[Transcriber's note: Some Footnotes in this text contain specialcharacters, including a, e, and o with superior macron, represented by[=a], [=e], and [=o], and a and u with superior breve, represented by[)a] and [)u], to indicate pronunciation of native-language words. ]

THE BOOK OF MISSIONARY HEROES

BY

BASIL MATHEWS, M. A. 

_Author of "The Argonauts of Faith, ""The Riddle of Nearer Asia, "etc. _

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

_Copyright, 1922, _

_By George H. Doran Company_

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

 PAGE

PROLOGUE THE RELAY RACE 9

BOOK I: THE PIONEERS

 CHAPTER I THE HERO OF THE LONG TRAIL (_St. Paul_) 19 II THE MEN ON THE SHINGLE BEACH (_Wilfrid of Sussex_) 30 III THE KNIGHT OF A NEW CRUSADE (_Raymond Lull_) 36 IV FRANCIS COEUR-DE-LION (_St. Francis of Assisi_) 47

BOOK II: THE ISLAND ADVENTURERS

 V THE ADVENTUROUS SHIP (_The Duff_) 65 VI THE ISLAND BEACON FIRES (_Papeiha_) 72 VII THE DAYBREAK CALL (_John Williams_) 80 VIII KAPIOLANI, THE HEROINE OF HAWAII (_Kapiolani_) 86 IX THE CANOE OF ADVENTURE (_Elikana_) 92 X THE ARROWS OF SANTA CRUZ (_Patteson_) 103 XI FIVE KNOTS IN A PALM LEAF (_Patteson_) 108 XII THE BOY OF THE ADVENTUROUS HEART (_Chalmers_) 113 XIII THE SCOUT OF PAPUA (_Chalmers_) 118 XIV A SOUTH SEA SAMARITAN (_Ruatoka_) 126

BOOK III: THE PATHFINDERS OF AFRICA

 XV THE MAN WHO WOULD GO ON (_Livingstone_) 131 XVI A BLACK PRINCE OF AFRICA (_Khama_) 136 XVII THE KNIGHT OF THE SLAVE GIRLS (_George Grenfell_) 150 XVIII "A MAN WHO CAN TURN HIS HAND TO ANYTHING" (_Mackay_) 158 XIX THE ROADMAKER (_Mackay_) 164 XX FIGHTING THE SLAVE TRADE (_Mackay_) 172 XXI THE BLACK APOSTLE OF THE LONELY LAKE (_Shomolakae_) 186 XXII THE WOMAN WHO CONQUERED CANNIBALS (_Mary Slessor_) 196

BOOK IV: HEROINES AND HEROES OF PLATEAU AND DESERT

 XXIII SONS OF THE DESERT (_Abdallah and Sabat_) 213 XXIV A RACE AGAINST TIME (_Henry Martyn_) 224 XXV THE MOSES OF THE ASSYRIANS (_Dr. Shedd_) 236 XXVI AN AMERICAN NURSE IN THE GREAT WAR (_E. D. Cushman_) 249 XXVII ON THE DESERT CAMEL TRAIL (_Archibald Forder_) 260 XXVIII THE FRIEND OF THE ARAB (_Archibald Forder_) 271

THE BOOK OF MISSIONARY HEROES

PROLOGUE

THE RELAY-RACE

The shining blue waters of two wonderful gulfs were busy with fishingboats and little ships. The vessels came under their square sails andwere driven by galley-slaves with great oars. 

A Greek boy standing, two thousand years ago, on the wonderfulmountain of the Acro-Corinth that leaps suddenly from the plain aboveCorinth to a pinnacle over a thousand feet high, could see the boatscome sailing from the east, where they hailed from the Piræus andEphesus and the marble islands of the Ægean Sea. Turning round hecould watch them also coming from the West up the Gulf of Corinthfrom the harbours of the Gulf and even from the Adriatic Sea andBrundusium. 

In between the two gulfs lay the Isthmus of Corinth to which the menon the ships were sailing and rowing. 

The people were all in holiday dress for the great athletic sportswere to be held on that day and the next, --the sports that drew, inthose ancient days, over thirty thousand Greeks from all the countryround; from the towns on the shores of the two gulfs and from themountain-lands of Greece, --from Parnassus and Helicon and Delphi, from Athens and the villages on the slopes of Hymettus and even fromSparta. 

These sports, which were some of the finest ever held in the wholeworld, were called--because they were held on this isthmus--theIsthmian Games. 

The athletes wrestled. They boxed with iron-studded leatherstraps over their knuckles. They fought lions brought across theMediterranean (the Great Sea as they called it) from Africa, andtigers carried up the Khyber Pass across Persia from India. They flungspears, threw quoits and ran foot-races. Amid the wild cheering ofthirty thousand throats the charioteers drove their frenzied horses, lathered with foam, around the roaring stadium. 

One of the most beautiful of these races has a strange hold on theimagination. It was a relay-race. This is how it was run. 

Men bearing torches stood in a line at the starting point. Each manbelonged to a separate team. Away in the distance stood another row ofmen waiting. Each of these was the comrade of one of those men at thestarting point. Farther on still, out of sight, stood another row andthen another and another. 

At the word "Go" the men at the starting point leapt forward, theirtorches burning. They ran at top speed towards the waiting men andthen gasping for breath, each passed his torch to his comrade in thenext row. He, in turn, seizing the flaming torch, leapt forward anddashed along the course toward the next relay, who again raced on andon till at last one man dashed past the winning post with his torchburning ahead of all the others, amid the applauding cheers of themultitude. 

The Greeks, who were very fond of this race, coined a proverbialphrase from it. Translated it runs:

"Let the torch-bearers hand on the flame to the others" or "Let thosewho have the light pass it on. "

 * * * * *

That relay-race of torch-bearers is a living picture of the wonderfulrelay-race of heroes who, right through the centuries, have, withdauntless courage and a scorn of danger and difficulty, passed throughthrilling adventures in order to carry the Light across the continentsand oceans of the world. 

The torch-bearers! The long race of those who have borne, and stillcarry the torches, passing them on from hand to hand, runs before us. A little ship puts out from Seleucia, bearing a man who had caughtthe fire in a blinding blaze of light on the road to Damascus. Paulcrosses the sea and then threads his way through the cities of Cyprusand Asia Minor, passes over the blue Ægean to answer the call fromMacedonia. We see the light quicken, flicker and glow to a steadyblaze in centre after centre of life, till at last the torch-bearerreaches his goal in Rome. 

 "Yes, without cheer of sister or of daughter, Yes, without stay of father or of son, Lone on the land and homeless on the water Pass I in patience till the work be done. "

Centuries pass and men of another age, taking the light that Paul hadbrought, carry the torch over Apennine and Alp, through dense forestswhere wild beasts and wilder savages roam, till they cross the NorthSea and the light reaches the fair-haired Angles of Britain, on whosename Augustine had exercised his punning humour, when he said, "NotAngles, but Angels. " From North and South, through Columba and Aidan, Wilfred of Sussex and Bertha of Kent, the light came to Britain. 

"Is not our life, " said the aged seer to the Mercian heathen king asthe Missionary waited for permission to lead them to Christ, "like asparrow that flies from the darkness through the open window into thishall and flutters about in the torchlight for a few moments to fly outagain into the darkness of the night. Even so we know not whence ourlife comes nor whither it goes. This man can tell us. Shall we notreceive his teaching?" So the English, through these torch-bearers, come into the light. 

The centuries pass by and in 1620 the little _Mayflower_, bearingChristian descendants of those heathen Angles--new torch-bearers, struggles through frightful tempests to plant on the AmericanContinent the New England that was indeed to become the forerunner ofa New World. [1]

A century and a half passes and down the estuary of the Thames creepsanother sailing ship. 

The Government officer shouts his challenge:

"What ship is that and what is her cargo?"

"The _Duff_, " rings back the answer, "under Captain Wilson, bearingMissionaries to the South Sea. "

The puzzled official has never heard of such beings! But the littleship passes on and after adventures and tempests in many seas at lastreaches the far Pacific. There the torch-bearers pass from islandto island and the light flames like a beacon fire across many a bluelagoon and coral reef. 

One after another the great heroes sail out across strange seas andpenetrate hidden continents each with a torch in his hand. 

Livingstone, the lion-hearted pathfinder in Africa, goes out as thefearless explorer, the dauntless and resourceful missionary, faced bypoisoned arrows and the guns of Arabs and marched with only his blackcompanions for thousands of miles through marsh and forest, overmountain pass and across river swamps, in loneliness and hunger, oftenwith bleeding feet, on and on to the little hut in old Chitambo'svillage in Ilala, where he crossed the river. Livingstone is theCoeur-de-Lion of our Great Crusade. 

John Williams, who, in his own words, could "never be content withthe limits of a single reef, " built with his own hands and almostwithout any tools on a cannibal island the wonderful little ship _TheMessenger of Peace_ in which he sailed many thousands of miles fromisland to island across the Pacific Ocean. 

These are only two examples of the men whose adventures are morethrilling than those of our story books and yet are absolutely true, and we find them in every country and in each of the centuries. 

So--as we look across the ages we

 "See the race of hero-spirits Pass the torch from hand to hand. "

In this book the stories of a few of them are told as yarns to boysand girls round a camp-fire. Every one of the tales is historicallytrue, and is accurate in detail. 

In that ancient Greek relay-race the prize to each winner was simply awreath of leaves cut by a priest with a golden knife from trees in thesacred grove near the Sea, --the grove where the Temple of Neptune, thegod of the Ocean, stood. It was just a crown of wild olive that wouldwither away. Yet no man would have changed it for its weight in gold. 

For when the proud winner in the race went back to his little city, set among the hills, with his already withering wreath, all the peoplewould come and hail him a victor and wave ribbons in the air. A greatsculptor would carve a statue of him in imperishable marble and itwould be set up in the city. And on the head of the statue of theyoung athlete was carved a wreath. 

In the great relay-race of the world many athletes--men andwomen--have won great fame by the speed and skill and daring withwhich they carried forward the torch and, themselves dropping in theirtracks, have passed the flame on to the next runner; Paul, Francis, Penn, Livingstone, Mackay, Florence Nightingale, and a host of others. And many who have run just as bravely and swiftly have won no fameat all though their work was just as great. But the fame or theforgetting really does not matter. The fact is that the race is stillrunning; _it has not yet been won_. Whose team will win? That is whatmatters. 

The world is the stadium. Teams of evil run rapidly and teams of goodtoo. 

The great heroes and heroines whose story is told in this book haverun across the centuries over the world to us. Some of them are aliveto-day, as heroic as those who have gone. But all of them say the samething to us of the new world who are coming after them:

 "Take the torch. "

The greatest of them all, when he came to the very end of his days, ashe fell and passed on the Torch to others, said:

 "I have run my course. "

But to us who are coming on as Torch-bearers after him he spoke inurgent words--written to the people at Corinth where the Isthmianraces were run:

 "Do you not know that they which run in a race all run, but one wins the prize? So run, that ye may be victors. "

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: See "The Argonauts of Faith" by Basil Mathews. (Doran. )]

Book One: THE PIONEERS

CHAPTER I

THE HERO OF THE LONG TRAIL

_St. Paul_

(Dates, b. A. D. 6, d. A. D. 67[2])

_The Three Comrades. _

The purple shadows of three men moved ahead of them on the tawnystones of the Roman road on the high plateau of Asia Minor one bright, fresh morning. [3] They had just come out under the arched gatewaythrough the thick walls of the Roman city of Antioch-in-Pisidia. Thegreat aqueduct of stone that brought the water to the city from themountains on their right[4] looked like a string of giant camelsturned to stone. 

Of the three men, one was little more than a boy. He had the oval faceof his Greek father and the glossy dark hair of his Jewish mother. The older men, whose long tunics were caught up under their girdlesto give their legs free play in walking, were brown, grizzled, sturdytravellers. They had walked a hundred leagues together from thehot plains of Syria, through the snow-swept passes of the Taurusmountains, and over the sun-scorched levels of the high plateau. [5]Their muscles were as tireless as whipcord. Their courage had notquailed before robber or blizzard, the night yells of the hyena or thestones of angry mobs. 

For the youth this was his first adventure out into the glorious, unknown world. He was on the open road with the glow of the sun on hischeek and the sting of the breeze in his face; a strong staff in hishand; with his wallet stuffed with food--cheese, olives, and someflat slabs of bread; and by his side his own great hero, Paul. Theirsandals rang on the stone pavement of the road which ran straight asa strung bowline from the city, Antioch-in-Pisidia, away to the west. The boy carried over his shoulder the cloak of Paul, and carried thatcloak as though it had been the royal purple garment of the RomanEmperor himself instead of the worn, faded, travel-stained cloak of awandering tent-maker. 

The two older men, whose names were Paul the Tarsian and Silas, hadtrudged six hundred miles. Their younger companion, whose name was"Fear God, " or Timothy as we say, with his Greek fondness for perfectathletic fitness of the body, proudly felt the taut, wiry musclesworking under his skin. 

On they walked for day after day, from dawn when the sun rose behindthem to the hour when the sun glowed over the hills in their faces. They turned northwest and at last dropped down from the highlands ofthis plateau of Asia Minor, through a long broad valley, until theylooked down across the Plain of Troy to the bluest sea in the world. 

Timothy's eyes opened with astonishment as he looked down on such acity as he had never seen--the great Roman seaport of Troy. The marbleStadium, where the chariots raced and the gladiators fought, gleamedin the afternoon light. 

The three companions could not stop long to gaze. They swung easilydown the hill-sides and across the plain into Troy, where they tooklodgings. 

They had not been in Troy long when they met a doctor named Luke. Wedo not know whether one of them was ill and the doctor helped him; wedo not know whether Doctor Luke (who was a Greek) worshipped, whenhe met them, Æsculapius, the god of healing of the Greek people. Thedoctor did not live in Troy, but was himself a visitor. 

"I live across the sea, " Luke told his three friends--Paul, Silas andTimothy--stretching his hand out towards the north. "I live, " he wouldsay proudly, "in the greatest city of all Macedonia--Philippi. It iscalled after the great ruler Philip of Macedonia. "

Then Paul in his turn would be sure to tell Doctor Luke what it wasthat had brought him across a thousand miles of plain and mountainpass, hill and valley, to Troy. This is how he would tell the story insuch words as he used again and again:

"I used to think, " he said, "that I ought to do many things to opposethe name of Jesus of Nazareth. I had many of His disciples put intoprison and even voted for their being put to death. I became soexceedingly mad against them that I even pursued them to foreigncities. 

"Then as I was journeying[6] to Damascus, with the authority of thechief priests themselves, at mid-day I saw on the way a light from thesky, brighter than the blaze of the sun, shining round about me and mycompanions. And, as we were all fallen on to the road, I heard a voicesaying to me:

"'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kickagainst the goad. '

"And I said, 'Who are you, Lord?'

"The answer came: 'I am Jesus, whom you persecute. '"

Then Paul went on:

"I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision; but I told those inDamascus and in Jerusalem and in all Judæa, aye! and the foreignnations also, that they should repent and turn to God. 

"Later on, " said Paul, "I fell into a trance, and Jesus came againto me and said, 'Go, I will send you afar to the Nations. ' That (Paulwould say to Luke) is why I walk among perils in the city; in perilsin the wilderness; in perils in the sea; in labour and work; in hungerand thirst and cold, to tell people everywhere of the love of Godshown in Jesus Christ. "[7]

_The Call to Cross the Sea. _

One night, after one of these talks, as Paul was asleep in Troy, heseemed to see a figure standing by him. Surely it was the dream-figureof Luke, the doctor from Macedonia, holding out his hands and pleadingwith Paul, saying, "Come over into Macedonia and help us. "

Now neither Paul nor Silas nor Timothy had ever been across the seainto the land that we now call Europe. But in the morning, when Paultold his companions about the dream that he had had, they all agreedthat God had called them to go and deliver the good news of theKingdom to the people in Luke's city of Philippi and in the othercities of Macedonia. 

So they went down into the busy harbour of Troy, where the singingsailor-men were bumping bales of goods from the backs of camels intothe holds of the ships, and they took a passage in a little coastingship. She hove anchor and was rowed out through the entrance betweenthe ends of the granite piers of the harbour. The seamen hoisting thesails, the little ship went gaily out into the Ægean Sea. 

All day they ran before the breeze and at night anchored under the leeof an island. At dawn they sailed northward again with a good wind, till they saw land. Behind the coast on high ground the columns ofa temple glowed in the sunlight. They ran into a spacious bay andanchored in the harbour of a new city--Neapolis as it was called--theport of Philippi. 

Landing from the little ship, Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke climbedfrom the harbour by a glen to the crest of the hill, and then on, forthree or four hours of hard walking, till their sandals rang onthe pavement under the marble arch of the gate through the wall ofPhilippi. 

_Flogging and Prison. _

As Paul and his friends walked about in the city they talked withpeople; for instance, with a woman called Lydia, who also had comeacross the sea from Asia Minor where she was born. She and herchildren and slaves all became Christians. So the men and women ofPhilippi soon began to talk about these strange teachers from theEast. One day Paul and Silas met a slave girl dressed in a flowing, coloured tunic. She was a fortune-teller, who earned money for hermasters by looking at people and trying to see at a glance what theywere like so that she might tell their fortunes. The fortune-tellinggirl saw Paul and Silas going along, and she stopped and called outloud so that everyone who went by might hear: "These men are theslaves of the Most High God. They tell you the way of Salvation. "

The people stood and gaped with astonishment, and still the girlcalled out the same thing, until a crowd began to come round. ThenPaul turned round and with sternness in his voice spoke to the evilspirit in the girl and said: "In the Name of Jesus Christ, I order youout of her. "

From that day the girl lost her power to tell people's fortunes, sothat the money that used to come to her masters stopped flowing. Theywere very angry and stirred up everybody to attack Paul and Silas. Amob collected and searched through the streets until they found them. Then they clutched hold of their arms and robes, shouting: "To theprætors! To the prætors!" The prætors were great officials who sat inmarble chairs in the Forum, the central square of the city. 

The masters of the slave girl dragged Paul and Silas along. Attheir heels came the shouting mob and when they came in front of theprætors, the men cried out:

"See these fellows! Jews as they are, they are upsetting everything inthe city. They tell people to take up customs that are against the Lawfor us as Romans to accept. "

"Yes! Yes!" yelled the crowd. "Flog them! Flog them!"

The prætors, without asking Paul or Silas a single question as towhether this was true, or allowing them to make any defence, werefussily eager to show their Roman patriotism. Standing up they gavetheir orders:

"Strip them, flog them. "

The slaves of the prætors seized Paul and Silas and took their robesfrom their backs. They were tied by their hands to the whipping-post. The crowd gathered round to see the foreigners thrashed. 

The lictors--that is the soldier-servants of the prætors--untied theirbundles of rods. Then each lictor brought down his rod with cruelstrokes on Paul and Silas. The rods cut into the flesh and the bloodflowed down. 

Then their robes were thrown over their shoulders, and the two men, with their tortured backs bleeding, were led into the black darknessof the cell of the city prison; shackles were snapped on to theirarms, and their feet were clapped into stocks. Their bodies ached; theother prisoners groaned and cursed; the filthy place stank; sleep wasimpossible. 

But Paul and Silas did not groan. They sang the songs of their ownpeople, such as the verses that Paul had learned--as all Jewishchildren did--when he was a boy at school. For instance--

 God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change, And though the mountains be moved in the heart of the seas; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. 

As they sang there came a noise as though the mountains really wereshaking. The ground rocked; the walls shook; the chains were loosenedfrom the stones; the stocks were wrenched apart; their hands and feetwere free; the heavy doors crashed open. It was an earthquake. 

The jailor leapt to the entrance of the prison. The moonlight shone onhis sword as he was about to kill himself, thinking his prisoners hadescaped. 

"Do not harm yourself, " shouted Paul. "We are all here. "

"Torches! Torches!" yelled the jailor. 

The jailor, like all the people of his land, believed that earthquakeswere sent by God. He thought he was lost. He turned to Paul and Silaswho, he knew, were teachers about God. 

"Sirs, " he said, falling in fear on the ground, "what must I do to besaved?"

"Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, " they replied, "and you and yourhousehold will all be saved. "

The jailor's wife then brought some oil and water, and the jailorwashed the poor wounded backs of Paul and Silas and rubbed healing oilinto them. 

The night was now passing and the sun began to rise. There was a trampof feet. The lictors who had thrashed Paul and Silas marched tothe door of the prison with an order to free them. The jailor wasdelighted. 

"The prætors have sent to set you free, " he said. "Come out then andgo in peace. "

He had the greatest surprise in his life when, instead of going, Paulturned and said:

"No, indeed! The prætors flogged us in public in the Forum and withouta trial--flogged Roman citizens! They threw us publicly into prison, and now they are going to get rid of us secretly. Let the prætors comehere themselves and take us out!"

Surely it was the boldest message ever sent to the powerful prætors. But Paul knew what he was doing, and when the Roman prætors heard themessage they knew that he was right. They would be ruined if it werereported at Rome that they had publicly flogged Roman citizens withouttrial. 

Their prisoner, Paul, was now their judge. They climbed down fromtheir marble seats and walked on foot to the prison to plead with Pauland Silas to leave the prison and not to tell against them what hadhappened. 

"Will you go away from the city?" they asked. "We are afraid of otherriots. "

So Paul and Silas consented. But they went to the house where Lydialived--the home in which they had been staying in Philippi. 

Paul cheered up the other Christian folk--Lydia and Luke andTimothy--and told them how the jailor and his wife and family had allbecome Christians. 

"Keep the work of spreading the message here in Philippi goingstrongly, " said Paul to Luke and Timothy. "Be cheerfully prepared fortrouble. " And then he and Silas, instead of going back to their ownland, went out together in the morning light of the early winter ofA. D. 50, away along the Western road over the hills to face perilsin other cities in order to carry the Good News to the people of theWest. 

_The Trail of the Hero-Scout. _

So Paul the dauntless pioneer set his brave face westwards, followingthe long trail across the Roman Empire--the hero-scout of Christ. Nothing could stop him--not scourgings nor stonings, prison norrobbers, blizzards nor sand-storms. He went on and on till at last, asa prisoner in Rome, he laid his head on the block of the executionerand was slain. These are the brave words that we hear from him as hecame near to the end:

 +-----------------------------+ | I HAVE FOUGHT A GOOD FIGHT; | | I HAVE RUN MY COURSE; | | I HAVE KEPT THE FAITH. | +-----------------------------+

Long years afterward, men who were Christians in Rome carried thestory of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ across Europe to some savages inthe North Sea Islands--called Britons. Paul handed the torch fromthe Near East to the people in Rome. They passed the torch on to thepeople of Britain--and from Britain many years later men sailed tobuild up the new great nation in America. So the torch has run fromEast to West, from that day to this, and from those people of long agoto us. But we owe this most of all to Paul, the first missionary, who gave his life to bring the Good News from the lands of Syria andJudæa, where our Lord Jesus Christ lived and died and rose again. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: The dates are, of course, conjectural; but those givenare accepted by high authorities. Paul was about forty-four at thetime of this adventure. ]

[Footnote 3: The plateau on which Lystra, Derbe, Iconium, andAntioch-in-Pisidia stood is from 3000 to 4000 feet above sea-level. ]

[Footnote 4: The aqueduct was standing there in 1914, when the authorwas at Antioch-in-Pisidia (now called Yalowatch). ]

[Footnote 5: A Bible with maps attached will give the route fromAntioch in Syria, round the Gulf of Alexandretta, past Tarsus, up theCilician Gates to Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch-in-Pisidia. ]

[Footnote 6: Compare Acts ix. I-8, xxvi. 12-20. ]

[Footnote 7: St. Paul's motive and message are developed more fully inthe Author's _Paul the Dauntless_. ]

CHAPTER II

THE MEN OF THE SHINGLE BEACH

_Wilfrid of Sussex_

(Date, born A. D. 634. Incidents A. D. 666 and 681[8])

Twelve hundred and fifty years ago a man named Wilfrid sailed alongthe south coast of a great island in the North Seas. With him in theship were a hundred and twenty companions. 

The voyage had started well, but now the captain looked anxious as hepeered out under his curved hand, looking first south and then north. There was danger in both directions. 

The breeze from the south stiffened to a gale. The mast creaked andstrained as the gathering storm tore at the mainsail. The ship reeledand pitched as the spiteful waves smote her high bow and swept hissingand gurgling along the deck. She began to jib like a horse and refusedto obey her rudder. Wind and current were carrying her out of hercourse. 

In spite of all the captain's sea-craft the ship was being drivennearer to the dreaded, low, shingle beach of the island that stretchedalong the northern edge of the sea. The captain did not fear thecoast itself, for it had no rocks. But the lines deepened on hisweather-scarred face as he saw, gathering on the shelving beach, thewild, yellow-haired men of the island. 

The ship was being carried nearer and nearer to the coast. All onboard could now see the Men of the Shingle Beach waving their spearsand axes. 

The current and the wind swung the ship still closer to the shore, andnow--even above the whistle of the gale in the cordage--the crew heardthe wild whoop of the wreckers. These men on the beach were the sonsof pirates. But they were now cowards compared with their fathers. Forthey no longer lived by the wild sea-rover's fight that had madetheir fathers' blood leap with the joy of the battle. They lived bya crueller craft. Waiting till some such vessel as this was sweptashore, they would swoop down on it, harry and slay the men, carry thewomen and children off for slaves, break up the ship and take the woodand stores for fire and food. They were beach-combers. 

An extra swing of the tide, a great wave--and with a thud the ship wasaground, stuck fast on the yielding sands. With a wild yell, and withtheir tawny manes streaming in the wind, the wreckers rushed down thebeach brandishing their spears. 

Wilfrid, striding to the side of the ship, raised his hand to showthat he wished to speak to the chief. But the island men rushed onlike an avalanche and started to storm the ship. Snatching up arms, poles, rope-ends--whatever they could find--the men on board beat downupon the heads of the savages as they climbed up the ship's slipperyside. One man after another sank wounded on the deck. The fight grewmore obstinate, but at last the men of the beach drew back up thesands, baffled. 

The Men of the Shingle Beach might have given up the battle had nota fierce priest of their god of war leapt on to a mound of sand, and, lifting his naked arms to the skies, called on the god to destroy themen in the ship. 

The savages were seized with a new frenzy and swept down the beachagain. Wilfrid had gathered his closest friends round him and wasquietly kneeling on the deck praying to his God for deliverance fromthe enemy. The fight became desperate. Again the savages were drivenback up the beach. 

Once more they rallied and came swooping down on the ship. But apebble from the sling of a man on the ship struck the savage prieston the forehead; he tottered and fell on the sand. This infuriatedthe savages, yet it took the heart out of these men who had trusted intheir god of war. 

Meanwhile the tide had been creeping up; it swung in still further andlifted the ship from the sand; the wind veered, the sails strained. Slowly, but with gathering speed, the ship stood out to sea followedby howls of rage from the men on the beach. 

 * * * * *

Some years passed by, yet Wilfrid in all his travels had neverforgotten the Men of the Beach. And, strangely enough, he wanted to goback to them. 

At last the time came when he could do so. This time he did not visitthem by sea. After he had preached among the people in a distantpart of the same great island, Wilfrid with four faithfulcompanions--Eappa, Padda, Burghelm and Oiddi--walked down to the southcoast of the island. 

As he came to the tribe he found many of them gathered on the beachas before. But the fierceness was gone. They tottered with weakness asthey walked. The very bones seemed ready to come through their skin. They were starving with hunger and thirst from a long drought, whenno grain or food of any kind would grow. And now they were gathered onthe shore, and a long row of them linked hand in hand would rush downthe very beach upon which they had attacked Wilfrid, and would castthemselves into the sea to get out of the awful agonies of theirhunger. 

"Are there not fish in the sea for food?" asked Wilfrid. 

"Yes, but we cannot catch them, " they answered. 

Wilfrid showed the wondering Men of the Shingle Beach how to makelarge nets and then launched out in the little boats that they owned, and let the nets down. For hour after hour Wilfrid and his companionsfished, while the savages watched them from the beach with hungry eyesas the silver-shining fish were drawn gleaming and struggling into theboats. 

At last, as evening drew on, the nets were drawn in for the last time, and Wilfrid came back to the beach with hundreds of fish in the boats. With eager joy the Men of the Beach lit fires and cooked the fish. Their hunger was stayed; the rain for which Wilfrid prayed came. Theywere happy once more. 

Then Wilfrid gathered them all around him on the beach and said wordslike these:

"You men tried to kill me and my friends on this beach years ago, trusting in your god of war. You _failed_. There is no god of war. There is but one God, a God not of war, but of Love, Who sent His onlySon to tell about His love. That Son, Jesus Christ, Who fed the hungrymultitudes by the side of the sea with fish, sent me to you to showlove to you, feeding you with fish from the sea, and feeding you withHis love, which is the Bread of Life. "

The wondering savages, spear in hand, shook their matted hair andcould not take it in at once. Yet they and their boys and girls hadalready learned to trust Wilfrid, and soon began to love the God ofWhom he spoke. 

 * * * * *

Now, those savages were the great, great, great grandfathers andmothers of the English-speaking peoples of the world. The North SeaIsland was Britain; the beach was at Selsey near Chichester on theSouth Coast. And the very fact that you and I are alive to-day, theshelter of our homes, the fact that we can enjoy the wind on the heathin camp, our books and sport and school, all these things come to usthrough men like Wilfrid and St. Patrick, St. Columba and St. Ninian, St. Augustine and others who in the days of long ago came to lift ourfathers from the wretched, quarrelsome life, and from the starvinghelplessness of the Men of the Shingle Beach. 

The people of the North Sea Islands and of America and the rest ofthe Christian world have these good things in their life becausethere came to save our forefathers heroic missionaries like Wilfrid, Columba, and Augustine. There are to-day men of the South Sea Islands, who are even more helpless than our Saxon grandfathers. 

To get without giving is mean. To take the torch and not to pass it onis to fail to play the game. We must hand on to the others the lightthat has come to us. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 8: The chief authority for the story of Wilfrid is Bede. ]

CHAPTER III

THE KNIGHT OF A NEW CRUSADE

_Raymund Lull_

(Dates, b. 1234, d. 1315)

I

A little old man, barefooted and bareheaded, and riding upon an ass, went through the cities and towns and villages of Europe, in theeleventh century, carrying--not a lance, but a crucifix. When he camenear a town the word ran like a forest fire, "It is Peter the Hermit. "

All the people rushed out. Their hearts burned as they heard him tellhow the tomb of Jesus Christ was in the hand of the Moslem Turk, ofhow Christians going to worship at His Tomb in Jerusalem were throwninto prison and scourged and slain. Knights sold lands and houses tobuy horses and lances. Peasants threw down the axe and the spade forthe pike and bow and arrows. Led by knights, on whose armour a redCross was emblazoned, the people poured out in their millions for thefirst Crusade. It is said that in the spring of 1096 an "expeditionaryforce" of six million people was heading toward Palestine. 

The Crusades were caused partly by the cruelty of the followers ofMohammed, the Moslem Turks, who believed that they could earn entranceinto Paradise by slaying infidel Christians. The Moslems every day andfive times a day turn their faces to Mecca in Arabia, saying "There isno God but God; Mohammed is the Prophet of God. " Allah (they believe)is wise and merciful to His own, but not holy, nor our Father, nor loving and forgiving, nor desiring pure lives. On earth and inParadise women have no place save to serve men. 

The first Crusade ended in the capture of Jerusalem (July 15, 1099), and Godfrey de Bouillon became King of Jerusalem. But Godfrey refusedto put a crown upon his head. For, he said, "I will not wear a crownof gold in the city where Our Lord Jesus Christ wore a crown ofthorns. "

 The fortunes of Christian and Moslem ebbed and flowed for nearly two hundred years, during which time there were seven Crusades ending at the fall of Acre into the hands of the Turks in 1291. 

 The way of the sword had failed, though indeed the Crusades had probably been the means of preventing all Europe from being overrun by the Moslems. At the time when the last Crusade had begun a man was planning a new kind of Crusade, different in method but calling for just as much bravery as the old kind. We are going to hear his story now. 

II

_The Young Knight's Vision_

In the far-off days of the last of the Crusades, a knight of Majorca, in the Mediterranean Sea, stood on the shore of his island home gazingover the water. Raymund Lull from the beach of Palma Bay, where hehad played as a boy, now looked out southward, where boats with theirtall, rakish, brown sails ran in from the Great Sea. 

The knight was dreaming of Africa which lay away to the south of hisisland. He had heard many strange stories from the sailors about thelife in the harbours of that mysterious African seaboard; but he hadnever once in his thirty-six years set eyes upon one of its ports. 

It was the year when Prince Edward of England, out on the mad, futileadventure of the last Crusade, was felled by the poisoned dagger of anassassin in Nazareth, and when Eleanor (we are told) drew the poisonfrom the wound with her own lips. Yet Raymund Lull, who was a knightso skilled that he could flash his sword and set his lance in restwith any of his peers, had not joined that Crusade. His brave fathercarried the scars of a dozen battles against the Moors. Yet, when thelast Crusade swept down the Mediterranean, Lull stood aside; for hewas himself planning a new Crusade of a kind unlike any that had gonebefore. 

He dreamed of a Crusade not to the Holy Land but to Africa, where theCrescent of Mohammed ruled and where the Cross of Christ was neverseen save when an arrogant Moslem drew a cross in the sand of thedesert to spit upon it. It was the desire of Raymund Lull's life tosail out into those perilous ports and to face the fierce Saracens whothronged the cities. He longed for this as other knights panted to goout to the Holy Land as Crusaders. He was rich enough to sail at anytime, for he was his own master. Why, then, did he not take one of theswift craft that rocked in the bay, and sail?

It was because he had not yet forged a sharp enough weapon for his newCrusade. His deep resolve was that at all costs he would "Be Prepared"for every counter-stroke of the Saracen whose tongue was as swift andsharp as his scimitar. 

What powers do we think a man should have in order to convincefanatical Moslems, who knew their own sacred book--the Koran--of thetruth of Christianity? Control of his own temper, courage, patience, knowledge of the Moslem religion and of the Bible, suggest themselves. 

III

_The Preparation of Temper_

So Lull turned his back on the beach and on Africa, and plunged underthe heavy shadows of the arched gateway through the city wall up thenarrow streets of Palma. A servant opened the heavy, studded door ofhis father's mansion--the house where Lull himself was born. 

He hastened in and, calling to his Saracen slave, strode to his ownroom. The dark-faced Moor obediently came, bowed before his youngmaster, and laid out on the table manuscripts that were covered withmysterious writing such as few people in Europe could read. 

Lull was learning Arabic from this sullen Saracen slave. He wasstudying the Koran--the Bible of the Mohammedans--so that he might beable to strive with the Saracens on their own ground. For Lull knewthat he must be master of all the knowledge of the Moslem if he wasto win his battles; just as a knight in the fighting Crusades mustbe swift and sure with his sword. And this is how Lull spoke of theCrusade on which he was to set out. 

"I see many knights, " he said, "going to the Holy Land beyond the seasand thinking that they can acquire it by force of arms; but in the endall are destroyed before they attain that which they think to have. Whence it seems to me that the conquest of the Holy Land ought notto be attempted except in the way in which Christ and His Apostlesachieved it, namely, by love and prayers, and the pouring out of tearsand blood. "

Suddenly, as he and the Saracen slave argued together, the Moorblurted out passionately a horrible blasphemy against the name ofJesus. Lull's blood was up. He leapt to his feet, leaned forward, andcaught the Moor a swinging blow on the face with his hand. In a furythe Saracen snatched a dagger from the folds of his robe and, leapingat Lull, drove it into his side. Raymund fell with a cry. Friendsrushed in. The Saracen was seized and hurried away to a prison-cell, where he slew himself. 

Lull, as he lay day after day waiting for his wound to heal andremembering his wild blow at the Saracen, realised that, although hehad learned Arabic, he had not yet learned the first lesson of his ownnew way of Crusading--to be master of himself. 

IV

_The Preparation of Courage_

So Raymund Lull (at home and in Rome and Paris) set himself afresh tohis task of preparing. At last he felt that he was ready. From Parishe rode south-east through forest and across plain, over mountain andpass, till the gorgeous palaces and the thousand masts of Genoa camein sight. 

He went down to the harbour and found a ship that was sailing acrossthe Mediterranean to Africa. He booked his passage and sent his goodswith all his precious manuscripts aboard. The day for sailing came. His friends came to cheer him. But Lull sat in his room trembling. 

As he covered his eyes with his hands in shame, he saw the fiery, persecuting Saracens of Tunis, whom he was sailing to meet. He knewthey were glowing with pride because of their triumphs over theCrusaders in Palestine. He knew they were blazing with anger becausetheir brother Moors had been slaughtered and tortured in Spain. He sawahead of him the rack, the thumb-screw, and the boot; the long yearsin a slimy dungeon--at the best the executioner's scimitar. He simplydared not go. 

The books were brought ashore again. The ship sailed without Lull. 

"The ship has gone, " said a friend to Lull. He quivered under atorture of shame greater than the agony of the rack. He was wrung withbitter shame that he who had for all these years prepared for thisCrusade should now have shown the white feather. He was, indeed, acraven knight of Christ. 

His agony of spirit threw him into a high fever that kept him in hisbed. 

Soon after he heard that another ship was sailing for Africa. 

In spite of the protestations of his friends Lull insisted that theyshould carry him to the ship. They did so; but as the hour of sailingdrew on his friends were sure that he was so weak that he would dieon the sea before he could reach Africa. So--this time in spite of allhis pleading--they carried him ashore again. But he could not rest andhis agony of mind made his fever worse. 

Soon, however, a third ship was making ready to sail. This time Lullwas carried on board and refused to return. 

The ship cast off and threaded its way through the shipping of theharbour out into the open sea. 

"From this moment, " said Lull, "I was a new man. All fever left mealmost before we were out of sight of land. "

V

_The First Battle_

Passing Corsica and Sardinia, the ship slipped southward till at lastshe made the yellow coast of Africa, broken by the glorious Gulfof Tunis. She dropped sail as she ran alongside the busy wharves ofGoletta. Lull was soon gliding in a boat through the short ancientcanal to Tunis, the mighty city which was head of all the WesternMohammedan world. 

He landed and found the place beside the great mosque where thegrey-bearded scholars bowed over their Korans and spoke to one anotherabout the law of Mohammed. 

