Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/281

Rh men whom duty had called half a year from their home.

Between two of the Christian pioneers of civilization the gaunt and haggard stranger staggered up the hill-side, casting wild eyes around, seeking for some face, he ever saw, to welcome him; weeping when he learned that he had not yet come to the home beside the lake. The good Bishop, himself crippled by the deadly dews of the treacherous seas, welcomed the social missionary to his bungalow.

The man revived, and feasted with the three hundred of all ages and grades, who, in the great mess-room, suggestive of an Australian wool-shed, partook of their meal in common.

Pitcairn Islanders welcomed the victim of a modern mutiny, showing him their clean-swept, macadamized roads and leafy avenues, and receiving him to their massive stone residences, relics of the labours of long-defunct convicts. In the stone chapel, beautiful as the Isles in which it gathers the music of the coral seas, memorial of the bishop-martyr who fell, fearless, at Santa Cruz, the doctor, with dark-skinned Christians in white robes, worshipped.

Later the Mary Ogilvey brought letters three months old to the isolated community hungering for news. The restored wanderer accepted the invitation of Captain Gartle to voyage in his trim schooner to Sydney. A brief stay at Lord Howe's Island, pleasant basking under the unrivalled palms that fringe the bright seaboard, and on to Sydney.

The doctor was afraid to telegraph, knowing that he must be accounted dead. He took steamer to Adelaide. Still unnerved, though daily gaining strength, he dared not make himself known. He clung to the vessel, and