"There are no signs of blood or fighting in the boat," I said, examining it close. "They can't have escaped from a massacre, anyhow." For I remembered at once to what perils the missionaries are often exposed in these remote islands--how good Bishop Patteson had been murdered at Santa Cruz, and how the natives had broken the heads of Mason and Wood at Erromanga not so many months back, in cold blood, out of pure lust of slaughter.
"But they must have run away in an awful hurry," Tom Blake added, overhauling the locker of the boat, "for, see, she ain't found; there ain't no signs of food or anything to hold it nowheres, sir; and this ere little can must 'a' been the o'ny thing they had with 'em for water."
He was quite right. The boat had clearly put to sea unprovisioned. It deepened our horror at the poor lads' plight to think of this further aggravation of their incredible sufferings. For days they must have tossed in hunger and thirst on the great deep. But we could only wait to have the mystery cleared up when the lads were well enough to explain to us what had happened. Meanwhile we could but look and wonder in silence; and indeed we had quite enough to do for the present in endeavoring to restore them to a state of consciousness.
"Any marks on their clothes?" my brother Jim suggested, with practical good sense, looking up from his charge as we rowed back toward the _Albatross_, with the _Messenger of Peace_ in tow behind us. "That might help us to guess who they are, and where they hail from."
I looked close at the belt of the lads' blue shirts. On the elder's I read in a woman's handwriting, "Martin Luther Macglashin, 6, '87." The younger boy's bore in the same hand the corresponding inscription, "John Knox Macglashin, 6, '86." It somehow deepened the tragedy of the situation to come upon those simple domestic reminiscences at such a moment.
"Sons of a Scotch missionary, apparently," I said, as I read them out. "If only we could find where their father was at work, we might manage to get some clue to this mystery."
"We can look him up," Jim answered, "when we get to Fiji."
We rowed back in silence the rest of the way to the _Albatross_, lifted the poor boys tenderly on board, and laid them down to rest on our own bunks in the cabin. Serang-Palo, our Malay cook, made haste at the galleys to dress them a little arrowroot with condensed milk; and before half an hour the younger boy was sitting up in Jim's arms with his eyes and mouth wide open, craving eagerly for the nice warm mess we were obliged to dole out to his enfeebled stomach in sparing spoonfuls, and with a trifle of color already returning to his pale cheeks. He was too ill to speak yet--his brother indeed lay even now insensible on the bunk in the corner--but as soon as he had finished the small pittance of arrowroot which alone we thought it prudent to let him swallow at present, he mustered up just strength enough to gasp out a few words of solemn importance in a very hollow voice. We bent over him to listen. They were broken words we caught, half rambling as in delirium, but we heard them distinctly--