seventeen. In 1797 he became an undergraduate at St. John's College,
Cambridge. He was still very passionate.

For instance, when a man was "ragging" him in the College Hall at
dinner, he was so furious that he flung a knife at him, which stuck
quivering in the panelling of the wall. Kempthorne, his old friend,
was at Cambridge with him. They used to read the Bible together and
Martyn became a real Christian and fought hard to overcome his violent
temper.

He was a very clever scholar and became a Fellow of Jesus College in
1802. He at that time took orders in the Church of England. He became
very keen on reading about missionary work, e.g. Carey's story of
nine years' work in _Periodical Accounts_, and the L.M.S. Report on
Vanderkemp in South Africa. "I read nothing else while it lasted," he
said of the Vanderkemp report.

He was accepted as a chaplain of the East India Company. They could
not sail till Admiral Nelson gave the word, because the French were
waiting to capture all the British ships. Five men-of-war convoyed
them when they sailed in 1805. They waited off Ireland, because the
immediate invasion of England by Napoleon was threatened. On board
Martyn worked hard at Hindustani, Bengali and Portuguese. He already
knew Greek, Latin and Hebrew. He arrived at Madras (South India) and
Calcutta and thence went to Cawnpore. It is at this point that our
yarn begins.

A voice like thunder, speaking in a strange tongue, shouted across an
Indian garden one night in 1809.

The new moon, looking "like a ball of ebony in an ivory cup,"--as one
who was there that night said--threw a cold light over the palm trees
and aloes, on the man who was speaking and on those who were seated
around him at the table in the bungalow.

Beyond the garden the life of Cawnpore moved in its many streets;
the shout of a donkey-driver, the shrill of a bugle from the barracks
broke sharply through the muffled sounds of the city. The June wind,
heavy with the waters of the Ganges which flows past Cawnpore, made
the night insufferably hot. But the heat did not trouble Sabat, the
wild son of the Arabian desert, who was talking--as he always did--in
a roaring voice that was louder than most men's shouting. He was
telling the story of Abdallah's brave death as a Christian martyr.[62]

Quietly listening to Sabat's voice--though he could not understand
what he was saying--was a young Italian, Padre Julius Caesar, a monk of
the order of the Je