must be within reach of doctors, they lived for the most part at various
coast cities in Africa, where Thomas worked with his usual fervour
and earnestness, acquiring languages which he learned to speak with
considerable perfection, though Dorcas never did, and acquainting
himself thoroughly with the local conditions in so far as they affected
missionary enterprise.

He took no interest in anything else, not even in the history of the
natives, or their peculiar forms of culture, since for the most part
they have a secret culture of their own. All that was done with, he
said, a turned page of the black and barbarous past; it was his business
to write new things upon a new sheet. Perhaps it was for this reason
that Thomas Bull never really came to understand or enter into the heart
of a Zulu, or a Basuto, or a Swahili, or indeed of any dark-skinned man,
woman, or child. To him they were but brands to be snatched from the
burning, desperate and disagreeable sinners who must be saved, and he
set to work to save them with fearful vigour.

His wife, although her vocabulary was still extremely limited and much
eked out with English or Dutch words, got on much better with them.

"You know, Thomas," she would say, "they have all sorts of fine ideas
which we don't understand, and are not so bad in their way, only you
must find out what their way is."

"I have found out," he said grimly; "it is a very evil way, the way of
destruction. I wish you would not make such a friend of that sly black
nurse-girl who tells me a lie once out of every three times she opens
her mouth."