_The Toil of Brain_
There was not in the world a copy of the New Testament in good
Persian. To make one Henry Martyn slaved hard, far into the hot,
sultry Indian nights, with scores of mosquitoes "pinging" round his
lamp and his head, grinding at his Persian grammar, so that he could
translate the life of Jesus Christ into that language.
Even while he was listening to Sabat's story in the bungalow at
Cawnpore, Martyn knew that he was so ill that he could not live for
many years more. The doctor said that he must leave India for a time
to be in a healthier place. Should he go home to England, where all
his friends were? He wanted that; but much more he wanted to go on
with his work. So he asked the doctor if he might go to Persia on the
way home, and he agreed.
So Martyn went down from Cawnpore to Calcutta, and in a boat down the
Hoogli river to the little Arab coasting sailing ship the _Hummoudi_,
which hoisted sail and started on its voyage round India to Bombay.
Martyn read while on board the Old Testament in the original Hebrew
and the New Testament in the original Greek, so that he might
understand them better and make a more perfect translation into
Persian. He read the Koran of Mohammed so that he could argue with
the Persians about it.
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