When we reached Free Town, in the Barbadoes, an incident happened which was very amusing, but which these fanatics used to point out the evils of liquor. I knew some people there, and the Canadian and I went ashore and called on them. Of course there was "a party," and we enjoyed ourselves in free and easy fashion. Now the ship lay about a mile off port, because there was not sufficient water to allow her to dock. We went ashore in rowboats and came back in the same way. The deck was reached by a thirty-foot ladder, which is not the safest sort of footing at best. On our return from the party my friend missed his step at the top of the ladder and fell plump into the sea. There were a number of boats about and he was fished out without difficulty. The captain and I regarded the mishap as a good joke on the Canadian, but at dinner that night the missionaries used it as the text for an extended discourse on the evils of strong drink. One female missionary told us a story which led to a retort that is worth repeating. "Forty-odd years ago three prominent Philadelphia doctors decided that drink and tobacco were the two great evils of the world," she said, "so they agreed never to touch either as long as they lived. They agreed that they would all meet after forty years and see how they compared with their drinking, smoking, dissipating friends. All lived up to the agreement faithfully. Then they met in Philadelphia as before, and were amazed to see how energetic, health-perfect, and generally superior they were to those who remained of their friends. They were now between seventy and eighty years old and yet were as active as men scores of years younger. "This proves conclusively," she concluded, "that all the ills of old age are directly due to drink and tobacco." Naturally, we agreed with her. This, of course, we should not have done, since the fanatic gets no pleasure unless able to argue for his creed. My Canadian friend, however, could not contain himself. "Dr. O'Neil told me a similar case this morning," he said quite seriously. "It was about his uncle. This uncle is now one hundred and five years old and is beginning to worry about his health. Not long ago he was talking about drink and tobacco and told the doctor here that he had smoked steadily since he was seven years old; also that since he was fourteen he had drunk like a fish. 'And look at me,' he concluded; 'look at me! I know this whiskey will get me in the end!'" There was a roar of laughter about the table, but the seven missionaries did not join in it. Instead, we went out of their lives forever, and in the long days that followed, the skipper, the Canadian, and I spent most of our time together. The remainder of our voyage was uneventful and we finally reached New York. Here I found a cable from Oom Tuys saying that the coronation was to be held soon and advising me to return as quickly possible.