Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 1.djvu/329

 "Five years alone, amongst those savages!" exclaimed Kennedy.

"There were souls to be saved," said the young priest. "Ignorant brothers, barbarians, whom religion alone is able to instruct and to civilize."

Samuel Ferguson, yielding to the desire of the missionary, talked to him for a long time of France. The priest listened eagerly, and tears gathered in his eyes. The poor young man took by turns the hands of Kennedy and Joe in his feverish grasp, the doctor prepared some cups of tea, of which he gladly partook. He had then sufficient strength to sit up a little, and smiled at seeing himself carried through such a pure atmosphere.

"You are certainly wonderful travelers," he said, "and you will succeed in your bold enterprise. You will see your parents, your friends, your country once again, you"

The weakness of the young priest here became so great that he was obliged to lie down again. During the prostration of some hours which followed, he was like one dead under Ferguson's hands. He could not contain his emotion, he felt his patient's life was speeding. Were they then to lose so quickly he whom they had snatched from martyrdom? He dressed the patient's wounds once more, and sacrificed the greater part of the supply of water, in order to refresh the sick man's burning limbs. He bestowed the most tender and discriminating care upon his patient, who recovered little by little, and returned to consciousness, if not to life.

"Speak your native tongue," he said. "I understand it.it." [sic]

The doctor learnt his history in disconnected sentences.

The missionary was a poor young man from the village of Aradon, in Bretagne, in the plain of Morbihan; his first instincts led him towards an ecclesiastical career. To that life of self-denial he wished to unite a life of danger, and entered into the order of mission priests, of which St. Vincent de Paul was the glorious founder. At twenty years of age he quitted his native land for the inhospitable plains of Africa. Then, by degrees, overcoming obstacles, enduring privations, praying and marching, he advanced into the midst of the tribes which dwell by the affluents of the upper Nile. During two years his religion was scoffed at, his