They looked at him with amazement as he boldly came up to them andsaid, "I have come to talk with you about Christ and His Way of Life, and Mohammed and his teaching. If you can prove to me that Mohammed isindeed _the_ Prophet, I will myself become a follower of him. "

The Moslems, sure of their case, called together their wisest men andtogether they declaimed to Lull what he already knew very well--thewatchword that rang out from minaret to minaret across the roofs ofthe vast city as the first flush of dawn came up from the East acrossthe Gulf. "There is no God but God; Mohammed is the Prophet of God. "

"Yes, " he replied, "the Allah of Mohammed is one and is great, but Hedoes not love as does the Father of Jesus Christ. He is wise, but Hedoes not do good to men like our God who so loved the world that Hegave His Son Jesus Christ. "

To and fro the argument swung till, after many days, to their dismayand amazement the Moslems saw some of their number waver and at lastactually beginning to go over to the side of Lull. To forsake theFaith of Mohammed is--by their own law--to be worthy of death. AMoslem leader hurried to the Sultan of Tunis. 

"See, " he said, "this learned teacher, Lull, is declaring the errorsof the Faith. He is dangerous. Let us take him and put him to death. "

The Sultan gave the word of command. A body of soldiers went out, seized Lull, dragged him through the streets, and threw him into adark dungeon to wait the death sentence. 

But another Moslem who had been deeply touched by Lull's teachingcraved audience with the Sultan. 

"See, " he said, "this learned man Lull--if he were a Moslem--wouldbe held in high honour, being so brave and fearless in defence of hisFaith. Do not slay him. Banish him from Tunis. "

So when Lull in his dungeon saw the door flung open and waited to betaken to his death he found to his surprise that he was led from thedungeon through the streets of Tunis, taken along the canal, thrustinto the hold of a ship, and told that he must go in that ship toGenoa and never return. But the man who had before been afraid to sailfrom Genoa to Tunis, now escaped unseen from the ship that would havetaken him back to safety in order to risk his life once more. He saidto himself the motto he had written:

 +--------------------------------------+ | "HE WHO LOVES NOT, LIVES NOT! HE WHO | | LIVES BY THE LIFE CANNOT DIE. " | +--------------------------------------+

He was not afraid now even of martyrdom. He hid among the wharvesand gathered his converts about him to teach them more and more aboutChrist. 

VI

_The Last Fight_

At last, however, seeing that he could do little in hiding, Lull tookship to Naples. After many adventures during a number of years, in ascore of cities and on the seas, the now white-haired Lull sailed intothe curved bay of Bugia farther westward along the African coast. Inthe bay behind the frowning walls the city with its glittering mosquesclimbed the hill. Behind rose two glorious mountains crowned with thedark green of the cedar. And, far off, like giant Moors wearing whiteturbans, rose the distant mountain peaks crowned with snow. 

Lull passed quietly through the arch of the city gateway which he knewso well, for among other adventures he had once been imprisoned inthis very city. He climbed the steep street and found a friend who hidhim away. There for a year Lull taught in secret till he felt that thetime had come for him to go out boldly and dare death itself. 

One day the people in the market-place of Bugia heard a voice ring outthat seemed to some of them strangely familiar. They hurried towardthe sound. There stood the old hero with arm uplifted declaring, inthe full blaze of the North African day, the Love of God shown inJesus Christ His Son. 

The Saracens murmured. They could not answer his arguments. They criedto him to stop, but his voice rose ever fuller and bolder. They rushedon him, dragged him by the cloak out of the market-place, down thestreets, under the archway to a place beyond the city walls. Therethey threw back their sleeves, took up great jagged stones and hurledthese grim messengers of hate at the Apostle of Love, till he sanksenseless to the ground. [9]

It was word for word over again the story of Stephen; the speech, thewild cries of the mob, the rush to the place beyond the city wall, thestoning. [10]

Did Lull accomplish anything? He was dead; but he had conquered. Hehad conquered his old self. For the Lull who had, in a fit of temper, smitten his Saracen slave now smiled on the men who stoned him; andthe Lull who had showed the white feather of fear at Genoa, now defieddeath in the market-place of Bugia. And in that love and heroism, inface of hate and death, he had shown men the only way to conquerthe scimitar of Mohammed, "the way in which Christ and His Apostlesachieved it, namely, by love and prayers, and the pouring out of tearsand blood. "

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 9: June 30. 1315. ]

[Footnote 10: Acts vi. 8-vii. 60. ]

CHAPTER IV

FRANCIS COEUR-DE-LION

(_St. Francis of Assisi_) A. D. 1181-1226 (Date of Incident, 1219)

I

The dark blue sky of an Italian night was studded with sparkling starsthat seemed to be twinkling with laughter at the pranks of a livelygroup of gay young fellows as they came out from a house half-way upthe steep street of the little city of Assisi. 

As they strayed together down the street they sang the love-songs oftheir country and then a rich, strong voice rang out singing a song inFrench. 

"That is Francis Bernardone, " one neighbour would say to another, nodding his head, for Francis could sing, not only in his nativeItalian, but also in French. 

"He lives like a prince; yet he is but the son of a clothmerchant, --rich though the merchant be. "

So the neighbours, we are told, were always grumbling about Francis, the wild spendthrift. For young Francis dressed in silk and always inthe latest fashion; he threw his pocket-money about with a free hand. He loved beautiful things. He was very sensitive. He would ride a longway round to avoid seeing the dreadful face of a poor leper, and wouldhold his nose in his cloak as he passed the place where the leperslived. 

He was handsome in face, gallant in bearing, idle and careless; ajolly companion, with beautiful courtly manners. His dark chestnuthair curled over his smooth, rather small forehead. His blacktwinkling eyes looked out under level brows; his nose was straight andfinely shaped. 

When he laughed he showed even, white, closely set teeth betweenthin and sensitive lips. He wore a short, black beard. His arms wereshortish; his fingers long and sensitive. He was lightly built; hisskin was delicate. 

He was witty, and his voice when he spoke was powerful and sonorous, yet sweet-toned and very clear. 

For him to be the son of a merchant seemed to the gossips of Assisiall wrong--as though a grey goose had hatched out a gorgeous peacock. 

The song of the revellers passed down the street and died away. Thelittle city of Assisi slept in quietness on the slopes of the ApennineMountains under the dark clear sky. 

A few nights later, however, no song of any revellers was heard. Francis Bernardone was very ill with a fever. For week after week hismother nursed him; and each night hardly believed that her son wouldlive to see the light of the next morning. When at last the fever lefthim, he was so feeble that for weeks he could not rise from his bed. Gradually, however, he got better: as he did so the thing that hedesired most of all in the world was to see the lovely country aroundAssisi;--the mountains, the Umbrian Plain beneath, the blue skies, thedainty flowers. 

At last one day, with aching limbs and in great feebleness, he creptout of doors. There were the great Apennine Mountains on the side ofwhich his city of Assisi was built. There were the grand rocky peakspointing to the intense blue sky. There was the steep street with thehouses built of stone of a strange, delicate pink colour, as thoughthe light of dawn were always on them. There were the dark green olivetrees, and the lovely tendrils of the vines. The gay Italian flowerswere blooming. 

Stretching away in the distance was one of the most beautifullandscapes of the world; the broad Umbrian Plain with its browns andgreens melting in the distance into a bluish haze that softened thelines of the distant hills. 

How he had looked forward to seeing it all, to being in the sunshine, to feeling the breeze on his hot brow! But what--he wondered--hadhappened to him? He looked at it all, but he felt no joy. It allseemed dead and empty. He turned his back on it and crawled indoorsagain, sad and sick at heart. He was sure that he would never feelagain "the wild joys of living. "

As Francis went back to his bed he began to think what he should dowith the rest of his life. He made up his mind not to waste it anylonger: but he did not see clearly what he should do with it. 

A short time after Francis begged a young nobleman of Assisi, whowas just starting to fight in a war, if he might go with him. Thenobleman--Walter of Brienne, agreed: so Francis bought splendidtrappings for his horse, and a shield, sword and spear. His armour andhis horse's harness were more splendid than even those of Walter. Sothey went clattering together out of Assisi. 

But he had not gone thirty miles before he was smitten again by fever. After sunset one evening he lay dreamily on his bed when he seemed tohear a voice. 

"Francis, " it asked, "what could benefit thee most, the master or theservant, the rich man or the poor?"

"The master and the rich man, " answered Francis in surprise. 

"Why then, " went on the voice, "dost thou leave God, Who is the Masterand rich, for man, who is the servant and poor?"

"Then, Lord, what will Thou that I do?" asked Francis. 

"Return to thy native town, and it shall be shown thee there what thoushall do, " said the voice. 

He obediently rose and went back to Assisi. He tried to join again inthe old revels, but the joy was gone. He went quietly away to a caveon the mountain side and there he lay--as young Mahomet had done, youremember, five centuries before, to wonder what he was to do. 

Then a vision came to him. All at once like a flash his mind wasclear, and his soul was full of joy. He saw the love of JesusChrist--Who had lived and suffered and died for love of him and ofall men;--that love was to rule his own life! He had found hisCaptain--the Master of his life, the Lord of his service, --Christ. 

Yet even now he hardly knew what to do. He went home and told hisfriends as well as he could of the change in his heart. 

Some smiled rather pityingly and went away saying to one another:"Poor fellow; a little mad, you can see; very sad for his parents!"

Others simply laughed and mocked. 

One day, very lonely and sad at heart, he clambered up the mountainside to an old church just falling into ruin near which, in a cavern, lived a priest. He went into the ruin and fell on his knees. 

"Francis, " a voice in his soul seemed to say, "dost thou see my housegoing to ruin. Buckle to and repair it. "

He dashed home, saddled his horse, loaded it with rich garments androde off to another town to sell the goods. He sold the horse too;trudged back up the hill and gave the fat purse to the priest. 

"No, " said the priest, "I dare not take it unless your father says Imay. "

But his father, who had got rumour of what was going on, came with aband of friends to drag Francis home. Francis fled through the woodsto a secret cave, where he lay hidden till at last he made up his mindto face all. He came out and walked straight towards home. Soon thetownsmen of Assisi caught sight of him. 

"A madman, " they yelled, throwing stones and sticks at him. All theboys of Assisi came out and hooted and threw pebbles. 

His father heard the riot and rushed out to join in the fun. Imaginehis horror when he found that it was his own son. He yelled withrage, dashed at him and, clutching him by the robe, dragged him along, beating and cursing him. When he got him home he locked him up. Butsome days later Francis' mother let him out, when his father wasabsent; and Francis climbed the hill to the Church. 

The bishop called in Francis and his father to his court to settle thequarrel. 

"You must give back to your father all that you have, " said he. 

"I will, " replied Francis. 

He took off all his rich garments; and, clad only in a hair-vest, heput the clothes and the purse of money at his father's feet. 

"Now, " he cried, "I have but one father. Henceforth I can say in alltruth 'Our Father Who art in heaven. '"

A peasant's cloak was given to Francis. He went thus, without homeor any money, a wanderer. He went to a monastery and slaved in thekitchen. A friend gave him a tunic, some shoes, and a stick. He wentout wandering in Italy again. He loved everybody; he owned nothing; hewanted everyone to know the love of Jesus as he knew and enjoyed thatlove. 

There came to Francis many adventures. He was full of joy; he sangeven to the birds in the woods. Many men joined him as his disciplesin the way of obedience, of poverty, and of love. Men in Italy, inSpain, in Germany and in Britain caught fire from the flame of hissimple love and careless courage. Never had Europe seen so clear avision of the love of Jesus. His followers were called the LesserBrothers (Friars Minor). 

All who can should read the story of Francis' life: as for us we arehere going simply to listen to what happened to him on a strange andperilous adventure. 

II

About this time people all over Europe were agog with excitement aboutthe Crusades. Four Crusades had come and gone. Richard Coeur-de-Lionwas dead. But the passion for fighting against the Saracen was stillin the hearts of men. 

"The tomb of our Lord in Jerusalem is in the hands of the Saracen, "the cry went up over all Europe. "Followers of Jesus Christ are slainby the scimitars of Islam. Let us go and wrest the Holy City from thehands of the Saracen. "

There was also the danger to Europe itself. The Mohammedans ruled inSpain as well as in North Africa, in Egypt and in the Holy Land. 

So rich men sold their lands to buy horses and armour and to fitthemselves and their foot soldiers for the fray. Poor men came armedwith pike and helmet and leather jerkin. The knights wore a blood-redcross on their white tunics. In thousands upon thousands, with Johnof Brienne as their Commander-in-Chief (the brother of that Walter ofBrienne with whom, you remember, Francis had started for the wars asa knight), they sailed the Mediterranean to fight for the Cross inEgypt. 

They attacked Egypt because the Sultan there ruled over Jerusalem andthey hoped by defeating him to free Jerusalem at the same time. 

As Francis saw the knights going off to the Crusades in shining armourwith the trappings of their horses all a-glitter and a-jingle, and ashe thought of the lands where the people worshipped--not the God andFather of our Lord Jesus Christ--but the "Sultan in the Sky, " theAllah of Mahomet, his spirit caught fire within him. 

Francis had been a soldier and a knight only a few years before. Hecould not but feel the stir of the Holy War in his veins, --the tingleof the desire to be in it. He heard the stories of the daring of theCrusaders; he heard of a great victory over the Saracens. 

Francis, indeed, wanted Jesus Christ to conquer men more than hewanted anything on earth; but he knew that men are only conquered byJesus Christ if their hearts are changed by Him. 

"Even if the Saracens are put to the sword and overwhelmed, still theyare not saved, " he said to himself. 

As he thought these things he felt sure that he heard them calling tohim (as the Man from Macedonia had called to St. Paul)--"Come over andhelp us. " St. Paul had brought the story of Jesus Christ to Europe;and had suffered prison and scourging and at last death by theexecutioner's sword in doing it; must not Francis be ready to take thesame message back again from Europe to the Near East and to suffer forit?

"I will go, " he said, "but to save the Saracens, not to slay them. "

He was not going out to fight, yet he had in his heart a plan thatneeded him to be braver and more full of resource than any warriorin the armies of the Crusades. He was as much a Lion-hearted heroas Richard Coeur-de-Lion himself, and was far wiser and indeed morepowerful. 

So he took a close friend, Brother Illuminato, with him and theysailed away together over the seas. They sailed from Italy with Walterof Brienne, with one of the Crusading contingents in many ships. Southeast they voyaged over the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. 

Francis talked with the Crusaders on board; and much that they saidand did made him very sad. They squabbled with one another. The knights were arrogant and sneered at the foot soldiers; themen-at-arms did not trust the knights. They had the Cross on theirarmour; but few of them had in their hearts the spirit of Jesus whowas nailed to the Cross. 

At last the long, yellow coast-line of Egypt was sighted. Behind itlay the minarets and white roofs of a city. They were come to theeastern mouth of the Nile, on which stood the proud city of Damietta. The hot rays of the sun smote down upon the army of the Crusaders asthey landed. The sky and the sea were of an intense blue; the sand andthe sun glared at one another. 

Francis would just be able to hear at dawn the cry of the muezzin fromthe minarets of Damietta, "Come to prayer: there is no God but Allahand Mahomet is his prophet. Come to prayer. Prayer is better thansleep. "

John of Brienne began to muster his men in battle array to attack theSultan of Egypt, Malek-Kamel, a name which means "the Perfect Prince. "

Francis, however, was quite certain that the attempt would be aghastly failure. He hardly knew what to do. So he talked it over withhis friend, Brother Illuminato. 

"I know they will be defeated in this attempt, " he said. "But if Itell them so they will treat me as a madman. On the other hand, ifI do not tell them, then my conscience will condemn me. What do youthink I ought to do?"

"My brother, " said Illuminate, "what does the judgment of the worldmatter to you? If they say you are mad it will not be the first time!"

Francis, therefore, went to the Crusaders and warned them. Theylaughed scornfully. The order for advance was given. The Crusaderscharged into battle. Francis was in anguish--tears filled his eyes. The Saracens came out and fell upon the Christian soldiers andslaughtered them. Over 6000 of them either fell under the scimitar orwere taken prisoner. The Crusaders were defeated. 

Francis' mind was now fully made up. He went to a Cardinal, whorepresented the Pope, with the Crusading Army to ask his leave to goand preach to the Sultan of Egypt. 

"No, " said the Cardinal, "I cannot give you leave to go. I know fullwell that you would never escape to come back alive. The Sultan ofEgypt has offered a reward of gold to any man who will bring to himthe head of a Christian. That will be your fate. "

"Do suffer us to go, we do not fear death, " pleaded Francis andIlluminato, again and again. 

"I do not know what is in your minds in this, " said the Cardinal, "butbeware--if you go--that your thoughts are always to God. "

"We only wish to go for great good, if we can work it, " repliedFrancis. 

"Then if you wish it so much, " the Cardinal at last agreed, "you maygo. "

So Francis and Illuminato girded their loins and tightened theirsandals and set away from the Crusading Army towards the very camp ofthe enemy. 

As he walked Francis sang with his full, loud, clear voice. These werethe words that he sang:

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I willfear no evil; for thou art with me; Thy rod and thy staff, theycomfort me. 

As they walked along over the sandy waste they saw two small sheepnibbling the sparse grass growing near the Nile. 

"Be of good cheer, " said Francis to Illuminato, smiling, "it is thefulfilling of the Gospel words 'Behold I send you as sheep in themidst of wolves. '"

Then there appeared some Saracen soldiers. They were, at first, forletting the two unarmed men go by; but, on questioning Francis, theygrew angrier and angrier. 

"Are you deserters from the Christian camp?" they asked. 

"No, " replied Francis. 

"Are you envoys from the commander come to plead for peace?"

"No, " was the answer again. 

"Will you give up the infidel religion and become a true believer andsay 'There is no God but Allah, and Mahomet is his prophet?'"

"No, no, " cried Francis, "we are come to preach the Good News of JesusChrist to the Sultan of Egypt. "

The eyes of the Saracen soldiers opened with amazement: they couldhardly believe their ears. Their faces flushed under their dark skinswith anger. 

"Chain them, " they cried to one another. "Beat them--the infidels. "

Chains were brought and snapped upon the wrists and ankles ofFrancis and Illuminato. Then they took rods and began to beat the twomen--just as Paul and Silas had been beaten eleven centuries earlier. 

As the rods whistled through the air and came slashing upon theirwounded backs Francis kept crying out one word--"Soldan--Soldan. " Thatis "Sultan--Sultan. "

He thus made them understand that he wished to be taken to theirCommander-in-Chief. So they decided to take these strange beings toMalek-Kamel. 

As the Sultan sat in his pavilion Francis and Illuminato were led in. They bowed and saluted him courteously and Malek-Kamel returned thesalute. 

"Have you come with a message from your Commander?" said the Sultan. 

"No, " replied Francis. 

"You wish then to become Saracens--worshippers of Allah in the name ofMahomet?"

"Nay, nay, " answered Francis, "Saracens we will never be. We have comewith a message from God; it is a message that will save your life. Ifyou die under the law of Mahomet you are lost. We have come to tellyou so: if you listen to us we will show all this to you. "

The Sultan seems to have been amused and interested rather than angry. 

"I have bishops and archbishops of my own, " he said, "they can tell meall that I wish to know. "

"Of this we are glad, " replied Francis, "send and fetch them, if youwill. "

The Sultan agreed; he sent for eight of his Moslem great men. Whenthey came in he said to them: "See these men, they have come to teachus a new faith. Shall we listen to them?"

"Sire, " they answered him at once, "thou knowest the law: thou artbound to uphold it and carry it out. By Mahomet who gave us the lawto slay infidels, we command thee that their heads be cut off. We willnot listen to a word that they say. Off with their heads!"

The great men, having given their judgment, solemnly left the presenceof the Sultan. The Sultan turned to Francis and Illuminato. 

"Masters, " he said to them, "they have commanded me by Mahomet to haveyour heads cut off. But I will go against the law, for you have riskedyour lives to save my immortal soul. Now leave me for the time. "

The two Christian missionaries were led away; but in a day or twoMalek-Kamel called them to his presence again. 

"If you will stay in my dominions, " he said, "I will give you land andother possessions. "

"Yes, " said Francis, "I will stay--on one condition--that you and yourpeople turn to the worship of the true God. See, " he went on, "letus put it to the test. Your priests here, " and he pointed to some whowere standing about, "they will not let me talk with them; will theydo something. Have a great fire lighted. I will walk into the firewith them: the result will shew you whose faith is the true one. "

As Francis suggested this idea the faces of the Moslem leaders weretransfigured with horror. They turned and quietly walked away. 

"I do not think, " said the Sultan with a sarcastic smile at theirretreating backs, "that any of my priests are ready to face the flamesto defend their faith. "

"Well, I will go _alone_ into the fire, " said Francis. "If I amburned--it is because of my sins--if I am protected by God then youwill own Him as your God. "

"No, " replied the Sultan, "I will not listen to the idea of such atrial of your life for my soul. " But he was astonished beyond measureat the amazing faith of Francis. So Francis withdrew from the presenceof the Sultan, who at once sent after him rich and costly presents. 

"You must take them back, " said Francis to the messengers; "I will nottake them. "

"Take them to build your churches and support your priests, " said theSultan through his messengers. 

But Francis would not take any gift from the Sultan. He left him andwent back with Illuminato from the Saracen host to the camp of theCrusaders. As he was leaving the Sultan secretly spoke with Francisand said: "Will you pray for me that I may be guided by an inspirationfrom above that I may join myself to the religion that is mostapproved by God?"

The Sultan told off a band of his soldiers to go with the two men andto protect them from any molesting till they reached the Crusaders'Camp. There is a legend--though no one now can tell whether it is trueor not--that when the Sultan of Egypt lay dying he sent for a discipleof Francis to be with him and pray for him. Whether this was so ornot, it is quite clear that Francis had left in the memory of theSultan such a vision of dauntless faith as he had never seen before orwas ever to see again. 

The Crusaders failed to win Egypt or the Holy Land; but to-day men aregoing from America and Britain in the footsteps of Francis of Assisithe Christian missionary, to carry to the people in Egypt, in the HolyLand and in all the Near East, the message that Francis took of thelove of Jesus Christ. The stories of some of the deeds they have doneand are to-day doing, we shall read in later chapters in this book. 

Book Two: THE ISLAND ADVENTURERS

CHAPTER V

THE ADVENTUROUS SHIP

_The Duff_

(Date of Incident, 1796)

A ship crept quietly down the River Thames on an ebb-tide. She wasslipping out from the river into the estuary when suddenly a challengerang out across the grey water. 

"What ship is that?"

"_The Duff_, " was the answer that came back from the little ship whosecaptain had passed through a hundred hairsbreadth escapes in his lifebut was now starting on the strangest adventure of them all. 

"Whither bound?" came the challenge again from the man-o'-war that hadhailed them. 

"Otaheite, " came the answer, which would startle the Governmentofficer. For Tahiti[11] (as we now call it) was many thousands ofmiles away in the heart of the South Pacific Ocean. Indeed it had onlybeen discovered by Captain Cook twenty-eight years earlier in 1768. _The Duff_ was a small sailing-ship such as one of our American oceanliners of to-day could put into her dining saloon. 

"What cargo?" The question came again from the officer on theman-o'-war. 

"Missionaries and provisions, " was Captain Wilson's answer. 

The man-o'-war's captain was puzzled. He did not know what strangebeings might be meant by missionaries. He was suspicious. Were theypirates, perhaps, in disguise!

We can understand how curious it would sound to him when we rememberthat (although Wilfrid and Augustine and Columba had gone to Britainas missionaries over a thousand years before _The Duff_ started downthe Thames) no cargo of missionaries had ever before sailed from thoseNorth Sea Islands of Britain to the savages of other lands like theSouth Sea Islands. 

There was a hurried order and a scurry on board the Government ship. A boat was let down into the Thames, and half a dozen sailors tumbledinto her and rowed to _The Duff. _ What did the officer find?

He was met at the rail by a man who had been through scores ofadventures, Captain Wilson. The son of the captain of a Newcastlecollier, Wilson had grown up a dare-devil sailor boy. He enlisted asa soldier in the American war, became captain of a vessel trading withIndia, and was then captured and imprisoned by the French in India. Heescaped from prison by climbing a great wall, and dropping down fortyfeet on the other side. He plunged into a river full of alligators, and swam across, escaping the jaws of alligators only to be capturedon the other bank by Indians, chained and made to march barefootfor 500 miles. Then he was thrust into Hyder Ali's loathsome prison, starved and loaded with irons, and at last at the end of two years wasset free. 

This was the daring hero who had now undertaken to captain the little_Duff_ across the oceans of the world to the South Seas. WithCaptain Wilson, the man-o'-war officer found also six carpenters, twoshoemakers, two bricklayers, two sailors, two smiths, two weavers, asurgeon, a hatter, a shopkeeper, a cotton factor, a cabinet-maker, adraper, a harness maker, a tin worker, a butcher and four ministers. But they were all of them missionaries. With them were six children. 

All up and down the English Channel French frigates sailed like hawkswaiting to pounce upon their prey; for England was at war with Francein those days. So for five weary weeks _The Duff_ anchored in theroadstead of Spithead till, as one of a fleet of fifty-seven vessels, she could sail down the channel and across the Bay of Biscay protectedby British men-o'-war. Safely clear of the French cruisers, _The Duff_held on alone till the cloud-capped mountain-heights of Madeira hovein sight. 

Across the Atlantic she stood, for the intention was to sail roundSouth America into the Pacific. But on trying to round the Cape Horn_The Duff_ met such violent gales that Captain Wilson turned her inher tracks and headed back across the Atlantic for the Cape of GoodHope. 

Week after week for thousands and thousands of miles she sailed. She had travelled from Rio de Janiero over 10, 000 miles and had onlysighted a single sail--a longer journey than any ship had ever sailedwithout seeing land. 

"Shall we see the island to-day?" the boys on board would ask CaptainWilson. Day after day he shook his head. But one night he said:

"If the wind holds good to-night we shall see an island in themorning, but not the island where we shall stop. "

"Land ho!" shouted a sailor from the masthead in the morning, and, sure enough, they saw away on the horizon, like a cloud on the edge ofthe sea, the island of Toobonai. [12]

As they passed Toobonai the wind rose and howled through the rigging. It tore at the sail of _The Duff, _ and the great Pacific waves rolledswiftly by, rushing and hissing along the sides of the little ship andtossing her on their foaming crests. But she weathered the storm, and, as the wind dropped, and they looked ahead, they saw, cutting into thesky-line, the mountain tops of Tahiti. 

It was Saturday night when the island came in sight. Early on theSunday morning by seven o'clock _The Duff_ swung round under a gentlebreeze into Matavai[13] Bay and dropped anchor. But before she couldeven anchor the whole bay had become alive with Tahitians. Theythronged the beach, and, leaping into canoes, sent them skimmingacross the bay to the ship. 

Captain Wilson, scanning the canoes swiftly and anxiously, saw withrelief that the men were not armed. But the missionaries were startledwhen the savages climbed up the sides of the ship, and with wonderingeyes rolling in their wild heads peered over the rail of the deck. They then leapt on board and began dancing like mad on the deck withtheir bare feet. From the canoes the Tahitians hauled up pigs, fowl, fish, bananas, and held them for the white men to buy. But CaptainWilson and all his company would not buy on that day--for it wasSunday. 

The missionaries gathered together on deck to hold their Sundaymorning service. The Tahitians stopped dancing and looked on withamazement, as the company of white men with their children knelt topray and then read from the Bible. 

The Tahitians could not understand this strange worship, with nogod that could be seen. But when the white fathers and mothers andchildren sang, the savages stood around with wonder and delight ontheir faces as they listened to the strange and beautiful sounds. 

But the startling events of the day were not over. For out from thebeach came a canoe across the bay, and in it two Swedish sailors, named, like some fishermen of long ago, Peter and Andrew. Thesewhite men knew some English, but lived, not as Christians, but as thenatives lived. 

And after them came a great and aged chief named Haamanemane. [14] Thisgreat chief went up to the "chief" of the ship, Captain Wilson, andcalled out to him "Taio. "[15]

They did not know what this meant, till Peter the Swede explainedthat Haamanemane wished to be the brother--the troth-friend of CaptainWilson. They were even to change names. Captain Wilson would be calledHaamanemane, and Haamanemane would be called Wilson. 

So Captain Wilson said "Taio, " and he and the chief, who was also highpriest of the gods of Tahiti, were brothers. 

Captain Wilson said to Haamanemane, through Peter, who translated eachto the other:

"We wish to come and live in this island. "

Haamanemane said that he would speak to the king and queen of Tahitiabout it. So he got down again over the side of the vessel into thecanoe, and the paddles of his boatman flashed as they swept along overthe breakers to the beach to tell the king of the great white chiefwho had come to visit them. 

All these things happened on the Sunday. On Tuesday word came that theking and the queen would receive them. So Captain Wilson and all hismissionaries got into the whale-boat and pulled for the shore. Thenatives rushed into the water, seized the boat and hauled her agroundout of reach of the great waves. 

They were startled to see the king and queen come riding on theshoulders of men. Even when one bearer grew tired and the king orthe queen must get upon another, they were not allowed to touch theground. The reason was that all the land they touched became theirown, and the people carried them about so that they themselves mightnot lose their land and houses by the king and queen touching them. 

So at that place, under the palm trees of Tahiti, with the beatingof the surf on the shore before them, and the great mountain forestsbehind, these brown islanders of the South Seas gave a part of theirland to Captain Wilson and his men that they might live there. 

The sons of the wild men of the North Sea Islands had met their firstgreat adventure in bringing to the men of the South Sea Islands thestory of the love of the Father of all. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: Ta-hee-tee. ]

[Footnote 12: Too-b[=o]-n[=a]-ee. ]

[Footnote 13: M[=a]-t[)a]-v[)a]-ee. ]

[Footnote 14: Haa-m[)u]-n[=a]y-m[)a]-này. ]

[Footnote 15: Ta-ce-[=o]. ]

CHAPTER VI

THE ISLAND BEACON FIRES

_Papeiha_[16]

(Date of Incident, 1823)

The edge of the sea was just beginning to gleam with the gold of therising sun. The captain of a little ship, that tossed and rolled onthe tumbling ocean, looked out anxiously over the bow. Around himeverywhere was the wild waste of the Pacific Ocean. Through day afterday he had tacked and veered, baffled by contrary winds. Now, withlittle food left in the ship, starvation on the open ocean stared themin the face. 

They were searching for an island of which they had heard, but whichthey had never seen. 

The captain searched the horizon again, but he saw nothing, exceptthat ahead of him, on the sky-line to the S. W. , great clouds hadgathered. He turned round and went to the master-missionary--the heroand explorer and shipbuilder, John Williams, saying:

"We must give up the search or we shall all be starved. "

John Williams knew that this was true; yet he hated the thought ofgoing back. He was a scout exploring at the head of God's navy. He hadleft his home in London and with his young wife had sailed across theworld to the South Seas to carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ to thepeople there. He was living on the island of Raiatea: but as hehimself said, "I cannot be confined within the limits of a singlereef. " He wanted to pass on the torch to other islands. So he was nowon this voyage of discovery. 

It was seven o'clock when the captain told John Williams that theymust give up the search. 

"In an hour's time, " said Williams, "we will turn back if we have notsighted Rarotonga. "

So they sailed on. The sun climbed the sky, the cool dawn was givingway to the heat of day. 

"Go up the mast and look ahead, " said Williams to a South Sea Islandnative. Then he paced the deck, hoping to hear the cry of "Land, " butnothing could the native see. 

"Go up again, " cried Williams a little later. And again there wasnothing. Four times the man climbed the mast, and four times hereported only sea and sky and cloud. Gradually the sun's heat hadgathered up the great mountains of cloud, and the sky was clear to theedge of the ocean. Then there came a sudden cry from the masthead:

"Teie teie, taua fenua, nei!"[17]

"Here, here is the land we have been seeking. "

All rushed to the bows. As the ship sailed on and they came nearer, they saw a lovely island. Mountains, towering peak on peak, with deepgreen valleys between brown rocky heights hung with vines, and thegreat ocean breakers booming in one white line of foaming surf on thereef of living coral, made it look like a vision of fairyland. 

They had discovered Rarotonga. 

But what of the people of the island?

They were said to be cannibals. 

Would they receive the missionaries with clubs and spears? Who wouldgo ashore?

On board the ship were brown South Sea men from the island where JohnWilliams lived. They had burned their idols, and now they too weremissionaries of Jesus Christ. Their leader was a fearless young man, Papeiha. He was so daring that once, when everybody else was afraid togo from the ship to a cannibal island, he bound his Bible in his loincloth, tied them to the top of his head, and swam ashore, defying thesharks, and unafraid of the still more cruel islanders. 

So at Rarotonga, when the call came, "Who will go ashore?" and a canoewas let down from the ship's side, two men, Papeiha and his friendVahineino, [18] leapt into it. Those two fearlessly paddled towards theshore, which was now one brown stretch of Rarotongans crowded togetherto see this strange ship with wings that had sailed from over thesea's edge. 

The Rarotongans seemed friendly; so Papeiha and Vahineino, who knewthe ways of the water from babyhood and could swim before they couldwalk, waited for a great Pacific breaker, and then swept in on herfoaming crest. The canoe grated on the shore. They walked up the beachunder the shade of a grove of trees and said to the Rarotongan king, Makea, [19] and his people:

"We have come to tell you that many of the islands of the sea haveburned their idols. Once we in those islands pierced each other withspears and beat each other to death with clubs; we brutally treatedour women, and the children taken in war were strung together by theirears like fish on a line. To-day we come--before you have destroyedeach other altogether in your wars--to tell you of the great God, ourFather, who through His Son Jesus Christ has taught us how to live asbrothers. "

King Makea said he was pleased to hear these things, and came in hiscanoe to the ship to take the other native teachers on shore with him. The ship stood off for the night, for the ocean there is too deep foranchorage. 

Papeiha and his brown friends, with their wives, went ashore. Nightfell, and they were preparing to sleep, when, above the thud and hissof the waves they heard the noise of approaching crowds. The footstepsand the talking came nearer, while the little group of Christianslistened intently. At last a chief, carried by his warriors, camenear. He was the fiercest and most powerful chief on the island. 

When he came close to Papeiha and his friends, the chief demanded thatthe wife of one of the Christian teachers should be given to him, so that he might take her away with him as his twentieth wife. Theteachers argued with the chief, the woman wept; but he ordered thewoman to be seized and taken off. She resisted, as did the others. Their clothes were torn to tatters by the ferocious Rarotongans. Allwould have been over with the Christians, had not Tapairu, [20] a braveRarotongan woman and the cousin of the king, opposed the chiefs andeven fought with her hands to save the teacher's wife. At last thefierce chief gave in, and Papeiha and his friends, before the sunhad risen, hurried to the beach, leapt into their canoe and paddledswiftly to the ship. 

"We must wait and come to this island another day when the people aremore friendly, " said every one--except Papeiha, who never would turnback. "Let me stay with them, " said he. 

He knew that he might be slain and eaten by the savage cannibals onthe island. But without fuss, leaving everything he had upon theship except his clothes and his native Testament, he dropped into hiscanoe, seized the paddle, and with swift, strong strokes that neverfaltered, drove the canoe skimming over the rolling waves till itleapt to the summit of a breaking wave and ground upon the shore. 

The savages came jostling and waving spears and clubs as they crowdedround him. 

"Let us take him to Makea. "

So Papeiha was led to the chief. As he walked he heard them shoutingto one another, "I'll have his hat, " "I'll have his jacket, " "I'llhave his shirt. "

At length he reached the chief, who looked and said, "Speak to us, Oman, that we may know why you persist in coming. "

"I come, " he answered, looking round on all the people, "so that youmay all learn of the true God, and that you, like all the people inthe far-off islands of the sea, may take your gods made of wood, ofbirds' feathers and of cloth, and burn them. "

A roar of anger and horror burst from the people. "What!" they cried, "burn the gods! What gods shall we then have? What shall we do withoutthe gods?"

They were angry, but there was something in the bold face of Papeihathat kept them from slaying him. They allowed him to stay, and did notkill him. 

Soon after this, Papeiha one day heard shrieking and shouting and wildroars as of men in a frenzy. He saw crowds of people round the godsoffering food to them; the priests with faces blackened with charcoaland with bodies painted with stripes of red and yellow, thewarriors with great waving head-dresses of birds' feathers and whitesea-shells. Papeiha, without taking any thought of the peril that herushed into, went into the midst of the people and said:

"Why do you act so foolishly? Why do you take a log of wood and carveit, and then offer it food? It is only fit to be burned. Some day soonyou shall make these very gods fuel for fire. " So with the companionwho came to help him, brown Papeiha went in and out of the island justas brave Paul went in and out in the island of Cyprus and Wilfrid inBritain. He would take his stand, now under a grove of bananas ona great stone, and now in a village, where the people from the hutsgathered round, and again on the beach, where he would lift up hisvoice above the boom of the ocean breakers to tell the story of Jesus. And some of those degraded savages became Christians. 

One day he was surprised to see one of the priests come to him leadinghis ten-year-old boy. 

"Take care of my boy, " said the priest. "I am going to burn my god, and I do not want my god's anger to hurt the boy. Ask your God toprotect him. " So the priest went home. 

Next morning quite early, before the heat of the sun was great, Papeiha looked out and saw the priest tottering along with bent andaching shoulders. On his back was his cumbrous wooden god. Behind thepriest came a furious crowd, waving their arms and crying out:

"Madman, madman, the god will kill you. "

"You may shout, " answered the priest, "but you will not change me. I am going to worship Jehovah, the God of Papeiha. " And with that hethrew down the god at the feet of the teachers. One of them ran andbrought a saw, and first cut off its head and then sawed it into logs. Some of the Rarotongans rushed away in dread. Others--even some ofthe newly converted Christians--hid in the bush and peered throughthe leaves to see what would happen. Papeiha lit a fire; the logs werethrown on; the first Rarotongan idol was burned. 

"You will die, " cried the priests of the fallen god. But to show thatthe god was just a log of wood, the teachers took a bunch of bananas, placed them on the ashes where the fire had died down, and roastedthem. Then they sat down and ate the bananas. 

The watching, awe-struck people looked to see the teachers fall dead, but nothing happened. The islanders then began to wonder whether, after all, the God of Papeiha was not the true God. Within a year theyhad got together hundreds of their wooden idols, and had burned themin enormous bonfires which flamed on the beach and lighted up the darkbackground of trees. Those bonfires could be seen far out across thePacific Ocean, like a beacon light. 

To-day the flames of love which Papeiha bravely lighted, throughperils by water and club and cannibal feast, have shone right acrossthe ocean, and some of the grandchildren of those very Rarotongans whowere cannibals when Papeiha went there, have sailed away, as we shallsee later on, to preach Papeiha's gospel of the love of God to thefar-off cannibal Papuans on the steaming shores of New Guinea. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: P[)a]-pay-ee-h[)a]. ]

[Footnote 17: Tay-ee-ay: ta-oo-a: fay-noo-[)a]: nay-ee. ]

[Footnote 18: Va-hee-nay-ee-n[=o]. ]

[Footnote 19: M[)a]-kay-[)a]. ]

[Footnote 20: T[)a]-p[=a]-ee-roo. ]

CHAPTER VII

THE DAYBREAK CALL

_John Williams_ (Date of Incident, 1839)

Two men leaned on the rail of the brig _Camden_ as she swept slowlyalong the southern side of the Island of Erromanga in the WesternPacific. A steady breeze filled her sails. The sea heaved in long, silky billows. The red glow of the rising sun was changing to thefull, clear light of morning. 

