British -- Oceania -- Fiction; Missionaries -- Fiction
And they did, all overgrown and barely discernible, but ruins without a
doubt, and of a city of great buildings. By dint of peeling off the
superincumbent growths of the ages they even laid bare a piece of wall,
huge squared blocks from which the creeping mosses and lichens had long
since eaten out the mortar.
"We shall never get them to live here, that's certain," said Blair.
"The place is alive with ghosts for them. It would be an uncommonly
safe place for a mission-station, if safety were the only thing. But
it's too far from the parish. I think we can use it, however," he
nodded thoughtfully, with some of his far-reaching schemes in view.
"How those little pigs would enjoy those big paw-paws!"
They rambled about the valley, charmed with its wealth of fruit and
flower, gathered quantities of each as evidences of their visit, and
pulled back home.
Every one was on fire at once to go and view the wonders of the valley.
"To-morrow we will carry over a pair of goats and half a dozen piglets
and some geese. They will have rare times there. If they don't burst
themselves, they will multiply rapidly. By the time we have educated
our friends here to better taste in the matter of eating, the larder
will be stocked. It is better for them to hunt pigs and goats than
men. And the wilder the pigs and goats the better. They will carry
their own sauce with them," said Blair.
"It's the very place I've dreamed of since I was six years old," said
Aunt Jannet, shedding her years. "Girls! we'll go over to-morrow, with
the geese and the goats and the piglets, and have a scramble and a
rummage."
Which they did, and found even more than the men. For Jean, at cost of
a wetting, discovered a narrow entrance behind one of the figures, and
inside it a winding stone staircase which led up into its head, and
found that through the eyes of the god she could see all that went on
below.
And one of the things she saw was Aunt Jannet Harvey wandering amazedly
in front of the great stone figures; and then in a moment the earth
opened and swallowed her up. For the good lady had stepped on a carpet
of beautiful green moss, and the carpet gave way beneath her and
precipitated her into a chamber of horrors full of skulls and dead
men's bones, whence she was extricated with difficulty and in a state
of extreme nervous tension by the men from the boat. Aunt Jannet's
taste for exploration was dulled somewhat by the incident, and they
went back home promising to return another day.
The goats, pigs, and geese entered into their new possession with
delighted gabblings, bleatings, squeakings, and proved forthwith that
they could look after themselves without any outside assistance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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