YARNS ON 
 
 1 AFRICAN PIONEERS 
 
 TO BE TOLD TO BOYS 
 
 BY BASIL MATHEWS 
 
 PRICE ONE SHILLING NET
 
 
 Published by the United Council for Missionary 
 Education for the Baptist Missionary Society, the 
 Church Missionary Society, the Friends' Foreign 
 Mission Association, the London Missionary Society, 
 the Church of Scotland and United Free Church of 
 Scotland Foreign Mission Committees, and the 
 Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society.
 
 YARNS ON 
 
 AFRICAN PIONEERS 
 
 TO BB TOLD TO BOYS 
 
 By 
 
 BASIL MATHEWS, M.A. 
 
 Author of "Yarns of South Sea Pioneers" 
 
 "'Livingstone the Pathfinder" 
 
 "The Splendid Quest" 
 
 etc. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 UNITED COUNCIL FOR MISSIONARY EDUCATION 
 
 EDINBURGH HOUSE, 2 EATON GATE, S.W.I 
 
 1920
 
 First Edition, June 1916 
 Second Edition, August 1917 
 Third Edition, January 1918 
 Fourth Edition, February 1919 
 Fifth Edition, July 1920 
 
 Printed in Great Britain 
 by Turntull & S fears, Edinburgh
 
 L \mo 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE first volume in the series of "YARNS," of which this 
 book is the fourth, was a distinctly new experiment. In- 
 tended for the use of leaders and teachers of boys, especially 
 those of the Brigade and Scout type, the Yarns have attempted 
 so to present the high adventure and heroic romance, the 
 colour, drama and movement of the missionary enterprise as 
 to enthral the adolescent boy. 
 
 It has been proved that, just at the age when the new 
 emotions of hero worship, space hunger, and sex instinct are 
 bringing these boys into a new world, the heroic missionary 
 material is ideally fitted for drawing out high emotions and 
 interests, and lifting them toward a clean, unselfish and 
 courageous manhood. 
 
 The present book of Yarns attempts to carry the experi- 
 ment a stage further in method. In the three previous 
 volumes (on the South Seas, China and India), first the Yarn 
 has been told, and then the background the teaching material, 
 as it were has been given in small type. The first idea 
 was that the Yarn would be told simply with the maximum 
 emotional impact and that the interest thus called up would 
 stir the boys to ask questions. Practice has shown, however, 
 that although the Yarn can be told, and told most effectively, 
 from the platform just as it is printed, the total effect is 
 very much gre.ater particularly in talking with smaller 
 groups, e.g. with Brigade boys or Scouts round a camp fire 
 or in a room if a closer educational method is followed. 
 
 In the present book, therefore, the material in smaller type 
 suggests in an introductory paragraph initial points of 
 contact. This is followed by material for drawing the boys 
 out by questions, and in other ways attempting to stimulate 
 their mental hunger as well as their emotional interest. 
 Supplementary material is for this reason interspersed in 
 small type, at intervals, in the main body of the Yarn. It 
 will, however, in all cases be found that the Yarn itself, as
 
 4 Preface 
 
 printed in large type, runs in sequence without a break, so 
 that the Yarn can be told without the use of the auxiliary 
 material when it is necessary to do so, e.g. from the platform 
 or the pulpit. 
 
 It should be reaffirmed that, though stranger than fiction, 
 these Yarns are nevertheless in every case both historically 
 true and accurate in detail. They are drawn from first-hand 
 authorities, and in most cases from the actual letters and 
 other writings of the men who went through the adventures 
 described. These authorities are given in connection with 
 each separate Yarn, but for the use of the leader the reading 
 of one or two supplementary books on the subject of Africa 
 as a whole is recommended, notably The Future of Africa, by 
 Donald Fraser (all Missionary Societies, Is. net) and God's 
 Image in Ebony, by T. H. Darlow (all Missionary Societies, 
 7d. net). 
 
 This book of Yarns is not intended, of course, to go into 
 the hands of the boys, but is for the use of the leader. 
 
 It will greatly add to the interest in group or class work 
 to get a large brown-paper outline map of Africa, 1 and let 
 the boys fill in the details as the Yarns proceed. All needed 
 detail will be found in the small outline map on pages 94-5. 
 
 The leader should always aim at making his preliminary 
 preparation for telling the Yarn so thorough that the use of 
 the book is entirely unnecessary at the time of giving it. 
 But the core of all preparation is that of the leader's own 
 life ; his manhood and attitude of spirit. 
 
 BASIL MATHEWS. 
 
 From all Missionary Sociaties, or IT.C.M.E. 3d. net, 5d. post free.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAOB 
 
 I. THE KNIGHT OF A NEW CRUSADE . . 7 
 
 EAYMUND LULL. 
 
