"I wonder if there is a boy here this afternoon who will become a
missionary, and by and by bring the Gospel to other such cannibals as
those?"

Even as the minister said those words, the adventurous heart of young
Chalmers leapt in reply as he said to himself, "Yes, God helping me, I
will."

He was just a freckled, dark-haired boy with hazel eyes, a boy
tingling with the joy of the open air and with the love of the heave
and flow of the sea. But when he made up his mind to do a thing,
however great the difficulties or dangers, James usually carried it
through.

So it came about that some years later in 1866, having been trained
and accepted by the London Missionary Society, Chalmers, as a young
man, walked across the gangway to a fine new British-built clipper
ship. It had been christened _John Williams_ after the great hero
missionary[34] who gave up his life on the beach of Erromanga.

This boy, who loved the sea and breathed deep with joy in the face of
adventure and peril, had set his face towards the deep, long breakers
of the far-off Pacific. He was going to carry to the South Seas the
story of the Hero and Saviour Whom he had learnt to love within the
sound of the Atlantic breakers that dashed and fretted against the
rocks of Western Scotland.

FOOTNOTES: