He spoke to his wife in Gaelic. "Perhaps the lad will be called
to break a great rock some day. The Lord grant he may do it."

The boy looked up wonderingly. He understood Gaelic as well as
English, but he did not comprehend his father's words. He had no
idea they were prophetic, and that away on the other side of the
world, in a land his geography lessons had not yet touched, there
stood a great rock, ugly and hard and grim, which he was one day
to be called upon to break.



CHAPTER II. A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY

The steamship America, bound for Hongkong, was leaving the dock
at San Francisco. All was bustle and noise and stir. Friends
called a last farewell from the deck, handkerchiefs waved, many
of them wet with tears. The long boom of a gun roared out over
the harbor, a bell rang, and the signal was given. Up came the
anchor, and slowly and with dignity the great vessel moved out
through the Golden Gate into the wide Pacific.

Crowds stood on the deck to get a last glimpse of home and loved
ones, and to wave to friends as long as they could be
distinguished. There was one young man who stood apart from the
crowd, and who did not wave farewell to any one. He had come on
board with a couple of men, but they had gone back to the dock,
and were lost in the crowd. He seemed entirely alone. He leaned
against the deck-railing and gazed intently over the widening
strip of tumbling wafers to the city on the shore. But he did not