Yarns the Missionaries Tell 73

when the suggestion comes that it is time to retire,
it is not entertained for a moment. ‘‘We don’t
get this every day,” is the universal cry. So we go
on some more, and the lady who lives in the lonely
place wants us to play and sing far into the night.
We eventually get away. Next day, with three fare-
well blasts on the ship’s whistle, we leave them.

Our next stop is at M Island. Two or three
houses, a hotel, and the inevitable beer parlour, sign
of a government’s folly. In the course of our visita-
tion here we notice on the table of a modest home
The New Outlook—a United Church home. We are
immediately interested. We promise to return soon,
and baptize the new baby. On again we go, this
time tying up at alog boom. The little boy of this
home sees us, and rows across a little lagoon to get us.
We spend an hour or so here, and are off, with a
promise to return soon.

We navigate our little craft through tortuous and
winding waterways, through narrow channels, along
inlets that look for all the world like Norwegian
fjords, and look—in the distance—a fishing fleet.
We are approaching again Johnstone Straits and
the fishing grounds. A number of our Alert Bay
people are there with their little fishing craft, seeking
the ‘‘silver harvest of the sea.”” The fish buying
station affords a place to tie up, and there we con-
verse with the fishermen, and cheer them a little,
for this year the salmon fishing industry has been }
hard hit with a poor run of fish.