The men, as they talked, scanned the coast-line closely. There was thegrey, stone-covered beach, and, behind the beach, the dense bush andthe waving fronds of palms. Behind the palms rose the volcanic hillsof the island. The elder man straightened himself and looked keenly tothe bay from which a canoe was swiftly gliding. 

He was a broad, sturdy man, with thick brown hair over keen watchfuleyes. His open look was fearless and winning. His hands, which graspedthe rail, had both the strength and the skill of the trained mechanicand the writer. For John Williams could build a ship, make a boat andsail them both against any man in all the Pacific. He could work withhis hammer at the forge in the morning, make a table at his joiner'sbench in the afternoon, preach a powerful sermon in the evening, andwrite a chapter of the most thrilling of books on missionary travelthrough the night. Yet next morning would see him in his ship, withher sails spread, moving out into the open Pacific, bound for adistant island. 

"It is strange, " Williams was saying to his friend Mr. Cunningham, "but I have not slept all through the night. "

How came it that this man, who for over twenty years had facedtempests by sea, who had never flinched before perils from savage menand from fever, on the shores of a hundred islands in the South Seas, should stay awake all night as his ship skirted the strange island ofErromanga?

It was because, having lived for all those years among the coralislands of the brown Polynesians of the Eastern Pacific, he was nowsailing to the New Hebrides, where the fierce black cannibal islandersof the Western Pacific slew one another. As he thought of the fiercemen of Erromanga he thought of the waving forests of brown hands hehad seen, the shouts of "Come back again to us!" that he had heardas he left his own islands. He knew how those people loved him in theSamoan Islands, but he could not rest while others lay far off whohad never heard the story of Jesus. "I cannot be content, " he said, "within the narrow limits of a single reef. "

But the black islanders were wild men who covered their dark faceswith soot and painted their lips with flaming red, yet their cruelhearts were blacker than their faces, and their anger more fiery thantheir scarlet lips. They were treacherous and violent savages whowould smash a skull by one blow with a great club; or leaping on a manfrom behind, would cut through his spine with a single stroke of theirtomahawks, and then drag him off to their cannibal oven. 

John Williams cared so much for his work of telling the islandersabout God their Father, that he lay awake wondering how he couldcarry it on among these wild people. It never crossed his mind thathe should hold back to save himself from danger. It was for this workthat he had crossed the world. 

"Let down the whale-boat. " His voice rang out without a tremor offear. His eyes were on the canoe in which three black Erromangans werepaddling across the bay. As the boat touched the water, he and thecrew of four dropped into her, with Captain Morgan and two friends, Harris and Cunningham. The oars dipped and flashed in the morning sunas the whale-boat flew along towards the canoe. When they reached it, Williams spoke in the dialects of his other islands, but none couldthe three savages in the canoe understand. So he gave them some beadsand fish-hooks as a present to show that he was a friend and again hisboat shot away toward the beach. 

They pulled to a creek where a brook ran down in a lovely valleybetween two mountains. On the beach stood some Erromangan natives, with their eyes (half fierce, half frightened) looking out under theirmatted jungle of hair. 

Picking up a bucket from the boat, Williams held it out to the chiefand made signs to show that he wished for water from the brook. Thechief took the bucket, and, turning, ran up the beach and disappeared. For a quarter of an hour they waited; and for half an hour. At last, when the sun was now high in the sky, the chief returned with thewater. 

Williams drank from the water to show his friendliness. Then hisfriend, Harris, swinging himself over the side of the boat, wadedashore through the cool, sparkling, shallow water and sat down. Thenatives ran away, but soon came back with cocoa-nuts and opened themfor him to drink. 

 * * * * *

"See, " said Williams, "there are boys playing on the beach; that is agood sign. "

"Yes, " answered Captain Morgan, "but there are no women, and when thesavages mean mischief they send their women away. "

Williams now waded ashore and Cunningham followed him. Captain Morganstopped to throw out the anchor of his little boat and then steppedout and went ashore, leaving his crew of four brown islanders restingon their oars. 

Williams and his two companions scrambled up the stony beach overthe grey stones and boulders alongside the tumbling brook for over ahundred yards. Turning to the right they were lost to sight from thewater-edge. Captain Morgan was just following them when he heard aterrified yell from the crew in the boat. 

Williams and his friends had gone into the bush, Harris in front, Cunningham next, and Williams last. Suddenly Harris, who haddisappeared in the bush, rushed out followed by yelling savages withclubs. Harris rushed down the bank of the brook, stumbled, and fellin. The water dashed over him, and the Erromangans, with the red furyof slaughter in their eyes, leapt in and beat in his skull with clubs. 

Cunningham, with a native at his heels with lifted club, stooped, picked up a great pebble and hurled it full at the savage who waspursuing him. The man was stunned. Turning again, Cunningham leaptsafely into the boat. 

Williams, leaving the brook, had rushed down the beach to leap intothe sea. Reaching the edge of the water, where the beach falls steeplyinto the sea, he slipped on a pebble and fell into the water. 

Cunningham, from the boat, hurled stones at the natives rushing atWilliams, who lay prostrate in the water with a savage over him withuplifted club. The club fell, and other Erromangans, rushing in, beathim with their clubs and shot their arrows into him until the ripplesof the beach ran red with his blood. 

The hero who had carried the flaming torch of peace on earth tothe savages on scores of islands across the great Pacific Ocean wasdead--the first martyr of Erromanga. 

 * * * * *

When _The Camden_ sailed back to Samoa, scores of canoes put out tomeet her. A brown Samoan guided the first canoe. 

"Missi William, " he shouted. 

"He is dead, " came the answer. 

The man stood as though stunned. He dropped his paddle; he drooped hishead, and great tears welled out from the eyes of this dark islanderand ran down his cheeks. 

The news spread like wildfire over the islands, and from alldirections came the natives crying in multitudes:

"Aue, [21] Williamu, Aue, Tama!" (Alas, Williams, Alas, our Father!)

And the chief Malietoa, [22] coming into the presence of Mrs. Williams, cried:

"Alas, Williamu, Williamu, our father, our father! He has turned hisface from us! We shall never see him more! He that brought us the goodword of Salvation is gone! O cruel heathen, they know not what theydid! How great a man they have destroyed!"

John Williams, the torch-bearer of the Pacific, whom the brownmen loved, the great pioneer, who dared death on the grey beachof Erromanga, sounds a morning bugle-call to us, a Reveillè to ourslumbering camps:

 "The daybreak call, Hark how loud and clear I hear it sound; Swift to your places, swiftto the head of the army, Pioneers, O Pioneers!"[23]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: A-oo-ay. ]

[Footnote 22: M[)a]-lee-ay-to-[)a]. ]

[Footnote 23: Walt Whitman. ]

CHAPTER VIII

KAPIOLANI, THE HEROINE OF HAWAII

_Kapiolani_

(Date of Incident, 1824)

"Pélé[24] the all-terrible, the fire goddess, will hurl her thunderand her stones, and will slay you, " cried the angry priests ofHawaii. [25] "You no longer pay your sacrifices to her. Once you gaveher hundreds of hogs, but now you give nothing. You worship the newGod Jehovah. She, the great Pélé, will come upon you, she andthe Husband of Thunder, with the Fire-Thruster, and the Red-FireCloud-Queen, they will destroy you altogether. "

The listening Hawaiians shuddered as they saw the shaggy priestscalling down the anger of Pélé. One of the priests was a gigantic manover six feet five inches high, whose strength was so terrible that hecould leap at his victims and break their bones by his embrace. 

Away there in the volcanic island[26] in the centre of the greatestocean in the world--the Pacific Ocean--they had always as childrenbeen taught to fear the great goddess. 

They were Christians; but they had only been Christians for a shorttime, and they still trembled at the name of the goddess Pélé, wholived up in the mountains in the boiling crater of the fiery volcano, and ruled their island. 

Their fathers had told them how she would get angry, and would pourout red-hot rivers of molten stone that would eat up all the trees andpeople and run hissing into the Pacific Ocean. There to that day wasthat river of stone--a long tongue of cold, hard lava--stretchingdown to the shore of the island, and here across the trees on themountain-top could be seen, even now, the smoke of her anger. Perhaps, after all, Pélé was greater than Jehovah--she was certainlyterrible--and she was very near!

"If you do not offer fire to her, as you used to do, " the priests wenton, "she will pour down her fire into the sea and kill all your fish. She will fill up your fishing grounds with the pahoehoe[27] (lava), and you will starve. Great is Pélé and greatly to be feared. "

The priests were angry because the preaching of the missionaries hadled many away from the worship of Pélé which, of course, meant fewerhogs for themselves; and now the whole nation on Hawaii, that volcanicisland of the seas, seemed to be deserting her. 

The people began to waver under the threats, but a brown-faced woman, with strong, fearless eyes that looked out with scorn on Pélé priests, was not to be terrified. 

"It is Kapiolani, [28] the chieftainess, " murmured the people to oneanother. "She is Christian; will she forsake Jehovah and return toPélé?"

Only four years before this, Kapiolani had--according to the custom ofthe Hawaiian chieftainesses, married many husbands, and she had givenway to drinking habits. Then she had become a Christian, giving up herdrinking and sending away all her husbands save one. She had thrownaway her idols and now taught the people in their huts the story ofChrist. 

"Pélé is nought, " she declared, "I will go to Kilawea, [29] themountain of the fires where the smoke and stones go up, and Pélé shallnot touch me. My God, Jehovah, made the mountain and the fires withinit too, as He made us all. "

So it was noised through the island that Kapiolani, the queenly, woulddefy Pélé the goddess. The priests threatened her with awful tormentsof fire from the goddess; her people pleaded with her not to dare thefires of Kilawea. But Kapiolani pressed on, and eighty of her peoplemade up their minds to go with her. She climbed the mountain paths, through lovely valleys hung with trees, up and up to where the hardrocky lava-river cut the feet of those who walked upon it. 

Day by day they asked her to go back, and always she answered, "If Iam destroyed you may believe in Pélé; if I live you must all believein the true God, Jehovah. "

As she drew nearer to the crater she saw the great cloud of smoke thatcame up from the volcano and felt the heat of its awful fires. But shedid not draw back. 

As she climbed upward she saw by the side of the path low bushes, andon them beautiful red and yellow berries, growing in clusters. Theberries were like large currants. 

"It is chelo, "[30] said the priests, "it is Pélé's berry. You must nottouch them unless we ask her. She will breathe fire on you. "

Kapiolani broke off a branch from one of the bushes regardless ofthe horrified faces of the priests. And she ate the berries, withoutstopping to ask the goddess for her permission. 

She carried a branch of the berries in her hand. If she had told themwhat she was going to do they would have been frenzied with fear andhorror. 

Up she climbed until the full terrors of the boiling crater of Kilaweaburst on her sight. Before her an immense gulf yawned in the shape ofthe crescent moon, eight miles in circumference and over a thousandfeet deep. Down in the smoking hollow, hundreds of feet beneath her, alake of fiery lava rolled in flaming waves against precipices ofrock. This ever-moving lake of molten fire is called: "The House ofEverlasting Burning. " This surging lake was dotted with tiny mountainislets, and, from the tops of their little peaks, pyramids of flameblazed and columns of grey smoke went up. From some of these littleislands streams of blazing lava rolled down into the lake of fire. Theair was filled with the roar of the furnaces of flame. 

Even the fearless Kapiolani stood in awe as she looked. But she didnot flinch, though here and there, as she walked, the crust of thelava cracked under her feet and the ground was hot with hidden fire. 

She came to the very edge of the crater. To come so far withoutoffering hogs and fish to the fiery goddess was in itself enough tobring a fiery river of molten lava upon her. Kapiolani offered nothingsave defiance. Audacity, they thought, could go no further. 

Here, a priestess of Pélé came, and raising her hands in threatdenounced death on the head of Kapiolani if she came further. Kapiolani pulled from her robe a book. In it--for it was herNew Testament--she read to the priestess of the one true, lovingFather-God. 

Then Kapiolani did a thing at which the very limbs of those whowatched trembled and shivered. She went to the edge of the crater andstepped over onto a jutting rock and let herself down and down towardthe sulphurous burning lake. The ground cracked under her feet andsulphurous steam hissed through crevices in the rock, as though thedemons of Pélé fumed in their frenzy. Hundreds of staring, wonderingeyes followed her, fascinated and yet horrified. 

Then she stood on a ledge of rock, and, offering up prayer and praiseto the God of all, Who made the volcano and Who made her, she cast thePélé berries into the lake, and sent stone after stone down into theflaming lava. It was the most awful insult that could be offered toPélé! Now surely she would leap up in fiery anger, and, with a hailof burning stones, consume Kapiolani. But nothing happened; andKapiolani, turning, climbed the steep ascent of the crater edge and atlast stood again unharmed among her people. She spoke to her people, telling them again that Jehovah made the fires. She called on them allto sing to His praise and, for the first time, there rang across thecrater of Kilawea the song of Christians. The power of the priestswas gone, and from that hour the people all over that island who hadtrembled and hesitated between Pélé and Christ turned to the worshipof our Lord Jesus, the Son of God the Father Almighty. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: Pay-lay. ]

[Footnote 25: Hah-wye-ee. ]

[Footnote 26: Discovered by Captain Cook in 1778. The first Christianmissionaries landed in 1819. Now the island is ruled by the UnitedStates of America. ]

[Footnote 27: Pa-h[=o]-è-h[=o]-è. ]

[Footnote 28: Kah-pèe-[=o]-l[)a]-nèe. She was high female chief, inher own right, of a large district. ]

[Footnote 29: Kil-a-wee-[)a]. The greatest active volcano in theworld. ]

[Footnote 30: Chay-lo. ]

CHAPTER IX

THE CANOE OF ADVENTURE

_Elikana_

(Date of Incident, 1861)

 "I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care. "

I

Manihiki Island looked like a tiny anchored canoe far away acrossthe Pacific, as Elikana glanced back from his place at the tiller. Hesang, meantime, quietly to himself an air that still rang in his ears, the tune that he and his brother islanders had sung in praise ofthe Power and Providence of God at the services on Manihiki. For theChristian people of the Penrhyn group of South Sea Islands had cometogether in April, 1861, for their yearly meeting, paddling from thedifferent quarters in their canoes through the white surge of thebreakers that thunder day and night round the island. 

Elikana looked ahead to where his own island of Rakahanga grew clearerevery moment on the sky-line ahead of them, though each time his craftdropped into the trough of the sea between the green curves of theleague-long ocean rollers the island was lost from sight. 

He and his six companions were sailing back over the thirty milesbetween Manihiki and Rakahanga, two of the many little lonely oceanislands that stud the Pacific like stars. 

They sailed a strange craft, for it cannot be called raft or canoeor hut. It was all these and yet was neither. Two canoes, forty-eightfeet long, sailed side by side. Between the canoes were spars, stretching across from one to the other, lashed to each boat andmaking a platform between them six feet wide. On this was built a hut, roofed with the beautiful braided leaves of the cocoa-nut palm. 

Overhead stretched the infinite sky. Underneath lay thousands offathoms of blue-green ocean, whose cold, hidden deeps among themountains and valleys of the awful ocean under-world held strangegoblin fish-shapes. And on the surface this hut of leaves and bambooswung dizzily between sky and ocean on the frail canoes. And in thecanoes and the hut were six brown Rakahangan men, two women, and achubby, dark-eyed child, who sat contented and tired, being lapped tosleep by the swaying waters. 

Above them the great sail made of matting of fibre, strained inthe breeze that drove them nearer to the haven where they would be. Already they could see the gleam of the Rakahanga beach with the rimof silver where the waves broke into foam. Then the breeze dropped. The fibre-sail flapped uneasily against the mast, while the two littlecanvas sails hung loosely, as the wind, with little warning, swunground, and smiting them in the face began to drive them back into theocean again. 

Elikana and his friends knew the sea almost like fish, from the timethey were babies. And they were little troubled by the turn of thebreeze, save that it would delay their homecoming. They tried in vainto make headway. Slowly, but surely they were driven back from land, till they could see that there was no other thing but just to turnabout and let her run back to Manihiki. In the canoes were enoughcocoa-nuts to feed them for days if need be, and two large calabashesof water. 

The swift night fell, but the wind held strong, and one man sat atthe tiller while two others baled out the water that leaked into thecanoes. They kept a keen watch, expecting to sight Manihiki; but whenthe dawn flashed out of the sky in the East, where the island shouldhave been, there was neither Manihiki nor any other land at all. Theyhad no chart nor compass; north and south and east and west stretchedthe wastes of the Pacific for hundreds of leagues. Only here and therein the ocean, and all unseen to them, like little groups of mushroomson a limitless prairie, lay groups of islets. 

They might, indeed, sail for a year without ever sighting any land;and one storm-driven wave of the great ocean could smite their littleegg-shell craft to the bottom of the sea. 

They gathered together in the hut and with anxious faces talked ofwhat they might do. They knew that far off to the southwest lay theislands of Samoa, and Rarotonga. So they set the bows of their craftsouthward. Morning grew to blazing noon and fell to evening and night, and nothing did they see save the glittering sparkling waters of theuncharted ocean, cut here and there by the cruel fin of a waitingshark. It was Saturday when they started; and night fell seven timeswhile their wonderful hut-boat crept southward along the water, tillthe following Friday. Then the wind changed, and, springing up fromthe south, drove them wearily back once more in their tracks, and thenbore them eastward. 

For another week they drove before the breeze, feeding on thecocoa-nuts. But the water in the calabashes was gone. Then onthe morning of the second Friday, the fourteenth day of theirsea-wanderings, just when the sun in mid heaven was blazing itsnoon-heat upon them and most of the little crew were lying underthe shade of the hut and the sail to doze away the hours of tedioushunger, they heard the cry of "Land!" and leaping to their feet gazedahead at the welcome sight. With sail and paddle they urged the crafton toward the island. 

Then night fell, and with it squalls of wind and rain cameand buffeted them till they had to forsake the paddles for thebailing-vessels to keep the boat afloat. Taking down the sails theyspread them flat to catch the pouring rain, and then poured thisprecious fresh water--true water of life to them--into theircalabashes. But when morning came no land could be seen anywhere. Itwas as though the island had been a land of enchantment and mirage, and now had faded away. Yet hope sprang in them erect and glad nextday when land was sighted again; but the sea and the wind, as thoughdriven by the spirits of contrariness, smote them back. 

For two more days they guided the canoe with the tiller and tried toset her in one steady direction. Then, tired and out of heart, aftersixteen days of ceaseless and useless effort, they gave it up and lether drift, for the winds and currents to take her where they would. 

At night each man stood in his canoe almost starving and parched withthirst, with aching back, stooping to dip the water from the canoe andrising to pour it over the side. For hour after hour, while the calmmoon slowly climbed the sky, each slaved at his dull task. Lulled bythe heave and fall of the long-backed rollers as they slid under thekeels of the canoes, the men nearly dropped asleep where theystood. The quiet waters crooned to them like a mother singing an oldlullaby--crooned and called, till a voice deep within them said, "Itis better to lie down and sleep and die than to live and fight andstarve. "

Then a moan from the sleeping child, or a sight of a streaming rayof moonlight on the face of its mother would send that nameless Voiceshivering back to its deep hiding-place--and the man would stoop andbail again. 

Each evening as it fell saw their anxious eyes looking west and northand south for land, and always there was only the weary waste ofwaters. And as the sun rose, they hardly dared open their eyes to theunbroken rim of blue-grey that circled them like a steel prison. Theysaw the thin edge of the moon grow to full blaze and then fade to acorn sickle again as days and nights grew to weeks and a whole monthhad passed. 

Every morning, as the pearl-grey sea turned to pink and then togleaming blue, they knelt on the raft between the canoes and turnedtheir faces up to their Father in prayer, and never did the sun sinkbehind the rim of waters without the sound of their voices rising intothe limitless sky with thanks for safe-keeping. 

Slowly the pile of cocoa-nuts lessened. Each one of them with itssweet milk and flesh was more precious to them than a golden chaliceset with rubies. The drops of milk that dripped from them were morethan ropes of pearls. 

At last eight Sundays had followed one upon another; and now at theend of the day there was only the half of one cocoa-nut remaining. When that was gone--all would be over. So they knelt down under thecloudless sky on an evening calm and beautiful. They were on thatinvisible line in the Great Pacific where the day ends and begins. Those seven on the tiny craft were, indeed, we cannot but believe, thelast worshippers in all the great world-house of God as Sunday drewto its end just where they were. Was it to be the last time that theywould pray to God in this life?

Prayer ended; night was falling. Elikana the leader, who had kepttheir spirits from utterly failing, stood up and gazed out with greatanxious eyes before the last light should fail. 

"Look, there upon the edge of the sea where the sun sets. Is it--" Hecould hardly dare to believe that it was not the mirage of his wearybrain. But one and another and then all peered out through the swiftlywaning light and saw that indeed it was land. 

Then a squall of wind sprang up, blowing them away from the land. Wasthis last hope, by a fine ecstasy of torture, to be dangled beforethem and then snatched away? But with the danger came the help; withthe wind came the rain; cool, sweet, refreshing, life-giving water. Then the squall of wind dropped and changed. They hoisted the one sailthat had not blown to tatters, and drove for land. 

Yet their most awful danger still lay before them. The roar of thebreakers on the cruel coral reef caught their ears. But there wasnothing for it but to risk the peril. They were among the breakerswhich caught and tossed them on like eggshells. The scourge of thesurf swept them; a woman, a man--even the child, were torn from themand ground on the ghastly teeth of the coral. Five were swept overwith the craft into the still, blue lagoon, and landing they fellprone upon the shore, just breathing and no more, after the giantbuffeting of the thundering rollers, following the long, slowstarvation of their wonderful journey in the hut on the canoes among"the waters of the wondrous isles. "

 "Wake: the silver dusk returning Up the beach of darkness brims, And the ship of sunrise burning Strands upon the eastern rims. "

II

Thrown up by the ocean in the darkness like driftwood, Elikana and hiscompanions lay on the grey shore. Against the dim light of the starsand beyond the beach of darkness they could see the fronds ofthe palms waving. The five survivors were starving, and the greencocoa-nuts hung above them, filled with food and drink. But theirbodies, broken and tormented as they were by hunger and the batteringbreakers, refused even to rise and climb for the food that meant life. So they lay there, as though dead. 

 * * * * *

Over the ridge of the beach came a man. His pale copper skin shone inthe fresh sunlight of the morning. His quick black eyes were caught bythe sight of torn clothing hanging on a bush. Moving swiftly down thebeach of pounded coral, he saw a man lying with arms thrown out, facedownward. Turning the body over Faivaatala[31] found that the man wasdead. Taking the body in his arms he staggered with it up the beach, and placed it under the shade of the trees. Returning he found theliving five. Their gaunt bodies and the broken craft on the shore toldhim without words the story of their long drifting over the wildernessof the waters. 

Without stopping to waste words in empty sympathy with starving men, Faivaatala ran to the nearest cocoa-nut tree and, climbing it, threwdown luscious nuts. Those below quickly knocked off the tops, drankdeep draughts of the cool milk and then ate. Coming down again, Faivaatala kindled a fire and soon had some fish grilling for thesestrange wanderers thrown up on the tiny islet. 

They had no time to thank him before he ran off and swiftly paddledto Motutala, the island where he lived, to tell the story of thesestrange castaways. He came back with other helpers in canoes, and thefive getting aboard were swiftly paddled to Motutala. 

As the canoes skimmed over the surface of the great lagoon Elikanaand his friends could see, spread out in a great semi-circle thatstretched to the horizon, the long low coral islets crowned with palmswhich form part of the Ellice Islands. 

The islanders, men, women, and children, ran down the beach to see thenewcomers and soon had set apart huts for them and made them welcome. Elikana gathered them round him, and began to tell them about thelove of Jesus and the protecting care of God the Father. It all seemedstrange to them, but quickly they learned from him, and he began toteach them and their children. This went on for four months, till oneday Elikana said: "I must go away and learn more so that I can teachyou more. "

But they had become so fond of Elikana that they said: "No, you mustnot leave us, " and it was only when he promised to come back withanother teacher to help him, that they could bring themselves to partwith him. So when a ship came to the island to trade in cocoa-nutsElikana went aboard and sailed to Samoa to the London MissionarySociety's training college there at Malua. 

 * * * * *

"A ship! A ship!" The cry was taken up through the island, and thepeople running down the beach saw a large sailing vessel. Boats putdown and sculls flashed as sailors pulled swiftly to the shore. 

They landed and the people gathered round to see and to hear what theywould say. 

"Come onto our ship, " said these men, who had sailed there from Peru, "and we will show you how you can be rich with many knives and muchcalico. "

But the islanders shook their heads and said they would stay wherethey were. Then a wicked white man named Tom Rose, who lived on theisland and knew how much the people were looking forward to the daywhen Elikana would come back to teach them, went to the traders andwhispered what he knew to them. 

So the Peruvian traders, with craft shining in their eyes, turnedagain to the islanders and said: "If you will come with us, we willtake you where you will be taught all that men can know about God. "

At this the islanders broke out into glad cries and speaking to oneanother said: "Let us go and learn these things. "

The day came for sailing, and as the sun rose, hundreds of brown feetwere running to the beach, children dancing with excitement, womensaying "Goodbye" to their husbands--men, who for the first time inall their lives were to leave their tiny islet for the wonderful worldbeyond the ocean. 

So two hundred of them went on board. The sails were hoisted and theywent away never to return; sailed away not to learn of Jesus, but tothe sting of the lash and the shattering bullet, the bondage of theplantations, and to death at the hands of those merciless beasts ofprey, the Peruvian slavers. 

 * * * * *

Years passed and a little fifty-ton trading vessel came to anchoroutside the reef. One man and then another and another got down intothe little boat and pulled for the shore. Elikana had returned. Thewomen and children ran down to meet him--but few men were there, fornearly all had gone. 

"Where is this one? Where is the other?" cried Elikana, with sad faceas he looked around on them. 

"Gone, gone, " came the answer; "carried away by the man-stealingships. "

Elikana turned to the white missionary who had come with him, to askwhat they could do. 

"We will leave Joane and his wife here, " replied Mr. Murray. 

 * * * * *

So a teacher from Samoa stayed there and taught the people, whileElikana went to begin work in an island near by. 

To-day a white lady missionary has gone to live in the Ellice Islands, and the people are Christians, and no slave-trader can come to snatchthem away. 

So there sailed over the waters of the wondrous isles first the boatof sunrise and then the ship of darkness, and last of all the shipof the Peace of God. The ship of darkness had seemed for a time toconquer, but her day is now over; and to-day on that beach, as thesunlight brims over the edge of the sea, and a new Lord's Day dawns, you may hear the islanders sing their praise to the Light of theWorld, Who shines upon them and keeps them safe. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 31: F[)a]-ee-v[)a] t[)a] l[=a]. ]

CHAPTER X

THE ARROWS OF SANTA CRUZ

_Bishop Patteson_

(Date of Incident--August 15th, 1864)

The brown crew of _The Southern Cross_ breathed freely again as theanchor swung into place and the schooner began to nose her way outinto the open Pacific. They were hardened to dangers, but the Islandof Tawny Cannibals had strained their nerve, by its hourly perilsfrom club and flying arrow. The men were glad to see their ship's bowsplunge freely again through the long-backed rollers. 

As they set her course to the Island of Santa Cruz the crew talkedtogether of the men of the island they had left. In his cabin sat agreat bronzed bearded man writing a letter to his own people far awayon the other side of the world. Here are the very words that he wroteas he told the story of one of the dangers through which they had justpassed on the island:

 "As I sat on the beach with a crowd about me, most of them suddenly jumped up and ran off. Turning my head I saw a man (from the boat they saw two) coming to me with club uplifted. I remained sitting and held out a few fish-hooks to him, but one or two men jumped up and, seizing him by the waist, forced him off. 

 "After a few minutes I went back to the boat. I found out that a poor fellow called Moliteum was shot dead two months ago by a white trader for stealing a bit of calico. The wonder was, not that they wanted to avenge the death of their kinsman, but that others should have prevented it. How could they possibly know that I was not one of the wicked set? Yet they did.... The plan of going among the people unarmed makes them regard me as a friend. "

Then he says of these men who had just tried to kill him: "The people, though constantly fighting, and cannibals and the rest of it, are tome very attractive. "

The ship sailed on till they heard ahead of them the beating of thesurf on the reef of Santa Cruz. Behind the silver line of the breakersthe waving fronds of her palms came into sight. They put _The SouthernCross_ in, cast anchor, and let a boat down from her side. Into theboat tumbled a British sailor named Pearce, a young twenty-year-oldEnglishman named Atkin, and three brown South-Sea Island boys from themissionary training college for native teachers on Norfolk Island, and their leader, Bishop Patteson, the white man who, having faced theclubs of savages on a score of islands, never flinched from walkinginto peril again to lead them to know of "the best Man in the world, Jesus Christ. " These brown boys were young helpers of Bishop Patteson. And one of them especially, Fisher Young, would have died for hisgreat white leader gladly. They were like father and son. 

The reef, covered at mid-tide with curling waters mottled with thefoam of the broken waves, was alive with men; while the beach beyondwas black with crowds of the wild islanders who had come down to seethe strange visitors from the ship. The four men sculled the boaton to the edge of the reef and then rested on their oars as Pattesonswung himself over the side into the cool water. He waded across thereef between the hosts of savages, and in every hand was a club orspear or a six-foot wooden bow with an arrow ready to notch in itsbamboo string. 

Patteson had come to make friends with them. So he entered a darkwattled house and sat down to talk. The doorway was filled withthe faces of wondering men. As he looked on them a strange gleam oflonging came into his eyes and a smile of great tenderness softenedthe strength of his brown face--the longing and the tenderness ofa shepherd looking for wandering sheep who are lost on the wildmountains of the world. 

Then he rose, left the house, and went back to the boat. The water wasnow one seething cauldron of men--walking, splashing, swimming. Some, as Patteson climbed into his boat, caught hold of the gunwale andcould hardly be made to loosen their hold. The four young fellows inthe boat swung their oars and got her under way, but they had madebarely half a dozen strokes when, without warning, an arrow whizzedthrough the air into the boat. A cloud of arrows followed. 

Six canoes were now filled with savage Santa Cruzans, who surroundedthe boat and joined in the shooting. Patteson, who was in the sternbetween his boys and the bowmen, had not shipped the rudder, sohe held it up, as the boat shot ahead of the canoes, to shield offarrows. 

Turning round to see whither his now rudderless boat was being pulled, he saw that they were heading for a little bay in the reef, whichwould have wrecked their hopes of safety. 

"Pull, port oars, pull on steadily, " shouted Patteson; and they madefor _The Southern Cross_. 

As he called to them he saw Pearce, the young British sailor, lyingbetween the thwarts with the long shaft of an arrow in his chest, anda young Norfolk Islander with an arrow under his left eye. Thearrows flew around them in clouds, and suddenly Fisher Young--thenineteen-year-old Polynesian whom he loved as a son--who was pullingstroke, gave a faint scream. He was shot through the left wrist. 

"Look out, sir! close to you, " cried one of his crew. But the arrowswere all around him. All the way to the schooner the canoes skimmedover the water chasing the boat. The four youths, including thewounded, pulled on bravely and steadily. At last they reached the shipand climbed on board, while the canoes--fearing vengeance from the menon the schooner--turned and fled. 

Once aboard, Bishop Patteson knelt by the side of Pearce, drew outthe arrow which had run more than five inches deep into his chest, and bound up his wound. Turning to Fisher, he found that the arrow hadgone through the wrist and had broken off in the wound. Taking holdof the point of the arrow where it stood out on the lower side of thewrist, Patteson pulled it through, though the agony of the boy wasvery great. 

The arrows were wooden-headed and not poisoned. The wounds seemed tobe healing, but a few days later Fisher said, "I can't make out whatmakes my jaws feel so stiff. "

Fisher Young was the grandson of fierce, foul Pitcairn Islandcannibals, and was himself a brave and pure Christian lad. He hadfaced death with his master many times on coral reefs, in savagevillages, on wild seas and under the clubs of Pacific islanders. Nowhe was face to face with something more difficult than a swiftand dangerous adventure--the slow, dying agony of lockjaw. He grewsteadily worse in spite of everything that Patteson could do. 

Near to the end he said faintly, "Kiss me; I am very glad I was doingmy duty. Tell my father that I was in the path of duty, and he will beso glad. Poor Santa Cruz people!"

He spoke in that way of the people who had killed him. The young brownhero lies to-day, as he would have wished, in the port that was namedafter the Bishop whom he loved, and who was his hero, Port Patteson. 

"I loved him, " said Patteson, "as I think I never loved anyone else. "Fisher's love to his Bishop had been that of a youth to the hero whomhe worships, but Patteson had led that brown islander still further, for he had taught the boy to love the Hero of all heroes, JesusChrist. 

CHAPTER XI

FIVE KNOTS IN A PALM LEAF

_The Death of Patteson_

(Date of Incident, September 20th, 1871)

The masts of the schooner _The Southern Cross_ swung gently to andfro across the darkening sky as the long, calm rollers of the Pacificslipped past her hull. Her bows spread only a ripple of water as theslight breeze bore her slowly towards the island of Nukapu. [32]

On deck stood a group of men, their brown faces turned to a tall, bearded man. As the light of the setting sun gleamed on his bronzeface, it kindled his brave eyes and showed the grave smile that playedabout the corners of his mouth. They all looked on him with thatworship which strong men give to a hero, who can be both brave andkindly. But "he wist not that his face shone" for them. 

Patteson read to these young men from a Book; and the words thathe read were these: "And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God andsaying, 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. ' And he knelt down and cried, with a loud voice, 'Lord, lay not this sin to their charge'; and whenhe had said this, he fell asleep. "

When he had spoken to them strongly on these words and said how it maycome to any man who worships Jesus to suffer so, Bishop Patteson andall except the man on watch went to their sleep. The South Sea Islandmen and the young Englishman who were there remembered all theirlives what Patteson had said that evening; partly because these menthemselves had seen him brave such a death as Stephen's again andagain, and, indeed, they had themselves stood in peril by his sideface to face with threatening savages, but even more because of theadventure that came to them on the next day. 

At dawn they sighted land, and by eleven o'clock they were so nearthat they could see, shimmering in the heat of the midsummer sun, thewhite beach of coral sand and the drooping palms that make all theisland of Nukapu green. [33] Looking out under their hands to theisland, the men aboard _The Southern Cross_ could see four greatcanoes, with their sails set, hovering like hawks about the circlingreef which lay between them and the island. On the reef the blue wavesbeat and broke into a gleaming line of cool white foam. 

The slight breeze was hardly strong enough to help the ship to makethe island. It was as though she knew the danger of that day and wouldnot carry Patteson and his men into the perils that lay hidden behindthe beauty of that island of Nukapu. 

Patteson knew the danger. He knew that, but a little time before theirvisit, white men had come in a ship, had let down their boats androwed to the men of the island, had pretended to make friends, andthen, shooting some and capturing others, had sped back to the ship, carrying off the captives to work for them on the island of Fiji. Thelaw of the savages of the islands was "Blood for blood. " And tothem all white men belonged to one tribe. The peril that lay beforePatteson was that they might attack him in revenge for the foul crimeof those white traders. 

Just before noon the order was given to lower a boat from _TheSouthern Cross_. Patteson went down into it, and sat in the stern, while Mr. Atkin (his English helper), Stephen Taroniara, James Minipa, and John Nonono came with him to row. The boat swung toward thereef. Between the reef and the island lay two miles of the blue andglittering lagoon. 

By the time the boat reached the reef six canoes full of warriors hadcome together there. The tide was not high enough to float the boatacross the reef. The Nukapuan natives said they would haul the boat upon to the reef, but the Bishop did not think it wise to consent. Thentwo of the savages said to "Bisipi, " as they called the Bishop:

"Will you come into our canoe?"

Without a moment's hesitation, knowing that confidence was the bestway to win them, he stepped into the canoe. As he entered they gavehim a basket with yams and other fruit in it. 

As the tide was low, the Bishop and the savages were obliged to wadeover the reef, dragging the canoe across to the deeper lagoon within. The boat's crew of _The Southern Cross_ stopped in the outer sea, drifting on the tide with the other four Nukapu canoes. They watchedthe Bishop cross the lagoon in the canoe and land far off upon thebeach. Then he went from their sight. 

The brown men and the white man in the boat were trying to talk to theislanders in the remaining canoes outside the reef, when suddenly asavage jumped up in the nearest canoe, not ten yards from them, andcalled out in his native language:

"Have you anything like this?"

He drew his bow to his ear and shot a yard arrow. His companionsin the other canoes leapt to their feet and sent showers of arrowswhizzing at the men in the boat, shouting as they aimed:

"This for New Zealand man, this for Bernu man, this for Motu man. "

Pulling away with all their speed, Patteson's men were soon out ofrange, but an arrow had nailed John Nonono's cap to his head. Stephenlay in the bottom of the boat with six arrows in his chest andshoulders. Mr. Atkin, the white man, had one in his left shoulder. 

They reached the ship and were helped on board. The arrow head wasdrawn out from Mr. Atkin's shoulder, and was found to be made of asharpened human bone. No sooner was the arrow head out than Mr. Atkinleapt back into the boat, insisting on going back to find Patteson. He alone knew how and where the reef could be crossed on the tide thatwas now rising. 

So they got a boat's crew from the ship, put a beaker full of waterand some food in the boat, and pulled toward the reef. 

At half-past four the tide was high enough to carry them across, andthey rowed over, looking through their glasses anxiously at the whiteshore which was lined with brown figures. A canoe rowed out towardsthem bringing another canoe in tow. As the boat went towards theisland, one canoe cast off the other, and went back; the second canoedrifted towards them slowly on the still waters of the blue lagoon. 

As it came nearer they saw that in the middle of it lay Somethingmotionless, covered with matting. They pulled alongside, leaned overthe canoe, and lifted into their boat--the body of Patteson. The emptycanoe now drifted away. 

A yell went up from the savages on the shore. The boat was pulledtowards the ship and then the body lifted up and laid on the deck. Ithad been rolled in the native matting as a shroud, tied at the headand feet. They unrolled the mat, and there on the face of the deadBishop was still that wonderful, patient and winning smile, as of onewho at the moment when his head was beneath the uplifted club said, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge, " and had then fallen asleep. 

There was a palm leaf fastened over his breast. In its long leafletsfive knots were made. On the body, in the head, the side, and thelegs were five wounds. And five men in Fiji were at work in theplantations--men captured from Nukapu by brutal white traders. 

