on me like sleep upon the eyelids of a child, and
when at last she closed the book she'd say: 'We'll save them in spite of
themselves.' And I felt strong again in the Lord, and I answered: 'Yes,
with God's help I'll save them. I must save them.'"

He came over to the table and stood in front of it as though it were a
lectern.

"You see, they were so naturally depraved that they couldn't be brought
to see their wickedness. We had to make sins out of what they thought
were natural actions. We had to make it a sin, not only to commit
adultery and to lie and thieve, but to expose their bodies, and to dance
and not to come to church. I made it a sin for a girl to show her bosom
and a sin for a man not to wear trousers."

"How?" asked Dr Macphail, not without surprise.

"I instituted fines. Obviously the only way to make people realise that
an action is sinful is to punish them if they commit it. I fined them if
they didn't come to church, and I fined them if they danced. I fined
them if they were improperly dressed. I had a tariff, and every sin had
to be paid for either in money or work. And at last I made them
understand."

"But did they never refuse to pay?"

"How could they?" asked the missionary.

"It would be a brave man who tried to stand up against Mr Davidson,"
said his wife, tightening her lips.

Dr Macphail looked at Davidson with troubled eyes. What he heard
shocked him, but he hesitated to express his disapproval.

"You must remember that in the last resort I could expel them from their
church membership."

"Did they mind that?"

Davidson smiled a little and gently rubbed his hands.

"They couldn't sell their copra. When the men fished they got no share
of the catch. It meant something very like starvation. Yes, they minded
quite a lot."

"Tell him about Fred Ohlson," said Mrs Davidson.

The missionary fixed his fiery eyes on Dr Macphail.

"Fred Ohlson was a Danish trader who had been in the islands a good many
years. He was a pretty rich man as traders go and he wasn't very pleased
when we came. You see, he'd had things very much his own way. He paid
the natives what he liked for their copra, and he paid in goods and
whiskey. He had a native wife, but he was flagrantly unfaithful to her.
He was a drunkard. I gave him a chance to mend his ways, but he
wouldn't take it. He laughed at me."

Davidson's voice fell to a deep bass as he said the last words, and he
was silent for a minute or two. T