Sure enough on the seaward side I saw him. He was sitting in a deck-chair and looking out across the water. At first I thought he was gazing intently at nothing, but as I too looked, I made out, across the strait, the dim outline of the Sham-balla Mountains on the mainland that are sometimes visible for a little at sunset and dawn. The priest’s chair was drawn close to the bulwark, and almost before I knew what I was doing, I was leaning against it in an attitude which allowed me, too, to see those distant peaks and at the same time to converse easily, if it should be permitted.
“Hullo, father,” I said; “we were wondering if you had come aboard.”
He looked at me, smiling. “I believe I was one of the first,” he replied, in his excellent English.
“Saying good-bye to Africa?” I queried, half jocularly.
“Yes, I expect so.”
The tone of his voice suggested far more than the words themselves expressed. It aroused my curiosity. “For long?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t suppose I shall see those peaks again. I saw them first twenty-seven years ago, a young priest on his first mission, and I have not seen them from the sea since. Now I have been ordered to India to my second mission, and it is not very likely that I shall be moved again. It is still less likely that I shall return. After so long an acquaintance, it is natural that I should want to say good-bye.”
I think I was slightly incredulous. “Do you mean you have been over twenty-seven years up there without leave?” I questioned.
“Twenty-seven next month, there and beyond.”
I have told you that I was young in those days, and I did not then know of the heroic sacrifices of Catholic missionaries. Moreover, I too was taking a first leave—after two years’ service, according to our plan. And I was eagerly looking forward to a visit to my married sister in India, and a journey home after that. Stupidly enough, it took me a few seconds to swallow those twenty-seven years; but for all that my mind worked quickly. Twenty-seven years of tinned food, mosquitoes, heat, natives, and packing-case furniture! That was how I read it. “Well,” I said at last, “I should think you were glad to go anywhere after all that time.”