MASTER COMES! And beneath, in smaller letters, The Second Generation Needs Your Gifts and Prayers.
Donations Wanted To Further Our Cause.
“Looks as if the Bibles have a price tag,” Greybeard observed. A group of people on the steamer came forward and removed a section of rail; they lowered a small boat into the water, obviously with the intention of coming ashore. At the same time, a loud-hailer opened up with a preliminary rasp and began to address the women ashore.
“Ladies of Wittenham Island, the Master calls you! He greets you and he will deign to see you. But this time he will not leave his holy vessel. If you want to speak with him, you’d better come aboard. We’re putting out a boat to ferry you and your gifts over. Remember, it costs only a dozen eggs to get you into his presence, and for a chicken you can have a word with him.”
The rowing boat put out from the steamer and laboured towards the shore. Two women rowed it, bent double over the oars, coughing and gasping as if on the verge of thrombosis. They became less insubstantial as, emerging from the mist, they reached the bank and climbed ashore.
Martha clutched Greybeard’s hand.
“Do you recognize one of those women? The one spitting into the water now?”
“It can’t be! It looks like old – what was her name?”
“We left her at whatever that place was – Becky! It is, it’s Becky Thomas!”
Martha hurried forward. The women of the island were jostling to get into the boat. Carried in their arms or in baskets were provisions, presumably offerings to lay before the Master. Becky stood to one side, watching the proceedings apathetically. She looked even dirtier than she had in her Sparcot days, and much older, though her body remained plump. Her cheeks were sunken and her nose sharp.
Regarding her, Martha thought, “She’s of Algy’s and my parents’ generation. Amazing how some of them still survive, despite those gloomy predictions we used to hear about everyone dying young. Becky must be eighty-five if she’s a day.”
Arid, stabbingly, “What’ll be left of the world if Algy and I ever reach that age?”
As Martha approached her, Becky changed her position and stood with her hands on her hips. On one scrawny wrist, Martha noted, was strapped the battered old non-functioning watch that had once been Towin’s pride. Where was he?
“Hello, Becky,” she said. “It’s a small wet world. Are you taking a summer cruise?”
Becky showed little excitement at meeting up with Martha again, or at seeing Greybeard, Charley, and Pitt as they came over to speak to her.
“I belong to the Master now,” she told them. “That’s why I’m privileged even at my age to bear one of the Second Generation children. I shall be delivered of it in the autumn.”
Pitt cackled coarsely. “You was expecting when we left you at that fair place, however many years that was ago. Whatever happened to that kid? I reckon it was a phantom litter, wasn’t it? I always thought so at the time.”
“I was married then, you coarse old brute, you are,” Becky said, “and the Master had not then taken on his Masterhood, so of course I had no issue. Only now I’ve seen the Light can I conceive. If you want children, Martha, you’d better bring a gift to the Master and see what he can do for you. He works miracles, he does.”
“What’s happened to old Towin then, Becky?” Charley asked. “Isn’t he on the boat with you?”
She wrinkled her face into a frown.
“Old Towin Thomas was a sinful man, Charley Samuels, and I don’t think of him no more. He wouldn’t believe in the Master, or take the Master’s cures, and as a result, he died of a malignant cancer that wasted him away until he didn’t weigh above a stone and a half. Frankly, it was a blessing when he passed over. I’ve followed the Master ever since then. I’m now coming up for my two hundred and twenty-third birthday. I don’t look a day over a hundred, I reckon, do I?”