d for, these he still thought he
saw. But to find the whole machine thus glow with the reverberation of
religious zeal surprised him beyond words; and he laboured in vain, as
he walked, to piece together into any kind of whole his odds and ends of
knowledge--to adjust again into any kind of focus with itself his
picture of the man beside him.

"What brought you here to the South Seas?" he asked presently.

"Many things," said Attwater. "Youth, curiosity, romance, the love of
the sea, and (it will surprise you to hear) an interest in missions.
That has a good deal declined, which will surprise you less. They go the
wrong way to work; they are too parsonish, too much of the old wife, and
even the old apple-wife. _Clothes_, _clothes_, are their idea; but
clothes are not Christianity, any more than they are the sun in heaven,
or could take the place of it! They think a parsonage with roses, and
church bells, and nice old women bobbing in the lanes, are part and
parcel of religion. But religion is a savage thing, like the universe it
illuminates; savage, cold, and bare, but infinitely strong."

"And you found this island by an accident?" said Herrick.

"As you did!" said Attwater. "And since then I have had a business, and
a colony, and a mission of my own. I was a man of the world before I was
a Christian; I'm a man of the world still, and I made my mission pay. No
good ever came of coddling. A man has to stand up in God's sight and
work up to his weight avoirdupois: then I'll talk to him, but not
before. I gave these beggars what they wanted: a judge in Israel, the
bearer of the sword and scourge; I was making a new people here; and
behold, the angel of the Lord smote them and they were not!"

With the very uttering of the words, which were accompanied by a
gesture, they came forth out of the porch of the palm wood by the margin
of the sea and full in front of the sun, which was near setting. Before
them the surf broke slowly. All around, with an air of imperfect wooden
things inspired with wicked activity, the crabs trundled and scuttled
into holes. On the right, whither Attwater pointed and abruptly turned,
was the cemetery of the island, a field of broken stones from the
bigness of a child's hand to that of his head, diversified by many
mounds of the same material, and walled by a rude rectangular enclosure.
Nothing grew there but a shrub or two with some white flowers; nothing
but the number of the mounds, and thei