 II. THE MAN WHO WOULD Go ON . . . 17 
 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 
 
 III. THE KNIGHT OF THE SLAVE GIRLS . 25 
 
 GEORGE GRENFELL. 
 
 IV. THE WOMAN WHO CONQUERED CANNIBALS . 33 
 
 MARY SLESSOR. 
 
 V. THE BOY WHO COULD "TURN HIS HAND TO 
 
 ANYTHING" 48 
 
 ALEXANDER MACKAY (1) 
 
 VI. THE EOAD MAKER 56 
 
 ALEXANDER MACKAY (2) 
 
 VII. FIGHTING THE SLAVE TRADE ... 66 
 
 ALEXANDER MACKAY (3) 
 
 VIII. THE BOY HEROES OF UGANDA ... 73 
 
 ALEXANDER MACKAY (4) 
 
 IX. A BLACK PRINCE OF AFRICA ... 83 
 
 KHAMA. 
 
 MAP OF AFRICA 94-95 
 
 5
 
 The Knight of a New Crusade 
 
 Raymund Lull 
 (Dates, b. 1234, d. 1315) 
 
 LEADER'S AIM. 
 
 To show how a courage greater than that of the Crusaders was 
 given to a pioneer called by God to carry the Gospel to North Africa. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The Crusades form the one historical subject that grips the interest 
 of all boys. The Yarns can be introduced by asking the boys what 
 they know about the Crusades and filling in the few needed details 
 that they may be unable to supply. The main points are suggested 
 here. 
 
 The Crusades were caused by the cruelty of the followers of 
 Mohammed, the Moslem Turks, who believed that they could earn 
 entrance into Paradise by slaying infidel Christians. The Moslems 
 every day and five times a day turn their faces to Mecca in Arabia, 
 saying, " There is no 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 in Paradise women have no place save to serve 
 men. 
 
 A little old man, barefooted and bareheaded and riding upon an 
 ass, went through the cities and towns and villages of Europe, in 
 the eleventh century, carrying not a lance, but a crucifix. When 
 he came near 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 tell how the tomb of Jesus Christ was in the hand of the 
 Moslem Turk, of how Christians going to worship at His Tomb in 
 Jerusalem were thrown into prison and scourged and slain. Knights 
 sold lands and houses to buy horses and lances. Peasants threw 
 down the axe and the spade for the pike and bow and arrows. Led 
 by knights, on whose armour a red Cross was emblazoned, the people 
 poured out in their millions for the first Crusade. It is said that in 
 the spring of 1096 an " expeditionary force " of six million people 
 was heading toward Palestine. 
 
 The first Crusade ended in the capture of Jerusalem (July 15, 1099), 
 and Godfrey de Bouillon became King of Jerusalem, and the Christian 
 
 7
 
 8 Yarns /on African Pioneers 
 
 / ; 
 
 power held the land ^or half a century. 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 over- 
 run 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. 
 
 I. The Young Knight's Vision. 
 
 In the far-off days of the last of the Crusades, 
 a knight of Majorca stood on the shore of his 
 island home gazing over the sea. Raymund Lull 
 from the beach of Palma Bay, where he had 
 played as a boy, now looked out southward, where 
 boats with their tall, rakish, brown sails ran in 
 from the Great Sea. 
 
 The knight was dreaming of Africa which lay 
 away to the south of his island. He had heard 
 many strange stories from the sailors about the 
 life in the harbours of that mysterious African 
 seaboard ; but he had never once in his thirty-six 
 years set eyes upon one of its ports. 
 
 Bring out the brown-paper map l and indicate on the extreme top 
 edge of the paper where the Balearic Isles are. Show one or two of 
 the ports of Africa to and from which ships sailed, e.g. Bugia, 
 Tunis. 
 
 It was the year when Prince Edward of England, 
 out on the mad, futile adventure of the last 
 Crusade, was felled by the poisoned dagger of an 
 assassin in Nazareth, and when Eleanor (we are 
 told) drew the poison from the wound with her 
 own lips. Yet Raymund Lull, who was a knight 
 so skilled that he could flash his sword and set 
 his lance in rest with any of his peers, had not 
 
 1 See Preface.
 
 The Knight of a New Crusade 9 
 
 joined that Crusade. His brave father carried 
 the scars of a dozen battles against the Moors. 
 Yet when the last Crusade swept down the 
 Mediterranean Lull stood aside ; for he was him- 
 self planning a new Crusade of a kind unlike any 
 that had gone before. 
 
