'Yes, I did. Whaler's try-pots, aren't they? What is boiling in them?'

Harvey nodded. 'Only water. They belonged to the Comboy, a New Bedford whaleship, which went ashore here a good many years ago--before you were born. Well, about an hour ago the skipper called our "blackbirds" together, and solemnly told them that the pots are used by the Fotuna natives to cook strangers in, and that fires had been lighted under them in the hope that Hayes would sell a few of his passengers every day to make a feast. It just scared the life out of them, especially as an old French priest happened to pass along the beach at that time, followed by a lot of converts dressed in white sulus; Hayes pointed him out to them, and said he was the principal "devil doctor" who, with his gang of meat carvers, had come down to the beach to see if there was any meat ready.'

Tom laughed. 'It's funny; but do the "blackbirds" believe it?'

'Rather. And as long as we are at this island we shall have no trouble with our cargo of niggers. They think that they would be killed, cut up, put into those pots, and eaten by the Fotuna natives in a brace of shakes, if Hayes gets mad with them. Oh, it's a mighty smart trick, and saves the hands a lot of trouble.'

'But don't you think, Mr. Harvey, that it is rather a mean sort of trick? The Catholic priests here have done a lot of good to the natives, and redeemed them from their savage customs, have they not? Mr. Collier said that of them.'

Harvey laughed scornfully. 'I'm a "holy Roman," lad--born and bred--but I've sailed the South Seas for twenty years, and I know as much about missionaries as any man, and I tell you this--these French priests here have done a lot of good, in many ways; and yet these Fotuna natives are taught to believe that all white men who are not Roman Catholics will be damned.'

'Are you sure, Mr. Harvey?'

'Sure!'--and the stern-faced young officer dashed his clenched hand down upon the cabin table--'sure! My boy, you will learn a lot before you get back to your home again in Australia. Wait till we get to Samoa, and there you will see what the Protestant missionaries have done, and what the French priests have done, and you can size up the work of both alongside, and draw your own conclusions. I am, as I said just now, a Roman Catholic, but I know a lot about the way in which the French priests "Christianize" the natives of these islands, and I despise many of their ways. They have come to the South Seas under the protection of the British flag, in British ships, following in the wake of English missionaries who have done all the hard graft, and then they teach their converts to hate and despise everything that is English and Protestant--from the pennant of an admiral to the jibsheet-block of a British trading schooner.'

'Poor Mr. Collier told me that the French missionaries, although they cause a great deal of trouble, are very good men, Mr. Harvey.'

'Good men! Ay. Guess they're good enough in some ways. They build their own churches and live like the Kanakas themselves, and I allow they don't go in for making dollars. But they poison the native mind against everything that is British or American. Why, three years ago, when I was in Wallis Island, I went ashore to church, and the priest there gave me a bundle of school primers printed in Samoan, and asked me to spread 'em around amongst the natives in the Tokelau Group, on account of the pictures.'