Most of them came out in the steerage of the big ships from London, but none of them were seasick at all throughout the entire voyage.  They do not go about two and two unless it is that one of the old ones goes hand in hand with a younger brother for support.  Generally a score or more travel together.  They never complain of being tired or discouraged, and never get fever or cholera, although I have talked and slept with them at Bahrein when I had fever myself.  Never yet has one of them died on a sick-bed, although they often hide away and disappear for months.  On one or two occasions I have heard of a small company of them being burned at the stake, but I was told that not a groan escaped from their lips, nor were their companions frightened the least bit.  With my own eyes I have seen one or two of them torn asunder and trampled upon by those who hate Jesus Christ and His kingdom and His little missionaries.  Yet the only sound to be heard was the blasphemies of their persecutors, who could not answer them in any other way.

It is very strange indeed, that when once one or two of them get acclimatised and learn the language, they are bound to their work by so many tiny cords of love that they seldom fall apart from their work or fall out one with the other.  There are more than sixty different names and ages among them, and yet they all have one family accent.  Some of them are medical missionaries and can soothe and heal even broken hearts and prevent broken heads.  There are two ladies among them, but they seldom go about alone, and, especially in Arabia, the men do most of the preaching.  Most of them are evangelists or apostles and teachers.  And their enterprise and push! why one of them told me the other day that he wanted "to preach the gospel in the regions beyond" Mecca, and that even there "every knee should bow to Jesus." Why, you begin to see them everywhere in the Persian Gulf and around Muscat and Aden.  Last year a few of them went to Jiddah with the pilgrims.  They dress very plainly, but often in bright Oriental colours (one just came in all in green); on one or two occasions I have seen them wear gold when visiting a rich man, but there was no pride about them, and they put on no airs in their talk.

[Illustration:  MISSION HOUSE AT BUSRAH.]

How many are there of these little missionaries, do you ask?  Over three thousand eight hundred and forty visited and left the three stations of the Arabian Mission in the Persian Gulf last year.  But, as I told you, they are so modest that only a score of them perhaps sent in any account of their work, and that even was sent through a third party by word of mouth.  I have heard it whispered that a faithful record of all their journeys and speeches is kept, but that these are put on file to be published all at once on a certain great day, when missionaries all get their permanent discharge.  What a quiet, patient, faithful, loving body of workers they are.  Even when it is very, very hot, and after a hard day’s work, they never get out of temper as other missionaries sometimes do when in hot discussion with a bigoted Moslem.  And yet how plainly they tell the truth—­they do not even fear a Turkish Pasha; but that is because they have very cunningly all obtained a Turkish passport and a permit to preach anywhere unmolested.