It was the vengeance of the savage--the call of "blood for blood"; andthe death of Patteson lies surely upon the head of those white traderswho carried death and captivity to the white coral shore of Nukapu. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 32: Noo-k[)a]-poo. ]

[Footnote 33: Midsummer day on the Equator, September 21. ]

CHAPTER XII

THE BOY OF THE ADVENTUROUS HEART

_Chalmers, the Boy_

(Born 1841, martyred 1901)

The rain had poured down in such torrents that even the hardy boys ofInverary in Scotland had been driven indoors. Now the sky had cleared, and the sun was shining again after the great storm. The boys were outagain, and a group of them were walking toward the little stream ofAray which tumbled through the glen down to Loch Fyne. But the streamwas "little" no longer. 

As the boys came near to the place called "The Three Bridges, " wherea rough wooden bridge crossed the torrent, they walked faster towardsthe stream, for they could hear it roaring in a perfect flood whichshook the timbers of the bridge. The great rainfall was running fromthe hills through a thousand streamlets into the main torrent. 

Suddenly there came a shout and a scream. A boy dashed toward themsaying that one of his schoolmates had fallen into the rushing water, and that the full spate of the Aray was carrying him away down to thesea. The boys stood horrified--all except one, who rushed forward, pulling off his jacket as he ran, leapt down the bank to the lowerside of the bridge, and, clinging to the timber, held to it with onearm while he stretched out the other as the drowning boy was beingcarried under the bridge, seized him, and held him tightly with hisleft hand. 

James Chalmers--the boy who had gone to the rescue--though only tenyears old, could swim. Letting go of the bridge, while still holdingthe other boy with one arm, he allowed the current to carry them bothdown to where the branches hung over the bank to the water's surface. Seizing one of these, he dragged himself and the boy toward the bank, whence he was helped to dry land by his friends. 

The boy whom young James Chalmers had saved belonged to a rivalschool. Often the wild-blooded boys (like their fierce Highlandancestors who fought clan against clan) had attacked the boys of thisschool and had fought them. James, whose father was a stonemason andwhose mother was a Highland lassie born near Loch Lomond, was theleader in these battles, but all the fighting was forgotten when heheard that a boy was in danger of his life, and so he had plunged inas swiftly to save him as he would have done for any boy from his ownschool. 

We do not hear that James was clever at lessons in his school, butwhen there was anything to be done, he had the quickest hand, thekeenest eye, the swiftest mind, and the most daring heart in all thevillage. 

Though he loved the hills and glens and the mountain torrent, James, above everything else, revelled in the sea. One day a little later on, after the rescue of his friend from drowning, James stood on thequay at Inverary gazing across the loch and watching the sails of thefishing boats, when he heard a loud cry. 

He looked round. There, on the edge of the quay, stood a motherwringing her hands and calling out that her child had fallen into thewater and was drowning. James ran along the quay, and taking off hiscoat as he dashed to the spot, he dived into the water and, seizingthe little child by the dress, drew him ashore. The child seemed dead, but when they laid him on the quayside, and moved his arms, his breathbegan to come and go again and the colour returned to his cheeks. 

Twice Chalmers had saved others from drowning. Three times he himself, as the result of his daring adventures in the sea, was carried home, supposed to be dead by drowning. 

At another time he, with two other boys, thrust a tarred herring-boxinto the sea from the sandy shore between the two rocky points wherethe western sea came up the narrow Loch Fyne. 

"Look at James!" shouted one of the boys to his companions as Chalmersleapt into the box. 

It almost turned over, and he swayed and rolled and then steadied asthe box swung out from the shore. 

The other boys, laughing and shouting, towed him and his boat throughthe sea as they walked along the shore. Suddenly, as they talked, theystaggered forward. The cord had snapped and they fell on the sand, still laughing, but when they stood up again the laughter died ontheir lips. James was being swiftly carried out by the current tosea--and in a tarred herring-box! He had no paddle, and his hands wereof no effect in trying to move the boat toward the shore. 

The boys shouted. There came an answering cry from the door of acottage in the village. A fisherman came swinging down the beach, strode to his boat, took the two boys into it, and taking an oarhimself and giving the other to the two boys, they pulled out with thetide. They reached James and rescued him just as the herring-box wassinking. He went home to the little cottage where he lived, and hismother gave him a proper thrashing. 

Some of James' schoolfellows used to go on Sundays to a school inInverary. He made up his mind to join them. The class met in thevestry of the United Presbyterian Church there. After their lessonthey went together into the church to hear a closing address. Mr. Meikle, the minister, who was also superintendent of the school, oneafternoon took from his pocket a magazine (a copy of the "PresbyterianRecord"). From this magazine he read a letter from a brave missionaryin the far-off cannibal islands of Fiji. The letter told of the savagelife there and of how, already, the story of Jesus was leading the menno longer to drag their victims to the cannibal ovens, nor to pileup the skulls of their enemies so as to show their own bravery. Thewriter said they were beginning happier lives in which the awfulterror of the javelin and the club, and the horror of demons andwitches was gone. 

When Mr. Meikle had finished reading the magazine he folded it upagain and then looked round on all the boys in the school, saying:

"I wonder if there is a boy here this afternoon who will become amissionary, and by and by bring the Gospel to other such cannibals asthose?"

Even as the minister said those words, the adventurous heart of youngChalmers leapt in reply as he said to himself, "Yes, God helping me, Iwill. "

He was just a freckled, dark-haired boy with hazel eyes, a boytingling with the joy of the open air and with the love of the heaveand flow of the sea. But when he made up his mind to do a thing, however great the difficulties or dangers, James usually carried itthrough. 

So it came about that some years later in 1866, having been trainedand accepted by the London Missionary Society, Chalmers, as a youngman, walked across the gangway to a fine new British-built clippership. It had been christened _John Williams_ after the great heromissionary[34] who gave up his life on the beach of Erromanga. 

This boy, who loved the sea and breathed deep with joy in the face ofadventure and peril, had set his face towards the deep, long breakersof the far-off Pacific. He was going to carry to the South Seas thestory of the Hero and Saviour Whom he had learnt to love within thesound of the Atlantic breakers that dashed and fretted against therocks of Western Scotland. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 34: See Chapter VII. ]

CHAPTER XIII

THE SCOUT OF PAPUA[35]

_Chalmers, the Friend_

(Date of Incident, about 1893)

The quick puffing of the steam launch _Miro_ was the only sound tobreak the stillness of the mysterious Aivai[36] River. On the launchwere three white people--two men and a woman. They were the first whohad ever broken the silence of that stream. 

They gazed out under the morning sun along the dead level of thePurari[37] delta, for they had left behind them the rolling breakersof the Gulf of Papua in order to explore this dark river. Away to thesouth rolled the blue waters between this vast island of New Guineaand Northern Australia. 

They saw on either bank the wild tangle of twisted mangroves withtheir roots higher than a man, twined together like writhing serpents. They peered through the thick bush with its green leaves drooping downto the very water's edge. But mostly they looked ahead over the bow ofthe boat along the green-brown water that lay ahead of them, dappledwith sunlight under the trees. For they were facing an unknowndistrict where savage Papuans lived--as wild as hawks. They did notknow what adventure might meet them at the next bend of the river. 

"Splendid! Splendid!" cried one of the white men, a bearded giantwhose flashing eyes and mass of brown hair gave him the look of alion. "We will make it the white woman's peace. Bravo!" And he turnedto Mrs. Abel, whose face lit up with pleasure at his happy excitement. 

"No white man has even seen the people of Iala, "[38] said Tamate--forthat was the native name given to James Chalmers, the Scottish boywho had now gone out to far-off Papua as a missionary. [39] "Ikothere"--and he pointed to a stalwart Papuan who stood by thefunnel--"is the only one of us who has seen them and can speak theirtongue. 

"It is dangerous for your wife to go among these people, " he went on, turning to Mr. Abel, "but she will help us more than anything elsepossibly can to make friends. " And Mr. Abel nodded, for he knew thatwhen the Papuans mean to fight they send their women and childrenaway; and that when they saw Mrs. Abel they would believe that thewhite people came as friends and not enemies. 

As the steamer carried this scouting party against the swift currentup the river toward Iala, Tamate wanted to find how far up the riverthe village lay. So he beckoned Iko to him. Tamate did not know a wordof the dialect which Iko spoke, but he had with him an old wrinkledPapuan, who knew Iko's language, and who looked out with worshippingeyes at the great white man who was his friend. So Tamate, wishingto ask Iko how far away the village of Iala was, spoke first to oldVaaburi, [40] and then Vaaburi asked Iko. 

Iko stretched out his dark forefinger, and made them understand thatthat finger meant the length of their journey to Iala. Then with hisother hand he touched his forefinger under the second joint to showhow far they had travelled on their journey--not a third of thedistance. 

Hour after hour went by, as the steamer drove her way through theswiftly running waters of Aivai. And ever Iko pointed further andfurther up his finger until at last they had reached his claw-likenail. By three o'clock the middle of the nail was reached. The eyes ofall looked anxiously ahead. At every curve of the river they strainedtheir sight to see if Iala were in view. How would these savage peoplewelcome the white men and woman in their snorting great canoe that hadno paddles, nor oars? There came a sharp bend in the river, and thena long straight reach of water lying between the forest-covered banks. Suddenly Iko called out, and Tamate and Mr. And Mrs. Abel peeredahead. 

The great trees of the river nearly met above their heads, and only anarrow strip of sky could be seen. 

There in the distance were the houses of Iala, close clustered on bothbanks of the steaming river. They stood on piles of wood driven intothe mud, like houses on stilts, and their high-pointed bamboo roofsstood out over the river like gigantic poke-bonnets. 

"Slow, " shouted Tamate to the engineer. The _Miro_ slackened speedtill she just stemmed the running current and no more. 

"It will be a bit of a shock to them, " said Tamate to his friends, "to see this launch. We will give them time to get their wits togetheragain. "

Looking ahead through their glasses, the white men and Mrs. Abel couldsee canoes swiftly crossing and re-crossing the river and men rushingabout. 

"Full speed ahead, " cried Tamate again, and then after a fewrevolutions of the engine, "Go slow. It will never do, " he said, "todrop amongst them while they are in that state. They will settle downpresently. " And then, as he looked up at the sky between the wavingbranches of the giant trees, "we have got a good two hours' daylightyet, " he said. 

Life and death to Tamate and his friends hung in the balance, forthey were three people unarmed, and here were dark savage warriors inhundreds. Everything depended on his choosing just the right momentfor going into the midst of these people. So he watched them closely, knitting his shaggy eyebrows together as he measured their state ofmind by their actions. He was the Scout of Christ in Papua, and hemust be watchful and note all those things that escape most men butmean so much to trained eyes. Tamate seemed to have a strange giftthat made him able, even where other men could tell nothing, to sayexactly when it was, and when it was not, possible to go among a wild, untouched tribe. 

Now the bewildered Ialan savages had grown quieter. Tamate called tothe engineer to drive ahead once more. Slowly the launch forged herway through the running waters and drew nearer and nearer to thecentre of Iala. 

There on either side stood the houses in long rows stretching up theriver, and on the banks hundreds of men stood silent and as still astrees. Their canoes lay half in and half out of the water ready forinstant launching. In each canoe stood its crew erect and waiting. Allthe women and children had been sent away, for these men were out tofight. They did not know whether this strange house upon the waterwith the smoke coming from its chimney was the work of gods or devils. Still they stood there to face the strange thing and, if need be, tofight. 

Brown Iko stood in the bows of the _Miro_; near him stood Tamate. Thenthe engine stopped and the anchor was dropped overboard. The savagesstood motionless. Not a weapon could be seen. The engineer, hearingthe anchor-chain rattle through the hole, blew the steam-whistle insimple high spirits. As the shriek of the whistle echoed underthe arches of the trees, with the swiftness of lightning the Ialanwarriors swung their long bows from behind their bodies. Withoutstooping each caught up an arrow that stood between his toes and withone movement fixed it and pulled the bamboo strings of their blackbows till the notch of the arrows touched their ears. A hundred arrowswere aimed at the hearts of Tamate and Mr. And Mrs. Abel. 

Swiftly Iko stood upon the bulwark of the _Miro_, and shouted just oneword at the top of his voice. It was the Ialan word for "Peace. " Andagain he shouted it, and yet again "Peace, Peace!"

Then he cried out "Pouta!"[41] It was the name of the chief of thesesavages. They had but to let the arrows from their bows and all wouldhave been over. There was silence. What order would Pouta give?

Then from the bank on their right came the sound of an answeringvoice. In a flash every arrow was taken from its bow, and again not aweapon was to be seen. 

Iko then called out again to Pouta, and Tamate told Iko what he was tosay to his friend, the savage chief. For some minutes the conversationwent on. At last Iko came to the point of asking for a canoe to takethem ashore. 

Chief Pouta hesitated. Then he gave his command, and a large canoe waslaunched from the bank into the river and slowly paddled towards the_Miro_. 

As the canoe came towards them, Tamate turned to Mrs. Abel, who hadstood there without flinching with all the arrows pointed toward theboat; and he spoke words like these: "Your bravery is our strength. Seeing you makes them believe that we come for peace. You give themgreater confidence in us than all our words. "

By this time the canoe had paddled alongside the launch. Tamate wentover the side first into the canoe, then Mrs. Abel, then Mr. Abel, Iko, and Vaaburi. The canoe pushed off again and paddled toward thelanding place, where a crowd of Ialan savages filled every inch ofspace. 

As soon as the bow of the canoe touched the bank, Tamate, withouthesitating a second, stepped out with Iko. Together they walked up tothe chief Pouta, and Tamate put his arms around him in an embrace ofpeace. 

Pouta, standing on a high place, shouted to all his warriors. But noneof the white people knew a word of his meaning. 

Look where they would, in every direction, this white woman and thetwo men were completely surrounded by an unbroken mass of wild andarmed savages, who stood gazing upon the strange apparitions in theirmidst. 

Tamate, without a pause, perfectly calm, and showing no signs of fear, spoke to Pouta and his men through old Vaaburi and Iko. 

"We have come, " he said, "so that we may be friends. We have comewithout weapons. We have brought with us a woman of our tribe, forwe come in peace. We are strangers. But we come with great things totell. Some day we will come again and will stay with you and will tellyou all our message. To-day we come only to make friends. "

Then Iko closed his eyes and prayed in the language of the people ofIala. 

Turning to his friends when the prayer was over, Tamate said quietly:"Now, we must get aboard as quickly as we possibly can. My plan for afirst visit is to come, make friends and get away again swiftly. Whenwe are gone they will talk to one another about us. Next time we comewe shall meet friends. "

So they walked down through an avenue of armed Papuans to the bank, and got into the canoe again: the paddles flashed as she drove swiftlythrough the water toward the launch. As they climbed her side, theanchor was weighed, the _Miro_ swung round, her engines started, and, carried down by the swift stream, she slipped past the packed massesof silent men who lined the banks. 

It is a great thing to be a pathfinder through a country which noman has penetrated before. But it is a greater thing to do as thesemissionary-scouts did on their journey up the Aivai and find a pathof friendship into savage lives. To do that was the greatest joy inTamate's life. For he said, when he had spent many years in this work:

"Recall the twenty-one years, give me back all its experiences, giveme its shipwrecks, give me its standings in the face of death, giveit me surrounded with savages with spears and clubs, give it me backagain with spears flying about me, with the club knocking me to theground, give it me back, and I will still be your missionary. "

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 35: Pa-poo-[)a]. ]

[Footnote 36: A-ee-v[)a]-ee. ]

[Footnote 37: Poo-r[)a]-ree. ]

[Footnote 38: Ee-[)a]-l[)a]. ]

[Footnote 39: He had spent some sixteen years in the South Sea Islandof Rarotonga and had in 1877 become a pioneer among the cannibals ofPapua (New Guinea). ]

[Footnote 40: V[=a][=a]-boo-ree. ]

[Footnote 41: Poo-o-t[)a]. ]

CHAPTER XIV

A SOUTH SEA SAMARITAN

_Ruatoka_ (Date of Incident, about 1878)

It was a dark night and silent. The swish and lapping of the waters onthe Port Moresby beach on the southern shore of the immense island ofNew Guinea, filled the air with a quiet hush of expectation. 

In a little white house sat a tall, dark man with his wife. The manwas Ruatoka. If you had asked "Who is Ruatoka?" of all the Papuans formiles around Port Moresby, they would have wondered at your ignorance. "Ruatoka, " they would have told you, was a "Jesus man. " He walkedamong their villages, and did not fear them when they threatened himwith spears and clubs. He gave them medicines when they were ill, andnursed them. He spoke strong words to them which made their heartsturn to water within them when he showed that they did wrong. He oftenstopped them from fighting. 

Ruatoka, with his wife, had sailed from the South Sea Islands withTamate, [42] who was to them their great hero. 

"My fathers of old were heathen, savage men on the island of Mangaia, "he would say. "The white men came to them and brought the storyof Jesus. Now we are happy. But we, too, must go to the men of NewGuinea, just as the white men came to us. To-day the New GuineaPapuans are savage cannibals and heathen. To-morrow they will knowJesus and be as happy as we are. "

So Ruatoka had been trained as a teacher and preacher as well as ahouse-builder and carpenter; and his wife was taught how to teachchildren as well as good housekeeping. 

This was the brown man, Ruatoka, who sat that night in his littlehouse at Port Moresby on the shore behind the great reef of Papua. Suddenly there came a knock at his door. The door opened, and theblack, frightened faces of Papuans, with staring eyes, looked at him. 

"What is the matter?" he asked. 

And they told him that, as they came at sunset along the path from thepeople of Larogi to Port Moresby, they found by the side of the path awhite man. "He was dying, " they said. "We were afraid to touch him. Ifwe touched him and he died, his ghost would haunt us for evermore. "

Ruatoka stood up at once and reached for his lantern, and turning tothe men said:

"Come and guide me to the place. "

They said, "No, we are afraid of the demon spirit. It is night. Theman will die. We are afraid of the spirits. We will not go. "

Ruatoka's father had told him when he was a boy how his own people inthe years before had dreaded the spirit-demons of Mangaia, but thathe must learn that there were no spirits to be dreaded; that one greatFather-Spirit ruled above all, and would take care of His children, and that all those children must love one another. 

So Rua, as they called him, knowing that the white man who lay sickby the roadside in the night, though of another colour, was yet abrother, and knowing that no demon spirit could harm him in the dark, lighted his lantern, poured water into a bottle, took a long piece ofcloth, folded it up, and started out under the stars. 

He walked for mile after mile up steep hills and down into valleysalong the path; but nothing did he hear save the cry of a night bird. At last he had gone five miles, and was wondering whether he couldever find the sick man (for the long grass towered up on either sideand all was still), when he heard a low moaning. Listening intently hefound the direction of the sound, and then moved towards it. He foundthere, at the side of the path, a white man named Neville, nearlydead. He was moaning with the pain of the fever, yet unconscious. 

Taking his bottle, Ruatoka poured a little water down the throat ofthe man. He then took the long piece of cloth, wound it round Neville, took the two ends in his hands, and stooping, he pulled and strainedwith all his great strength, until at last Neville lay like a sackupon his shoulders. Staggering along, Ruatoka climbed the hills thatrose 300 feet high. Again and again he was bound to rest, for the manon his shoulders was as heavy as Ruatoka himself. He tottered down thehill path, and at last, just as the first light of dawn was breakingover the eastern hills, Ruatoka staggered into his home, laid thesick man upon the only bed he had, and then himself laid down upon thefloor, wearied almost to death. There he slept while his wife nursedand tended the fever-stricken Neville back to life. 

 * * * * *

Over a thousand years before that day Wilfrid[43] had brought life andjoy to the starving Saxons of the South coast of England. A hundredyears before that day white men, the great-great-grandchildren ofthose Saxons, had started out in _The Duff_ and, sailing across theworld, had taken life and joy in the place of the terror of demons andthe death by the club to the men of the Islands of the Seas. 

Now Ruatoka, the South Sea islander, having in his heart the samebrave spirit of the Good Shepherd--that spirit of the Good Samaritan, of help and preparedness, of courage and of chivalry, had carried lifeand joy back to the North Sea islander, the Briton who had fallen bythe roadside in Papua. 

Ruatoka was a brown Greatheart. It was with him as it must be with allbrave sons who serve that great Captain, Jesus Christ: he wanted to bein the front of the battle. When the great Tamate was killed and eatenby the cannibals of Goaribari, Ruatoka wrote a letter to a missionarywho lived and still lives in Papua. This is the end of the letter:

"Hear my wish. It is a great wish. The remainder of my strength Iwould spend in the place where Tamate was killed. In that village Iwould live. In that place where they killed men, Jesus Christ's nameand His word I would teach to the people that they may become Jesus'children. My wish is just this. You know it. I have spoken. 

 RUATOKA. "

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 42: James Chalmers: see Chapter XIII. ]

[Footnote 43: See Chapter II. ]

Book Three: THE PATHFINDERS OF AFRICA

CHAPTER XV

THE MAN WHO WOULD GO ON

_David Livingstone_

(Dates born 1813, died 1873)

There was a deathly stillness in the hot African air as two bronzedScots strode along the narrow forest path. 

The one, a young, keen-eyed doctor, [44] glanced quickly through thetrees and occasionally turned aside to pick some strange orchid and toslip it into his collecting case. The other strode steadily alongwith that curious, "resolute forward tread" of his. [45] He was DavidLivingstone. Behind them came a string of African bearers carrying inbundles on their heads the tents and food of the explorers. 

Suddenly, with a crunch, Livingstone's heel went through a whiteobject half hidden in the long grass--a thing like an ostrich's egg. He stooped--and his strong, bronzed face was twisted with mingledsorrow and anger, as, looking into the face of his younger friend, hegritted out between his clenched teeth, "The slave-raiders again!"

It was the whitening skull of an African boy. 

For weeks those two Britons had driven their little steamer (the_Asthmatic_ they called her, because of her wheezing engines) up theZambesi river and were now exploring its tributary the Shiré. 

Each morning, before they could start the ship's engines, they hadbeen obliged to take poles and push from between the paddles of thewheels the dead bodies of Africans--men, women, and children--slainbodies which had floated down from the villages that the Arabslave-raiders had burned and sacked. Livingstone was out on the long, bloody trail of the slaver, the trail that stretched on and on intothe heart of Africa where no white man had ever been. 

This negro boy's skull, whitening on the path, was only one morelink in the long, sickening shackle-chain of slavery that girdleddown-trodden Africa. 

The two men strode on. The forest path opened out to a broad clearing. They were in an African village. But no voice was heard and no stepbroke the horrible silence. It was a village of death. The sun blazedon the charred heaps which now marked the sites of happy Africanhomes; the gardens were desolate and utterly destroyed. The villagewas wiped out. Those who had submitted were far away, trudging throughthe forest, under the lash of the slaver; those who had been too oldto walk or too brave to be taken without fight were slain. 

The heart of Livingstone burned with one great resolve--he would trackthis foul thing into the very heart of Africa and then blazon itshorrors to the whole world. 

The two men trudged back to the river bank again. Now, with theirbrown companions, they took the shallow boat that they had broughton the deck of the _Asthmatic_, and headed still farther up the Shirériver from the Zambesi toward the unknown Highlands of Central Africa. 

_Facing Spears and Arrows_

Only the sing-song chant of the Africans as they swung their paddles, and the frightened shriek of a glittering parrot, broke the stillnessas the boat pushed northward against the river current. 

The paddles flashed again, and as the boat came round a curve in theriver they were faced by a sight that made every man sit, paddle inhand, motionless with horror. The bank facing them in the next curveof the river was black with men. The ranks of savages bristled withspears and arrows. A chief yelled to them to turn back. Then a cloudof arrows flew over the boat. 

"Go on, " said Livingstone quietly to the Africans. Their paddles tookthe water and the boat leapt toward the savage semi-circle on thebank. The water was shallower now. Before any one realised what washappening Livingstone had swung over the edge of the boat and, up tohis waist in water, was wading ashore with his arms above his head. 

"It is peace!" he called out, and waded on toward the barbs of ahundred arrows and spears. The men in the boat sat breathless, waitingto see their leader fall with a score of spears through his body. But the savages on the bank were transfixed with amazement atLivingstone's sheer audacity. Awed by something god-like in thisunflinching and unarmed courage, no finger let fly a single arrow. 

"You think, " he called to the chief, "that I am a slave-raider. " ForLivingstone knew that he had never in all his wanderings been attackedby Africans save where they had first been infuriated by the cruelraiders. 

The chief scowled. 

"See, " cried Livingstone, baring his arm to show his white skin ashe again and again had done when threatened by Africans, "is this thecolour of the men who come to make slaves and to kill?"

The savages gazed with astonishment. They had never before seen sowhite a skin. 

"No, " Livingstone went on, "this is the skin of the tribe that hasheart toward the African. "

Almost unconsciously the man had dropped the spear points and arrowheads as he was speaking. The chief listened while Livingstone, whowas now on the bank, told the savages how he had come across the greatwaters from a far-off land with a message of peace and goodwill. 

Unarmed and with a dauntless heroism the "white man who would go on"had won a great victory over that tribe. He now passed on in his boatup the river and over rapids toward the wonderful shining Highlands inthe heart of Africa. 

_"Deliverance to the Captives"_

Dr. Kirk was recalled to England by the British Government; butLivingstone trudged on in increasing loneliness over mountains andacross rivers and lakes, plunging through marshes, racked a score oftimes with fever, robbed of his medicines, threatened again and againby the guns of the slave-raiding Arabs and the spears and clubs ofsavage head-hunters, bearing on his bent shoulders the Cross of thenegroes' agony--slavery, till at last, alone and on his knees inthe dead of night, our Greatheart crossed his last River, into thepresence of his Father in heaven. 

Yet still, though his body was dead, his spirit would go on. For thelife Livingstone lived, the death he died, and the record he wroteof the slave-raiders' horrible cruelties thrilled all Britain to healthat "open sore of the world. " Queen Victoria made Dr. Kirk her consulat Zanzibar, and told him to make the Sultan of Zanzibar order allslave-trading through that great market to cease. And to-day, becauseof David Livingstone, through all the thousands of miles of Africaover which he trod, no man dare lay the shackles of slavery onanother. To-day, where Livingstone saw the slave-market in Zanzibar, a grand church stands, built by negro hands, and in that cathedral youmay hear the negro clergy reading such words as--

 "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, Make His paths straight, "

and African boys singing in their own tongue words that sum up thewhole life of David Livingstone. 

 "He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, To preach deliverance to the captives. "

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 44: Dr Kirk, now Sir John Kirk, G. C. M. G. , who, leaning uponhis African ebony stick and gazing with his now dimmed eyes intothe glow of the fire, told me many stories of his adventures withLivingstone on his Zambesi journeyings, including this one. See nextchapter. ]

[Footnote 45: A friend of mine asked a very old African inMatabeleland whether--as a boy--he remembered Dr. Livingstone. "Oh, yes, " replied the aged Matabele, "he came into our village out ofthe bush walking thus, " and the old man got up and stumped along, imitating the determined tread of Livingstone, which, after sixtyyears, was the one thing he remembered. ]

CHAPTER XVI

THE BLACK PRINCE OF AFRICA

_Khama_

(Dates 1850--the present day)

One day men came running into a village in South Africa to say thata strange man, whose body was covered with clothes and whose facewas not black, was walking toward their homes. He was coming from theSouth. 

Never before had such a man been seen in their tribe. So there wasgreat excitement and a mighty chattering went through the round wattleof mud huts with their circular thatched roofs. 

The African Chief, Sekhome--who was the head of this Bamangwato tribeand who was also a noted witch-doctor--started out along the southwardtrail to meet the white man. By his side ran his eldest son. He was alithe, blithe boy; his chocolate coloured skin shone and the musclesrippled as he trotted along. He was so swift that his name was thename of the antelope that gallops across the veldt. Cama is what theBamangwato call the antelope. Khama is how we spell the boy's name. 

He gazed in wonder as he saw a sturdy man wearing clothes such as hehad not seen before--what we call coat and hat, trousers and boots. He looked into the bronzed face of the white man and saw that his eyesand mouth were kind. Together they walked back into the village. ChiefSekhome found that the white man's name was David Livingstone; andthat he was a kind doctor who could make boys and men better when theywere ill, with medicines out of a black japanned box. 

When evening came the boy Khama saw the strange white man open anotherbox and take out a curious thing which seemed to open yet was full ofhundreds and hundreds of leaves. Khama had never seen such a thingin his life and he could not understand why Livingstone opened itand kept looking at it for a long time, for he had never seen a bookbefore and did not even know what letters were or what reading was. 

It seemed wonderful to him when he heard that that book could speakto Livingstone without making any sound and that it told him aboutthe One Infinite, Holy, Loving God, Who is Father of all men, black orbrown or white, and Whose Son, Jesus Christ, came to teach us all tolove God and to love one another. For the book was the Bible whichLivingstone all through his heroic exploring of Africa read each day. 

So Livingstone passed on from the village; but this boy Khama neverforgot him, and in time--as we shall see--other white men came andtaught Khama himself to read that same book and worship that same God. 

_The Fight with the Lion_

Meanwhile strange adventures came to the growing young Khama. This isthe story of some of them:

The leaping flames of a hunting camp-fire threw upon the darkbackground of thorn trees weird shadows of the men who squatted in acircle on the ground, talking. 

The men were all Africans, the picked hunters from the tribe of theBamangwato. They were out on the spoor of a great lion that had madehimself the terror of the tribe. Night after night the lion had leaptamong their oxen and had slain the choicest in the chief's herds. Again and again the hunters had gone out on the trail of the ferociousbeast; but always they returned empty-handed, though boasting loudlyof what they would do when they should face the lion. 

"To-morrow, yes, to-morrow, " cried a young Bamangwato hunter rollinghis eyes, "I will slay _tau e bogale_--the fierce lion. "

The voices of the men rose on the night air as the whole groupdeclared that the beast should ravage their herds no more--the wholegroup, except one. This young man's tense face and the keen eyes thatglowed in the firelight showed his contempt for those who swaggered somuch and did so little. He was Khama, the son of Sekhome, the chief. The wild flames gleamed on him as he stood there, full six feet oftireless manhood leaning on his gun, like a superb statue carved inebony. Those swift, spare limbs of his, that could keep pace with agalloping horse, gave him the right to his name, Khama--the Antelope. 

The voices dropped, and the men, rolling themselves in the skins ofwild beasts, lay down and slept--all except one, whose eyes watched inthe darkness as sleeplessly as the stars. When they were asleep Khamatook up his gun and went out into the starry night. 

The night passed. As the first flush of dawn paled the stars, andthe men around the cold ashes of the fire sat up, they gazed inawed amazement. For they saw, striding toward them, their tall youngchieftain; and over his shoulders hung the tawny skin and mane of afull-grown king lion. Alone in the night he had slain the terror ofthe tribe!

The men who had boasted of what they meant to do and had neverperformed, never heard Khama--either at that time or later--make anymention of this great feat. 

It was no wonder that the great Bamangwato tribe looked at the tall, silent, resolute young chieftain and, comparing him with his craftyfather Sekhome and his treacherous, cowardly younger brother Khamane, said, "Khama is our _boikanyo_--our confidence. "

_The Fight with the Witch-doctors_

The years went by; and that fierce old villain Sekhome plotted andlaid ambush against the life of his valiant son, Khama. Men whofollowed David Livingstone into Africa had come as missionaries tohis tribe and had taught him the story of Jesus and given him theknowledge of reading and writing. So Khama had become a Christian, though Sekhome his father was still a heathen witch-doctor. Khamawould have nothing to do with the horrible ceremonies by which theboys of the tribe were initiated into manhood; nor would he look onthe heathen rain-making incantations, though his father smoked withanger against him. Under a thousand insults and threats of death Khamastood silent, never insulting nor answering again, and always treatingwith respect his unnatural father. 

"You, as the son of a great chief, must marry other wives, " saidold Sekhome, whose wives could not be numbered. Young Khama firmlyrefused, for the Word of God which ruled his life told him that hemust have but one wife. Sekhome foamed with futile rage. 

"You must call in the rain-doctors to make rain, " said Sekhome, asthe parched earth cracked under the flaming sun. Khama knew that theirwild incantations had no power to make rain, but that God alone ruledthe heavens. So he refused. 

Sekhome now made his last and most fearful attack. He was awitch-doctor and master of the witch-doctors whose ghoulishincantations made the Bamangwato tremble in terror of unseen devils. 

One night the persecuted Khama woke at the sound of strange clashingand chanting. Looking out he saw the fitful flame of a fire. Going outfrom his hut, he saw the _lolwapa_ or court in front of it lit upwith weird flames round which the black wizards danced with horns andlions' teeth clashing about their necks, and with manes of beasts'hair waving above their horrible faces. As they danced they castcharms into the fire and chanted loathsome spells and terrible curseson Khama. As a boy he had been taught that these witch-doctors had thepower to slay or to smite with foul diseases. He would have been morethan human if he had not felt a shiver of nameless dread at this luridand horrible dance of death. 

Yet he never hesitated. He strode forward swiftly, anger and contempton his face, scattering the witch-doctors from his path and leapingfull upon their fire of charms, stamped it out and scattered itsembers broadcast. The wizards fled into the darkness of the night. 

_The Fight with the Kaffir Beer_

At last Khama's treacherous old father, Sekhome, died. Khama wasacclaimed the supreme chief of all the Bamangwato. [46] He galloped outat the head of his horsemen to pursue Lobengula, the ferocious chiefof the Matabele who had struck fear into the Bamangwato for manyyears. Even Lobengula, who to his dying day carried in his neck abullet from Khama's gun, said of him, "The Bamangwato are dogs, butKhama is a man. "

Khama had now freed his people from the terror of the lion, thetyranny of witch-doctors, and the dread of the Matabele. Yet thedeadliest enemy of Khama and the most loathsome tyrant of theBamangwato was still in power, --the strong drink which degrades theAfrican to unspeakable depths. 

Even as Khama charged at the head of his men into the breaking ranksof the Matabele, his younger brother, Khamane, whom he had put incharge of his city in his absence, said to the people: "You may brewbeer again now. " Many of the people did not obey, but others took thecorn of the tribe and brewed beer from it. 

At night the cries of beaten women rose, and the weird chants ofincantations and of foul unclean dances were heard. Khamane called theolder men together around his fire. Pots of beer passed from hand tohand. As the men grew fuddled they became bolder and more boastful. Khamane then spoke to them and said, "Why should Khama rule you?Remember he forbids you to make and to drink beer. He has done awaywith the dances of the young men. He will not let you make charms orthrow enchanted dice or make incantations for rain. He is a Christian. If I ruled you, you should do all these things. "

When Khama rode back again into his town he saw men and women lyingdrunk under the eaves of their huts and others reeling along the road. At night the sounds of chants and drinking dances rose on the air. 

His anger was terrible. For once he lost his temper. He seized aburning torch and running to the hut of Khamane set fire to the roofand burned the house down over his drunken brother's head. He orderedall the beer that had been brewed to be seized, and poured it outupon the veldt. He knew that he was fighting a fiercer enemy thanthe Matabele, a foe that would throttle his tribe and destroy all hispeople if he did not conquer it. The old men of the tribe mutteredagainst him and plotted his death. He met them face to face. His eyesflashed. 

"When I was still a lad, " he said, "I used to think how I wouldgovern my town and what kind of a kingdom it should be. One thing Idetermined, I would not rule over a drunken town or people. I WILL NOTHAVE DRINK IN THIS TOWN. If you must have it you must go. "

_The Fight with the White Man's "Fire-water"_

Khama had conquered for the moment. But white men, Englishmen, cameto the town. They set up stores. And in the stores they began to sellbrandy from large casks. 

The drinking of spirits has more terrible effects on the African thaneven on white men. Once he starts drinking, the African cannotstop and is turned into a sot. The ships of the white man have beenresponsible to a terrible extent for sending out the "fire-water" toAfrica. 

Khama called the white traders in the tribe together. 

"It is my desire, " he said, "that no strong drink shall be sold in mytown. "

"We will not bring the great casks of brandy, " they replied, "butwe hope you will allow us to have cases of bottles as they are formedicine. "

"I consent, " said Khama, "but there must be no drunkenness. "

"Certainly, " the white men replied, "there shall be no drunkenness. "

In a few days one of the white traders had locked himself into hishouse in drunken delirium, naked and raving. Morning after morningKhama rose before daybreak to try and get to the man when he wassober, but all the time he was drunk. Then one morning this mangathered other white men together in a house and they sat drinking andthen started fighting one another. 

A boy ran to Khama to tell him. The chief went to the house and strodein. The room was a wreck. The men lay senseless with their whiteshirts stained with blood. 

Khama with set, stern face turned and walked to the house where heoften went for counsel, the home of his friend, Mr. Hepburn, themissionary. Mr. Hepburn lay ill with fever. Khama told him what thewhite men had done. Hepburn burned with shame and anger that his ownfellow-countrymen should so disgrace themselves. Ill as he was he roseand went out with the chief and saw with his own eyes that it was asKhama said. 

"I will clear them all out of my town, " cried the chief. 

It was Saturday night. 

_Khama's Decisive Hour_

On the Monday morning Khama sent word to all the white men to cometo him. It was a cold, dreary day. The chief sat waiting in the_Kgotla_[47] while the white men came together before him. Hepburn, the missionary, sat by his side. Those who knew Khama saw as soon asthey looked into his grim face that no will on earth could turn himfrom his decisions that day. 

"You white men, "[48] he said to them sternly, "have insulted anddespised me in my own town because I am a black man. If you despise usblack men, what do you want here in the country that God has given tous? Go back to your own country. "

His voice became hard with a tragic sternness. 

"I am trying, " he went on, "to lead my people to act according tothe word of God which we have received from you white people, and yet_you_ show them an example of wickedness such as we never knew. You, "and his voice rose in burning scorn, "you, the people of the wordof God! You know that some of my own brothers"--he was referring toKhamane especially--"have learned to like the drink, and you know thatI do not want them to see it even, that they may forget the habit. Yetyou not only bring it in and offer it to them, but you try to tempt_me_ with it. 

"I make an end of it to-day. Go! Take your cattle and leave my townand _never come back again_!"

No man moved or spoke. They were utterly shamed and bewildered. Thenone white man, who had lived in the town since he was a lad, pleadedwith Khama for pity as an old friend. 

"You, " said the chief with biting irony, "my friend? You--theringleader of those who despise my laws. You are my worst enemy. Youpray for pity? No! for you I have no pity. It is my duty to have pityon my people over whom God placed me, and I am going to show them pityto-day; and that is my duty to them and to God.... Go!"

And they all went. 

Then the chief ordered in his young warriors and huntsmen. 

