“Mr. Garnett is a very hard man to convince when he has once set his mind against a thing,” said the minister. “There’s no way of showing him he is wrong when he has made a mistake.”
“That’s true enough, especially if you try to rough him. He’s mad to-day because the skipper found fault with his swearing at the men.”
“He does swear most horribly,” said Dr. Davis.
“It’s nothing to what he used to. He don’t realize he does it at all now.”
“How do you mean?”
“Why, he used to be a most blasphemous old cuss. One day he went ashore at Tinian, and the missionary there asked him to dinner. When he asked Garnett what he would have he sung out, ‘Gimme a bowl of blood, ye tough old ram of the Lord,’ just to shock the good man. The missionary rose and ordered him out of the house, but Garnett wouldn’t go, so he struck him over the head with a dish of fried plantains, he was that mad. Garnett was two days getting over the stroke, for he had been stove down before by a handspike in the hands of a drunken sailor. He always thought the good man had called a curse down upon him, and since then he’s been slow at figures.”
“I see,” said Dr. Davis.
“Yes, it’s a fact, you’ve got to show a thing pretty plain to Garnett before he believes it. As to that missionary, he wasn’t overbright at converting savages.”
“What do you mean? That he wasn’t strong enough physically?”
“No, no, love ye, no; that missionary could take care of himself and not half try. What I mean is downright religious and Christian argument. There was one chief he never could convert. The fellow had an idol, the most uncanny thing I ever saw; sort of half bird, half beast, part fish, and having a strain of dragon. He used to pray to the thing, although he could speak English well enough and had seen plenty of white men. The missionary told him it was wrong to worship anything in an image of things in the heavens above, the earth beneath, or waters under the earth, and the chief took it all kindly. The good man finally gave him up, but the chief never could tell why. Once he offered to bet the missionary two wives against a bottle of rum that there wasn’t anything in the heavens above or earth beneath that resembled the strange thing in any way; and as the good man couldn’t prove it, the matter ended.”