The Book of Missionary Heroes - Basil Mathews (reading a book txt) 📗

nothing to do with the horrible ceremonies by which the boys of the tribe were initiated into manhood; nor would he look on the heathen rain-making incantations, though his father smoked with anger against him. Under a thousand insults and threats of death Khama stood silent, never insulting nor answering again, and always treating with respect his unnatural father.

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

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

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

One night the persecuted Khama woke at the sound of strange clashing and chanting. Looking out he saw the fitful flame of a fire. Going out from his hut, he saw the lolwapa or court in front of it lit up with weird flames round which the black wizards danced with horns and lions' teeth clashing about their necks, and with manes of beasts' hair waving above their horrible faces. As they danced they cast charms into the fire and chanted loathsome spells and terrible curses on Khama. As a boy he had been taught that these witch-doctors had the power to slay or to smite with foul diseases. He would have been more than human if he had not felt a shiver of nameless dread at this lurid and horrible dance of death.

Yet he never hesitated. He strode forward swiftly, anger and contempt on his face, scattering the witch-doctors from his path and leaping full upon their fire of charms, stamped it out and scattered its embers 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 was acclaimed the supreme chief of all the Bamangwato.[46] He galloped out at the head of his horsemen to pursue Lobengula, the ferocious chief of the Matabele who had struck fear into the Bamangwato for many years. Even Lobengula, who to his dying day carried in his neck a bullet from Khama's gun, said of him, "The Bamangwato are dogs, but Khama is a man."

Khama had now freed his people from the terror of the lion, the tyranny of witch-doctors, and the dread of the Matabele. Yet the deadliest enemy of Khama and the most loathsome tyrant of the Bamangwato was still in power,—the strong drink which degrades the African to unspeakable depths.

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

At night the cries of beaten women rose, and the weird chants of incantations and of foul unclean dances were heard. Khamane called the older men together around his fire. Pots of beer passed from hand to hand. 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 away with the dances of the young men. He will not let you make charms or throw 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 lying drunk 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 a burning torch and running to the hut of Khamane set fire to the roof and burned the house down over his drunken brother's head. He ordered all the beer that had been brewed to be seized, and poured it out upon the veldt. He knew that he was fighting a fiercer enemy than the Matabele, a foe that would throttle his tribe and destroy all his people if he did not conquer it. The old men of the tribe muttered against him and plotted his death. He met them face to face. His eyes flashed.

"When I was still a lad," he said, "I used to think how I would govern my town and what kind of a kingdom it should be. One thing I determined, I would not rule over a drunken town or people. I will not have 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, came to the town. They set up stores. And in the stores they began to sell brandy from large casks.

The drinking of spirits has more terrible effects on the African than even on white men. Once he starts drinking, the African cannot stop and is turned into a sot. The ships of the white man have been responsible to a terrible extent for sending out the "fire-water" to Africa.

Khama called the white traders in the tribe together.

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

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

"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 his house in drunken delirium, naked and raving. Morning after morning Khama rose before daybreak to try and get to the man when he was sober, but all the time he was drunk. Then one morning this man gathered other white men together in a house and they sat drinking and then started fighting one another.

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

Khama with set, stern face turned and walked to the house where he often went for counsel, the home of his friend, Mr. Hepburn, the missionary. Mr. Hepburn lay ill with fever. Khama told him what the white men had done. Hepburn burned with shame and anger that his own fellow-countrymen should so disgrace themselves. Ill as he was he rose and went out with the chief and saw with his own eyes that it was as Khama 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 come to 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 as they looked into his grim face that no will on earth could turn him from his decisions that day.

"You white men,"[48] he said to them sternly, "have insulted and despised me in my own town because I am a black man. If you despise us black men, what do you want here in the country that God has given to us? 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 to the 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 word of God! You know that some of my own brothers"—he was referring to Khamane especially—"have learned to like the drink, and you know that I do not want them to see it even, that they may forget the habit. Yet you 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 town and never come back again!"

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

"You," said the chief with biting irony, "my friend? You—the ringleader of those who despise my laws. You are my worst enemy. You pray for pity? No! for you I have no pity. It is my duty to have pity on my people over whom God placed me, and I am going to show them pity to-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 great meeting of the whole town. In serried masses thousand upon thousand the Bamangwato faced their great chief. He lifted up his voice:

"I, Khama, your chief, order that you shall not make beer. You take the corn that God has given to us in answer to our prayers and you destroy it. Nay, you not only destroy it, but you make stuff with it that 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 after those far-off days when Livingstone first went there, as you came in sight of the great stone church that the chief has built, you would see tearing across the African plain a whirlwind of dust. It would race toward you, with the soft thunder of hoofs in the loose soil. When the horses were almost upon you—with a hand of steel—chief Khama would rein in his charger and his bodyguard would pull up behind him.

Over eighty years old, grey and wrinkled, he would spring from his horse, without help, to greet you—still Khama, the Antelope. Old as he is, he is as alert as ever. He heard that a great all Africa aeroplane route was planned after the Great War. At once he offered to make a great aerodrome, and the day at last came when Khama—eighty-five years old—who had seen Livingstone, the first white man to visit his tribe—stood watching the first aeroplane come bringing 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 won his spurs against the enemies of his people.

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