"No one of you, " he said, "is to drink beer. " Then he called a greatmeeting of the whole town. In serried masses thousand upon thousandthe Bamangwato faced their great chief. He lifted up his voice:

"I, Khama, your chief, order that you shall not make beer. You takethe corn that God has given to us in answer to our prayers and youdestroy it. Nay, you not only destroy it, but you make stuff with itthat causes mischief among you. "

There was some murmuring. 

His eyes flashed like steel. 

"You can kill me, " he said, "but you cannot conquer me. "

 * * * * *

_The Black Prince of Eighty_

If you rode as a guest toward Khama's town over seventy years afterthose far-off days when Livingstone first went there, as you came insight of the great stone church that the chief has built, you wouldsee tearing across the African plain a whirlwind of dust. It wouldrace toward you, with the soft thunder of hoofs in the loose soil. When the horses were almost upon you--with a hand of steel--chiefKhama would rein in his charger and his bodyguard would pull up behindhim. 

Over eighty years old, grey and wrinkled, he would spring from hishorse, without help, to greet you--still Khama, the Antelope. Oldas he is, he is as alert as ever. He heard that a great all Africaaeroplane route was planned after the Great War. At once he offeredto make a great aerodrome, and the day at last came whenKhama--eighty-five years old--who had seen Livingstone, the firstwhite man to visit his tribe--stood watching the first aeroplane comebringing a young officer from the clouds. 

He stands there, the splendid chief of the Bamangwato--"steel-true, blade-straight. " He is the Black Prince of Africa--who has indeed wonhis spurs against the enemies of his people. 

And if you were to ask him the secret of the power by which he hasdone these things, Khama the silent, who is not used to boasting, would no doubt lead you at dawn to the _Kgotla_ before his huts. Thereat every sunrise he gathers his people together for their morningprayers at the feet of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, theCaptain and King of our Great Crusade for the saving of Africa. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 46: In 1875. ]

[Footnote 47: The chiefs open-air enclosure for official meetings. ]

[Footnote 48: These are Khama's own words taken down at the time byHepburn. ]

CHAPTER XVII

THE KNIGHT OF THE SLAVE GIRLS

_George Grenfell_

(Dates, b. 1849, d. 1906)

_The Building of the Steamship_

When David Livingstone lay dying in his hastily-built hut, in theheart of Africa, with his black companions Susi and Chumah attendinghim, almost his last words were, "How far away is the Luapula?"

He knew that the river to which the Africans gave that name was onlya short distance away and that it flowed northward. He thought that itmight be the upper reaches of the Nile, which had been sought by menthrough thousands of years, but which none had ever explored. 

Livingstone died in that hut (1873) and never knew what Stanley, following in his footsteps, discovered later (1876-7), viz. , that theLuapula was really the upper stretch of the Congo, the second largestriver in the world (3000 miles long), flowing into the Atlantic. Thebasin of the Congo would cover the whole of Europe from the Black Seato the English Channel. 

In the year when Livingstone died, and before Stanley started toexplore the Congo, a young man, who had been thrilled by reading thetravels of Livingstone, sailed to the West Coast of Africa to theKameruns. 

His name was George Grenfell, a Cornish boy (born at Sancreed, fourmiles from Penzance, in England), who was brought up in Birmingham. He was apprenticed at fifteen to a firm of hardware and machinerydealers. Here he picked up, as a lad, some knowledge of machinery thathelped him later on the Congo. He had been thrilled to meet at BristolCollege, where he was trained for his missionary work, a thin, worn, heroic man of tried steel, Alfred Saker, the great Kamerun missionary, and Grenfell leapt for joy to go out to the dangerous West Coast ofAfrica, where he worked hard, teaching the Africans to make tables andbricks and to print and read, healing them and preaching to them. 

When Stanley came down the Congo to the sea and electrified the worldby the story of the great river, Grenfell and the Baptist MissionarySociety which he served conceived the daring and splendid plan ofstarting a chain of mission stations right from the mouth of theCongo eastward across Africa. In 1878 Grenfell was on his way up theriver--travelling along narrow paths flanked by grass often fifteenfeet high, and crossing swamps and rivers, till after thirteenattempts and in eighteen months he reached Stanley Pool, February1881. A thousand miles of river lay between Stanley Pool and StanleyFalls, and even above Stanley Falls lay thirteen hundred miles ofnavigable river. Canoes were perilous. Hippopotami upset them, and menwere dragged down and eaten by crocodiles. They must have a steamerright up there beyond the Falls in the very heart of Africa. 

Grenfell went home to England, and the steamer _Peace_ was built onthe Thames, Grenfell watching everything being made from the crankto the funnel. She was built, launched, and tried on the Thames; thentaken to pieces and packed in 800 packages, weighing 65 lbs. Each, and taken to the mouth of the Congo. On the heads and shoulders ofa thousand men the whole ship and the food of the party were carriedpast the rapids, over a thousand miles along narrow paths, in peril ofsnakes and leopards and enemy savages, over streams crossed by bridgesof vine-creepers, through swamps, across ravines. 

Grenfell's engineer, who was to have put the ship together, died. Atlast they reached Stanley Pool. Grenfell with eight negroes startedto try to build the ship. It was a tremendous task. Grenfell saidthe _Peace_ was "prayed together. " It was prayer and hard work andgumption. At last the ship was launched, steam was up, the _Peace_began to move. "She lives, master, she lives!" shouted the excitedAfricans. 

A thousand thrilling adventures came to him as he steamed up anddown the river, teaching and preaching, often in the face ofpoisoned arrows and spears. We are now going to hear the story of oneadventure. 

_The Steamer's Journey_

The crocodiles drowsily dosing in the slime of the Congo river bankstirred uneasily as a strange sound broke the silence of the blazingAfrican morning. They lifted their heavy jaws and swung their headsdown stream. Their beady eyes caught sight of a Thing mightier than athousand crocodiles. It was pushing its way slowly up stream. 

The sound was the throb of the screw of the steamer from whose funnela light ribbon of smoke floated across the river. An awning shaded thewhole deck from bow to stern. On the top of the awning, under a littlesquare canopy, stood a tall young negro; the muscles in his sturdyarms and his broad shoulders rippled under his dark skin as the wheelswung round in his swift, strong hands. 

The steamer drove up stream while the crocodiles, startled by the washof the boat, slid sullenly down the bank and dived. 

A short, bearded man, dressed in white duck, stood on deck at thebows, where the steamer's name, _Peace_, was painted. He was GeorgeGrenfell. His keen eyes gleamed through the spectacles that rested onhis strong, arched nose. By his side stood his wife, looking out upthe river. They were searching for the landing-place and the hut-roofsof some friendly river-side town. 

At last as the bows swung round the next bend in the river they sawa village. The Africans rushed to the bank and hurriedly pushed outtheir tree-trunk canoes. Grenfell shouted an order. A bell rang. Thescrew stopped and the steamer lay-to while he climbed down into theship's canoe and was paddled ashore. The wondering people pushed andjostled around them to see this strange man with his white face. 

_The Slave Girls_

As they walked up among the huts, speaking with the men of the town, Grenfell came to an open space. As his quick eyes looked about he sawtwo little girls standing bound with cords. They were tetheredlike goats to a stake. Their little faces and round eyes looked allforlorn. Even the wonder of the strange bearded white man hardly keptback the tears that filled their eyes. 

"What are these?" he asked, turning to the chief. 

The African pointed up the river. Grenfell's heart burned in him, as the chief told how he and his men had swept up the river in theircanoes armed with their spears and bows and arrows and had raidedanother tribe. 

"And these, " said the chief, pointing to the girls, who beganto wonder what was going to happen, "these are two girls that wecaptured. They are some of our booty. They are slaves. They are tiedthere till someone will come and buy them. "

Grenfell could not resist the silent call of their woeful faces. Quickly he gave beads and cloth to the chief, and took the littlegirls back with him down to the river bank. As they jumped into thecanoe to go aboard the S. S. _Peace_, the two girls wondered what thisstrange new master would do with them. Would he be cruel? Yet his eyeslooked kind through those funny, round, shining things balanced on hisnose. 

The girls at once forgot all their sorrows when they jumped on boardthis wonderful river monster. They felt it shiver and throb and beginto move. The bank went farther and farther away. The _Peace_ had againstarted up stream. 

The girls stood in wonder and gazed with open eyes as the banks slidpast. They saw the birds all green and red flashing along the surfaceof the water, and the huge hippopotami sullenly plunging into theriver like the floating islands of earth that sail down the Congo. Their quick eyes noted the quaint iguana, like giant lizards, sunningthemselves on the branches of the trees over the stream and thendropping like stones into the stream as the steamer passed. 

_The Slave Girl's Brother_

Then, suddenly, as they came round a bend in the river, all waschanged. There ahead Grenfell saw a river town. The canoes were beingmanned rapidly by warriors. The bank bristled with spears in the handsof ferocious savages, whose faces were made horrible by gashes andloathsome tattooing. In each canoe men stood with bows in their handsand arrows drawn to the head. The throb of the engines ceased. Theship slowed up. But the canoes came on. 

The men of this Congo town only knew one thing. Enemies had, only afew weeks earlier, come from down-river, had raided their town, burned their huts, killed many of their braves, and carried away theirchildren. Here were men who had also come from down the river. Theymust, therefore, be enemies. 

Their chief shouted an order. In an instant a score of spears hurtledat the ship and rattled on the steel screens around the deck. The yellof the battle-cry of the tribe echoed and re-echoed down the river. 

Grenfell was standing by the little girls. Suddenly one of them withdancing eyes shouted and waved her arms. 

"What is it?" cried Grenfell to her. 

"See--see!" she cried, pointing to a warrior in a canoe who was justpoising a spear, "that is my brother! That is my brother! This is mytown!"

"Call to him, " said Grenfell. 

Her thin childish voice rang out. But no one heard it among thewarriors. Again she cried out to her brother. The only answer was ahail of spears and arrows. 

Grenfell turned rapidly and shouted an order to the engineer. Instantly a shriek, more wild and piercing than the combined yellsof the whole tribe, rent the air. Again the shriek went up. Thewarriors stood transfixed with spear and arrow in hand like statuesin ebony. There was a moment's intense and awful silence. They hadnever before heard the whistle of a steamer!

"Shout again--quickly, " whispered Grenfell to the little Africangirl. 

In a second the child's shrill voice rang out in the silence acrossthe water, crying first her brother's name, and then her own. 

The astonished warrior dropped his spear, caught up his paddleand--in a few swift strokes--drove his canoe towards the steamer. Hisastonishment at seeing his sister aboard overcame all his dread ofthis shrieking, floating island that moved without sails or paddles. 

Quickly she told her story of how the strange white man in the greatcanoe that smoked had found her in the village of their enemies, hadsaved her from slavery, and--now, had brought her safely home again. The story passed from lip to lip. Every spear and bow and arrow wasdropped. 

The girls were quickly put ashore, and as Grenfell walked up thevillage street every warrior who had but a few moments before beenseeking his blood was now gazing at this strange friend who hadbrought back to the tribe the daughters whom they thought they hadlost for ever. 

 Grenfell went on with his work in face of fever, inter-tribal fighting, slave-raiders, the horrors of wife and slave-slaughter at funerals, witch-killing--and in some ways worse still, the horrible cruelties of the Belgian rubber-traders--for over a quarter of a century. 

 In June 1906, accompanied by his negro companions, he lay at Yalemba, sick with fever. Two of the Africans wrote a letter for help to other missionaries:

 "We are very sorrow, " they wrote, "because out Master is very sick. So now we beging you one of you let him come to help Mr Grenfell please. We think now is near to die, but we don't know how to do with him. Yours, DISASI MAKULO, MASCOO LUVUSU. "

 To-day all up the fifteen hundred miles of Congo waterway the power of the work done by Grenfell and the men who came with him and after him has changed all the life. Gone are the slave-raiders, the inter-tribal wars, the cruelties of the white men, along that line. There stand instead negroes who cap make bricks, build houses, turn a lathe; engineers, printers, bookbinders, blacksmiths, carpenters, worshipping in churches built with their own hands. But beyond, and among the myriad tributaries and the vast forests millions of men have never yet even heard of the love of God in Jesus Christ, and still work their hideous cruelties. 

 So Grenfell, like Livingstone, opened a door. It stands open. 

CHAPTER XVIII

"A MAN WHO CAN TURN HIS HAND TO ANYTHING"

_Alexander Mackay_

(Dates 1863-1876)

The inquisitive village folk stared over their garden gates at Mr. Mackay, the minister of the Free Kirk of Rhynie, a small Aberdeenshirevillage, as he stood with his thirteen-year-old boy gazing into theroad at their feet. The father was apparently scratching at the stonesand dust with his stick. The villagers shook their heads. 

"Fat's the minister glowerin' at, wi' his loon Alic, among the stooro' the turnpike?"[49] asked the villagers of one another. 

The minister certainly was powerful in the pulpit, but his ways weremore than they could understand. He was for ever hammering at therocks on the moor and lugging ugly lumps of useless stone homeward, containing "fossils" as he called them. 

Now Mr. Mackay was standing looking as though he were trying to findsomething that he had lost in the road. If they had been near enoughto Alec and his father they would have heard words like these:

"You see, Alec, this is the Zambesi River running down from the heartof Africa into the Indian Ocean, and here running into the Zambesifrom the north is a tributary, the Shiré. Livingstone going up thatriver found wild savages who ... "

So the father was tracing in the dust of the road with the pointof his stick the course of the Zambesi which Livingstone had justexplored for the first time. 

On these walks with his father Alec, with his blue eyes wide open, used to listen to stories like the Yarn we have read of the marvellousadventures of Livingstone. [50] Sometimes Mr. Mackay would stop anddraw triangles and circles with his stick. Then Alec would be learninga problem in Euclid on this strange "blackboard" of the road. Helearned the Euclid--but he preferred the Zambesi and Livingstone!

One day Alec was off by himself trudging down the road with a fixedpurpose in his mind, a purpose that seemed to have nothing in theworld to do with either Africa or Euclid. He marched away from hislittle village of Rhynie, where the burn runs around the foot ofthe great granite mountain across the strath. He trudged on for fourmiles. Then he heard a shrill whistle. Would he be late after all?He ran swiftly toward the little railway station. A ribbon of smokeshowed over the cutting, away to the right. Alec entered the stationand ran to one end of the platform as the train slowed down and theengine stopped just opposite where he stood. 

He gazed at the driver and his mate on the footplate. He followedevery movement as the driver came round the engine with his long-nosedoil-can, and opened and shut small brass lids and felt the bearingswith his hand to see whether they were hot. The guard waved his greenflag. The whistle of the engine shrieked, and the train steamed out ofthe station along the burnside toward Huntly. Alec gazed down the linetill the train was out of sight and then, turning, left the stationand trudged homeward. When he reached Rhynie he had walked eight milesto look at a railway engine for two and a half minutes--and he washappy!

As he went along the village street he heard a familiar sound. 

"Clang-a-clang clang!--ssssssss!" It was irresistible. He stopped, and stepped into the magic cavern of darkness, gleaming with theforge-fire, where George Lobban, the smith, having hammered a glowinghorseshoe into shape, gripped it with his pincers and flung it hissinginto the water. 

Having cracked a joke with the laughing smith, Alec dragged himselfaway from the smithy, past the green, and looked in at the stable tocurry-comb the pony and enjoy feeling the little beast's muzzle nosingin his hand for oats. 

He let himself into the manse and ran up to his work-room, wherehe began to print off some pages that he had set up on his littleprinting press. 

At supper his mother looked sadly at her boy with his dancing eyes ashe told her about the wonders of the railway engine. In her heart shewanted him to be a minister. And she did not see any sign that thisboy would ever become one: this lad of hers who was always running offfrom his books to peer into the furnaces of the gas works, or to teasethe village carpenter into letting him plane a board, or to sit, withchin in hands and elbows on knees, watching the saddler cuttingand padding and stitching his leather, or to creep into thecarding-mill--like the Budge and Toddy whose lives he had read--"tosee weels go wound. "

It was a bitter cold night in the Christmas vacation fourteen yearslater. [51] Alec Mackay, now a young engineering student, was lost toall sense of time as he read of the hairbreadth escapes and adventurestold by the African explorer, Stanley, in his book, _How I foundLivingstone_. 

He read these words of Stanley's:

 "For four months and four days I lived with Livingstone in the same house, or in the same boat, or in the same tent, and I never found a fault in him.... Each day's life with him added to my admiration for him. His gentleness never forsakes him: his hopefulness never deserts him. His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring resolution of the Anglo-Saxon. The man has conquered me. "

Alexander Mackay put down Stanley's book and gazed into the fire. Since the days when he had trudged as a boy down to the station to seethe railway engine he had been a schoolboy in the Grammar School atAberdeen, and a student in Edinburgh, and while there had worked inthe great shipbuilding yards at Leith amid the clang and roar of therivetters and the engine shop. He was now studying in Berlin, drawingthe designs of great engines far more wonderful than the railwayengine he had almost worshipped as a boy. 

On the desk at Mackay's side lay his diary in which he wrote histhoughts. In that diary were the words that he himself had written:

 "This day last year[52] Livingstone died--a Scotsman and a Christian--loving God and his neighbour, in the heart of Africa. 'Go thou and do likewise. '"

Mackay wondered. Could it ever be that he would go into the heart ofAfrica like Livingstone? it seemed impossible. What was the good of anengineer among the lakes and forests of Central Africa?

On the table by the side of Stanley's _How I found Livingstone_ lay anewspaper, the Edinburgh _Daily Review_. Mackay glanced at it; then hesnatched it up and read eagerly a letter which appeared there. It wasa new call to Central Africa--the call, through Stanley, from KingM'tesa of Uganda, that home of massacre and torture. These are some ofthe words that Stanley wrote:

 "King M'tesa of Uganda has been asking me about the white man's God.... Oh that some practical missionary would come here. M'tesa would give him anything that he desired--houses, land, cattle, ivory. It is the practical Christian who can ... Cure their diseases, build dwellings, teach farming and turn his hand to anything like a sailor--this is the man who is wanted. Such a one, if he can be found, would become the saviour of Africa. "

Stanley called for "a practical man who could turn his hand toanything--_if he can be found_. "

The words burned their way into Mackay's very soul. 

"If he can be found. " Why here, here in this very room he sits--theboy who has worked in the village at the carpenter's bench and thesaddler's table, in the smithy and the mill, when his mother wishedhim to be at his books; the lad who has watched the ships building inthe docks of Aberdeen, and has himself with hammer and file and lathebuilt and made machines in the engineering works--he is here--the "manwho can turn his hand to anything. " And he had, we remember, alreadywritten in his diary:

 "Livingstone died--a Scotsman and a Christian--loving God and his neighbour, in the heart of Africa. 'Go thou and do likewise. '"

Mackay did not hesitate. Then and there he took pen and ink andpaper and wrote to London to the Church Missionary Society which wasoffering, in the daily paper that lay before him, to send men out toKing M'tesa. The words that Mackay wrote were these:

 "My heart burns for the deliverance of Africa, and if you can send me to any one of those regions which Livingstone and Stanley have found to be groaning under the curse of the slave-hunter I shall be very glad. "

Within four months Mackay, with some other young missionaries who hadvolunteered for the same great work, was standing on the deck of theS. S. _Peshawur_ as she steamed out from Southampton for Zanzibar. 

He was in the footsteps of Livingstone--"a Scotsman and aChristian"--making for the heart of Africa and "ready to turn his handto anything" for the sake of Him who as

 "... The Carpenter of Nazareth Made common things for God. "

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 49: "What is the minister gazing at, with his son Alec, inthe dust of the road?"]

[Footnote 50: See Chapter XV. ]

[Footnote 51: December 12, 1875. ]

[Footnote 52: May 1, 1873. ]

CHAPTER XIX

THE ROADMAKER

_Alexander Mackay_

(Date, 1878)

After many months of delay at Zanzibar, Mackay with his companionsand bearers started on his tramp of hundreds of miles along narrowfootpaths, often through swamps, delayed by fierce greedy chiefs whodemanded many cloths before they would let the travellers pass. Oneof the little band of missionaries had already died of fever. Whenhundreds of miles from the coast, Mackay was stricken with feverand nearly died. His companions sent him back to the coast again torecover, and they themselves went on and put together the _Daisy_, theboat which the bearers had carried in sections on their heads, on theshore of Victoria Nyanza. So Mackay, racked with fever, was carriedback by his Africans over the weary miles through swamp and forest tothe coast. At last he was well again, and with infinite labour he cuta great wagon road for 230 miles to Mpapwa. With pick and shovel, axeand saw, they cleared the road of trees for a hundred days. 

Mackay wrote home as he sat at night tired by the side of hishalf-made road, "This will certainly yet be a highway for the KingHimself; and all that pass this way will come to know His Name. "

At length, after triumphing by sheer skill and will over a thousanddifficulties, Mackay reached the southern shore of Victoria Nyanza atKagei, to find that his surviving companions had gone on to Uganda inan Arab sailing-dhow, leaving on the shore the _Daisy_, which had beentoo small to carry them. 

On the beach by the side of that great inland sea, Victoria Nyanza, inthe heart of Africa, Mackay found the now broken and leaking _Daisy_. Her cedar planks were twisted and had warped in the blazing sun tillevery seam gaped. A hippopotamus had crunched her bow between histerrible jaws. Many of her timbers had crumbled before the stillgreater foe of the African boat-builder--the white ant. 

Now, under her shadow lay the man "who could turn his hand toanything, " on his back with hammer and chisel in hand. He wasrivetting a plate of copper on the hull of the _Daisy_. Already he hadnailed sheets of zinc and lead on stern and bow, and had driven cottonwool picked from the bushes by the lake into the seams to caulk someof the leaks. Around the boat stood crowds of Africans, their darkfaces full of astonishment at the white man mending his big canoe. 

"Why should a man toil so terribly hard?" they wondered. 

The tribesmen of the lake had only canoes hollowed out from atree-trunk, or made of some planks sewn together with fibres from thebanana tree. 

At last Mackay had his boat ready to sail up the Victoria Nyanza. The whole of the length of that great sea, itself larger than his ownnative Scotland, still separated Mackay from the land of Uganda forwhich he had left Britain over fifteen months earlier. 

All through his disappointments and difficulties Mackay fought on. With him, as with Livingstone, nothing had power to break his spiritor quench his burning determination to carry on his God-given plan toserve Africa. 

Every use of saw and hammer and chisel, every

 "trick of the tool's true trade, "

all the training in the shipbuilding yards and engineering shops atEdinburgh and in Germany helped Mackay to invent some new, daring andingenious way out of every fresh difficulty. 

_The Wreck of the "Daisy"_

Now at last the _Daisy_ was on the water again; and Mackay and hisbearers went aboard[53] and hoisting sail from Kagei ran northward. Before they had gone far black storm clouds swept across the sky. Night fell. Lightning blazed unceasingly and flung up into silhouettethe wild outlines of the mountains to the east. The roar of thethunder echoed above the wail of the wind and the threshing of thewaves. 

All through the dark, Mackay and those of his men who could handle anoar rowed unceasingly. Again and again he threw out his twenty-fathomline, but in vain. He made out a dim line of precipitous cliffs, yetthe water seemed fathomless--the only map in existence was a roughone that Stanley had made. At last the lead touched bottom at fourteenfathoms. In the dim light of dawn they rowed and sailed toward a shadybeach before the cliffs, and anchored in three and a half fathoms ofwater. 

The storm passed; but the waves from the open sea came roaring in andbroke over the _Daisy_. The bowsprit dipped under the anchor chain, and the whole bulwark on the weatherside was carried away. The nextsea swept into the open and now sinking boat. By frantic efforts theyheaved up the anchor and the next wave swung the _Daisy_ with a crashonto the beach, where the waves pounded her to a complete wreck, wrenching the planks from the keel. But Mackay and his men managed torescue her cargo before she went to pieces. 

They were wrecked on a shore where Stanley, the great explorer, hadyears before had a hairbreadth escape from massacre at the handsof the wild savages. But Stanley, living up to the practice he hadlearned from Livingstone, had turned enemies into friends, and now thenatives made no attack on the shipwrecked Mackay. 

For eight weeks Mackay laboured there, hard on the edge of the lake, living on the beach in a tent made of spars and sails. With hammer andchisel and saw he worked unsparingly at his task. He cut the middleeight feet from the boat, and bringing her stern and stem togetherpatched the broken ends with wood from the middle part. After twomonths' work the now dumpier _Daisy_ took the water again, and carriedMackay and his men safely up the long shores of Victoria Nyanza to thegoal of all his travelling, the capital of M'tesa, King of Uganda. 

The rolling tattoo of goat-skin drums filled the royal reception-hallof King M'tesa, as the great tyrant entered with his chiefs. M'tesa, his dark, cruel heavy face in vivid contrast with his spotless whiterobe, sat heavily down on his stool of State, while brazen trumpetssent to him from England blared as Mackay entered. The chiefs squattedon low stools and on the rush-strewn mud-floor before the King. At hisside stood his Prime Minister, the Katikiro, a smaller man than theKing, but swifter and more far-sighted. The Katikiro was dressed in asnowy-white Arab gown covered by a black mantle trimmed with gold. Inhis hard, guilty face treacherous cunning and masterful cruelty wereblended. 

M'tesa was gracious to Mackay, and gave him land on which to buildhis home. More important to Mackay than even his hut was his workshop, where he quickly fixed his forge and anvil, vise and lathe, andgrindstone, for he was now in the place where he could practise hisskill. It was for this that he had left home and friends, and pressedon in spite of fever and shipwreck to serve Africa and lead her to theworship of Jesus Christ by working and teaching as our Lord did whenon earth. 

One day the wide thatched roof of that workshop shaded from theflaming rays of the sun a crowded circle of the chiefs of Uganda withtheir slaves, who loved to come to "hear the bellows roar. " They weregazing at Mackay, whose strong, bare right arm was swinging his hammer

 "Clang-a-clang-clang. "

Then a ruddy glow lit up the dark faces of the watchers and thebronzed face of the white man who in the centre of his workshop wasblowing up his forge fire. Gripping in his pincers the iron hoe thatwas now red-hot, Mackay hammered it into shape and then plunged it allhissing into the bath of water that stood by him. 

Hardly had the cloud of steam risen from the bath, when Mackay oncemore gripped the hoe, and moving to his grindstone placed his foot onthe pedal and set the edge of the hoe against the whirling stone. The sparks flew high. A murmur came from the Uganda chiefs who stoodaround. 

"It is witchcraft, " they said to one another. "It is witchcraft bywhich Mazunga-wa-Kazi makes the hard iron tenfold harder in the water. It is witchcraft by which he sends the wheels round and makes our hoessharp. Surely he is the great wizard. "

Mackay caught the sound of the new name that they had givenhim--Mazunga-wa-Kazi--the White-Man-at-Work. They called him by thisname because to them it was very strange that any man should work withhis own hands. 

"Women are for work, " said the chiefs. "Men go to talk with the King, and to fight and eat. "

Mackay paused in his work and turned on them. 

"No, " he said, "you are wrong. God made man with one stomach and withtwo hands in order that he may work twice as much as he eats. " AndMackay held out before them his own hands blackened with the work ofthe smithy, rough with the handling of hammer and saw, the file andlathe. "But you, " and he turned on them with a laugh and pointed totheir sleek bodies as they shone in the glow of the forge fire, "youare all stomach and no hands. "

They grinned sheepishly at one another under this attack, and, asMackay let down the fire and put away his tools, they strolled off tothe hill on which the King's beehive-shaped thatched palace was built. 

Mackay climbed up the hill on the side of which his workshop stood. From the ridge he gazed over the low-lying marsh from which the womenwere bearing on their heads the water-pots. He knew that the menand women of the land were suffering from fearful illnesses. He nowrealised that the fevers came from the poisonous waters of the marsh. He made up his mind how he could help them with his skill. They musthave pure water; yet they knew nothing of wells. 

Mackay at once searched the hill-side with his spade and found a bedof clay emerging from the side of the hill. He climbed sixteen feethigher up the hill and, bringing the men who could help him together, began digging. He knew that he would reach spring water at the levelof the clay, for the rains that had filtered through the earth wouldstop there. 

The Baganda[54] thought that he was mad. "Whoever, " they asked oneanother, "heard of digging in the top of a hill for water?"

"When the hole is so deep, " said Mackay, measuring out sixteen feet, "water will come, pure and clean, and you will not need to carry it upthe hill from the marsh. "

They dug and dug till the hole was too deep to hurl the earth up overthe edge. Then Mackay made a pulley, which seemed a magic thing tothem, for they could not yet understand the working of wheels; andwith rope and bucket the earth was pulled up. Exactly at the depth ofsixteen feet the water welled in. The Baganda clapped their hands anddanced with delight. 

"Mackay is the great wizard. He is the mighty spirit, " they cried. "The King must come to see this. "

King M'tesa himself wondered at the story of the making of the welland the finding of the water. He gave orders that he was to be carriedto view this great wonder. His eyes rolled with astonishment as he sawit and heard of the wonders that were wrought by the work of men. 

Yet M'tesa and his men still wondered why any man should workhard. Mackay tried to explain this to the King when he sat in hisreception-hall. Work, Mackay told M'tesa, is the noblest thing aman can do, and he told him how Jesus Christ, the Son of the GreatFather-Spirit who made all things, did not Himself feel that workwas a thing too mean for Him. For our Lord, when He lived on earth atNazareth, worked with His own hands at the carpenter's bench, and madeall labour forever noble. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 53: August 23, 1878. ]

[Footnote 54: The people of Uganda. ]

CHAPTER XX

FIGHTING THE SLAVE TRADE

_Alexander Mackay_

(Date, 1878)

In the court of King M'tesa, Mackay always saw many boys who used todrive away the flies from the King's face with fans, carry stoolsfor the chiefs and visitors to squat upon, run messages and makethemselves generally useful. Most of these boys were the sons ofchiefs. When they were not occupied with some errand, they wouldlounge about playing games with one another in the open space just bythe King's hut. 

Often when Mackay came to speak with the King, he had to wait in thisplace before he could have audience of M'tesa. He would bring withhim large sheets of paper on which he had printed in his workshop thealphabet and some sentences. The printing was actually done with thelittle hand-press that Mackay had used in his attic when he was a boyin his old home in Rhynie. He had taken it with him all the way toUganda, and now was setting up letters and sentences in a languagewhich had never been printed before. 

The Baganda boys who had gathered round the White-Man-of-Work withwondering eyes, as he with his "magic" printed the sheets of paper, now crowded about him as he unrolled one of these white sheets withthe curious black smudges on them. Mackay made the noise that we callA and then B, and pointed to these curious-shaped objects which wecall the letters of the alphabet. Then he got them to make the noiseand point to the letter that represented that sound. At last thekeenest of the boys really could repeat the alphabet right through andbegin to read whole words from another sheet--Baganda words--so thatat length they could read whole sentences. 

Two of these pioneer boys became very good scholars. One named Mukasabecame a Christian and was baptised with the name Samweli (Samuel);another called Kakumba was baptised Yusufu (Joseph). A third boy hadbeen captured from a tribe in the north, and his skin was of a muchlighter brown than that of the Baganda boys. This light-skinnedcaptured slave was named Lugalama. 

Each of these boys felt that it was a very proud day when at last hecould actually read a whole sheet of printing from beginning to endin his own language--from "Our Father" down to "the Kingdom, the powerand the glory, Amen. "

One morning these page-boys leapt to their feet as they heard thefamiliar rattle of the drums that heralded the coming of King M'tesa. They bowed as he entered the hall and sat heavily on his stool, whilehis chiefs ranged themselves about him. 

On a stool near the King sat Mackay, the White-Man-of-Work. Hisbronzed face was set in grim determination, for he knew that on thatmorning he had a difficult battle to fight. 

Another loud battering of drum-heads filled the air. The entrance tothe hut was darkened by a tall, swarthy Arab in long, flowing robes, followed by negro-bearers, who cast on the ground bales of cloth andguns. The Arab wore on his head a red fez, round which a colouredturban scarf was wound. He was a slave-trader from the coast, whohad come from the East to M'tesa in Uganda to buy men and women andchildren to carry them away into slavery. 

King M'tesa was himself not only a slave-trader but a slave-raider. He sent his fierce gangs of warriors out to raid a tribe away in thehills to the north. They would dash into a village, slay the men, and drag the boys and girls and women back to M'tesa as slaves. Thebronze-skinned boy, Lugalama, was a young slave who had been capturedon one of these bloodthirsty raids. And M'tesa, who often sent outhis executioners to slay his own people by the hundred to please thedreaded and horrible god of small-pox, would also sell his people bythe hundred to get guns for his soldiers. 

The Arab slave-trader bowed to the earth before King M'tesa, whosignalled to him to speak. 

"I have come, " said the Arab, pointing to the guns on the floor, "to bring you these things in exchange for some men and women andchildren. See, I offer you guns and percussion caps and cloth. " And hespread out lengths of the red cloth, and held out one of the guns withits gleaming barrel. 

King M'tesa's eyes lighted up with desire as he saw the muskets andthe ammunition. These, he thought, are the things that will make mepowerful against my enemies. 

"I will give you, " the Arab slave-trader went on, "one of theselengths of red cloth in exchange for one man to be sold to me asa slave; one of these guns for two men; and one hundred of thesepercussion caps for a woman as a slave. "

Mackay looked into the cruel face of M'tesa, and he could see how theambitious King longed for the guns. Should he risk the favour of theKing by fighting the battle of a few slaves? Yet Mackay remembered ashe sat there, how Livingstone's great fight against the slave-tradershad made him, as a student, vow that he too would go out and fightslavery in Africa. The memory nerved him for the fight he was now tomake. 

Mackay turned to M'tesa and said words like these:[55]

"O King M'tesa, you are set as father over all your multitude ofpeople. They are your children. It is they who make you a great King. 

"Remember, O King, that the Sultan of Zanzibar himself has signed adecree that no slaves shall be taken in all these lands and sold toother lands down beyond the coast, whither this Arab would lead yourchildren. Therefore if you sell slaves you break his law. 

"Will you, then, sell your own people that they may be taken out oftheir homeland into a strange country? They will be chained to oneanother, beaten with whips, scourged and kicked, and many will be leftat the wayside to die; till the peoples of the coast shall laugh atUganda and say, 'That is how King M'tesa lets strangers treat hischildren!'"

We can imagine how the Arab turned and scowled fiercely at Mackay. His heart raged, and he would have given anything to plunge the daggerhidden in his robe into Mackay's heart. Who was this white man whodared to try to stop his trade? But Mackay went on. 

"See, " he said, pointing to the boys and the chiefs, "your childrenare wonderfully made. Their bones, which are linked together, areclothed with flesh; and from the heart in their breasts the blood thatgives men life flows to and fro through their bodies, while the breathgoes in and out of their lungs and makes them live. God the Father andMaker of all men alone can create such wonders. No men who ever livedcould, if they worked all through their lives, make one thing somarvellous as one of these boys. Will you, then, sell one of thesemiracles, one of your children, for a bit of red rag which any man canmake in a day?"

All eyes turned to King M'tesa to learn what he would say. 

The King with a wave of his hand dismissed the scowling Arab, while hetook counsel with his chiefs, and came to this decision:

"My people shall no more be made slaves. "

A decree was written out and King M'tesa put his hand to it. Thecrestfallen Arab and his men gathered up their guns and cloths, marched down the hill to buy ivory instead of slaves for their balesof red cloth, and went out of the dominions of King M'tesa, across theGreat Lake homeward. 

Mackay had won the first battle against slavery. His heart was veryglad. Yet he knew that, although he had scored a triumph in this fightwith the slave-dealer, he had not won in his great campaign. The Kingwas generally kind to Mackay, for he was proud to have so clever awhite man in his country. But he could not make up his mind to becomea Christian. M'tesa's heart had not really changed. His slave-raidingof other tribes might still go on. The horrible butcherings of hispeople to turn away the dreaded anger of the gods would continue. Mackay felt he must press on with his work. He was slowly opening aroad through the jungle of cruelty and the marshes of dread of thegods that made the life of the Baganda people dark and dreadful. 

All Uganda waited breathless one day as though the end of the worldhad come. 

"King M'tesa is dead!" the cry went out through all the land. 

The people waited in dread and on tiptoe of eagerness till the newking was selected by the chiefs from the sons of the dead ruler. 

At last a great cheer went up from the Palace. "M'wanga has eatenUganda!" they shouted. 

By this the people meant that M'wanga, a young son of M'tesa--onlyeighteen years old--had been made King. He was, however, a boy with nopower--the mere feeble tool of the Katikiro (the Prime Minister) andof Mujasi, the Captain of the King's own bodyguard of soldiers. Bothof these great men of the kingdom fiercely hated Mackay, for they werejealous of his power over the old King. So they whispered into theyoung M'wanga's ears stories like this: "You know that men say thatUganda will be eaten up by an enemy from the lands of the rising sun. Mackay and the other white men are making ready to bring thousands ofwhite soldiers into your land to 'eat it up' and to kill you. "

So M'wanga began to refuse to speak to Mackay. Then, because the Kingwas afraid to attack him, he began to lay plots against the boys. 

One morning Mackay started out from his house with five or six boysand the crew of his boat to march down to the lake. Among the boyswere young Lugalama--the fair-haired slave-boy, now a freed-slave anda servant to Mackay--and Kakumba, who had (you remember) been baptisedJoseph. The King and the Katikiro had given Mackay permission to godown to the lake and sail across it to take letters to a place calledMsalala from which the carriers would bear them down to the coast. 

Down the hill the party walked, the crew carrying the baggage and theoars on their heads. Mackay and his colleague Ashe, who had come outfrom England to work with him, walked behind. 

To their surprise there came running down the path behind them andpast them a company of soldiers. 

"Where are you going?" asked Mackay of one of the soldiers. 

"Mujasi, the Captain of the Bodyguard, " he replied, "has sent us tocapture some of the King's wives who have run away. "

Another and yet another body of soldiers rushed past them. Mackaybecame more and more suspicious that some foul plot was being brewed. He and his company had walked ten miles, and the lake was but twomiles away, divided from them by a wood. Suddenly there leapt out frombehind the trees of the wood hundreds of men headed by Mujasi himself. 

They levelled their guns and spears at Mackay and his friends andyelled, "Go back! Go back!"

"We are the King's friends, " replied Mackay, "and we have his leave totravel. How dare you insult us?"

And they pushed forward. But the soldiers rushed at them; snatchedtheir walking-sticks from them and began to jostle them. Mackay andAshe sat down by the side of the path. Mujasi came up to them. 

"Where are you walking?" he asked. 

"We are travelling to the port with the permission of King M'wanga andthe Katikiro. "

"You are a liar!" replied Mujasi. 

Mujasi stood back and the soldiers rushed at the missionaries, draggedthem to their feet and held the muzzles of their guns within a fewinches of their chests. Mackay turned with his boys and marched backto the capital. 

