s
yearly. Now, if you manage to cover the lot, you must attend on a great
many more patients."

"We can only _dabble_ at present. We have little pottering dispensaries,
and our men manage slight cases of accident, but I cannot help feeling
that our work is more or less a sham. People don't think so, but I want
so much that I am discontented."

Sir James broke in, "Your vessels have to fish, haven't they?"

"They did at first. We hope to let them all be clear of the trawl for
the future."

Mr. Cassall looked at Sir James. "I say, Doctor, how would you like one
of your men to operate just after he had been handling fish? Do they
clean the fish, Mr. Fullerton? They do? What charming surgeons!"

"We have gone on the principle of trying to do our best with any
material. 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. "Cassall isn't putting
obstacles in your way," interposed Sir James. "I know what he's driving
at, but strangers are apt to mistake him. He means to draw out of you by
cross-examination the fact that quick transport is ab