miles away in the heart of the South Pacific Ocean. Indeed it had only
been discovered by Captain Cook twenty-eight years earlier in 1768.
_The Duff_ was a small sailing-ship such as one of our American ocean
liners of to-day could put into her dining saloon.

"What cargo?" The question came again from the officer on the
man-o'-war.

"Missionaries and provisions," was Captain Wilson's answer.

The man-o'-war's captain was puzzled. He did not know what strange
beings might be meant by missionaries. He was suspicious. Were they
pirates, perhaps, in disguise!

We can understand how curious it would sound to him when we remember
that (although Wilfrid and Augustine and Columba had gone to Britain
as missionaries over a thousand years before _The Duff_ started down
the Thames) no cargo of missionaries had ever before sailed from those
North Sea Islands of Britain to the savages of other lands like the
South Sea Islands.

There was a hurried order and a scurry on board the Government ship.
A boat was let down into the Thames, and half a dozen sailors tumbled
into her and rowed to _The Duff._ What did the officer find?

He was met at the rail by a man who had been through scores of
adventures, Captain Wilson. The son of the captain of a Newcastle
collier, Wilson had grown up a dare-devil sailor boy. He enlisted as
a soldier in the American war, became captain of a vessel trading with
India, and was then captured and imprisoned by the French in India. He