He and Ashe were allowed to go back to their own home on the side ofthe hill, but the five boys were marched to the King's headquartersand imprisoned. The Katikiro, when Mackay went to him, refused tolisten at first. Then he declared that Mackay was always taking boysout of the country, and returning with armies of white men and hidingthem with the intention of conquering Uganda. 

The Katikiro waved them aside and the angry waiting mob rushed on themissionaries yelling, "Mine shall be his coat!" "Mine his trousers!""No, mine!" shouted another, as the men scuffled with one another. 

Mackay and Ashe at last got back to their home and knelt in prayer. Later on the same evening, they decided to attempt to win backthe King and the Prime Minister and Mujasi by gifts, so that theirimprisoned boys would be freed from danger. 

Mackay spoke to his other boys, telling them to go and fly for theirlives or they would be killed. 

In the morning Mackay heard that three of the boys who had beencaptured on the previous day were not only bound as prisoners, butthat Mujasi was threatening to burn them to death. The boys were namedSeruwanga, Kakumba, and Lugalama. The eldest was fifteen, the youngesttwelve. 

The boys were led out with a mob of howling men and boys around them. Mujasi shouted to them: "Oh, you know Isa Masiya (Jesus Christ). Youbelieve you will rise from the dead. I shall burn you, and you willsee if this is so. "

A hideous roar of laughter rose from the mob. The boys were led downthe hill towards the edge of a marsh. Behind them was a plantation ofbanana trees. Some men who had carried bundles of firewood on theirheads threw the wood into a heap; others laid hold of each of the boysand cut off their arms with hideous curved knives so that they shouldnot struggle in the fire. 

Seruwanga, the bravest, refused to utter a cry as he was cut topieces, but Kakumba shouted to Mujasi, who was a Mohammedan, "Youbelieve in Allah the Merciful. Be merciful!" But Mujasi had no mercy. 

We are told that the men who were watching held their breath withawed amazement as they heard a boy's voice out of the flame and smokesinging, "Daily, daily sing to Jesus, Sing, my soul, His praises due. "

As the executioners came towards the youngest and feeblest, Lugalama, he cried, "Oh, do not cut off my arms. I will not struggle, I will notfight--only throw me into the fire. "

But they did their ghastly work, and threw the mutilated boy on awooden framework above the slow fire where his cries went up, till atlast there was silence. 

One other Christian stood by named Musali. Mujasi, with eyes bloodshotand inflamed with cruelty, came towards him and cried:

"Ah, you are here. I will burn you too and your household. You are afollower of Isa (Jesus). "

"Yes, I am, " replied Musali, "and I am not ashamed of it. "

It was a marvel of courage to say in the face of the executioner'sfire and knife what Peter dared not say when the servant-maid inJerusalem laughed at him. Perhaps the heroism of Musali awed even thecruel-hearted Mujasi. In any case he left Musali alone. 

For a little time M'wanga ceased to persecute the Christians. But thewily Arabs whispered in his ear that the white men were still tryingto "eat up" his country. M'wanga was filled with mingled anger andfear. Then his fury burst all bounds when Mujasi said to him: "Thereis a great white man coming from the rising sun. Behind him will comethousands of white soldiers. "

"Send at once and kill him, " cried the demented M'wanga. 

A boy named Balikudembe, a Christian, heard the order and he could notcontain himself, but broke out, "Oh, King M'wanga, why are you goingto kill a white man? Your father did not do so. "

But the soldiers went out, travelled east along the paths till theymet the great Bishop Hannington being carried in a litter, strickenwith fever. They took him prisoner, and, after some days, slew him ashe stood defenceless before them. Hannington had been sent out to helpMackay and his fellow-Christians. 

Then the King fell ill. He believed that the boy Balikudembe, who hadwarned him not to kill the Bishop, had bewitched him. So M'wanga'ssoldiers went and caught the lad and led him down to a place wherethey lit a fire, and placing the boy over it, burned him slowly todeath. 

All through this time Mackay alone had not been really seriouslythreatened, for his work and what he was made the King and theKatikiro and even Mujasi afraid to do him to death. 

Then there came a tremendous thunderstorm. A flash of lightning smotethe King's house and it flamed up and burned to ashes. Then KingM'wanga seemed to go mad. He threatened to slay Mackay himself. 

"Take, seize, burn the Christians, " he cried. And his executionersand their minions rushed out, captured forty-six men and boys, slashedtheir arms from their bodies with their cruel curved knives so thatthey could not struggle, and then placed them over the ghastly flameswhich slowly wrung the lives from their tortured bodies. Yet thenumbers of the Christians seemed to grow with persecution. 

The King himself beat one boy, Apolo Kagwa, with a stick and smote himon the head, then knocked him down, kicked and stamped upon him. Thenthe King burned all his books, crying, "Never read again. "

The other men and boys who had become Christians were now scatteredover the land in fear of their lives. Mackay, however, come what may, determined to hold on. He set his little printing press to work andprinted off a letter which he sent to the scattered Christians. InMackay's letter was written these words, "In days of old Christianswere hated, were hunted, were driven out and were persecuted forJesus' sake, and thus it is to-day. Our beloved brothers, do not denyour Lord Jesus!"

At last M'wanga's mad cruelties grew so frightful that all his peoplerose in rebellion and drove him from the throne, so that he had towander an outcast by the lake-side. Mackay at that time was workingby the lake, and he offered to shelter the deposed King who had only ashort time before threatened his life. 

 * * * * *

Two years passed; and Mackay, on the lake-side, was building a newboat in which he hoped to sail to other villages to teach the people. Then a fever struck him. He lay lingering for some days. Then hedied--aged only forty-one. 

If Mackay, instead of becoming a missionary, had entered theengineering profession he might have become a great engineer. When hewas a missionary in Africa, the British East Africa Company offeredhim a good position. He refused it. General Gordon offered him a highposition in his army in Egypt. He refused it. 

He held on when his friends and the Church Missionary Society calledhim home. This is what he said to them, "What is this you write--'Comehome'? Surely now, in our terrible dearth of workers, it is not thetime for anyone to desert his post. Send us only our first twenty men, and I may be tempted to come to help you to find the second twenty. "

He died when quite young; homeless, after a life in constant dangerfrom fever and from a half-mad tyrant king--his Christian discipleshaving been burned. 

Was it worth while?

To-day the Prime Minister of Uganda is Apolo Kagwa, who as a boywas kicked and beaten and stamped upon by King M'wanga for beinga Christian; and the King of Uganda, Daudi, M'wanga's son, is aChristian. At the capital there stands a fine cathedral in which brownBaganda clergy lead the prayers of the Christian people. On the placewhere the boys were burned to death there stands a Cross, put there by70, 000 Baganda Christians in memory of the young martyrs. 

Was their martyrdom worth while?

To-day all the slave raiding has ceased for ever; innocent people arenot slaughtered to appease the gods; the burning of boys alive hasceased. 

Mackay began the work. He made the first rough road and as he made ithe wrote: "This will certainly yet be a highway for the King Himself;and all that pass this way will come to know His name. "

"And a highway shall be there and a way; and it shall be a way ofholiness. "

But the Way is not finished. And the last words that Mackay wrotewere: "Here is a sphere for your energies. Bring with you your highesteducation and your greatest talents, and you will find scope for theexercise of them all. "

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 55: There is no record of the precise words, but Mackaygives the argument in a letter home. ]

CHAPTER XXI

THE BLACK APOSTLE OF THE LONELY LAKE

_Shomolekae_

In the garden in Africa where, you remember, David Livingstoneplighted troth with Mary Moffat, as they stood under an almond tree, there lived years ago a chocolate-skinned, curly-haired boy. His namewas Shomolekae. [56]

His work was to go among the fruit trees, when the peaches andapricots were growing and to shout and make a noise to scare away thebirds. If he had not done this they would have eaten up all the fruit. This boy was born in Africa over seventy-five years ago, when Victoriawas a young queen. 

In the same garden was a grown-up gardener, also an African, with adark face and crisp, curly hair. The grown-up gardener one day stolesome of the fruit off the trees, and he went to the little boy, Shomolekae, and offered him some apricots. 

Now, Shomolekae had learned to love the missionary, Mr. Mackenzie, who had come to live in the house at Kuruman. He knew that it was verywrong of the gardener to steal the fruit and throw the blame on thebirds. So he said that he would not touch the fruit. He went to an oldblack friend of his named Paul and said to him:

"The gardener has stolen the apples and plums and has asked me to eatthem. He has robbed Mr. Mackenzie. I do not know what to do. "

And old Paul went and told John Mackenzie, who took notice of the boyShomolekae and learned to trust him. 

Many months passed by; and two years later John Mackenzie was goingto a place further north in Africa than Kuruman. The name of this townwas Shoshong, where Mackenzie would live and teach the people aboutJesus Christ. So he went to the father of Shomolekae, whose name wasSebolai. 

"Sebolai, " said John Mackenzie, "I want to take your son, Shomolekae, with me to Shoshong. "

Sebolai replied: "I am willing that my son should come to live withyou, but one thing I desire. It is that he should be taught hisreading and to know the stories in the Bible and such things. "

To this John Mackenzie quickly agreed, for he too desired that the boyshould read. 

So the sixteen oxen were yoked to the big wagon, and amid muchshouting and cracking of whips and lowing of oxen and creaking ofwagon-joints, John Mackenzie, Shomolekae, and the others, started fromKuruman northward to Shoshong. 

Now, at Shoshong the chief was Sekhome, who, you remember, in our laststory, was father to Khama. So when they were at Shoshong, Shomolekae, the young man who was cook, and Khama, the young man who was the sonof the chief, worshipped in the same little church together. It wasnot such a church as you go to in our country--but just a little placemade of mud bricks that had been dried in the sun. There were holesinstead of windows, and there was no door in the open doorway; and onthe top of the little building was a roof of rough, reedy grass. 

These were the days that you heard of in the last story, when Khama, seeing his tribe attacked by the fierce Lobengula, rode out onhorseback at the head of his regiment of cavalry and fought them andbeat them, and drove away Lobengula with a bullet in his neck. 

For two years Shomolekae, learning to read better every day, andserving John Mackenzie faithfully in his house, lived at Shoshong. 

Sometimes Shomolekae took long journeys with wagon and oxen, and atthe end of two years he went with Mackenzie a great way in order tobuy windows, doors, hinges, nails, corrugated iron, and timber withwhich to build a better church at Shoshong. 

When Shomolekae came back again with the wagons loaded up there wasgreat excitement in the tribe. Hammers and saws, screw-drivers andchisels were busy day after day, and the missionary and his helperslaid the bricks one upon another until there rose up a strong churchwith windows and a door--a place in which the people went to worshipGod the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Again Shomolekae went away by wagon, and this time he travelled awayby the edge of the desert southward until at last he reached thegarden at Kuruman where as a boy he used to frighten the birds fromthe fruit trees. He was now a very clever man at driving wagons andoxen. 

This, as you know, is not so easy as driving a wagon with two horsesis in Britain. For there were as many as sixteen and even eighteenoxen harnessed two by two to the long iron chains in front of thewagon. 

There were no roads, only rough tracks, and the wagon would dragthrough the deep sand, or bump over great boulders of rock, or sinkinto wet places by the river. But at such times one of the nativesalways led the two front oxen through the river with a long thong thatwas fastened to their horns. 

So, in order to drive a wagon well, Shomolekae needed to be able tomanage sixteen oxen all at once, and keep them walking in a straightline. He needed to know which were the bad-tempered ones and whichwere the good, and which pulled best in one part of the span and whichin another; and how to keep them all pulling together and not lungingat one another with their horns. 

Shomolekae also had to be so bold and daring that, if lions came toeat the oxen at night, he could go with the gun and either frightenthem away or actually shoot them. 

So you see Shomolekae was very clever, and was full of good courage. 

While he was living at Kuruman a man came to him one day and said:

"John Mackenzie is alone at Shoshong, and there is no one who candrive his wagon well for him. "

The man who told him this was, as it happened, going by wagon toShoshong, where John Mackenzie lived. 

"Let me go with you, " said Shomolekae. 

So he got up into the wagon, and away they went day after daynorthward on the same journey that Shomolekae had taken when he was aboy. 

So Shomolekae served Mackenzie for years as wagon driver at Shoshong. 

At last the time came when Mackenzie himself left the tribe atShoshong--left Khama and all his people--and travelled southward tobuild at Kuruman a kind of small school where he could train youngblack men to be missionaries to their own people. And Shomolekaehimself went to Kuruman with Mackenzie. He set to work with his ownhands, and he helped to make and lay bricks, to put in the doors andwindows, and to place the roof on the walls, until at last the littleschool was built. 

And when it was actually built Shomolekae himself went to be a studentthere, and Mackenzie began to train him to be a preacher and a teacherto his own people. 

For three years Shomolekae worked hard in the college, learning moreand more about Jesus Christ, preparing himself to go among his ownpeople to tell them about Him. 

At last the time came when he was ready to go; and he started out, andtravelled long, long miles through sandy places, and then by ariver, until at last he reached a town of little thatched huts calledPitsani, which means "The Town of the Little Hyena. "

In that town he gathered the men and women and the boys and girlstogether and taught them the things that he knew. 

While Shomolekae was at Pitsani there came into that part of Africa anew missionary, whose name was Mr. Wookey. 

It was decided that Mr. Wookey should go a long, long journey andsettle down by the shores of Lake Ngami, which, you remember, DavidLivingstone had discovered long years before. 

Shomolekae wished to go out with Mr. Wookey into this country and tohelp. So he took the wagon and yoked the oxen to it, loaded it up withfood and all the things needed for cooking as they travelled along, and drove the oxen dragging the wagon over many hundreds of miles ofcountry in which leopards barked and lions roared, until at last theycame to the land near Lake Ngami. 

When they came into this land, and found a place in which to settledown, clever Shomolekae mixed earth into mud just as boys and girlsdo in order to make mud-pies, but he made the mud into the shape ofbricks, and then placed the bricks of mud out into the sun to dry. 

The sunshine was very, very hot indeed--so hot that the bricks becamehard and dry and strong. Day after day Shomolekae worked until he hadmade a big heap of bricks. With these he built a little house for Mr. Wookey to live in. But these sun-dried bricks soon spoil if they getwet, so he had to build a verandah to keep the rain from the walls. 

When the house was built and Mr. Wookey was settled in it, theytravelled still further up the river to learn what people were livingthere. 

After a while it was decided that Shomolekae should go and live in asmall village by the river, and there again begin his work of tellingthe men and women of Jesus Christ, and teaching the boys and girls toread. 

In his satchel, which was made of odd bits of calico print ofdifferent patterns, Shomolekae had a hymn-book with music. Thehymn-book was written in the language of the people--the Sechuanalanguage--and Shomolekae taught them from the book to sing hymns. Themusic was the sol-fa notation. 

This is one of the hymns:

 1. "Yesu oa me oa nthata, Leha ke le mo dibin; A re yalo mo kwalon, A re yalo mo pedun. 

 E, Yesu oa me, E, Yesu oa me, E, Yesu oa me, Oa me, mo loraton. 

 2. "Yesu oa me oa nthata, O ntehetse molato; O mpusitse timelon, O ntlhapisa mo pedun. 

 "E, Yesu oa me, " etc. 

This is what these words mean in English. I expect you know them verywell. 

 1. "Jesus loves me, this I know, For the Bible tells me so; Little ones to Him belong, They are weak, but He is strong. 

 "Yes, Jesus loves me, Yes, Jesus loves me, Yes, Jesus loves me-- The Bible tells me so. 

 2. "Jesus loves me, He who died Heaven's gate to open wide; He will wash away my sin, Let His little child come in. 

 "Yes, Jesus loves me, " etc. 

But, you see, the missionary had to alter the words sometimes so as tomake the Sechuana lines come right for the music; and the second versereally means:

 "My Jesus loves me; He has paid my debt; He has brought me back from where I strayed; He has washed my heart. 

 Yes, my Jesus, Yes, my Jesus. Yes, my Jesus. Mine in love. "

They would learn the words off by heart because there was only theone hymn-book, and they would sing them together, Shomolekae's voiceleading. 

They learned them so well that sometimes when the mothers were outhoeing in the fields, or the little boys were paddling in their canoesand fishing in the marshy waters, you would hear them singing thehymns that they learned in Shomolekae's little school hut. 

Then on Sunday they would have Sunday-school, and when that was overShomolekae would gather the chocolate-faced men and women and boys andgirls together--all who would come--and he would teach them to kneeldown and pray to the one God, Who is our Father, and they would singthe hymns that they had learned, and then he would speak to them asimple little address, telling them of the Lord Jesus. 

But Shomolekae desired always to go further and further, even thoughit was dangerous and difficult. So he got a canoe and launched itin the river by the village and paddled further and further up thestream, under the overhanging trees, and sometimes across the deeppools in which the big and fierce hippopotami and crocodiles lived. 

He paddled up the River Okanvango, though many times he was in dangerof his life. The river was not like rivers in our own country, deepand with strong banks; it was often filled all over with reeds, andas shallow as a swamp, and poor Shomolekae had to push his waywith difficulty through these reeds. Always at night the poisonousmosquitoes came buzzing and humming around him. The evil-temperedhippopotamus would suddenly come up from the bottom of the river withhis wicked beady eyes, and great cavernous mouth, with its enormousteeth, yawning at Shomolekae as though he quite meant to swallow himwhole. 

On the banks at night the lions would roar, and then the hyenas wouldhowl; but Shomolekae's brave heart held on, and he pushed on up theriver to preach and teach the people in the villages near the river. 

So through many years, with high courage and simple faith, Shomolekaeworked. 

A good many boys and girls in England before they are ten years oldown many more books than Shomolekae ever had and have read more thanhe. They also have better homes than he, for he pushed on from onemud hut to another along the rivers and lakes, and all the possessionsthat he had in the world could be put into the bottom of his canoe. 

But our Heavenly Father, Who loves you and me, went with him everystep of the way. When Shomolekae taught the boys and girls to singhymns in praise of Jesus, even in a little mud hut, He was there, justas He is in the most beautiful church when we worship Him. Now God hastaken Shomolekae across the last river to be with Himself. 

Shomolekae was a negro with dark skin and curly hair. We are whitechildren with fair faces and light hair. But God is his Father as wellas ours and loves us all alike and wishes to gather us together roundHim--loving Him and one another. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 56: Pronounce Shoh-moh-leh-kei. ]

CHAPTER XXII

THE WOMAN WHO CONQUERED CANNIBALS

_Mary Slessor_

(Dates, b. 1848, d. 1915)

I. THE MILL-GIRL

_The Calabar Girls at the Station_

As the train from the south slowed down in Waverley Station, Edinburgh, one day in 1898, a black face, with eyes wide open withwonder, appeared at the window. The carriage door opened and a littleAfrican girl was handed down onto the platform. 

The people on the station stopped to glance at the strange negro face. But as a second African girl a little older than the first steppedfrom the carriage to the platform, and a third, and then a fourthblack girl appeared, the cabmen and porters stood staring in amusedcuriosity. 

Who was that strange woman (they asked one another), short and slight, with a face like yellow parchment and with short, straight brown hair, who smiled as she gathered the little tribe of African girls round heron the railway platform?

The telegraph boys and the news-boys gazed at her in astonishment. But they would have been transfixed with amazement if they had knowna tenth of the wonder of the story of that heroic woman who, justas simply as she stood there on the Waverley platform, had masteredcannibals, conquered wild drunken chiefs brandishing loaded muskets, had faced hunger and thirst under the flaming heat and burning feversof Africa, and walked unscathed by night through forests haunted byferocious leopards, to triumph over regiments of frenzied savagesdrawn up for battle, had rescued from death hundreds of baby twinsthrown out to be eaten by ants--and had now brought home to Scotlandfrom West Africa four of these her rescued children. 

Still more would those Scottish boys at Waverley Station havewondered, as they gazed on the little woman and her group of blackchildren, if they had known that the woman who had done these things, Mary Slessor, had been a Scottish factory girl, who had toiled at herweaving machine from six in the morning till six at night amid thewhirr of the belts, the flash of the shuttles, the rattle of thelooms, and the roar of the great machines. 

Born in Aberdeen, December 2, 1848, Mary Slessor was the daughter ofa Scottish shoemaker. Her mother was a gentle and sweet-faced woman. After her father's death Mary was the mainstay of the home. Workingin a weaving shed in Dundee (whither the family moved when Mary waseleven) she educated herself while at her machine. 

_The Call to Africa_

Like Livingstone, she taught herself with her book propped up onthe machine at which she worked. She read his travels and heard thestories of his fight against slavery for Africa, till he became herhero. 

One day the news flashed round the world: "Livingstone is dead. Hisheart is buried in Central Africa. " Mary had thrilled as she read thestory of his heroic and lonely life. Now he had fallen. She heard inher heart the words that he had spoken:

"I go to Africa to try to make an open door.... ; do you carry out thework which I have begun. I LEAVE IT WITH YOU. "

As Mary sat, tired with her week's work, in her pew in the church onSunday, and thought of Livingstone's call to Africa, she saw visionsof far-off places of which she heard from the pulpit and read in hermagazines--visions of a steaming river on the West Coast of Africawhere the alligators slid from the mud banks into the water; visionsof the barracoons on the shore in which the captured negroes werepenned as they waited for the slave-ships; pictures of villages wheretrembling prisoners dipped their hands in boiling oil to test theirguilt, and wives were strangled to go with their dead chief into thespirit-land; visions of the fierce chiefs who could order a score ofmen to be beheaded for a cannibal feast and then sell a hundred moreto be hounded away into the outer darkness of slavery--the Calabarwhere the missionaries of her church were fighting the black darknessof the most savage people of the world. 

Mary Slessor made up her mind to go out and give her whole life toAfrica. So she offered herself, a timorous girl who could not cross afield with a cow in it, as a missionary for cannibal Calabar, in WestAfrica. 

For twelve years she worked at the centre of the mission in Calabarand then flung herself into pioneer work among the terrible tribeof Okoyong. No one had ever been able to influence them. They defiedBritish administration. For fifteen years she strove there, and wona power over the ferocious Okoyong savages such as no one has everwielded. "I'm a wee, wee wifie, " she said, "no very bookit, but I gripon well none the less. "

To-day over two thousand square miles of forest and rivers, the dark savages, as they squat at night in the forestaround their palaver-fires, tell one another stories of theGreat-White-Ma-Who-Lived-Alone, and the stories they tell are likethese. 

II. THE HEALING OF THE CHIEF

_Through the Forest in the Rain_

A strange quiet lay over all the village by the river. For the chieflay ill in his hut. The Calabar people were waiting on the tip-toe ofsuspense. For if the chief died many of them would be slain to gowith him into the spirit-world--his wives and some of his soldiers andslaves. 

Suddenly a strange African woman, who had come over from anothervillage, entered the chief's harem. She spoke to the wives of thechief, saying, "There lives away through the forest at Ekenge a whiteMa who can cast out by her magic the demons who are killing yourchief. My son's child was dying, but the white Ma[57] saved her andshe is well to-day. Many other wonders has she done by the power ofher juju. Let your chief send for her and he will not die. "

There was silence and then eager chattering, for the women knew thattheir very lives depended on the chief getting well. If he died, theywould be killed. 

They sent in word to the chief about the strange white Ma. 

"Let her be sent for, " he ordered. "Send a bottle and four rods (valueabout a shilling) and messengers to ask her to come. "

All through the day the messengers hurried over stream and hill, through village after village and along the forest paths till at last, after eight hours' journey, they came to the village of Ekenge. Goingto the courtyard of the chief they told him the story of their sickchief, and their desire that the white Ma who lived in his villageshould come and heal him. 

"She will say for herself what she will do, " said the chief. 

So he sent a messenger to Mary Slessor. She soon came over from herlittle house to learn what was needed of her. 

The story of the sick chief was again told. 

"What is the matter with your chief?" asked Mary Slessor. Blank facesand nodding heads showed that they knew nothing at all. 

"I must go to him, " she declared. She knew that the way was full ofperils, and that she might be killed by warriors and wild beasts; butshe knew too that, if she did not go and if the chief died, hundredsof lives might be sacrificed. 

Chief Edem said, "There are warriors out in the woods and you will bekilled. You must not go. "

Ma Eme, a tall fat African widow of Ekenge village, who loved MarySlessor, said, "No, you must not go. The streams are deep; the rainsare come. You could never get there. "

But Mary Slessor said, "I _must_ go. "

"Then I will send women with you to look after you, and men to protectyou, " said Chief Edem. 

Mary Slessor went back to her house to prepare to start on her longdangerous journey in the morning. She could not sleep for wonderingwhether she was indeed right to risk her life and all her work on theoff-chance of saving this distant sick chief. She knelt down and askedGod to guide her. Then she felt in her heart that she must go. 

In the morning at dawn a guard of Ekenge women came to her door. 

"The men will join us outside the village, " they said. 

The skies were grey. The rain was falling as they started. When thevillage lay behind them the rain began to pour in sheets. It came downas only an African rain can, unceasing torrents of pitiless deluge. Soon Mary Slessor's soaked boots became impossible to walk in. Shetook them off and threw them into the bush; then her stockings went, and she ploughed on in the mud in her bare feet. 

They had walked for three hours when, as the weather began to clear, Mary Slessor came out into a market-place for neighbouring villages. The hundreds of Africans who were bartering in the market-place turnedand stared at the strange white woman who swiftly passed through theirmidst and disappeared into the bush beyond. 

So she pressed on for hour after hour, her head throbbing with fever, her dauntless spirit driving her trembling, timid body onward tillat last, when she had been walking almost ceaselessly for over eighthours, she tottered into the village of the sick chief. 

_The Healing Hand. _

Mary Slessor, aching from head to foot with fever and overwhelmingweariness, did not lie down even for a moment's rest, but walkedstraight to the chief who lay senseless on his mat on the mud floor. Having examined him she took from her little medicine chest a drug andgave a dose to the chief. But she could see at once that more of thismedicine was needed than she had with her. She knew that, away on theother side of the river, some hours distant, another missionary wasworking. 

"You must go across the river to Ikorofiong for more medicine. "

"No, no!" they said, "we dare not go. They will slay any man who goesthere. "

She was in despair. Then someone said, "There is a man of that countryliving in his canoe on the river. Perhaps he would go?"

They ran down to the river and found him. After much persuading he atlast went, and returned next day with the medicine. 

The chief, whom the women had believed to be almost dead, graduallyrecovered consciousness, then sat up and took food. At last he wasquite well. All the village laughed and sang for joy. There would beno slaying. They gathered round Mary Slessor in grateful wonder ather magic powers. She told them that she had come to them becauseshe worshipped the Great Physician Jesus Christ, the Son of theFather--God who made all things. Then she gathered them together inthe morning and evening, and led them as with bowed heads they allthanked God for the healing of the chief. 

III. VALIANT IN FIGHT

Years passed by and Mary Slessor's name was known in all the villagesfor many miles. She was, to them, the white Ma who was brave and wiseand kind. She was mad, they thought, because she was always rescuingthe twin babies whom the Calabar people throw out to die and themothers of twins whom they often kill. But in some strange way theyfelt that her wisdom, her skill in healing men, and her courage, whichwas more heroic than that of their bravest warriors, came from theSpirit who made all things. She would wrench guns from the hands ofdrunken savage men who were three times as strong as she was. At lastshe used to sit with their chief as judge of quarrels, and many timesin palavers between villages she stopped the people from going to war. 

_Through the Forest Perilous_

One day a secret message came to her that, in some villages far away, a man of one village had wounded the chief in another village and thatall the warriors were arming and holding councils of war. 

"I must go and stop it, " said Mary Slessor. 

"You cannot, " said her friends at Ekenge, "the steamer is coming totake you home to Britain because you are so ill. You will miss theboat. You are too ill to walk. The wild beasts in the woods will killyou. The savage warriors are out, and will kill you in the dark--notknowing who you are. "

"But I must go, " she answered. 

The chief insisted that she must have two armed men with lanterns withher, and that she must get the chief of a neighbouring village to sendout his drummer with her so that people might know--as they heard thedrum--that a protected person was travelling who must not be harmed. 

It was night, and Mary Slessor with her two companions marched outinto the darkness, the lanterns throwing up strange shadows thatlooked like fierce men in the darkness. Through the night they walkedtill at midnight they reached the village where they were to ask forthe drum. 

The chief was surly. 

"You are going to a warlike people, " he said. "They will not listen towhat a woman says. You had better go back. I will not protect you. "

Mary Slessor was on her mettle. 

"When you think of the woman's power, " she said to the chief, "youforget the power of the woman's God. I shall go on. "

And to the amazement of the savages in the villages she went on intothe darkness. Surely she must be mad. She defied their chief who hadthe power to kill her. She had walked on into a forest where ferociousleopards abounded ready to spring out upon her, and where men weredrinking themselves into a fury of war. And for what? To try with awoman's tongue to stop the fiery chiefs and the savages of a distantwarlike tribe from fighting. Surely she was mad. 

_Facing the Warriors_

She pressed on through the darkness. Then she saw the dim outlinesof huts. Mary Slessor had reached the first town in the war area. Shefound the hut where an old Calabar woman lived who knew the white Ma. 

"Who is there?" came a whisper from within. 

But even as she replied there was a swift patter of bare feet. Out ofthe darkness leapt a score of armed warriors. They were all round her. From all parts dark shadows sprang forward till scores of men withtheir chiefs were jostling, chattering and threatening. 

"What have you come for?" they asked. 

"I have heard that you are going to war. I have come to ask you not tofight, " she replied. 

The chiefs hurriedly talked together, then they came to her and said--

"The white Ma is welcome. She shall hear all that we have to saybefore we fight. All the same we shall fight. For here you see are menwounded. We _must_ wipe out the disgrace that is put upon us. Now shemust rest. Women, you take care of the white Ma. We will call her atcock-crow when we start. "

This meant an hour's sleep. Mary Slessor lay down in a hut. It seemedas though her eyes were hardly shut before she was wakened again. Shestood, tottering with tiredness, when she heard the cry--

"Run, Ma, run!"

The warriors were off down the hill away to the fight. She ran, butthey were quickly out of sight on the way to the attack. Was all hertrouble in vain? She pressed on weak and breathless, but determined. She heard wild yells and the roll of the war drum. The warriors shehad followed were feverishly making ready to fight, a hundred yardsdistant from the enemy's village. 

She went up to them and spoke sternly. 

"Behave like men, " she said, "not like fools. Do not yell and shout. Hold your peace. I am going into the village there. "

She pointed to the enemy. Then she walked forward. Ahead of her stoodthe enemy in unbroken ranks of dark warriors. They stood like a solidwall. She hailed them as she walked forward. 

There was an ominous silence. She laughed. 

"How perfect your manners are!" she exclaimed. She was about to walkforward and force them to make way for her when an old chief steppedout toward her and, to her amazement, knelt down at her feet. 

"Ma, " he said, "we thank you for coming to us. We own that we woundedthe chief over there. It was only one of our men who did it. It wasnot the act of all our town. We ask you that you will speak with ourenemy to bring them to peace with us. "

_The Healed Chief_

She looked into the face of the chief. Then she saw to her joy thatthis was the very chief whom she had toiled through the rain to heallong ago. Because of what she had done then, he was now at her feetasking her to make peace. Should she run back and tell the warriors, who a hundred yards away were spoiling for a fight? That was her firstjoyful thought. Then she saw that she must first make her authoritystronger over the whole band of warriors. 

"Stay where you are, " she said. "Some of you find a place where I cansit in comfort; and bring me food. I will not starve while men fight. Choose two or three men to speak well for you, and we will have twomen from your enemies. "

These grim warriors, so sullen and threatening a few moments ago, obeyed her every word. At length two chiefs came from the other sideand stood on one side of her, while the two chiefs chosen in thevillage came and threw down their arms and knelt at their feet. 

"Your chief, " they said, "was wounded by a drunken youth. Do not letus shed blood through all our villages because of what he did. Ifyou will cease from war with us, we will pay to you any fine that thewhite Ma shall say. "

She, too, pressed them to stop their fighting. Word went back to thewarriors on both sides, who became wildly excited. Some agreed, othersstormed and raged till they were in a frenzy. Would they fight evenover her body? Furious warriors came moving up from both sides. Butby arguing and appealing at last she persuaded the warlike tribe toaccept a fine. 

_The Promise of Peace_

The town whose drunken youth had wounded the enemy chief at once paida part of the fine. They used no money. So the fine was paid in casksand bottles of trade gin. Mary Slessor trembled. For as the boxes ofgin bottles were brought forward the warriors pranced with excitementand made ready to get drunk. She knew that this would make them fightafter all. What could she do? The roar of voices rose. She couldnot make her own voice heard. A daring idea flashed into her mind. According to the law of these Egbo people, clothes thrown overanything give it the protection of your body. She snatched off herskirt and all the clothing she could spare and spread them over thegin. She seized the one glass that the tribe had, and doled outone portion only to each chief to test whether the bottles indeedcontained spirit. At last they grew quieter and she spoke to them. 

"I am going, " she said, "across the Great Waters to my home, and Ishall be away many moons. Promise me here, on both sides, that youwill not go to war with one another while I am away. "

"We promise, " they said. They gathered around her and she told themthe story of Jesus Christ in whose name she had come to them. 

"Now, " she said, "go to your rest and fight no more. " And the tribeskept their promise to her, --so that when she returned they could say, "It is peace. "

 * * * * *

For nearly forty years she worked on in Calabar, stricken scores oftimes with fever. She rescued her hundreds of twin babies thrown outto die in the forest, stopped wars and ordeal by poison, made peace, healed the sick. 

At last, too weak to walk, she was wheeled through the forests andalong the valleys by some of her "twins" now grown to strong children, and died there--the conquering Queen of Calabar, who ruled in thehearts of even the fiercest cannibals through the power of the Faith, by which out of weakness she was made strong. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 57: The African uses the word "Ma" as mother, (_a_) toname a woman after her eldest son, _e. G. _ Mrs. Livingstone was calledMa-Robert; and (_b_) as in this case, for a woman whom they respect. ]

Book Four: HEROINES AND HEROES OF PLATEAU AND DESERT

CHAPTER XXIII

SONS OF THE DESERT

_Abdallah and Sabat_

(Time of Incidents, about 1800-1810)

_Two Arab Wanderers_

One day, more than a hundred years ago, two young Arabs, Abdallah andSabat, rode on their camels toward a city that was hidden among thetawny hills standing upon the skyline. 

The sun was beginning to drop toward the edge of the desert away inthe direction of the Red Sea. The shadows of the long swinging legs ofthe camels wavered in grotesque lines on the sand. There was a lookof excited expectation in the eyes of the young Arabs; for, by sunset, their feet would walk the city of their dreams. 

They were bound for Mecca, the birthplace of Mohammed, the Holy Citytoward which every man of the Mohammedan world turns five times a dayas he cries, "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is the prophetof Allah. " To have worshipped in Mecca before the sacred Kaaba andto have kissed the black stone in its wall--this was to make Paradisecertain for them both. Having done that pilgrimage these two Arabs, Sabat and Abdallah, would be able to take the proud title of "Haji"which would proclaim to every man that they had been to Mecca--theHoly of Holies. 

So they pressed on by the valley between the hills till they sawbefore them the roofs and the minarets of Mecca itself. As darknessrushed across the desert and the stars came out, the tired camelsknelt in the courtyard of the Khan, [58] and Sabat and Abdallahalighted and stretched their cramped legs, and took their sleep. 

These young men, Sabat and Abdallah, the sons of notable Arab chiefs, had struck up a great friendship. Now, each in company with his chum, they were together at the end of the greatest journey that an Arab cantake. 

As the first faint flush of pink touched the mountain beyond Mecca, the cry came from the minaret: "Come to prayer. Prayer is better thansleep. There is no God but Allah. "

Sabat and Abdallah were already up and out, and that day they said theMohammedan prayer before the Kaaba itself with other pilgrims who hadcome from many lands--from Egypt and Abyssinia, from Constantinopleand Damascus, Baghdad and Bokhara, from the defiles of the KhyberPass, from the streets of Delhi and the harbour of Zanzibar. 

We do not know what Abdallah looked like. He was probably like mostyoung Arab chieftains, a tall, sinewy man--brown-faced, dark-eyed, with hair and a short-cropped beard that were between brown and black. 

His friend Sabat was, however, so striking that even in that greatcrowd of many pilgrims people would turn to look at him. They wouldturn round, for one reason, because of Sabat's voice. Even when he wasjust talking to his friend his voice sounded like a roar; when he gotexcited and in a passion (as he very often did) it rolled like thunderand was louder than most men's shouting. As he spoke his large whiteteeth gleamed in his wide mouth. His brown face and black archedeyebrows were a dark setting for round eyes that flashed as he spoke. His black beard flowed over his tawny throat and neck. Gold earringsswung with his agitation and a gold chain gleamed round his neck. Hewore a bright silk jacket with long sleeves, and long, loose-flowingtrousers and richly embroidered shoes with turned-up toes. From agirdle round his waist hung a dagger whose handle and hilt flashedwith jewels. 

Abdallah and Sabat were better educated than most Arabs, for theycould both read. But they were not men who could stay in one placeand read and think in quiet. When they had finished their worship atMecca, they determined to ride far away across the deserts eastward, even to Kabul in the mountains of Afghanistan. So they rode, firstnorthward up the great camel-route toward Damascus, and then eastward. In spite of robbers and hungry jackals, through mountain gorges, overstreams, across the Syrian desert from oasis to oasis, and then acrossthe Euphrates and the Tigris they went, till they had climbed rung byrung the mountain ranges that hold up the great plateau of Persia. 

At last they broke in upon the rocky valleys of Afghanistan and cameto the gateway of India--to Kabul. They presented themselves to ZemanShah, the ruler of Afghanistan, and he was so taken with Abdallah'scapacity that he asked him to be one of his officers in the court. So Abdallah stayed in Kabul. But the restless, fiery Sabat turned theface of his camel westward and rode back into Persia to the lovelycity of Bokhara. 

_Abdallah the Daring_

In Kabul there was an Armenian whose name we do not know: but heowned a book printed in Arabic, a book that Abdallah could read. TheArmenian lent it to him. There were hardly any books in Arabic, soAbdallah took this book and read it eagerly. As he read, he thoughtthat he had never in all his life heard of such wonderful things, and he could feel in his very bones that they were true. He read fourshort true stories in this book: they were what we call the Gospelsaccording to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. As he read, Abdallah saw inthe stories Someone who was infinitely greater than Mohammed--One whowas so strong and gentle that He was always helping children and womenand people who were ill; so good that He always lived the very lifethat God willed; and so brave that He died rather than give in to evilmen--our Lord Jesus Christ. 

