The Sultan told off a band of his soldiers to go with the two men and
to protect them from any molesting till they reached the Crusaders'
Camp. There is a legend--though no one now can tell whether it is true
or not--that when the Sultan of Egypt lay dying he sent for a disciple
of Francis to be with him and pray for him. Whether this was so or
not, it is quite clear that Francis had left in the memory of the
Sultan such a vision of dauntless faith as he had never seen before or
was ever to see again.

The Crusaders failed to win Egypt or the Holy Land; but to-day men are
going from America and Britain in the footsteps of Francis of Assisi
the Christian missionary, to carry to the people in Egypt, in the Holy
Land and in all the Near East, the message that Francis took of the
love of Jesus Christ. The stories of some of the deeds they have done
and are to-day doing, we shall read in later chapters in this book.

Book Two: THE ISLAND ADVENTURERS

CHAPTER V

THE ADVENTUROUS SHIP

_The Duff_

(Date of Incident, 1796)

A ship crept quietly down the River Thames on an ebb-tide. She was
slipping out from the river into the estuary when suddenly a challenge
rang out across the grey water.

"What ship is that?"

"_The Duff_," was the answer that came back from the little ship whose
captain had passed through a hundred hairsbreadth escapes in his life
but was now starting on the strangest adventure of them all.

"Whither bound?" came the challenge again from the man-o'-war that had
hailed them.

"Otaheite," came the answer, which would startle the Government
officer. For Tahiti[11] (as we now call it) was many thousands of
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