“How can you teach a child that a lie is a lie, when lies are told at home and in day-school? How can you make him understand that to steal is a sin when everybody else tells him that the only sin about it is to be found out? “The child of South America is up against all that sort of thing; it is the very air he breathes during the week. “He comes to us for an hour on Sunday; how much do you think can be done to press home these powerful influences? We are more than ever convinced that if we are to do in this country a work that will take deep root downward, and bear fruit upward, the children must be got hold of, placed in the right atmosphere, and taught on the right lines. For this we must get the day-schools and get them quickly.” CHAPTER VI[A] DIMINUTIVE DWELLERS IN THE LAND OF FIRE “More than one hundred years ago God sent a baby boy to Mr and Mrs Gardiner. They called him Allen Francis. He had four elder brothers, and as the lads romped and played games and learned lessons together, they would have been ever so much surprised if they could have taken a peep into the future, and seen what wonderful adventures in strange lands, among strange people, and what terrible dangers and difficulties were in store for little Allen. “He always said he ‘meant to be a sailor, and travel all over the world,’ and one night when Mrs Gardiner went to tuck him up and give him a good-night kiss, she found his bed empty, and her little boy fast asleep on the hard floor--‘getting hardened and used to roughing it,’ he told her. When thirteen years old he went to the Naval College at Portsmouth for two years, and then his life as a sailor began. “Who will come in thought with me and pay a visit to the Land of Fire? Before we start, let us remember that first we take a long leap into the past--we jump backwards over fifty years--for we want to join our dear old friend and sailor Captain Allen Gardiner. “We shall certainly all need our strongest boots and thickest wraps and waterproofs, as we join our sailor hero. Sleet and hail are beating around the boat on all sides, and every few minutes a wave dashes across the bows. When we land on one of the Islands, and trudge along by the Captain’s side, on one of his exploring expeditions, we find the mud more than knee-deep in many places. “We shall find the natives a very miserable lot of people. They have no form of worship, no idols; they know nothing whatever of God. There is not even a word in their language to express the name of God. They are Indians, and divided into many different tribes, all at enmity with each other; always quarrelling and at war. Food is often the cause of the trouble, for it is very hard to get.