250 ADVENTURES IN THE SOUTH SEAS 
The unselfish heroism of Mrs. Brown in all her trials was 
little by little revealed to her husband as Mr. Danks told the 
story of suffering through which they had all passed; and, 
without question, had it not been for her constant care of 
them all, and for the mercy of God by which her health 
had been spared from attack, the dark days through which 
they had passed would have been darker. 
The circumstances under which the little boy died have 
been briefly related by Mr. Danks. “We were all feeling 
very anxious one day about Geoffrey and Wallis,” he said, 
“but could do little to help. Mrs. Danks was very ill in one 
room, Geoffrey was tossing about in another room either on 
the sofa or on the floor. I was lying weak and ill on the 
veranda, and Mrs. Brown was nursing Wallis a few yards 
away, when she suddenly called out to me: ‘O Mr. Danks, 
he is dead!” And so her great sorrow came upon her.” 
Few words, to be sure, but who could tell the story more 
effectively ° 
Sad indeed were the circumstances connected with the 
death of little Mabel. “Often when she was recovering 
from an attack of the fever, she would look out to sea, and 
then turn to her mother and cry: “‘O mamma, why doesn’t 
father come back to us?’”’ Great must have been the bur- 
den of sorrow and anxiety that then pressed the stricken 
mother’s heart, and yet she had none but kind and thought- 
ful words for others; nor could some of the others have 
lived through those days without her unstinted help and her 
patient and enduring service on their behalf. 
“When I speak of those days,’ said Mr. Danks, “I must 
ever speak of them as the dark days of my mission life, for 
I cannot conceive it possible to have more trouble and more 
darkness than we then had. It seemed to us as if the very 
heavens were closed against our cries of agony, and that 
we were left alone in our misery. Whoever undertakes to 
write the history of our mission here will fail to fulfill his 
task if he does not give to the world the story of poor Mrs. 
