Our skippers are not first-rate pulpit orators, but we have
been obliged to let them preach. Both their preaching and their surgery
have done an incredible amount of good, but we want more."
"Exactly. Now, I'm a merchant, Mr. Fullerton, and I know nothing about
ships, but I understand your vessels are all sailers. Is that the proper
word? You depend on the wind entirely. How would you manage if you took
a man on board right up, or down, the North Sea?--I don't know which is
up and which is down; but, any way, you want to run from one end to the
other. How would you manage if you had a very foul wind after your man
got cured?"
"We must take our chance. As a matter of experience, we find that our
vessels do get about very well. The temperatures of the land on each
side of the sea vary so much, that we are never long without a breeze."
"Still, you depend on chance. Is that not so? Now I never like doing
things by halves. Tell me frankly, Mr. Fullerton, what _would_ you do if
you took off a smallpox case, and got becalmed on the run home?"
Fullerton laughed. "You are a remarkably good devil's advocate, Mr.
Cassall, but if I had ever conjured up obstacles in my own mind, there
would have been no mission--would there, Blair? And I venture to think
that the total amount of human happiness would have been less by a very
appreciable quantity." Besides, it is absolutely against rules to take
infectious cases on board the mission vessels.
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