He was tall and thin, white-haired and grey-bearded, and his eyes shone like stars. His face was bronzed with much sun. There was a glow in it which did not come from the sun, a mighty determination which did not come from mere strength of will, a sweet white soul-fire which had made him a power throughout the islands of the Southern Seas. "I am ready," said the younger man. His face was brown also, but not bronzed. There was a lighter patch of tightened skin above each cheek-bone. His jaw was set so grimly that it looked aggressive. His lips were tightly closed. His eyes were unnaturally wide at the moment. He looked slightly raised--fey, in fact, as a man looks when he and death meet face to face in a narrow way. In front, the crowd of Islanders stood waiting for them at an angle of rock where the white beach curved round into the land. They carried clubs and spears, and swung them restlessly. Behind, on the smooth reflexive swell of the lagoon, a white boat, just pushed off from the shore, rode like a seabird with wings outstretched for swoop or flight. Farther out a waiting schooner, whose white sails shivered softly to a head breeze. "Remember, my son," said the elder man quietly, "one sign of flinching and it is finished. Now let us go." He bared his white head and said softly, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Spirit," and went up towards the dark men like the courteous Christian gentleman he was. The younger man did the same. [Illustration: One sign of flinching and it is finished.] The natives drew back round the rock; the white men followed. The men in the boat watched intently, and then listened and gazed at the angle of the rock. Their orders were to wait. The two men passed out of sight, the elder, quiet and calm, as if going for a stroll in his mission garden, the younger, strung to martyr pitch, ready to endure to the utmost. The islanders retreated foot by foot; the white men followed steadily. Then, suddenly, clubs whirled and spears bristled, and the brown men turned and rolled on the white like a flood, and parted them. The elder man stood and eyed them steadfastly. He had been through it many times before. Death and he had been old friends and fellow-travellers for many a year, and the passing of The Gate was to him but the entrance to a larger life. He spoke to them in words he thought they might understand. For a moment the two men were like two white rocks in a foaming mountain stream. Brown arms, clubs, spears whirled about them. Not one man in ten thousand could have stood it unmoved. The white-haired man was such a one. He stood. The younger man's face broke; the strings had been drawn too tight. He cast one swift glance round.