“Oh,” continued Antonio, “that isn’t the kind of love they love you with. They want to broil and eat you, dearie.”
. . . . . .
Months went on; the sponges collected on the sea beach were tied to sticks in the sand at low water, in thousands. When the tide was high it washed them; when low, the sun bleached them; and so all the innumerable animalculæ that dwelt in their cells soon decayed and washed away.
As soon as they were thoroughly dry and clean, they were taken off to the ship in boats.
. . . . . .
But during all these months Leona had not been idle. Her heart bled to think that these poor benighted savages should never have heard the history of the world, as mythically revealed in the Book of Books.
She determined to tell them this story, and the better and happier story that followed—the story of Jesus Christ our Saviour.
She hired natives to build a church on a hillside, with great open windows in it that looked far out over the lone blue sea. The church was entirely composed of palm leaves woven together, and supported on bamboo poles. There was squatting room for five hundred.
Leona’s sermons were simplicity itself, and couched in the language of the islanders.
She told of the fall of man after the creation of the world, of the gradual peopling of the earth, of the promises of salvation held out to God’s people through the mouths of His prophets, and last of all of the coming of the gentle Saviour to this weary, sinful world—of His humble birth, His boyhood, His wondrous work, and His awful death on the cross, from the time He was nailed up until His gentle spirit was wafted away with the ever-memorable words, “’Tis finished.”