“Oh, lead me on, lead me out of this,” she cried.
It was a sight she would never forget, a sight she would dream of many a night in after life when on a bed of sickness. Ugh!
* * * * *
That very night Peggy McQueen formed a resolution. Some may call it a childish one. Perhaps it was, yet even from the mouths of babes and sucklings wisdom at times may come.
She would try to convert that blood-stained cannibal king.
She now spent an hour or two each day with him at his palace of huts, and surely no preacher ever expounded the doctrines of Christianity in language more simple and beautiful, yet forcible, than did our little heroine. Its loveliness, its truths, and its terrors, she told him all.
Did she succeed? Ah, that I cannot tell, but the king’s soul, it must be remembered, was like that of a little child. The souls of all savages are, and if the guileless prattle of child Peggy did not appeal to it and touch a chord, the sterner, though more learned logic of no missionary may hope to succeed.
The Wandering Minstrels gave one more performance the night before they left, and every one of Fitzroy’s troupe excelled himself and broke all former record.
Johnnie never felt in better form; Willie had never been so funny before; Peggy never sang nor played more sweetly; the giant’s great brass bassoon made echoes ring from tree to tree; then good-byes were spoken.
Fireflies were flitting from bush to bush, and moon and stars shone softly on the sea when the boats took all hands back to the barque.