'Just so,' he answered. 'I am trying to compel them to eat pork. Who knows that before the equator be crossed I may not have excited a real love for pork among them? That would be a great work, sir. It will sap one of the most contemptible of their superstitions, and provide me with a little crevice for the insertion of the wedge of truth.'
'I believe pork,' said I, 'is not so much a question of religion as a question of health with these poor dark creatures, bred in hot latitudes.'
'Pork enters largely into their faith,' he answered.
'So far, you have not been very successful, I think?'
'No. You heard what Vanjoor Nakier said. The wasteful wretches have for the third time cast their allowance overboard. Only think, Miss Nielsen, of wilfully throwing over the rail as much hearty excellent food—honest salt pork and very fair peasoup—as would keep a poor family at home in dinners for a week!'
'What do they eat instead?' she asked.
'Why, on pork days, biscuit, I suppose. There is nothing else.'
'You give them beef every other day?' said I.
'Beef and duff,' he answered; 'but I shall stop that. Famine may help me in dealing with their superstitions.'
It was not for me, partaking, as Helga and I were, of this man's hospitality, using his ship, dependent upon him, indeed, for my speedy return home with Helga—it was not for me, I say, at this early time at all events, to remonstrate with him, to tell him that, exalted as he might consider his motives, they were urging him into a very barbarous, cruel behaviour; but, as I sat looking at him, my emotion, spite of his claims upon my kindness, was one of hearty disgust, with deeper feelings working in me besides, when I considered that, if our evil fortune forced us to remain for any length of time on board The Light of the World, we might find his theory of conversion making his ship a theatre for as bad a tragedy as was ever enacted upon the high seas.