cargo of missionaries had ever before sailed from those
North Sea Islands of Britain to the savages of other lands like the
South Sea Islands.

There was a hurried order and a scurry on board the Government ship.
A boat was let down into the Thames, and half a dozen sailors tumbled
into her and rowed to _The Duff._ What did the officer find?

He was met at the rail by a man who had been through scores of
adventures, Captain Wilson. The son of the captain of a Newcastle
collier, Wilson had grown up a dare-devil sailor boy. He enlisted as
a soldier in the American war, became captain of a vessel trading with
India, and was then captured and imprisoned by the French in India. He
escaped from prison by climbing a great wall, and dropping down forty
feet on the other side. He plunged into a river full of alligators,
and swam across, escaping the jaws of alligators only to be captured
on the other bank by Indians, chained and made to march barefoot
for 500 miles. Then he was thrust into Hyder Ali's loathsome prison,
starved and loaded with irons, and at last at the end of two years was
set free.

This was the daring hero who had now undertaken to captain the little
_Duff_ across the oceans of the world to the South Seas. With
Captain Wilson, the man-o'-war officer found also six carpenters, two
shoemakers, two bricklayers, two sailors, two smiths, two weavers, a
surgeon, a hatter, a shopkeeper, a cotton factor, a cabinet-maker, a
draper, a harness maker, a tin worker, a butcher and four ministers.
But they were all of them missionaries. With them were six children.

All up and down the English Channel French frigates sailed like hawks
waiting to pounce upon their prey; for England was at war with France
in those days. So for five weary weeks _The Duff_ anchored in the
roadstead of Spithead till, as one of a fleet of fifty-seven vessels,
she could sail down the channel and across the Bay of Biscay protected
by British men-o'-war. Safely clear of the French cruisers, _The Duff_
held on alone till the cloud-capped mountain-heights of Madeira hove
in sight.

Across the Atlantic she stood, for the intention was to sail round
South America into the Pacific. But on trying to round the Cape Horn
_The Duff_ met such violent gales that Captain Wilson turned her in
her tracks and headed back across the Atlantic for the Cape of Good
Hope.

Week after week for thousands and thousands of miles she sailed.
She had travelled from Rio