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

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

He knew that the river to which the Africans gave that name was only a short distance away and that it flowed northward. He thought that it might be the upper reaches of the Nile, which had been sought by men through 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 the Luapula was really the upper stretch of the Congo, the second largest river in the world (3000 miles long), flowing into the Atlantic. The basin of the Congo would cover the whole of Europe from the Black Sea to the English Channel.

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

His name was George Grenfell, a Cornish boy (born at Sancreed, four miles from Penzance, in England), who was brought up in Birmingham. He was apprenticed at fifteen to a firm of hardware and machinery dealers. Here he picked up, as a lad, some knowledge of machinery that helped him later on the Congo. He had been thrilled to meet at Bristol College, 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 of Africa, where he worked hard, teaching the Africans to make tables and bricks and to print and read, healing them and preaching to them.

When Stanley came down the Congo to the sea and electrified the world by the story of the great river, Grenfell and the Baptist Missionary Society which he served conceived the daring and splendid plan of starting a chain of mission stations right from the mouth of the Congo eastward across Africa. In 1878 Grenfell was on his way up the river—travelling along narrow paths flanked by grass often fifteen feet high, and crossing swamps and rivers, till after thirteen attempts and in eighteen months he reached Stanley Pool, February 1881. A thousand miles of river lay between Stanley Pool and Stanley Falls, and even above Stanley Falls lay thirteen hundred miles of navigable river. Canoes were perilous. Hippopotami upset them, and men were dragged down and eaten by crocodiles. They must have a steamer right up there beyond the Falls in the very heart of Africa.

Grenfell went home to England, and the steamer Peace was built on the Thames, Grenfell watching everything being made from the crank to the funnel. She was built, launched, and tried on the Thames; then taken to pieces and packed in 800 packages, weighing 65 lbs. each, and taken to the mouth of the Congo. On the heads and shoulders of a thousand men the whole ship and the food of the party were carried past the rapids, over a thousand miles along narrow paths, in peril of snakes and leopards and enemy savages, over streams crossed by bridges of vine-creepers, through swamps, across ravines.

Grenfell's engineer, who was to have put the ship together, died. At last they reached Stanley Pool. Grenfell with eight negroes started to try to build the ship. It was a tremendous task. Grenfell said the Peace was "prayed together." It was prayer and hard work and gumption. At last the ship was launched, steam was up, the Peace began to move. "She lives, master, she lives!" shouted the excited Africans.

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

The Steamer's Journey

The crocodiles drowsily dosing in the slime of the Congo river bank stirred uneasily as a strange sound broke the silence of the blazing African morning. They lifted their heavy jaws and swung their heads down stream. Their beady eyes caught sight of a Thing mightier than a thousand crocodiles. It was pushing its way slowly up stream.

The sound was the throb of the screw of the steamer from whose funnel a light ribbon of smoke floated across the river. An awning shaded the whole deck from bow to stern. On the top of the awning, under a little square canopy, stood a tall young negro; the muscles in his sturdy arms and his broad shoulders rippled under his dark skin as the wheel swung round in his swift, strong hands.

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

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

At last as the bows swung round the next bend in the river they saw a village. The Africans rushed to the bank and hurriedly pushed out their tree-trunk canoes. Grenfell shouted an order. A bell rang. The screw stopped and the steamer lay-to while he climbed down into the ship's canoe and was paddled ashore. The wondering people pushed and jostled 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 saw two little girls standing bound with cords. They were tethered like goats to a stake. Their little faces and round eyes looked all forlorn. Even the wonder of the strange bearded white man hardly kept back 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 their canoes armed with their spears and bows and arrows and had raided another tribe.

"And these," said the chief, pointing to the girls, who began to wonder what was going to happen, "these are two girls that we captured. They are some of our booty. They are slaves. They are tied there 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 little girls back with him down to the river bank. As they jumped into the canoe to go aboard the S.S. Peace, the two girls wondered what this strange new master would do with them. Would he be cruel? Yet his eyes looked kind through those funny, round, shining things balanced on his nose.

The girls at once forgot all their sorrows when they jumped on board this wonderful river monster. They felt it shiver and throb and begin to move. The bank went farther and farther away. The Peace had again started up stream.

The girls stood in wonder and gazed with open eyes as the banks slid past. They saw the birds all green and red flashing along the surface of the water, and the huge hippopotami sullenly plunging into the river like the floating islands of earth that sail down the Congo. Their quick eyes noted the quaint iguana, like giant lizards, sunning themselves on the branches of the trees over the stream and then dropping 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 was changed. There ahead Grenfell saw a river town. The canoes were being manned rapidly by warriors. The bank bristled with spears in the hands of ferocious savages, whose faces were made horrible by gashes and loathsome tattooing. In each canoe men stood with bows in their hands and arrows drawn to the head. The throb of the engines ceased. The ship slowed up. But the canoes came on.

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

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

Grenfell was standing by the little girls. Suddenly one of them with dancing 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 just poising a spear, "that is my brother! That is my brother! This is my town!"

"Call to him," said Grenfell.

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

Grenfell turned rapidly and shouted an order to the engineer. Instantly a shriek, more wild and piercing than the combined yells of the whole tribe, rent the air. Again the shriek went up. The warriors stood transfixed with spear and arrow in hand like statues in ebony. There was a moment's intense and awful silence. They had never before heard the whistle of a steamer!

"Shout again—quickly," whispered Grenfell to the little African girl.

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

The astonished warrior dropped his spear, caught up his paddle and—in a few swift strokes—drove his canoe towards the steamer. His astonishment at seeing his sister aboard overcame all his dread of this shrieking, floating island that moved without sails or paddles.

Quickly she told her story of how the strange white man in the great canoe that smoked had found her in the village of their enemies, had saved her from slavery, and—now, had brought her safely home again. The story passed from lip to lip. Every spear and bow and arrow was dropped.

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