"I worship Him, " said Abdallah in his heart. Then he did a very daringthing. He knew that if he turned Christian it would be the duty ofMohammedans to kill him. Why not keep quiet and say nothing about hischange of heart? But he could not. He decided that he must come outin the open and confess the new Captain of his life. He was baptized aChristian. 

The Moslems were furious. To save his life Abdallah fled on his camelwestward to Bokhara. But the news that he had become a Christian fleweven faster than he himself rode. As he went along the streets ofBokhara he saw his friend Sabat coming toward him. As a friend, Sabatdesired to save Abdallah; but as a Moslem, the cruel law of Mohammedsaid that he must have him put to death. And Sabat was a fiery, hot-tempered Moslem. 

"I had no pity, " Sabat told his friends afterward. "I delivered him upto Morad Shah, the King. "

So Abdallah was bound and carried before the Moslem judges. His friendSabat stood by watching, just as Saul had stood watching them stoneStephen nearly eighteen centuries earlier. 

"You shall be given your life and be set free, " they said, "if youwill spit upon the Cross and renounce Christ and say, 'There is no Godbut Allah. '"

"I refuse, " said Abdallah. 

A sword was brought forward and unsheathed. Abdallah's arm wasstretched out: the sword was lifted--it flashed--and Abdallah's hand, cut clean off, fell on the ground, while the blood spurted from hisarm. 

"Your life will still be given you if you renounce Christ and proclaimAllah and Mohammed as His prophet. "

This is how Sabat himself described what happened next. "Abdallah madeno answer, but looked up steadfastly toward heaven, like Stephen, thefirst martyr, his eyes streaming with tears. He looked at me, " saidSabat, "but it was with the countenance of forgiveness. "

Abdallah's other arm was stretched out, again the sword flashed andfell. His other hand dropped to the ground. He stood there bleedingand handless. He bowed his head and his neck was bared to the sword. Again the blade flashed. He was beheaded, and Sabat--Sabat who hadridden a thousand miles with his friend and had faced with himthe blistering sun of the desert and the snow-blizzard of themountain--saw Abdallah's head lie there on the ground and the deadbody carried away. 

Abdallah had died because he was faithful to Jesus Christ and becauseSabat had obeyed the law of Mohammed. 

_The Old Sabat and the New_

The news spread through Bokhara like a forest fire. They could hardlybelieve that a man would die for the Christian faith like that. AsSabat told his friends afterward, "All Bokhara seemed to say, 'Whatnew thing is this?'"

But Sabat was in agony of mind. Nothing that he could do would takeaway from his eyes the vision of his friend's face as Abdallah hadlooked at him when his hands were being cut off. He plunged out onto the camel tracks of Asia to try to forget. He wandered far and hewandered long, but he could not forget or find rest for his torturedmind. 

At last he sailed away on the seas and landed on the coast of India atMadras. The British East India Company then ruled in India, and theygave Sabat a post in the civil courts as mufti, _i. E. _ as an expounderof the law of Mohammed. He spent most of his time in a coast townnorth of Madras, called Vizagapatam. [59] A friend handed to himthere a little book in his native language--Arabic. It was anothertranslation of those stories that Abdallah had read in Kabul--it wasthe New Testament. [60]

Sabat sat reading this New Book. He then took up the book ofMohammed's law--the Koran--which it was his daily work to explain. Hecompared the two. "The truth came"--as he himself said--"like a floodof light. " He too began to worship Jesus Christ, whose life he hadread now for the first time in the New Testament. Sabat decided thathe must follow in Abdallah's footsteps. He became a Christian. [61] Hewas then twenty-seven years of age. 

_The Brother's Dagger_

In the world of the East news travels like magic by Arab dhow (sailingship) and camel caravan. Very quickly the news was in Arabia thatSabat had renounced Mohammed and become a Christian. At once Sabat'sbrother rose, girded on his dagger, left the tents of his tribe, mounted his camel and coursed across Arabia to a port. There he tookship for Madras. Landing, he disguised himself as an Indian and wentup to Vizagapatam to the house where his brother Sabat was living. 

Sabat saw this Indian, as he appeared to be, standing before him. Hesuspected nothing. Suddenly the disguised brother put his hand withinhis robe, seized his dagger, and leaping at Sabat made a fierce blowat him. Sabat flung out his arm. He spoilt his brother's aim, buthe was too late to save himself. He was wounded, but not killed. Thebrother threw off his disguise, and Sabat--remembering the forgivenessof Abdallah--forgave his brother, gave him many presents, and sentloving messages to his mother. 

Sabat decided that he could no longer work as an expounder of Moslemlaw: he wanted to do work that would help to spread the ChristianFaith. He went away north to Calcutta, and there he joined thegreat men who were working at the task of translating the Bible intodifferent languages and printing them. This work pleased Sabat, forwas it not through reading an Arabic New Testament that all his ownlife had been changed?

Because Sabat knew Persian as well as Arabic he was sent to help avery clever young chaplain from England named Henry Martyn, who wasbusily at work translating the New Testament into Persian and Arabic. So Sabat went up the Ganges to Cawnpore with Henry Martyn. 

Sabat's fiery temper nearly drove Martyn wild. His was a flaming Arabspirit, hot-headed and impetuous; yet he would be ready to die forthe man he cared for; proud and often ignorant, yet simple--as Martynsaid, "an artless child of the desert. "

Sabat's knowledge of Persian was not really so good as he himselfthought it was, and some of the Indian translators at Calcuttacriticised his translation. At this he got furiously angry, and, likeSt. Peter, the fiery, impetuous apostle, he denied Jesus Christ andspoke against Christianity. 

With his heart burning with rage and his great voice thundering withanger, Sabat left his friends, went aboard ship and sailed down theBay of Bengal by the Indo-Chinese coast till he came to Penang, wherehe began to live as a trader. 

But by this time the fire of his anger had burnt itself out. He--againlike Peter--remembered his denial of his Master, and when he saw ina Penang newspaper an article saying that the famous Sabat, who hadbecome a Christian and then become a Mohammedan again, had come tolive in their city, he wrote a letter which was published in thenewspaper at Penang declaring that he was now--and for good and all--aChristian. 

A British officer named Colonel MacInnes was stationed at Penang. Sabat went to him. "My mind is full of great sorrow, " he said, "because I denied Jesus Christ. I have not had a moment's peace sinceSatan made me do that bad work. I did it for revenge. I only want todo one thing with my life: to spend it in undoing this evil that hascome through my denial. "

Sabat left the house of the Mohammedan with whom he was living inPenang. He found an old friend of his named Johannes, an ArmenianChristian merchant, who had lived in Madras in the very days whenSabat first became a Christian. Every night Johannes the Armenianand Sabat the Arab got out their Bibles, and far into the night Sabatwould explain their meaning to Johannes. 

_The Prince from Sumatra_

One day all Penang was agog with excitement because a brown Princefrom Acheen, a Malay State in the island of Sumatra, had suddenlysailed into the harbour. He was in flight from his own land, whererebels had attacked him. The people of Acheen were wild and ferocious;many of them were cannibals. 

"I will join you in helping to recover your throne, " said Sabat to thefugitive Prince. "I am going, " said Sabat to Colonel MacInnes, "to seeif I can carry the message of Christianity to this fierce people. "

So Sabat and the Prince, with others, went aboard a sailing ship andcrossed the Strait of Malacca to Sumatra. They landed, and for longthe struggle with the rebels swayed from side to side. The Prince wasso pleased with Sabat that he made him his Prime Minister. But thestruggle dragged on and on; there seemed to be no hope of triumph. Atlast Sabat decided to go back to Penang. One day he left the Princeand started off, but soldiers of the rebel-chief Syfoolalim capturedhim. 

Great was the joy of the rebels--their powerful enemy was in theirhands! They bound him, threw him into a boat, hoisted him aboard asailing ship and clapped him in the stifling darkness of the hold. Ashe lay there he pierced his arm to make it bleed, and, with the bloodthat came out, wrote on a piece of paper that was smuggled out andsent to Penang to Colonel MacInnes. 

The agonies that Sabat suffered in the gloom and filth of that ship'shold no one will ever know. We can learn from the words that he wrotein the blood from his own body that they loaded worse horrors uponhim because he was a Christian. All the scene is black, but out of thedarkness comes a voice that makes us feel that Sabat was faithful atthe end. In his last letter to Colonel MacInnes he told how he was nowready (like his friend Abdallah) to die for the sake of that Masterwhom he had in his rage denied. 

Then one day his cruel gaolers came to the hold where he lay, and, binding his limbs, thrust him into a sack, which they then closed. Inthe choking darkness of the sack he was carried on deck and draggedto the side of the ship. He heard the lapping of the waves. He felthimself lifted and then hurled out into the air, and down--down with acrash into the waters of the sea, which closed over him for ever. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 58: The inn of the Near East--a square courtyard with allthe doors and windows inside, with primitive stables and bunks for thecamelmen, and sometimes rooms for the well-to-do travellers. ]

[Footnote 59: Pronounce Vi-zah'-ga-pat-ahm. ]

[Footnote 60: The Arabic New Testament revised by Solomon Negri andsent to India by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledgein the middle of the eighteenth century. ]

[Footnote 61: Baptized "Nathaniel" at Madras by the Rev. Dr Kerr. ]

CHAPTER XXIV

A RACE AGAINST TIME

_Henry Martyn_

(Dates, b. 1781, d. 1812. Time of Incident 1810-12)

In the story of Sabat that was told in the previous chapter you willremember that, for a part of the time that he lived in India, heworked with an Englishman named Henry Martyn. 

Sabat was almost a giant; Henry Martyn was slight and not very strong. Yet--as we shall see in the story that follows--Henry Martyn wasbraver and more constant than Sabat himself. 

As a boy Henry, who was born and went to school in Truro, in Cornwall, in the West of England, was violently passionate, sensitive, andphysically rather fragile, and at school was protected from bullies bya big boy, the son of Admiral Kempthorne. 

He left school at the age of fifteen and shot and read till he wasseventeen. In 1797 he became an undergraduate at St. John's College, Cambridge. He was still very passionate. 

For instance, when a man was "ragging" him in the College Hall atdinner, he was so furious that he flung a knife at him, which stuckquivering in the panelling of the wall. Kempthorne, his old friend, was at Cambridge with him. They used to read the Bible together andMartyn became a real Christian and fought hard to overcome his violenttemper. 

He was a very clever scholar and became a Fellow of Jesus College in1802. He at that time took orders in the Church of England. He becamevery keen on reading about missionary work, e. G. Carey's story ofnine years' work in _Periodical Accounts_, and the L. M. S. Report onVanderkemp in South Africa. "I read nothing else while it lasted, " hesaid of the Vanderkemp report. 

He was accepted as a chaplain of the East India Company. They couldnot sail till Admiral Nelson gave the word, because the French werewaiting to capture all the British ships. Five men-of-war convoyedthem when they sailed in 1805. They waited off Ireland, because theimmediate invasion of England by Napoleon was threatened. On boardMartyn worked hard at Hindustani, Bengali and Portuguese. He alreadyknew Greek, Latin and Hebrew. He arrived at Madras (South India) andCalcutta and thence went to Cawnpore. It is at this point that ouryarn begins. 

A voice like thunder, speaking in a strange tongue, shouted across anIndian garden one night in 1809. 

The new moon, looking "like a ball of ebony in an ivory cup, "--as onewho was there that night said--threw a cold light over the palm treesand aloes, on the man who was speaking and on those who were seatedaround him at the table in the bungalow. 

Beyond the garden the life of Cawnpore moved in its many streets;the shout of a donkey-driver, the shrill of a bugle from the barracksbroke sharply through the muffled sounds of the city. The June wind, heavy with the waters of the Ganges which flows past Cawnpore, madethe night insufferably hot. But the heat did not trouble Sabat, thewild son of the Arabian desert, who was talking--as he always did--ina roaring voice that was louder than most men's shouting. He wastelling the story of Abdallah's brave death as a Christian martyr. [62]

Quietly listening to Sabat's voice--though he could not understandwhat he was saying--was a young Italian, Padre Julius Cæsar, a monk ofthe order of the Jesuits. On his head was a little skull-cap, over hisbody a robe of fine purple satin held with a girdle of twisted silk. 

Near him sat an Indian scholar--on his dark head a full turban, andabout him richly-coloured robes. On the other side sat a little, thin, copper-coloured Bengali dressed in white, and a British officer in hisscarlet and gold uniform, with his wife, who has told us the story ofthat evening. 

Not one of these brightly dressed people was, however, the strongestpower there. A man in black clothes was the real centre of the group. Very slight in build, not tall, clean-shaven, with a high foreheadand sensitive lips, young Henry Martyn seemed a stripling beside theflaming Arab. Yet Sabat, with all his sound and fury, was no match forthe swift-witted, clear-brained young Englishman. Henry Martyn was achaplain in the army of the East India Company, which then ruled inIndia. 

He was the only one of those who were listening to Sabat who couldunderstand what he was saying. When Sabat had finished his story, Martyn turned, and, in his clear, musical voice translated it fromthe Persian into Latin mixed with Italian for Padre Julius Cæsar, into Hindustani for the Indian scholar, into Bengali for the Bengalgentleman, and into English for the British officer and his wife. Martyn could also talk to Sabat himself both in Arabic and in Persian. 

As Martyn listened to the rolling sentences of Sabat, the ChristianArab, he seemed to see the lands beyond India, away across the KhyberPass, where Sabat had travelled--Mesopotamia, Arabia, Persia. 

Henry Martyn knew that in all those lands the people were Mohammedans. He wanted one thing above everything else in the world: that wasto give them all the chance of doing what Sabat and Abdallah haddone--the chance of reading in their own languages the one book in theworld that could tell them that God was a Father--the book of lettersand of biographies that we call the New Testament. 

_The Toil of Brain_

There was not in the world a copy of the New Testament in goodPersian. To make one Henry Martyn slaved hard, far into the hot, sultry Indian nights, with scores of mosquitoes "pinging" round hislamp and his head, grinding at his Persian grammar, so that he couldtranslate the life of Jesus Christ into that language. 

Even while he was listening to Sabat's story in the bungalow atCawnpore, Martyn knew that he was so ill that he could not live formany years more. The doctor said that he must leave India for a timeto be in a healthier place. Should he go home to England, where allhis friends were? He wanted that; but much more he wanted to go onwith his work. So he asked the doctor if he might go to Persia on theway home, and he agreed. 

So Martyn went down from Cawnpore to Calcutta, and in a boat down theHoogli 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 Hebrewand the New Testament in the original Greek, so that he mightunderstand them better and make a more perfect translation intoPersian. He read the Koran of Mohammed so that he could argue withthe Persians about it. And he worked hard at Arabic grammar, and readbooks in Persian. Yet he was for ever cracking jokes with his fellowtravellers, cooped up in the little ship on the hot tropical seas. 

From Bombay the governor granted Martyn a passage up the Persian Gulfin the _Benares_, a ship in the Indian Navy that was going on a cruiseto finish the exciting work of hunting down the fierce Arab piratesof the Persian Gulf. So on Lady Day, 1811, the sailors got her underweigh and tacked northward up the Gulf, till at last, on May 21, theroofs and minarets of Bushire hove in sight. Martyn, leaning over thebulwarks, could see the town jutting out into the Gulf on a spit ofsand and the sea almost surrounding it. That day he set foot for thefirst time on the soil of Persia. 

_Across Persia on a Pony_

Aboard ship Martyn had allowed his beard and moustache to grow. Whenhe landed at Bushire he bought and wore the clothes of a Persiangentleman, so that he should escape from attracting everybody's noticeby wearing clothes such as the people had never seen before. 

No one who had seen the pale, clean-shaven clergyman in black silkcoat and trousers in Cawnpore would have recognised the HenryMartyn who rode out that night on his pony with an Armenian servant, Zechariah of Isfahan, on his long one hundred and seventy mile journeyfrom Bushire to Shiraz. He wore a conical cap of black Astrakhan fur, great baggy trousers of blue, bright red leather boots, a light tunicof chintz, and over that a flowing cloak. 

They went out through the gates of Bushire on to the great plain ofburning sand that stretched away for ninety miles ahead of them. Theytravelled by night, because the day was intolerably hot, but even atmidnight the heat was over 100 degrees. It was a fine moonlight night;the stars sparkled over the plain. The bells tinkled on the mules'necks as they walked across the sand. All else was silent. 

At last dawn broke. Martyn pitched his little tent under a tree, the only shelter he could get. Gradually the heat grew more and moreintense. He was already so ill that it was difficult to travel. 

"When the thermometer was above 112 degrees--fever heat, " says Martyn, "I began to lose my strength fast. It became intolerable. I wrappedmyself up in a blanket and all the covering I could get to defendmyself from the air. By this means the moisture was kept a littlelonger upon the body. I thought I should have lost my senses. Thethermometer at last stood at 126 degrees. I concluded that death wasinevitable. "

At last the sun went down: the thermometer crept lower: it was nightand time to start again. But Martyn had not slept or eaten. He couldhardly sit upright on his pony. Yet he set out and travelled onthrough the night. 

Next morning he had a little shelter of leaves and branches made, andan Arab poured water on the leaves and on Martyn all day to try tokeep some of the frightful heat from him. But even then the heatalmost slew him. So they marched on through another night and thencamped under a grove of date palms. 

"I threw myself on the burning ground and slept, " Martyn wrote. "Whenthe tent came up I awoke in a burning fever. All day I had recourse tothe wet towel, which kept me alive, but would allow of no sleep. "

At nine that night they struck camp. The ground threw up the heat thatit had taken from the sun during the day. So frightfully hot was theair that even at midnight Martyn could not travel without a wet towelround his face and neck. 

As the night drew on the plain grew rougher: then it began to riseto the foothills and mountains. At last the pony and mules wereclambering up rough steep paths so wild that there was (as Martynsaid) "nothing to mark the road but the rocks being a little moreworn in one place than in another. " Suddenly in the darkness the ponystopped; dimly through the gloom Martyn could see that they were onthe edge of a tremendous precipice. A single step more would haveplunged him over, to be smashed on the rocks hundreds of feet below. Martyn did not move or try to guide the beast: he knew that the ponyhimself was the safest guide. In a minute or two the animal moved, andstep by step clambered carefully up the rock-strewn mountain-side. 

At last they came out on the mountain top, but only to find that theywere on the edge of a flat high plain--a tableland. The air was pureand fresher; the mules and the travellers revived. Martyn's pony beganto trot briskly along. So, as dawn came up, they came in sight of agreat courtyard built by the king of that country to refresh pilgrims. 

Through night after night they tramped, across plateau and mountainrange, till they climbed the third range, and then plunged by awinding rocky path into a wide valley where, at a great town calledKazrun, in a garden of cypress trees was a summer-house. 

Martyn lay down on the floor but could not sleep, though he washorribly weary. "There seemed, " he said, "to be fire within my head, my skin like a cinder. " His heart beat like a hammer. 

They went on climbing another range of mountains, first tormentedby mosquitoes, then frozen with cold; Martyn was so overwhelmed withsleep that he could not sit on his pony and had to hurry ahead to keepawake and then sit down with his back against a rock where he fellasleep in a second, and had to be shaken to wake up when Zechariah, the Armenian mule driver, came up to where he was. 

They had at last climbed the four mountain rungs of the ladder toPersia, and came out on June 11th, 1811, on the great plain where thecity of Shiraz stands. Here he found the host Jaffir Ali Khan, to whomhe carried his letters of introduction. Martyn in his Persian dress, seated on the ground, was feasted with curries and rice, sweets cooledwith snow and perfumed with rose water, and coffee. 

Ali Khan had a lovely garden of orange trees, and in the garden Martynsat. Ill as he was, he worked day in and day out to translate the lifeof Jesus Christ in the New Testament from the Greek language intopure and simple Persian. The kind host put up a tent for Martyn in thegarden, close to some beautiful vines, from which hung lovely bunchesof purple grapes. By the side of his tent ran a clear streamof running water. All the evening nightingales sang sweetly andmournfully. 

As he sat there at his work, men came hundreds of miles to talk withthis holy man, as they felt him to be. Moslems--they yet travelledeven from Baghdad and Bosra and Isfahan to hear this "infidel" speakof Jesus Christ, and to argue as to which was the true religion. Prince Abbas Mirza invited him to come to speak with him; and asMartyn entered the Prince's courtyard a hundred fountains began tosend up jets of water in his honour. 

At last they came to him in such numbers that Martyn was obliged tosay to many of them that he could not see them. He hated sending themaway. What was it forced him to do so?

_The Race against Time_

It was because he was running a race against time. He knew that hecould not live very long, because the disease that had smitten hislungs was gaining ground every day. And the thing that he had cometo Persia for--the object that had made him face the long voyage, the frightful heat and the freezing cold of the journey, the lifethousands of miles from his home in Cornwall--was that he might finishsuch a translation of the New Testament into Persian that men shouldlove to read years and years after he had died. 

So each day Martyn finished another page or two of the book, writtenin lovely Persian letters. He began the work within a week of reachingShiraz, and in seven months (February, 1812) it was finished. Threemore months were spent in writing out very beautiful copies of thewhole of the New Testament in this new translation, to be presented tothe Shah of Persia and to the heir to the throne, Prince Abbas Mirza. 

Then he started away on a journey right across Persia to find the Shahand Prince so that he might give his precious books to them. On theway he fell ill with great fever; he was so weak and giddy that hecould not stand. One night his head ached so that it almost drove himmad; he shook all over with fever; then a great sweat broke out. Hewas almost unconscious with weakness, but at midnight when the callcame to start he mounted his horse and, as he says, "set out, ratherdead than alive. " So he pressed on in great weakness till he reachedTabriz, and there met the British Ambassador. 

Martyn was rejoiced, and felt that all his pains were repaid when SirGore Ouseley said that he himself would present the Sacred Book tothe Shah and the Prince. When the day came to give the book to PrinceAbbas, poor Henry Martyn was so weak that he could not rise from hisbed. Before the other copy could be presented to the Shah, Martyn haddied. This is how it came about. 

_The Last Trail_

His great work was done. The New Testament was finished. He sent acopy to the printers in India. He could now go home to England andtry to get well again. He started out on horseback with two Armenianservants and a Turkish guide. He was making along the old track thathas been the road from Asia to Europe for thousands of years. His planwas to travel across Persia, through Armenia and over the Black Sea toConstantinople, and so back to England. 

For forty-five days he moved on, often going as much as ninety miles, and generally as much as sixty in a day. He slept in filthy inns wherefleas and lice abounded and mosquitoes tormented him. Horses, cows, buffaloes and sheep would pass through his sleeping-room, and thestench of the stables nearly poisoned him. Yet he was so ill thatoften he could hardly keep his seat on his horse. 

He travelled through deep ravines and over high mountain passes andacross vast plains. His head ached till he felt it would split; hecould not eat; fever came on. He shook with ague. Yet his remorselessTurkish guide, Hassan, dragged him along, because he wanted to get thejourney over and go back home. 

At last one day Martyn got rest on damp ground in a hovel, his eyesand forehead feeling as though a great fire burnt in them. "I wasalmost frantic, " he wrote. Martyn was, in fact, dying; yet Hassancompelled him to ride a hundred and seventy miles of mountain track toTokat. Here, on October 6th, 1812, he wrote in his journal:

"No horses to be had, I had an unexpected repose. I sat in the orchardand thought with sweet comfort and peace of my God--in solitude myCompany, my Friend, my Comforter. "

It was the last word he was ever to write. 

Alone, without a human friend by him, he fell asleep. But the bookthat he had written with his life-blood, the Persian New Testament, was printed, and has told thousands of Persians in far places, whereno Christian man has penetrated, that story of the love of God that isshown in Jesus Christ. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 62: See Chapter XXIII. ]

CHAPTER XXV

THE MOSES OF THE ASSYRIANS

_William Ambrose Shedd_

(1865-1918)

I

A dark-haired American with black, penetrating eyes that looked yousteadily in the face, and sparkled with light when he laughed, sat ona chair in a hall in 1918 in the ancient city of Urumia in the land ofAssyria where Persia and Turkey meet. 

His face was as brown with the sunshine of this eastern land as werethe wrinkled faces of the turbaned Assyrian village men who stoodbefore him. For he was born out here in Persia on Mount Seir. [63]And he had lived here as a boy and a man, save for the time when hissplendid American father had sent him to Marietta, Ohio, for some ofhis schooling, and to Princeton for his final training. His dark brownmoustache and short beard covered a firm mouth and a strong chin. His vigorous expression and his strongly Roman nose added to thecommanding effect of his presence. 

A haunting terror had driven these ragged village people into the cityof Urumia, to ask help of this wonderful American leader whom theyalmost worshipped because he was so strong and just and good. 

For the bloodthirsty Turks and the even more cruel and wilder Kurdsof the mountains were marching on the land. The Great War was ragingacross the world and even the hidden peoples of this distant mountainland were swept into its terrible flames. 

For Urumia city lies to the west of the southern end of the extremelysalt lake of the same name. It is about 150 miles west from theCaspian Sea and the same distance north of the site of ancientNineveh. It stands on a small plain and in that tangle of lakes, mountains and valley-plains where the ambitions of Russia, Persia andTurkey have met, and where the Assyrians (Christians of one of themost ancient churches in the world, which in the early centuries hada chain of missions from Constantinople right across Asia to Peking), the Kurds (wild, fierce Moslems), the Persians, the Turks and theRussians struggled together. 

In front of Dr. William Ambrose Shedd there stood an old man fromthe villages. His long grey hair and beard and his wrinkled face wereagitated as he told the American his story. The old man's dress wascovered with patches--an eyewitness counted thirty-seven patches--allof different colours on one side of his cloak and loose baggytrousers. 

"My field in my village I cannot plough, " he said, "for we have no ox. The Kurds have taken our possessions, you are our father. Grant us anox to plough and draw for us. "

Dr. Shedd saw that the old man spoke truth; he scribbled a few wordson a slip of paper and the old man went out satisfied. 

So for hour after hour, men and women from all the country roundcame to this strange missionary who had been asked by the AmericanGovernment to administer relief, yes, and to be the Consulrepresenting America itself in that great territory. 

They came to him from the villages where, around the fire in theKhans at night, men still tell stories of him as one of the greathero-leaders of their race. These are the kind of stories that theytell of the courage and the gentleness of this man who--while he was afine American scholar--yet knew the very heart of the Eastern peoplesin northwestern Persia as no American has ever done in all ourhistory. 

"One day, " says one old village Assyrian greybeard, "Dr. Shedd wassitting at meat in his house when his servant, Meshadi, ran into theroom crying, 'The Kurds have been among our people. They have takenthree girls, three Christian girls, and are carrying them off. Theyhave just passed the gate. ' The Kurds were all bristling with daggersand pistols. Dr. Shedd simply picked up the cane that he holds in hishand when he walks. He hurried out of the house with Meshadi, ran upthe hill to the Kurd village that lies there, entered, said to thefierce Kurds, 'Give back those girls to us. ' And they, as they lookedinto his face, could not resist him though they were armed and he wasnot. So they gave the Assyrian girls back to him and he led them downthe hill to their homes. "

So he also stood single-handed between Turks and five hundredAssyrians who had taken refuge in the missionary compound, and stoppedthe Turks from massacring the Christians. 

But even as he worked in this way the tide of the great war flowedtowards Urumia. The people there were mostly Assyrians with someArmenians; they were Christians. They looked southward across themountains to the British Army there in Mesopotamia for aid. 

But, as the Assyrians looked up from Urumia to the north they couldalready see the first Turks coming down upon the city. Thousands uponthousands of the Assyrians from the country villages crowded into thecity and into the American missionary compound, till actually even inthe mission school-rooms they were sleeping three deep--one lot on thefloor, another lot on the seats of the desks and a third on the top ofthe desks themselves. 

"Hold on; resist; the help of the British will come, " said Dr. Sheddto the people. "Agha Petros with a thousand of our men has gone tomeet the British and he will come back with them and will throw backthe Turks. "

The Turks and the Kurds came on from the north; many of the Armenianand Assyrian men were out across the plains to the east getting in theharvest; and no sign of succour came from the south. 

II

Through the fierce hot days of July the people held on because Dr. Shedd said that they must; but at last on the afternoon of July 30ththere came over all the people a strange irresistible panic. Theygathered all their goods together and piled them in wagons--food, clothes, saucepans, jewelry, gold, silver, babies, old women, mothers, --all were huddled and jumbled together. 

The wagons creaked, the oxen lurched down the roads to the south, thelittle children cried with hunger and fright, the boys trudgedalong rather excited at the adventure yet rather scared at the awfulhullabaloo and the strange feeling of horror of the cruel Kurdishhorsemen and of the crafty Turk. 

Dr. Shedd made one last vain effort to persuade the people to hold onto their city; but it was impossible--they had gone, as it seemed, madwith fright. 

He and his wife went to bed that night but not to sleep. At twoo'clock the telephone bell rang. 

"The Turks and Kurds are advancing; all the people are leaving, " camethe message. 

"It is impossible to hold on any longer, " said Dr. Shedd to his wife. "I will go and tell all in the compound. You get things ready. "

Mrs. Shedd got up and began to collect what was needed: she packedup food (bread, tea, sugar, nuts, raisins and so on), a frying pan, a kettle, a saucepan, water jars, saddles, extra horse-shoes, ropes, lanterns, a spade and bedding. By 7. 30 the baggage wagon and twoRed Cross carts were ready. Dr. Shedd and Mrs. Shedd got up into thewagon; the driver cried to his horses and they started. 

As they went out of the city on the south the Turks and Kurds cameraging in on the north. Within two hours the Turks and Kurds werecrashing into houses and burning them to the ground; but most ofthe people had gone--for Dr. Shedd was practically the last to leaveUrumia. 

Ahead of them were the Armenians and Syrians in flight. They came toa little bridge--a mass of sticks with mud thrown over them. Here, andat every bridge, pandemonium reigned. This is how Mrs. Shedd describesthe scene:

"The jam at every bridge was indescribable confusion. Every kind ofvehicle that you could imagine--ox carts, buffalo wagons, Red Crosscarts, troikas, foorgans like prairie schooners, hay-wagons, Russianphaëtons and many others invented and fitted up for the occasion. Theanimals--donkeys, horses, buffaloes, oxen, cows with their calves, mules and herds of thousands of sheep and goats. "

All through the day they moved on, at the end of the procession--Dr. Shedd, planning out how he could best get his people safely away fromthe Turks who--he knew--would soon come pursuing them down the plainto the mountains. Night fell and they were in a long line of wagonsclose to a narrow bridge built by the Russians across the Baranduzriver. They had come some eighteen miles from Urumia. 

So they lay down in the wagons to try to sleep. But they could not andat two o'clock in the night they moved on, crossed the river and droveon for hour after hour toward the mountains that rose in a wall beforethem. 

The poor horses were not strong so the wagon had to be lightened. Assyrian boys took loads on their heads and trudged up the rockymountain road while the wagon jolted and groaned as it bumped its wayalong. The trail of the mountain pass was littered with samovars (teaurns), copper kettles, carpets, bedding; and here and there the bodyof someone who had died on the way. At the very top of the pass lay ababy thrown aside there and just drawing its last breath. 

So for two days they jolted on hardly getting an hour's sleep. At lastat midday on the third day they left Hadarabad at the south end ofLake Urumia. Two hours later the sound of booming guns was heard. Ahorseman galloped up. 

"The Turks are in Hadarabad, " he said. "They are attacking the rear ofthe procession. "

"It seemed, " said Mrs. Shedd, "as if at any moment we should hear thescreams of those behind, as the enemy fell upon them. "

The wagons hurried on to the next town called Memetyar and there Dr. Shedd waited, lightening his own wagons by throwing away everythingthat they could spare--oil, potatoes, charcoal, every box except hisBible and a small volume of Browning's Poems. 

Then they started again, along a road that was littered with thediscarded goods of the people. Then they saw on the road-side a littlebaby girl that had been left by her parents. She was not a year oldand sat there all alone in a desolate spot. Left to die. Dr. Sheddlooked at his wife and she at him. 

He pulled up the horse and jumped down, picked up the baby and put herin the wagon. They went along till they came to a large village. Herethey found a Kurdish mother. 

"Take care of this little girl till we come back, " said Dr. Shedd, "and here is some money for looking after her. We will give you morewhen we come back if she is well looked after. "

III

Suddenly cannon were fired from the mountains and the people inpanic threw away their goods and hurried in a frenzy of fear down themountain passes. They passed on to the plain, and then as they werein a village guns began to be fired. Three hundred Turks and Persianswere attacking under Majdi--Sultana of Urumia. Dr. Shedd, riding hishorse, gathered together some Armenian and Assyrian men with guns andstayed with them to help them hold back the enemy, while the womendrove on. He was a good target sitting up there on his horse; butwithout thinking of his own danger he kept his men at it. For he feltlike a shepherd with a great flock of fleeing sheep whom it was hisduty to protect. 

Panic seized the people. Strong men left their old mothers to die. Mothers dropped their babies and ran. 

"One of my school-girls, " Mrs. Shedd says, "afterward told me how shehad left her baby on the bank and waded with an older child throughthe river when the enemy were coming after them. She couldn't carryboth. The memory of her deserted baby is always with her. "

The line of the refugees stretched for miles along the road. The enemyfired from behind boulders on the mountain sides. The Armenians andSyrians fired back from the road or ran up the mountains to chasethem. It was hopeless to think of driving the enemy off but Dr. Shedd's object was to hold them off till help came. So he went up anddown on his horse encouraging the men; while the bullets whizzed overthe wagons. 

"I feared, " said Mrs. Shedd, "that the enemy might get the better ofus and we should have to leave the carts and run for our lives. Whilethey were plundering the wagons and the loads we would get away. Ilooked about me to see what we might carry. There was little May, six years old (the daughter of one of their Syrian teachers) who hadunconcernedly curled herself up on the seat for a nap. I wrapped alittle bread in a cloth, put my glasses in my pocket, and took the bagof money so that I should be ready on a moment's notice for Dr. Sheddif they should swoop down upon us. "

All day long the firing went on from the mountain side as the tiredhorses pulled along the rough trail. The sun began to sink toward thehorizon. What would happen in the darkness?

Then they saw ahead of them coming from the south a group of men inkhaki. They were nine British Tommies with three Lewis guns underCaptain Savage. They had come ahead from the main body that had movedup from Baghdad in order to defend the rear of the great procession. The little company of soldiers passed on and the procession movedforward. That tiny company of nine British Tommies ten miles fartheron was attacked by hundreds of Turks. All day they held the road, likeHoratius on the bridge, till at night the Cavalry came up and droveoff the enemy, and at last the Shedds reached the British camp. 

"Why are you right at the tail end of the retreat?" asked one of theSyrian young men who had hurried forward into safety. 

"I would much rather be there, " said Dr. Shedd with some scorn inhis voice, "than like you, leave the unarmed, the sick, the weak, thewomen and the children to the mercy of the enemy. "

He was rejoiced that the British had come. 

"There was, " said Mrs. Shedd, "a ring in his voice, a light in hiseyes, a buoyancy in his step that I had not seen for months. "

He had shepherded his thousands and thousands of boys and girls, andmen and women through the mountains into the protection of the Britishsquadron of troops. 

IV

Later that day Dr. Shedd began to feel the frightful heat of theAugust day so exhausting that he had to lie down in the cart, whichhad a canvas cover open at both ends and was therefore much coolerthan a tent. He got more and more feverish. So Mrs. Shedd got theAssyrian boys to take out the baggage and she made up a bed for him onthe floor of the cart. 

The English doctor was out with the cavalry who were holding back anddispersing the Turkish force. 

Then a British officer came and said: "We are moving the camp forwardunder the protection of the mountains. "

It was late afternoon. The cart moved forward into the gatheringdarkness. Mrs. Shedd crouched beside her husband on the floor of thecart attending to him, expecting the outriders to tell her when theycame to the British Camp. 

For hours the cart rolled and jolted over the rough mountain roads. Atlast it stopped, it was so dark they could not see the road. They werein a gully and could not go forward. 

"Where is the British camp?" asked Mrs. Shedd. 

"We passed it miles back on the road, " was the reply. 

It was a terrible blow: the doctor, the medicines, the comfort, thenursing that would have helped Dr. Shedd were all miles away and hewas so ill that it was impossible to drive him back over that roughmountain track in the inky darkness of the night. 

There was nothing to do but just stay where they were, send amessenger to the camp for the doctor, and wait for the morning. 

"Only a few drops of oil were left in the lantern, " Mrs. Shedd tellsus, "but I lighted it and looked at Mr. Shedd. I could see that he wasvery sick indeed and asked two of the men to go back for the doctor. It was midnight before the doctor reached us. 

"The men, " Mrs. Shedd continues, "set fire to a deserted cart leftby the refugees and this furnished fire and light all night. Theyarranged for guards in turn and lay down to rest on the roadside. Hour after hour I crouched in the cart beside my husband massaging hislimbs when cramps attacked him, giving him water frequently, for whilehe was very cold to the touch, he seemed feverish. We heated the hotwater bottle for his feet, and made coffee for him at the blaze; wehad no other nourishment. He got weaker and weaker, and a terriblefear tugged at my heart. 

"Fifty thousand hunted, terror-stricken refugees had passed on; thedesolate, rocky mountains loomed above us, darkness was all about usand heaven seemed too far away for prayer to reach. A deserted babywailed all night not far away. When the doctor came he gave twohypodermic injections and returned to the camp saying we should waitthere for him to catch up to us in the morning. After the injectionsMr. Shedd rested better but he did not again regain consciousness. 

"When the light began to reveal things, I could see the awful changein his face, but I could not believe that he was leaving me. Shortlyafter light the men told me that we could not wait as they heardfighting behind and it was evident the English were attacked, so inhis dying hour we had to take him over the rough, stony road. Afteran hour or two Capt. Reed and the doctor caught up to us. We drew thecart to the side of the road where soon he drew a few short, sharpbreaths--and I was alone. "

So the British officers, with a little hoe, on the mountain side dugthe grave of this brave American shepherd, who had given his lifein defending the Assyrian flock from the Turkish wolf. They made thegrave just above the road beside a rock; and on it they sprinkled deadgrass so that it might not be seen and polluted by the enemy. 

 * * * * *

The people Dr. Shedd loved were safe. The enemy, whose bullets he hadbraved for day after day, was defeated by the British soldiers. Butthe great American leader, whose tired body had not slept while theAssyrians and Armenians were being hunted through the mountains, liesthere dreamless on the mountain side. 

These are words that broke from the lips of Assyrian sheiks when theyheard of his death:

"He bore the burdens of the whole nation upon his shoulders to thelast breath of his life. 

