Project Gutenberg's Captain Brassbound's Conversion, by George Bernard Shaw

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Title: Captain Brassbound's Conversion

Author: George Bernard Shaw

Posting Date: January 17, 2009 [EBook #3418]
Release Date: September, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Eve Sobol

CAPTAIN BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION

By Bernard Shaw

ACT I

On the heights overlooking the harbor of Mogador, a seaport on the west
coast of Morocco, the missionary, in the coolness of the late afternoon,
is following the precept of Voltaire by cultivating his garden. He is
an elderly Scotchman, spiritually a little weatherbeaten, as having to
navigate his creed in strange waters crowded with other craft but still
a convinced son of the Free Church and the North African Mission, with
a faithful brown eye, and a peaceful soul. Physically a wiry small-knit
man, well tanned, clean shaven, with delicate resolute features and
a twinkle of mild humor. He wears the sun helmet and pagri, the
neutral-tinted spectacles, and the white canvas Spanish sand shoes of
the modern Scotch missionary: but instead of a cheap tourist's suit from
Glasgow, a grey flannel shirt with white collar, a green sailor knot tie
with a cheap pin in it, he wears a suit of clean white linen, acceptable
in color, if not in cut, to the Moorish mind.

The view from the garden includes much Atlantic Ocean and a long stretch
of sandy coast to the south, swept by the north east trade wind,
and scantily nourishing a few stunted pepper trees, mangy palms, and
tamarisks. The prospect ends, as far as the land is concerned, in
little hills that come nearly to the sea: rudiments, these, of the Atlas
Mountains. The missionary, having had daily opportunities of looking at
this seascape for thirty years or so, pays no heed to it, being absorbed
in trimming a huge red geranium bush, to English eyes unnaturally
big, which, with a dusty smilax or two, is the sole product of his pet
flower-bed. He is sitting to his work on a Moorish stool. In the middle
of the garden there is a pleasant seat in the shade of a tamarisk t