my experience of English people I’ve always found them lavish with their help, only you must let them know what to help.  There’s the point.”

“And you’ve begun, dear Mr. Fullerton, have you not?”

“Yes; but the end is far off.  We were so late—­so late in beginning, and I must pass away, and my place will know me no more; and many and many another will pass away.  Oh, yes! we shall travel from gulf to gulf; but I think, sometimes, that my soul will be here on the wild nights.  I must be near my men—­my poor men!—­and I’ll meet them when their voyage is over.”

The enthusiast spoke solemnly, and his queer diction somehow was not unbecoming or grotesque.  I suppose George Fox and Savonarola did not use quite the ordinary language of their day and generation.

The doctor listened with a kind look on his strong face, and when the dark young girl quietly whispered “Amen!” our professor quite simply repeated the word.

Tom Lennard had been going through a most complicated series of acrobatic movements, and he now broke in—­

“Ah!  Harry Fullerton, if you’re not an angel, you’re pretty near one.  Ah! that eloquence is of the most—­the most—­a kind of—­ah! fahscinating—­oh-h-h! fahscinating!  But I believe this vessel has a personal spite against me, or else the sea’s rising.”

“It is, indeed,” said Mr. Blair, who had peeped out from the companion.  “We’re actually running up to the fleet, and the rocket has gone up for them to haul trawls.  It looks very bad, very bad.  You’re not frightened, Mrs. Walton, I hope?”

The reserved, silent lady said—­

“Oh, no!  Marion and I seem to take kindly to bad weather.  I believe if she could wear a sou’-wester she would hang on to the rigging.  It’s her combative instinct.  But I do hope there is no danger for the poor fishermen?”

Mr. Blair very quietly said—­

“If their vessels were like ours there would be no fear.  We haven’t an unsound rope or block, but many of the smacks are shockingly ill-found, and one rope or spar may cost a crew their lives if it’s faulty.  The glass has gone down badly, and we are in for a gale, and a heavy one.  But my ship would be quite comfortable in the Bay of Biscay.”

A trampling on deck sounded.  “See if the ladies can look from the companion,” said Tom Lennard.  “The sight should be splendid.  You and I must shove on oilskins, Blair and see if we can keep our legs.”

This was almost the end of the night’s conversation.  Those good mission-folks, as has been seen, contrived to get on without saying either clever things or bitter things, and persons who possess the higher intellect may fancy that this was a sign of a poor spirit.  Perhaps; and yet I have read somewhere that the poor in spirit may not fare so very badly in the long run.