which was the true religion.
Prince Abbas Mirza invited him to come to speak with him; and as
Martyn entered the Prince's courtyard a hundred fountains began to
send up jets of water in his honour.

At last they came to him in such numbers that Martyn was obliged to
say to many of them that he could not see them. He hated sending them
away. What was it forced him to do so?

_The Race against Time_

It was because he was running a race against time. He knew that he
could not live very long, because the disease that had smitten his
lungs was gaining ground every day. And the thing that he had come
to Persia for--the object that had made him face the long voyage,
the frightful heat and the freezing cold of the journey, the life
thousands of miles from his home in Cornwall--was that he might finish
such a translation of the New Testament into Persian that men should
love to read years and years after he had died.

So each day Martyn finished another page or two of the book, written
in lovely Persian letters. He began the work within a week of reaching
Shiraz, and in seven months (February, 1812) it was finished. Three
more months were spent in writing out very beautiful copies of the
whole of the New Testament in this new translation, to be presented to
the Shah of Persia and to the heir to the throne, Prince Abbas Mirza.

Then he started away on a journey right across Persia to find the Shah
and Prince so that he might give his precious books to them. On the
way he fell ill with great fever; he was so weak and giddy that he
could not stand. One night his head ached so that it almost drove him
mad; he shook all over with fever; then a great sweat broke out. He
was almost unconscious with weakness, but at midnight when the call
came to start he mounted his horse and, as he says, "set out, rather
dead than alive." So he pressed on in great weakness till he reached
Tabriz, and there met the British Ambassador.

Martyn was rejoiced, and felt that all his pains were repaid when Sir
Gore Ouseley said that he himself would present the Sacred Book to
the Shah and the Prince. When the day came to give the book to Prince
Abbas, poor Henry Martyn was so weak that he could not rise from his
bed. Before the other copy could be presented to the Shah, Martyn had
died. This is how it came about.

_The Last Trail_

His great work was done. The New Testament was finished. He sent a
copy to the printers in India. He could now go