"As long as we obeyed his advice and followed his lead we were safeand prosperous, but when we ceased to do that destruction came uponus. He was, and ever will be, the Moses of the Assyrian people. "

He lies there where his heart always was--in that land in which theTurk, the Assyrian, the Armenian, the Persian, the Russian and theArab meet; he is there waiting for the others who will go out andtake up the work that he has left, the work of carrying to all thoseeastern peoples the love of the Christ whom Dr. Shedd died in serving. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 63: Born January 25th, 1865. Graduated Marietta College, Ohio, 1887, and Princeton Theological Seminary, 1892. ]

CHAPTER XXVI

AN AMERICAN NURSE IN THE GREAT WAR

_E. D. Cushman_

(Time 1914-1920)

_The Turk in Bed_

The cold, clear sunlight of a winter morning on the high plateau ofAsia Minor shone into the clean, white ward of a hospital in Konia(the greatest city in the heart of that land). The hospital in whichthe events that I am going to tell in this story happened is supportedby Christian folk in America, and was established by two Americanmedical missionaries, Dr. William S. Dodd, and Dr. Wilfred Post, withMiss Cushman, the head nurse, sharing the general superintendence:other members of the staff are Haralambos, their Armenian dispenserand druggist, and Kleoniki, a Greek nurse trained by Miss Cushman. Theauthor spent the early spring of 1914 at the hospital in Konia, whenall the people named above were at work there. 

The tinkle of camel-bells as a caravan of laden beasts swung by, thequick pad-pad of donkeys' hoofs, the howl of a Turkish dog, the cryof a child--these and other sounds of the city came through the openwindow of the ward. 

On a bed in the corner of the ward lay a bearded man--a Turk--wholived in this ancient city of Konia (the Iconium of St. Paul's day). His brown face and grizzled beard were oddly framed in the white ofthe spotless pillow and sheets. 

His face turned to the door as it opened and the matron entered. Theeyes of the Turk as he lay there followed her as she walked towardone of her deft, gentle-handed assistant nurses who, in their neatuniforms with their olive-brown faces framed in dark hair, wentfrom bed to bed tending the patients; giving medicine to a boyhere, shaking up a pillow for a sick man there, taking a patient'stemperature yonder. Those skilled nurses were Armenian girls. TheArmenians are a Christian nation, who have been ruled by the Turks forcenturies and often have been massacred by them; yet these Armeniangirls were nursing the Turks in the hospital. But the matron of thehospital was not a Turk, nor an Armenian. She had come four thousandmiles across the sea to heal the Turks and the Armenians in this land. She was an American. 

The Turk in bed turned his eyes from the nurses to a picture on thewall. A frown came on his face. He began to mutter angry words intohis beard. 

As a Turk he had always been taught, even as a little boy, that thegreat Prophet Mohammed had told them they must have no pictures ofprophets, and he knew from what he had heard that the picture on thewall showed the face of a prophet. It was a picture of a man with akind, strong face, dressed in garments of the lands of the East, andwearing a short beard. He was stooping down healing a little child. Itwas our Lord Jesus Christ the Great Physician. 

As Miss Cushman--for that was the name of the matron--moved toward hisbed, the Turk burst into angry speech. 

"Have that picture taken down, " he said roughly, pointing to it. Sheturned to look at the picture and then back at him, and said wordslike these: "No, that is the picture of Jesus, the great Doctor wholived long ago and taught the people that God is Love. It is becauseHe taught that, and has called me to follow in His steps, that I amhere to help to heal you. "

But the Turk, who was not used to having women disobey his commands, again ordered angrily that the picture should be taken down. But theAmerican missionary-nurse said gently, but firmly: "No, the picturemust stay there to remind us of Jesus. If you cannot endure to seethe picture there, then if you wish you may leave the hospital, ofcourse. "

And so she passed on. The Turk lay in his bed and thought it over. Hewished to get well. If the doctors in this hospital--Dr. Dodd andDr. Post--did not attend him, and if the nurses did not give him hismedicine, he would not. He therefore decided to make no more fussabout the picture. So he lay looking at it, and was rather surprisedto find in a few days that he liked to see it there, and that hewanted to hear more and more about the great Prophet-Doctor, Jesus. 

Then he had another tussle of wills with Miss Cushman, the whitenurse from across the seas. It came about in this way. Women who areMohammedans keep their faces veiled, but the Armenian Christian nurseshad their faces uncovered. 

"Surely they are shameless women, " he thought in his heart. "And theyare Armenians too--Christian infidels!" So he began to treat themrudely. But the white nurse would not stand that. 

Miss Cushman went and stood by his bed and said: "I want you toremember that these nurses of mine are here to help you to get well. They are to you even as daughters tending their father; and you mustbehave to them as a good father to good daughters. "

So the Turk lay in bed and thought about that also. It took him along time to take it in, for he had always been taught to hate theArmenians and to think low thoughts about their womenfolk. But in theend he learnt that lesson also. 

At last the Turk got well, left his bed, and went away. He was sothankful that he was better that he was ready to do just anything inthe world that Miss Cushman wanted him to do. The days passed on inthe hospital, and always the white nurse from across the seas and theArmenian nurses tended the Turkish and other patients, and healed themthrough the heats of that summer. 

_War and Massacre_

As summer came near to its end there broke on the world the dreadfulday when all Europe went to war. Miss Cushman's colleagues, theAmerican doctors at the hospital, left Konia for service in thewar. Soon Turkey entered the war. The fury of the Turks against theArmenians burst out into a flame. You might see in Konia two or threeTurks sitting in the shadow of a little saddler's shop by the streetsmoking their hubble-bubble water-pipes, and saying words like these:

"The Armenians are plotting to help the enemies of Turkey. We shallhave to kill them all. "

"Yes, wipe them out--the accursed infidels!"

The Turks hate the Armenians because their religion, Islam, teachesthem to hate the "infidel" Christians; they are of a foreign race andforeign religion in countries ruled by Turks, though the Armenianswere there first, and the Armenians are cleverer business men than theTurks, who hate to see their subjects richer than themselves, and hopeby massacre to seize Armenian wealth. 

Yet all the time, as the wounded Turks were sent from the Gallipolifront back to Konia, the Armenian nurses in the hospital there werehealing them. But the Turkish Government gave its orders. Vile bandsof Turkish soldiers rushed down on the different cities and villagesof the Armenians. [64] One sunny morning a troop of Turkish soldierscame dashing into a quiet little Armenian town among the hills. Anorder was given. The Turks smashed in the doors of the houses. Afather stood up before his family; a bayonet was driven through himand soldiers dashed over his dead body; they looted the house; theysmashed up his home; others seized the mother and the daughters--themother had a baby in her arms; the baby was flung on the ground andthen picked up dead on the point of a bayonet; and, though the motherand daughters were not bayoneted then, it would have been better todie at once than to suffer the unspeakable horrors that came to them. 

And that happened in hundreds of villages and cities to hundred ofthousands of Armenians, while hundreds of thousands more scattereddown the mountain passes in flight towards Konia. 

_The Orphan Boys and Girls_

As Miss Cushman and her Armenian nurses looked out through the windowsof the hospital, their hearts were sad as they saw some of theseArmenian refugees trailing along the road like walking skeletons. Whatwas to happen to them? It was very dangerous for anyone to show thatthey were friends with the Armenians, but the white matron was asbrave as she was kind; so she went out to do what she could to helpthem. 

One day she saw a little boy so thin that the bones seemed almost tobe coming through his skin. He was very dirty; his hair was all mattedtogether; and there were bugs and fleas in his clothes and in hishair. The hospital was so full that not another could be taken in. Butthe boy would certainly die if he were not looked after properly. Hisfather and his mother had both been slain by the Turks; he did notknow where his brothers were. He was an orphan alone in all the world. 

Miss Cushman knew Armenian people in Konia, and she went to one ofthese homes and told them about the poor boy and arranged to pay themsome money for the cost of his food. So she made a new home for him. The next day she found another boy, and then a girl, and so she wenton and on, discovering little orphan Armenian boys and girls who hadnobody to care for them, and finding them homes--until she had oversix hundred orphans being cared for. It is certain that nearly all ofthem would have died if she had not looked after them. 

So Miss Cushman gathered the six hundred Armenian children togetherinto an orphanage, that was half for the boys and half for the girls. She was a hundred times better than the "Woman who Lived in a Shoe, "because, though she had so many children, she _did_ know what todo. She taught them to make nearly everything for themselves. In themornings you would see half the boys figuring away at their sums orlearning to write and read, while the other boys were hammering andsawing and planing at the carpenter's bench; cutting leather andsewing it to make shoes for the other boys and girls; cutting petroltins up into sheets to solder into kettles and saucepans; and cuttingand stitching cloth to make clothes. A young American Red Crossofficer who went to see them wrote home, "The kids look happy andhealthy and as clean as a whistle. "

_The People on the Plain_

As Miss Cushman looked out again from the hospital window she saw mencoming from the country into the city jogging along on little donkeys. 

"In the villages all across the plain, " they said to her, "areArmenian boys and girls, and men and women. They are starving. Manyare without homes, wandering about in rags till they simply lie downon the ground, worn out, and die. "

Miss Cushman sent word to friends far away in America, and they sentfood from America to Turkey in ships, and a million dollars of moneyto help the starving children. So Miss Cushman got together her boysand girls and some other helpers, and soon they were very busy all dayand every day wrapping food and clothes into parcels. 

Next a caravan of snorting camels came swinging in to the courtyardand, grumbling and rumbling, knelt down, to be loaded up. The parcelswere done up in big bales and strapped on to the camels' backs. Thenat a word from the driver the camels rose from their knees and wentlurching out from Konia into the country, over the rough, rollingtracks, to carry to the people the food and clothes that would keepthem alive. 

The wonderful thing is that these camels were led by a Turk belongingto the people who hate the Armenians, yet he was carrying food andclothes to them! Why did this Turk in Konia go on countless journeys, travelling over thousands of miles with tens of thousands of parcelscontaining wheat for bread and new shirts and skirts and other clothesfor the Armenians whom he had always hated, and never lose a singleparcel?

Why did he do it?

This is the reason. Before the war when he was ill in the hospitalMiss Cushman had nursed him with the help of her Armenian girls, andhad made him better; he was so thankful that he would just run to doanything that she wished him to do. 

_To Stay or not to Stay?_

But at last Miss Cushman--worn out with all this work--fell ill witha terrible fever. For some time it was not certain that she would notdie of it; for a whole month she lay sick in great weakness. PresidentWilson had at this time broken off relations between America andTurkey. The Turk now thought of the American as an enemy; and MissCushman was an American. She was in peril. What was she to do?

"It is not safe to stay, " said her friends. "You will be practically aprisoner of war. You will be at the mercy of the Turks. You know whatthe Turk is--as treacherous as he is cruel. They can, if they wish, rob you or deport you anywhere they like. Go now while the path isopen--before it is too late. You are in the very middle of Turkey, hundreds of miles from any help. The dangers are terrible. "

As soon as she was well enough Miss Cushman went to the TurkishGovernor of Konia, a bitter Mohammedan who had organised the massacreof forty thousand Armenians, to say that she had been asked to go backto America. 

"What shall you do if I stay?" she asked. 

"I beg you to stay, " said the Governor. "You shall be protected. Youneed have no fear. "

"Your words are beautiful, " she replied. "But if American and Turkeygo to war you will deport me. "

If she stayed she knew the risks under his rule. She was still weakfrom her illness. There was no colleague by her side to help her. There seemed to be every reason why she should sail away back toAmerica. But as she sat thinking it over she saw before her thehospital full of wounded soldiers, the six hundred orphans who lookedto her for help, the plain of a hundred villages to which she wassending food. No one could take her place. 

Yet she was weak and tired after her illness and, in America, rest andhome, friends and safety called to her. 

"It was, " she wrote later to her friends, "a heavy problem to knowwhat to do with the orphans and other helpless people who depended onme for life. "

What would you have done? What do you think she did? For what reasonshould she face these perils?

Not in the heat of battle, but in cool quiet thought, all alone amongenemies, she saw her path and took it. She did not count her life herown. She was ready to give her life for her friends of all nations. She decided to stay in the heart of the enemies' country and serve herGod and the children. Many a man has had the cross of Honour for anact that called for less calm courage. That deed showed her to be oneof the great undecorated heroes and heroines of the lonely path. 

So she stayed on. 

From all over the Turkish Empire prisoners were sent to Konia. Therewas great confusion in dealing with them, so the people of Koniaasked Miss Cushman to look after them; they even wrote to the TurkishGovernment at Constantinople to tell them to write to her to inviteher to do this work. There was a regular hue and cry that she shouldbe appointed, because everyone knew her strong will, her power oforganising, her just treatment, her good judgment, and her lovingheart. So at last she accepted the invitation. Prisoners of elevendifferent nationalities she helped--including British, French, Italian, Russian, Indians and Arabs. She arranged for the nursing ofthe sick, the feeding of the hungry, the freeing of some from prison. 

She went on right through the war to the end and beyond the end, caring for her orphans, looking after the sick in hospital, sendingfood and clothes to all parts of the country, helping the prisoners. Without caring whether they were British or Turkish, Armenian orIndian, she gave her help to those who needed it. And because of hersplendid courage thousands of boys and girls and men and women arealive and well, who--without her--would have starved and frozen todeath. 

To-day, in and around Konia (an Army officer who has been there tellsus), the people do not say, "If Allah wills, " but "If Miss Cushmanwills!" It is that officer's way of letting us see how, through herbrave daring, her love, and her hard work, that served everybody, British, Armenian, Turk, Indian, and Arab, she has become theuncrowned Queen of Konia, whose bidding all the people do because sheonly cares to serve them, not counting her own life dear to her. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 64: In reading this part of the story to younger childrendiscretion should be exercised. Some of the details on this page arehorrible; but it is right that older children should realize the eviland how Miss Cushman's courage faced it. ]

CHAPTER XXVII

ON THE DESERT CAMEL TRAIL

_Archibald Forder_

(Time of Incident 1900-1901)

_The Boy Who Listened_

An eight-year-old schoolboy sat one evening in a crowded meeting inSalisbury, his eyes wide open with wonder as he heard a bronzed andbearded man on the platform telling of his adventures in Africa. Theman was Robert Moffat. 

It was a hot summer night in August (1874). The walls of the buildingwhere the meeting was held seemed to have disappeared and the boyArchibald Forder could in imagination see "the plain of a thousandvillages, " that Livingstone had seen when this same Robert Moffat hadcalled him to Africa many years before. As the boy Archibald heardMoffat he too wished to go out into the foreign field. Many thingshappened as he grew up; but he never forgot that evening. 

At the age of thirteen he left home and was apprenticed to the groceryand baking business. In 1888 he married. At this time he read in amagazine about missionary work in Kerak beyond the River Jordan--inMoab among the Arabs--where a young married man ready to rough it wasneeded. He sailed with his wife for Kerak on September 3, 1891, andleft Jerusalem by camel on September 30, on the four days' journeyacross Jordan to Kerak. Three times they were robbed by brigands onthis journey. Mr. Forder worked there till 1896. He then leftand travelled through America to secure support for an attempt topenetrate Central Arabia with the first effort to carry the Gospel ofJesus Christ there. 

The story that follows tells how Forder made his pioneer journey intothe Arabian desert. 

_The Adventure into the Desert_

Two pack-horses were stamping their hoofs impatiently outside a housein Jerusalem in the early morning a week or two before Christmas. [65]Inside the house a man was saying good-bye to his wife and his threechildren. He was dressed as an Arab, with a long scarf wrapped abouthis head and on the top the black rope of twisted goats' hair that theArab puts on when he becomes a man. 

"Will you be long, Father?" asked his little four-year-old boy. 

The father could not answer, for he was going out from Jerusalem forhundreds of miles into the sun and the thirst of the desert, to theland of the fiercest Arabs--Moslems whose religion tells them thatthey must kill the infidel Christians. It was difficult to tearhimself from his wife and his children and go out to face death inthe desert. But he had come out here to carry to the Arab the story ofJesus Christ, who Himself had died on a Cross outside this very city. 

So he kissed his little boy "good-bye, " wrenched himself away, climbedon top of the load on one of the pack horses and rode out through thegate into the unknown. He thought as his horses picked their way downthe road from Jerusalem toward Jericho of how Jesus Christ had beenput to death in this very land. Over his left shoulder he saw theslopes of the Mount of Olives; down below across the ravine on hisright was the Garden of Gethsemane. In a short time he was passingthrough Bethany where Mary and Martha lived. Down the steep windingroad amongst the rocks he went, and took a cup of cold water at theinn of the Good Samaritan. 

Then with the Wilderness of Desolation stretching its tawny tumbleddesert hills away to the left, he moved onward, down and down untilthe road came out a thousand feet below sea-level among the huts andsheepfolds of Jericho, where he slept that night. 

With his face toward the dawn that came up over the hills of Moab inthe distance, he was off again over the plain with the Dead Sea onhis right, across the swiftly flowing Jordan, and climbing the ravinesthat lead into the mountains of Gilead. 

That night he stayed with a Circassian family in a little house ofonly one room into which were crowded his two horses, a mule, twodonkeys, a yoke of oxen, some sheep and goats, a crowd of cocks andhens, four small dirty children and their father and mother; and agreat multitude of fleas. 

The mother fried him a supper of eggs with bread, and after it heshowed them something that they had never seen before. He took out ofhis pack a copy of the New Testament translated into Arabic. [66] Heread bits out of it and talked to them about the Love of God. 

Early next morning, his saddle-bag stuffed with a batch of loaveswhich the woman had baked first thing in the morning specially forhim, he set out again. 

How could a whole batch of loaves be stuffed in one saddle-bag? Theloaves are flat and circular like a pancake. The dough is spread on akind of cushion, the woman takes up the cushion with the dough on it, pushes it through the opening and slaps the dough on the inner wallof a big mud oven (out of doors) that has been heated with a fireof twigs, and in a minute or two pushes the cushion in again and thecooked bread falls on to it. 

So Forder climbed up the mountain track till he came out on the highplain. He saw the desert in front of him--like a vast rolling ocean ofglowing gold it stretched away and away for close on a thousand mileseastward to the Persian Gulf. Forder knew that only here and there inall those blazing, sandy wastes were oases where men could build theirhouses round some well or little stream that soon lost itself in thesand. All the rest was desert across which man and beast must hurryor die of thirst. He must follow the camel-tracks from oasis to oasis, where they could find a well of water, therefore drink for man andcamel, and date-palms. 

So turning north he pressed on[67] till on the sixth day out fromJerusalem the clouds came up with the dawn, and hail and rain, carriedby a biting east wind, beat down upon him. Lifting his eyes to thehorizon he saw ahead the sturdy castle and thick walls of the ancientcity of Bosra. Stumbling through the storm, along the narrow windingstreets, he met, to his disgust, a man whose dress showed that he wasa Turkish Government official. He knew that the Turkish Governmentwould be against a Christian and a foreigner going into their land. 

"Who are you?" asked the official, stopping him. "Where are you from?Where are you going?"

Forder told him, and the man said. "Come with me. I will find you andyour horses shelter at the Governor's house. " Forder followed him intoa large room in the middle of which on the floor a fire was burning. 

"I must examine all your cases, " said the official. "Get up. Open yourboxes. "

"Never, " said Forder. "This is not a custom-house. "

"Your boxes are full of powder for arming the Arabs against theTurkish Government, " replied the official. 

"I will not open them, " said Forder, "unless you bring me writtenorders from the Turkish Governor in Damascus and from the BritishConsul. "

Off went the official to consult the headman (the equivalent of theMayor) of the city. The headman came and asked many questions. At lasthe said:

"Well, my orders are to turn back all Europeans and not to let anystay in these parts. However, as you seem to be almost an Arab, mayGod go with you and give you peace. "

So Forder and the headman of the ancient city of Bosra got talkingtogether. Forder opened his satchel and drew out an Arabic NewTestament, and together they read parts of the story of the life ofJesus Christ and talked about Him till ten o'clock at night. As theheadman rose to go to his own rooms Forder offered to him, and hegladly took, the copy of the New Testament in Arabic to read forhimself. 

_Saved by the Mist_

Next morning early, Forder had his horses loaded and started off withhis face to the dawn. The track now led toward the great Castle ofSulkhund, which he saw looming up on the horizon twenty-five milesaway, against the dull sky. But mist came down; wind, rain, and hailbuffeted him; the horses, to escape the hail in their faces, turnedaside, and the trail was lost. Mist hid everything. Forder's compassshowed that he was going south; so he turned east again; but he couldnot strike the narrow, broken, stony trail. 

Suddenly smoke could be seen, and then a hamlet of thirty housesloomed up. Forder opened a door and a voice came calling, "Welcome!"He went in and saw some Arabs crouching there out of the rain. A fireof dried manure was made; the smoke made Forder's eyes smart and thetears run down his cheeks. He changed into another man's clothes, andhung his own up in the smoke to dry. 

"Where are we?" he asked. The men told him that he was about two anda half hours' ride from the castle and two hours off the track that hehad left in the mist. The men came in from the other little houses tosee the stranger and sip coffee. Forder again brought out an ArabicNew Testament and found to his surprise that some of the men couldread quite well and were very keen on his books. So they bought someof the Bibles from him. They had no money but paid him in dried figs, flour and eggs. At last they left him to curl up on the hard floor;and in spite of the cold and draughts and the many fleas he soon fellasleep. 

As dawn came up he rose and started off: there (as he climbed out ofthe hollow in which the hamlet lay) he could see the Castle Sulkhund. He knew that the Turks did not want any foreigner to enter that landof the Arabs, and that if he were seen, he would certainly be orderedback. Yet he could not hide, for the path ran close under the castle, and on the wall strode the sentry. The plain was open; there was noway by which he could creep past. 

At last he came to the hill on which the castle stood. At that verymoment a dense mist came down; he walked along, lost the track, andfound it again. Then there came a challenge from the sentry. He couldnot see the sentry or the sentry him. So he called back in Arabic thathe was a friend, and so passed on in the mist. At last he was out onthe open ground beyond both the castle and the little town by it. Five minutes later the mist blew away; the sun shone; the castle waspassed, and the open plains lay before him. The mist had saved him. 

In an hour he came to a large town named Orman on the edge of thedesert sandy plains; and here he stayed for some weeks. His horseswere sent back to Jerusalem. Instead of towns and villages of huts, he would now find only the tents of wandering Arabs who had to keepmoving to find bits of sparse growth for their few sheep and camels. While he was at Orman he managed to make friends with many of theArabs and with their Chief. He asked the Chief to help him on towardKaf--an oasis town across the desert. 

"Don't go, " the Chief and his people said, "the Arabs there are bad:when we go we never let our rifles out of our hands. "

So the old Chief told him of the dangers of the desert; death fromthirst or from the fiery Arabs of Kaf. 

"I am trusting God to protect and keep me, " said Forder. "I believe Hewill do so. "

So Forder handed the Chief most of his money to take care of, andsewed up the rest into the waistband of his trousers. (It is as safeas a bank to hand your money to an Arab chief who has entertained youin his tent. If you have "eaten his salt" he will not betray or robyou. Absolute loyalty to your guest is the unwritten law that no trueArab ever breaks. )

_The Caravan of Two Thousand Camels_

At last the old Chief very unwillingly called a man, told him to geta camel, load up Forder's things on it, and pass him on to the firstArab tent that he found. Two days passed before they found a groupof Bedouin tents. He was allowed to sleep in a tent: but early in themorning he woke with a jump. The whole of the tent had fallen righton him; he crawled out. He saw the Arab women standing round; they hadpulled the tent down. 

"Why do you do this so early?" he asked. 

"The men, " they replied, "have ordered us to move to another place;they fear to give shelter to a Christian--one that is unclean andwould cause trouble to come on us. "

So the tribesmen with their women and flocks made off, leaving Forder, his guide, and the camel alone in the desert. That afternoon he founda tent and heard that a great caravan was expected to pass that nighton the way to Kaf to get salt. Night fell; it was a full moon. Fordersat with the others in the tent doorway round the fire. A man ran upto them. 

"I hear the bells of the camels, " he said. Quickly Forder's goodswere loaded on a camel. He jumped on top. He was led off into the openplain. Away across the desert clear in the moonlight came the darkmass of the caravan with the tinkle of innumerable bells. 

Arabs galloped ahead of the caravan. They drew up their horsesshouting, "Who are you? What do you want?" Then came fifty horsemenwith long spears in their hands, rifles slung from their shoulders, swords hanging from their belts, and revolvers stuck in their robes. They were guarding the first section made up of four hundred camels. There were four sections, each guarded by fifty warriors. 

As they passed, the man with Forder shouted out the names of friendsof his who--he thought--would be in the caravan. Sixteen hundredcamels passed in the moonlight, but still no answer came. Then thelast section began to pass. The cry went up again of the names of themen. At last an answering shout was heard. The men they sought werefound. Forder's guide explained who he was and that he wanted to go toKaf. His baggage was swiftly shifted onto another camel, and in afew minutes he had mounted, and his camel was swinging along with twothousand others into the east. 

For hour after hour the tireless camels swung on and on, tawny beastson a tawny desert, under a silver moon that swam in a deep indigo skyin which a million stars sparkled. The moon slowly sank behind them;ahead the first flush of pink lighted the sky; but still they pushedon. At last at half-past six in the morning they stopped. Forder flunghimself on the sand wrapped in his _abba_ (his Arab cloak) and in afew seconds was asleep. In fifteen minutes, however, they awakenedhim. Already most of the camels had moved on. From dawn till noon, from noon under the blazing sun till half-past five in the afternoon, the camels moved on and on, "unhasting, unresting. " As the camels werekneeling to be unloaded, a shout went up. Forder looking up saw tenrobbers on horseback on a mound. Like the wind the caravan warriorsgalloped after them firing rapidly, and at last captured them anddragged them back to the camp. 

"Start again, " the command went round, and in fifteen minutes the twothousand camels swung grumbling and groaning out on the endless trailof the desert. The captured Arabs were marched in the centre. Allthrough the night the caravan went on from moonrise to moonset, andthrough the morning from dawn till ten o'clock--for they dared notrest while the tribe from whom they had captured the prisoners couldget near them. Then they released the captives and sent them back, for on the horizon they saw the green palms of Kaf, the city that theysought. 

The camels had only rested for thirty minutes in forty hours. [68] Withgrunts of pleasure they dropped on their knees and were freed fromtheir loads, and began hungrily to eat their food. 

Forder leapt down and was so glad to be in Kaf that he ran into somepalm gardens close by and sang "Praise God from Whom all blessingsflow, " jumped for joy, and then washed all the sweat and sand fromhimself in a hot spring of sulphur water. 

Lying down on the floor of a little house to which he was shown, heslept, with his head on his saddlebags, all day till nearly sunset. 

At sunset a gun was fired. The caravan was starting on its returnjourney. Forder's companions on the caravan came to him. 

"Come back with us, " they said. "Why will you stay with these cursedpeople of Kaf? They will surely kill you because you are a Christian. "

It was hard to stay. But no Christian white man had ever been in thatland before carrying the Good News of Jesus, and Forder had come outto risk his life for that very purpose. So he stayed. 

What made Forder put his life in peril and stand the heat, vermin, andhate? Why try to make friends with these wild bandits? Why care aboutthem at all? He was a baker in his own country in England and mighthave gone on with this work. It was the love of Christ that gave himthe love of all men, and, in obeying His command to "Go into all theworld, " he found adventure, made friends, and left with them the GoodNews in the New Testament. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 65: Thursday morning, December 13, 1900. ]

[Footnote 66: Recall Henry Martyn and Sabat at work on this. ]

[Footnote 67: Passing Es-Salt (Ramoth Gilead), Gerash and Edrei inBashan. ]

[Footnote 68: It took the caravan six days to go back. ]

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE FRIEND OF THE ARAB

_Archibald Forder_

(Date of Incident, 1901)

_The Lone Trail of Friendship_

So the two thousand camels swung out on the homeward trail. Forder nowwas alone in Kaf. 

"Never, " he says, "shall I forget the feeling of loneliness that cameover me as I made my way back to my room. The thought that I wasthe only Christian in the whole district was one that I cannot welldescribe. "

As Forder passed a group of Arabs he heard them muttering to oneanother, "_Nisraney_[69]--one of the cursed ones--the enemy of Allah!"He remembered that he had been warned that the Arabs of Kaf werefierce, bigoted Moslems who would slay a Christian at sight. But heput on a brave front and went to the Chief's house. There he sat downwith the men on the ground and began to eat with them from a greatiron pot a hot, slimy, greasy savoury, and then sipped coffee withthem. 

"Why have you come here?" they asked him. 

"My desire is, " he replied, "to pass on to the Jowf. "

Now the Jowf is the largest town in the Syrian desert--the mostimportant in all Northern Arabia. From there camel caravans go north, south, east, and west. Forder could see how his Arabic New Testamentswould be carried from that city to all the camel tracks of Arabia. 

"The Jowf is eleven days' camel ride away there, " they said, pointingto the south-east. 

[Illustration: FORDER'S JOURNEY TO THE JOWF. ]

"Go back to Orman, " said the Chief, whose name was Mohammed-el-Bady, "it is at your peril that you go forward. "

He sent a servant to bring in the headman of his caravan. "This_Nisraney_ wishes to go with the caravan to the Jowf, " said the Chief. "What do you think of it?"

"If I took a Christian to the Jowf, " replied the caravan leader, "I amafraid Johar the Chief there would kill me for doing such a thing. Icannot do it. "

"Yes, " another said, turning to Forder, "if you ever want to see theJowf you must turn Moslem, as no Christian would be allowed to livethere many days. "

"Well, " said the Chief, closing the discussion, "I will see more aboutthis to-morrow. "

As the men sat smoking round the fire Forder pulled a book out fromhis pouch. They watched him curiously. 

"Can any of you read?" he asked. There were a number who could; soForder opened the book--which was an Arabic New Testament--at St. John's Gospel, Chapter III. 

"Will you read?" he asked. 

So the Arab read in his own language this chapter. As we read thechapter through ourselves it is interesting to wonder which of theverses would be most easily understood by the Arabs. When the Arab whowas reading came to the words:

"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, thatwhosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlastinglife, " Forder talked to them telling what the words meant. Theylistened very closely and asked many questions. It was all quite newto them. 

"Will you give me the book?" asked the Arab who was reading. Forderknew that he would only value it if he bought it, so he sold it to himfor some dates, and eight or nine men bought copies from him. 

Next day the Chief tried to get other passing Arabs to conduct Forderto the Jowf, but none would take the risk. So at last he lent him twoof his own servants to lead him to Ithera--an oasis four hours' camelride across the desert. So away they went across the desert and in thelate afternoon saw the palms of Ithera. 

"We have brought you a Christian, " shouted the servants as they ledForder into a room full of men, and dumped his goods down on thefloor. "We stick him on to you; do what you can with him. "

"This is neither a Christian, nor a Jew, nor an infidel, " shoutedone of the men, "but a pig. " He did not know that Forder understoodArabic. 

"Men, " he replied boldly, "I am neither pig, infidel, nor Jew. I am aChristian, one that worships God, the same God as you do. "

"If you are a Christian, " exclaimed the old Chief, "go and sit amongthe cattle!" So Forder went to the further end of the room and satbetween an old white mare and a camel. 

Soon a man came in, and walking over to Forder put his hand out andshook his. He sat down by him and, talking very quietly so that theothers should not hear, said: "Who are you, and from where do youcome?"

"From Jerusalem, " said Forder. "I am a Christian preacher. "

"If you value your life, " went on the stranger, "you will get out ofthis as quickly as you can, or the men, who are a bad lot, will killyou. I am a Druze[70] but I pretend to be a Moslem. "

"What sort of a man is the Chief of Ithera?" asked Forder. 

"Very kind, " was the reply. So the friendly stranger went out. Forderlistened carefully to the talk. 

"Let us cut his throat while he is asleep, " said one man. 

"No, " said the Chief. "I will not have the blood of a Christian on myhouse and town. "

"Let us poison his supper, " said another. But the Chief would notagree. 

"Drive him out into the desert to die of hunger and thirst, " suggesteda third. "No, " said the Chief, whose name was Khy-Khevan, "we willleave him till the morning. "

Forder was then called to share supper with the others, and afterwardsthe Chief led him out to the palm gardens, so that his evil influenceshould not make the beasts ill; half an hour later, fearing he wouldspoil the date-harvest by his presence, the Chief led him to a filthytent where an old man lay with a disease so horrible that they hadthrust him out of the village to die. 

The next day Forder found that later in the week the old Chief himselfwas going to the Jowf. Ripping open the waistband of his trousers, Forder took out four French Napoleons (gold coins worth 16s. Each) andwent off to the Chief, whom he found alone in his guest room. 

Walking up to him Forder held out the money saying, "If you will letme go to the Jowf with you, find me camel, water and food, I will giveyou these four pieces. "

"Give them to me now, " said Khy-Khevan, "and we will start afterto-morrow. "

"No, " replied Forder, "you come outside, and before the men of theplace I will give them to you; they must be witnesses. " So in thepresence of the men the bargain was made. 

In the morning the camels were got together--about a hundred andtwenty of them--with eighty men, some of whom came round Forder, andpatting their daggers and guns said, "These things are for using onChristians. We shall leave your dead body in the sand if you do notchange your religion and be a follower of Mohammed. "

After these cheerful encouragements the caravan started at oneo'clock. For four hours they travelled. Then a shout went up--"Lookbehind!"

Looking round Forder saw a wild troop of Bedouin robbers gallopingafter them as hard as they could ride. The camels were rushed togetherin a group: the men of Ithera fired on the robbers and went afterthem. After a short, sharp battle the robbers made off and the mensettled down where they were for the night, during which they had tobeat off another attack by the robbers. 

Forder said, "What brave fellows you are!" This praise pleased themimmensely, and they began to be friendly with him, and forgot thatthey had meant to leave his dead body in the desert, though they stilltold him he would be killed at the Jowf. For three days they travelledon without finding any water, and even on the fourth day they onlyfound it by digging up the sand with their fingers till they had madea hole over six feet deep where they found some. 

_In the Heart of the Desert_

At last Forder saw the great mass of the old castle, "no one knowshow old, " that guards the Jowf[71] that great isolated city with itsthousands of lovely green date palms in the heart of the tremendousocean of desert. 

Men, women and children came pouring out to meet their friends: for adesert city is like a port to which the wilderness is the ocean, andthe caravan of camels is the ship, and the friends go down as men doto the harbour to meet friends from across the sea. 

"May Allah curse him!" they cried, scowling, when they heard that aChristian stranger was in the caravan. "The enemy of Allah and theprophet! Unclean! Infidel!"

Johar, the great Chief of the Jowf, commanded that Forder should bebrought into his presence, and proceeded to question him:

"Did you come over here alone?"

"Yes, " he answered. 

"Were you not afraid?"

"No, " he replied. 

"Have you no fear of anyone?"

"Yes, I fear God and the devil. "

"Do you not fear me?"

"No. "

"But I could cut your head off. "

"Yes, " answered Forder, "I know you could. But you wouldn't treat aguest thus. "

"You must become a follower of Mohammed, " said Johar, "for we aretaught to kill Christians. Say to me, 'There is no God but God andMohammed is His prophet' and I will give you wives and camels anda house and palms. " Everybody sat listening for the answer. Forderpaused and prayed in silence for a few seconds, for he knew that onhis answer life or death would depend. 

"Chief Johar, " said Forder, "if you were in the land of theChristians, the guest of the monarch, and if the ruler asked you tobecome a Christian and give up your religion would you do it?"

"No, " said Johar proudly, "not if the ruler had my head cut off. "

"Secondly, " he said to Johar, "which do you think it best to do, toplease God or to please man?"

"To please God, " said the Chief. 

"Johar, " said Forder, "I am just like you; I cannot change myreligion, not if you cut off two heads; and I must please Godby remaining a Christian.... I cannot do what you ask me. It isimpossible. " Johar rose up and went out much displeased. 

_"Kill the Christian!"_

One day soon after this there was fierce anger because the mud towerin which Johar was sitting fell in, and Johar was covered with thedebris. "This is the Christian's doing, " someone cried. "He lookedat the tower and bewitched it, so it has fallen. " At once the cry wasraised, "Kill the Christian--kill him--kill him! The Christian! TheChristian!"

An angry mob dashed toward Forder with clubs, daggers and revolvers. He stood still awaiting them. They were within eighty yards when, tohis own amazement, three men came from behind him, and standingin front of Forder between him and his assailants pulled out theirrevolvers and shouted, "Not one of you come near this Christian!"The murderous crowd halted. Forder slowly walked backwards toward hisroom, his defenders doing the same, and the crowd melted away. 

He then turned to his three defenders and said, "What made you come todefend me as you did?"

"We have been to India, " they answered, "and we have seen theChristians there, and we know that they do no harm to any man. We havealso seen the effect of the rule of you English in that land and inEgypt, and we will always help Christians when we can. We wish theEnglish would come here; Christians are better than Moslems. "

 * * * * *

Other adventures came to Forder in the Jowf, and he read the NewTestament with some of the men who bought the books from him to read. At last Khy-Khevan, the Chief of Ithera, who had brought Forder to theJowf, said that he must go back, and Forder, who had now learned whathe wished about the Jowf, and had put the books of the Gospel into thehands of the men, decided to return to his wife and boys in Jerusalemto prepare to bring them over to live with him in that land of theArabs. So he said farewell to the Chief Johar, and rode away on acamel with Khy-Khevan. Many things he suffered--from fever and hunger, from heat and thirst, and vermin. But at last he reached Jerusalemonce more; and his little four-year-old boy clapped hands with joyas he saw his father come back after those long months of peril andhardship. 

Fifteen hundred miles he had ridden on horse and camel, or walked. Twohundred and fifty Arabic Gospels and Psalms had been sold to peoplewho had never seen them before. Hundreds of men and women had heardhim tell them of the love of Jesus. And friends had been made amongArabs all over those desert tracks, to whom he could go back again inthe days that were to come. The Arabs of the Syrian Desert all thinkof Archibald Forder to-day as their friend and listen to him becausehe has proved to them that he wishes them well. 

 +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | "SEEING THEN THAT WE ARE COMPASSED ABOUT WITH SO GREAT A | | CLOUD OF WITNESSES, LET US LAY ASIDE EVERY WEIGHT AND THE | | SIN WHICH DOTH SO EASILY BESET US, AND LET US RUN WITH PATIENCE | | THE RACE THAT IS SET BEFORE US, LOOKING UNTO JESUS, THE AUTHOR | | AND PERFECTER OF OUR FAITH, WHO FOR THE JOY THAT WAS SET BEFORE | | HIM ENDURED THE CROSS, DESPISING THE SHAME. " | +------------------------------------------------------------------+

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 69: That is _Nasarene_ (or _Christian_). ]

[Footnote 70: The Druzes are a separate nation and sect whose religionis a kind of Islam mixed with relics of old Eastern faiths, _e. G. _, sun-worship. ]

[Footnote 71: The Jowf is a large oasis town with about 40, 000inhabitants, about 250 miles from the edge of the desert. The watersupply is drawn up by camels from deep down in the earth. ]