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

'There is no God but Allah, and Mahomet is his prophet?'"

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

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

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

Chains were brought and snapped upon the wrists and ankles of Francis and Illuminato. Then they took rods and began to beat the two men—just as Paul and Silas had been beaten eleven centuries earlier.

As the rods whistled through the air and came slashing upon their wounded backs Francis kept crying out one word—"Soldan—Soldan." That is "Sultan—Sultan."

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

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

"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 of Mahomet?"

"Nay, nay," answered Francis, "Saracens we will never be. We have come with a message from God; it is a message that will save your life. If you die under the law of Mahomet you are lost. We have come to tell you 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 me all that I wish to know."

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

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

"Sire," they answered him at once, "thou knowest the law: thou art bound to uphold it and carry it out. By Mahomet who gave us the law to slay infidels, we command thee that their heads be cut off. We will not listen to a word that they say. Off with their heads!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, I will go alone into the fire," said Francis. "If I am burned—it is because of my sins—if I am protected by God then you will own Him as your God."

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

"You must take them back," said Francis to the messengers; "I will not take them."

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

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

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

The Crusaders failed to win Egypt or the Holy Land; but to-day men are going from America and Britain in the footsteps of Francis of Assisi the Christian missionary, to carry to the people in Egypt, in the Holy Land and in all the Near East, the message that Francis took of the love of Jesus Christ. The stories of some of the deeds they have done and 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 was slipping out from the river into the estuary when suddenly a challenge rang out across the grey water.

"What ship is that?"

"The Duff," was the answer that came back from the little ship whose captain had passed through a hundred hairsbreadth escapes in his life but was now starting on the strangest adventure of them all.

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

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

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

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

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

We can understand how curious it would sound to him when we remember that (although Wilfrid and Augustine and Columba had gone to Britain as missionaries over a thousand years before The Duff started down the Thames) no cargo of missionaries had ever before sailed from those North Sea Islands of Britain to the savages of other lands like the South 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 tumbled into 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 of adventures, Captain Wilson. The son of the captain of a Newcastle collier, Wilson had grown up a dare-devil sailor boy. He enlisted as a soldier in the American war, became captain of a vessel trading with India, and was then captured and imprisoned by the French in India. He escaped from prison by climbing a great wall, and dropping down forty feet on the other side. He plunged into a river full of alligators, and swam across, escaping the jaws of alligators only to be captured on the other bank by Indians, chained and made to march barefoot for 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 was set 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. With Captain Wilson, the man-o'-war officer found also six carpenters, two shoemakers, two bricklayers, two sailors, two smiths, two weavers, a surgeon, a hatter, a shopkeeper, a cotton factor, a cabinet-maker, a draper, 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 hawks waiting to pounce upon their prey; for England was at war with France in those days. So for five weary weeks The Duff anchored in the roadstead of Spithead till, as one of a fleet of fifty-seven vessels, she could sail down the channel and across the Bay of Biscay protected by British men-o'-war. Safely clear of the French cruisers, The Duff held on alone till the cloud-capped mountain-heights of Madeira hove in sight.

Across the Atlantic she stood, for the intention was to sail round South America into the Pacific. But on trying to round the Cape Horn The Duff met such violent gales that Captain Wilson turned her in her tracks and headed back across the Atlantic for the Cape of Good Hope.

Week after week for thousands and thousands of miles she sailed. She had travelled from Rio de Janiero over 10,000 miles and had only sighted a single sail—a longer journey than any ship had ever sailed without seeing land.

"Shall we see the island to-day?" the boys on board would ask Captain Wilson. 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 the morning, 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 of the 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 rolled swiftly by, rushing and hissing along the sides of the little ship and tossing her on their foaming crests. But she weathered the storm, and, as the wind dropped, and they looked ahead, they saw, cutting into the sky-line, the mountain tops of Tahiti.

It was Saturday night when the island came in sight. Early on the Sunday morning by seven o'clock The Duff swung round under a gentle breeze into Matavai[13] Bay and dropped anchor. But before she could even anchor the whole bay had become alive with Tahitians. They thronged the beach, and, leaping into canoes, sent them skimming across the bay to the ship.

Captain Wilson, scanning the canoes swiftly and anxiously, saw with relief that the men were not armed. But the missionaries were startled when the savages climbed up the sides of the ship, and with wondering eyes 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 with their bare feet. From the canoes the Tahitians hauled up pigs, fowl, fish, bananas, and held them for the white men to buy. But Captain Wilson and all his company would not buy on that day—for it was Sunday.

The missionaries gathered together on deck to hold