them reflective! I believe I could not mistake. Nakier in particular listened with attention, and looked at his mates with an expression as though conviction were being slowly borne in upon him.'

I pricked up my ears at this, for here was a matter that had been causing me some anxious thought, and I broke away from my sullen, resentful behaviour to question him.

'What brought the men aft?'

'The same tiresome story,' he answered, speaking loudly, and seemingly forgetful of or indifferent to the pair of yellow ears which, I might warrant him, were thirstily listening at the helm. 'They ask for beef, for beef, for nothing but beef, and I say yes—beef one day, pork another; beef for your bodies and pork for your souls. I shall conquer them; and what a triumph it will be! Though I should make no further progress with them, yet I could never feel too grateful for a decisive victory over a gross imbecile superstition that, like a shutter, though it be one of many, helps to keep out the light.'

He then went on to tell us what he had said, how he had reasoned, and I shall not soon forget the unctuous, self-satisfied chuckle which broke from the folds of his throat as he paused before asking Helga what she thought of that as an example of pure logic. I listened, wondering that a man who could talk as he did could be crazy enough to attempt so perilous an experiment as the attempting to win his crew over to his own views of religion by as dangerous an insult as his fanatical mind could have lighted upon. It was the more incomprehensible to me in that the fellow had started upon his crude missionary scheme when there were but two whites in the ship to eleven believers in the Prophet.

I waited until his having to fetch breath enabled me to put in a word. I then briefly and quietly related what had passed in the forecastle as described to me by Jacob Minnikin.

'And what then, Mr. Tregarthen?' said he, and I seemed to catch a sneer threading, so to speak, his bland utterance: the moon gave but little light, as I have said, and I could not see his face. 'When a man starts on the work of converting, he must not be afraid.'

'Your men have knives—they are devils, so I have heard, when aroused—you may not be afraid, but you have no right to provoke peril for us,' I said.

'The coxswain of a lifeboat should have a stout heart,' he exclaimed. 'Miss Nielsen, do not be alarmed by your 

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