scended the gangway, and was rowed ashore to the glittering
lights of the southern city.

A POINT OF THEOLOGY ON MADURO

The _Palestine_ Tom de Wolf's South Sea trading brig, of Sydney, had
just dropped anchor off a native village on Maduro in the North Pacific,
when Macpherson the trader came alongside in his boat and jumped on
board. He was a young but serious-faced man with a red beard, was thirty
years of age, and had achieved no little distinction for having once
attempted to convert Captain "Bully" Hayes, when that irreligious
mariner was suffering from a fractured skull, superinduced by a bullet,
fired at him by a trader whose connubial happiness he had unwarrantably
upset. The natives thought no end of Macpherson, because in his spare
time he taught a class in the Mission Church, and neither drank nor
smoked. This was quite enough to make him famous from one end of
Polynesia to the other; but he bore his honours quietly, the only signs
of superiority he showed over the rest of his fellow traders being
the display on the rough table in his sitting-room of a quantity of
theological literature by the Reverend James MacBain, of Aberdeen. Still
he was not proud, and would lend any of his books or pamphlets to any
white man who visited the island.

He was a fairly prosperous man, worked hard at his trading business,
and, despite his assertions about the fearful future that awaited every
one who had not read the Reverend Mr. MacBain's religious works, was
well-liked. But few white men spent an evening in his house if they
could help it. One reason of this was that whenever a ship touched at
Maduro, the Hawaiian native teacher, Lilo, always haunted Mac-pherson's
house, and every trader and trading skipper detested this teacher above
all others. Macpherson liked him and said he was "earnest," the other
white men called him and believed him to be, a smug-faced and sponging
hypocrite.

Well, as I said, Macpherson came on board, and Packenham and Denison,
the supercargo, at once noticed that he looked more than usually solemn.
Instead of, as on former occasions, coming into the brig's trade-room
and picking out his trade goods, he sat down facing the captain and
answered his questions as to the state of business, etc., on the island,
in an awkward, restrained manner.

"What's the matter, Macpherson?" said the captain. "Have you married a
native girl and found out that she is related to any one on the island,
and