you much success in your missionary labours. Pray take me to your
cabin, as I wish to converse with you privately."

The missionary immediately took him by the hand, and as he led him
away I heard him saying, "Me most glad to find you trader; we
t'ought you be pirate. You very like one 'bout the masts."

What conversation the captain had with this man I never heard, but
he came on deck again in a quarter of an hour, and, shaking hands
cordially with the missionary, ordered us into our boat and
returned to the schooner, which was immediately put before the
wind. In a few minutes the OLIVE BRANCH was left far behind us.

That afternoon, as I was down below at dinner, I heard the men
talking about this curious ship.

"I wonder," said one, "why our captain looked so sweet on yon
swallow-tailed super-cargo o' pigs and Gospels. If it had been an
ordinary trader, now, he would have taken as many o' the pigs as he
required and sent the ship with all on board to the bottom."

"Why, Dick, you must be new to these seas if you don't know that,"
cried another. "The captain cares as much for the gospel as you do
(an' that's precious little), but he knows, and everybody knows,
that the only place among the southern islands where a ship can put
in and get what she wants in comfort, is where the gospel has been
sent to. There are hundreds o' islands, at this blessed moment,
where you might as well jump straight into a shark's maw as land
without a band o' thirty comrades armed to the teeth to back you."