"Ay," Farrell retorted, "but neither you nor your Mr. Collingwood, when you say that, understands a bit what it means . . ." He broke off, searching for some words to convey the remembered agony to our brains that had no capacity (he felt) even to imagine it. "No," came a dull voice from the couch--startling us, dull though it was. "Only you and I, Farrell, understand what it means. Tell them just the facts, as I told the facts, and no more. Tell them, and me, how you escaped." "By the same ship as you did, if you wish to know--the _I'll Away_ schooner, Captain Jefferson Hales. And I'll tell you something even more surprising.--Your ill-luck started the very hour you left me and Rover to die like two dogs together. When you stepped aboard the _I'll Away_, you stepped aboard as a lost missionary. You had your own bad reasons for not wanting to tell too much: and Hales had his own very good reasons for not putting too many questions. To start with, he didn't like missionaries as a class, _or_ their conversation: and I gather that his crew likewise didn't take much truck in them; neither in the species nor in you as a specimen: least of all in you as a specimen. I'm sorry for it, too, in a way: because, at first, I pictured them asking you to put up a prayer, and pictured your face and feelings as you knelt down to oblige. Well, that was one of the pretty fancies that ought to come true but don't manage to, in this world. As for the next, there's no saying. You passed yourself for a missionary, and if Satan has humour enough to accept you on that ticket, a pretty figure you'll make, putting up false prayers in hell. . . . Anyhow, you didn't make friends on board that schooner--eh?" "I did not," Foe answered listlessly. "You weren't over comfortable with that crowd when you changed me for it?" "I was not, if that's any comfort to you."