Psalm, but I did not know how well they knew it; it was
a nice answer, do not you think so? After the scripture lesson we kneel
and pray, all the boys repeating, 'O God, wash me from all my sins in the
blood of my Saviour, and I shall be whiter than snow; give me Thy Holy
Spirit, for Jesus' sake. Amen.' Will you ask God to make the boys pray
this prayer from their hearts? You see they are only just beginning to
learn about God. Before they came to us they were quite heathen. Prayer
ended we all march into another room,--you may come too, and begin
lessons. The big boys are learning sentences now; the little ones are
still at A, B, C, 1, 2, 3. At the end of two hours of spelling, reading
and writing, a little simple drill and the morning school is ended. Some
of the boys help prepare their fish and rice for dinner, and others make
baskets. At three o'clock all march up again for sewing. And let me tell
you a secret; the smallest boy of all sews the neatest. After this the
boys get ready to go for a bath in the sea, or for a walk. When we return
we have evening prayers, and then the boys eat their supper of rice and
fish, take their mats into the garden and go to sleep."

That was the way in which eighteen rescued slave boys began to live a life
with more light, and therefore also more responsibility than their former
life as savage children in Africa.

But what of the thousands who are _not_ rescued, but are taken to places
along the coast of Arabia and sold? Their lot is miserable. In Mecca there
is a slave market where boys and girls are sold to the highest bidder. At
Sur, in South Arabia, there are still many Arabs who make money by buying
and selling poor negro children. Only last month a little negro lad called
"Diamond" told me how he had been captured and sold to a merchant in
Persia. I am very glad that I can tell you that the little lad escaped to
a British ship and is now free.

A writer who travelled in the Red Sea says that he passed hundreds of
slave-dhows. What a lot of misery that means; not only misery to the
parents of these stolen children in Africa, but to the children
themselves. There may be many slaves in Arabia who get enough to eat and
have good clothing to wear, but they always remain slaves at the best, and
are taught a false religion by their masters. I think dearly all of them
were happier at home in Africa than in dark Arabia.

It is hard to love the cruel slave trader, is it not? Yet Jesu