"My mother's people? Oh, yes," I remembered. "She's from the New Hebrides. Married my father when he was a Methodist missionary. But then he took to preaching against the black-birders, slavers, you know—so the traders ran him out. He was fed up with the missions, anyway."
Rams was hooked good and hard, so I played him.
"If only," I sighed, "he had caught the mission schooner!"
"What happened?"
"You see, it's never safe in canoes along the New Guinea coast. Poor father was caught, and—well, I can just remember the smell—cooking, you know."
"Horrible! But you escaped?"
I couldn't really convince him unless I owned to that. "Yes, mother and I escaped—swam Torres Straits, got to the pearling station on Thursday Island."
He swallowed that thirty-mile swim, not to mention sharks, and said he had heard a lot about Thursday Island.
I thought best to skip the island.
"After we got home," said I, "we were dreadfully poor. Mother had a perfectly awful time in London, starving. Then she met Madame Tussaud."