 He dreamed of a Crusade not to the Holy Land 
 but to Africa, where the Crescent of Mohammed 
 ruled and where the Cross of Christ was never 
 seen save when an arrogant Moslem drew a cross 
 in the sand of the desert to spit upon it. It was 
 the desire of Raymund Lull's life to sail out into 
 those perilous ports and to face the fierce Saracens 
 who thronged the cities. He [longed for this as 
 other knights panted to go out to the Holy Land 
 as Crusaders. He was rich enough to sail at any 
 time, for he was his own master. Why, then, did 
 he not take one of the swift craft that rocked in 
 the bay, and sail ? 
 
 It was because he had not yet forged a sharp 
 enough weapon for his new Crusade. His deep 
 resolve was that at all costs he would "Be 
 Prepared " for every counter-stroke of the Saracen 
 whose tongue was as swift and sharp as his 
 scimitar. 
 
 What powers do the boys think a man should have in order to 
 convince fanatical Moslems, who knew their own sacred book the 
 Koran very well, of the truth of Christianity ? Control of his own 
 temper, courage, patience, knowledge of the Moslem religion and of 
 the Bible, suggest themselves. 
 
 2. The Preparation of Temper. 
 
 So Lull turned his back on the beach and on 
 Africa, and plunged under the heavy shadows of 
 the arched gateway through the city wall up the
 
 io Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 narrow streets of Palma. A servant opened the 
 heavy, studded door of his father's mansion the 
 house where Lull himself was torn. 
 
 He hastened in and, calling to his Saracen slave, 
 strode to his own room. The dark-faced Moor 
 obediently came, bowed before his young master, 
 and laid out on the table manuscripts that were 
 covered with mysterious writing such as few 
 people in Europe could read. 
 
 Lull was learning Arabic from this sullen 
 Saracen slave. He was studying the Koran the 
 Bible of the Mohammedans so that he might be 
 able to strive with the Saracens on their own 
 ground. For Lull knew that he must be master 
 of all the knowledge of the, Moslem if he was to 
 win his battles ; just as a knight in the fighting 
 Crusades must be swift and sure with his sword. 
 And this is how Lull spoke of the Crusade on 
 which he was to set out. 
 
 "I see many knights," he said, "going to the 
 Holy Land beyond the seas and thinking that 
 they can acquire it by force of arms ; but in the 
 end all are destroyed before they attain that which 
 they think to have. Whence it seems to me that 
 the conquest of the Holy Land ought not to be 
 attempted except in the way in which Christ and 
 His Apostles achieved it, namely, by love and 
 prayers, and the pouring out of tears and blood." 
 
 Suddenly, as he and the Saracen slave argued 
 together, the Moor blurted out passionately a 
 horrible blasphemy against the name of Jesus. 
 Lull's blood was up. He leapt to his feet, leaned 
 forward, and caught the Moor a swinging blow 
 on the face with his hand. In a fury the Saracen
 
 The Knight of a New Crusade 1 1 
 
 snatched a dagger from the folds of his robe and, 
 leaping at Lull, drove it into his side. Raymund 
 fell with a cry. Friends rushed 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 and remembering his wild blow 
 at the Saracen, realised that, although he had 
 learned Arabic, he had not yet learned the first 
 lesson of his own new way of Crusading to be 
 master of himself. 
 
 3. The Preparation of Courage. 
 
 So Raymund Lull (at home and in Rome and 
 Paris) set himself afresh to his task of preparing. 
 At last he felt that he was ready. From Paris 
 he rode south-east through forest and across plain, 
 over mountain and pass, till the gorgeous palaces 
 and the thousand masts of Genoa came in sight. 
 
 He went down to the harbour and found a ship 
 that was sailing across the Mediterranean to Africa. 
 He booked his passage and sent his goods with 
 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 knew they 
 were glowing with pride because of "their triumphs 
 over the Crusaders in Palestine. He knew they 
 were blazing with anger because their brother 
 Moors had been slaughtered and tortured in Spain. 
 He saw ahead of him the rack, the thumb-screw, 
 and the boot ; the long years in a slimy dungeon
 
 12 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 at the best the executioner's scimitar. He 
 simply dared 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 a torture of shame greater than 
 the agony of the rack. He was wrung with bitter 
 shame that he who had for all these years prepared 
 for this Crusade should now have shown the white 
 feather. He was, indeed, a craven knight of Christ. 
 
 His agony of spirit threw him into a high fever 
 that kept him in his bed. 
 
 Soon after he heard that another ship was 
 sailing for Africa. 
 
 In spite of the protestations of his friends Lull 
 insisted that they should carry him to the ship. 
 They did so ; but as the hour of sailing drew on 
 his friends were sure that he was so weak that he 
 would die on the sea before he could reach Africa. 
 So this time in spite of all his pleading they 
 carried him ashore again. But he could not rest 
 and his agony of mind made his fever worse. 
 
 Soon, however, a third ship was making ready 
 to sail. This time Lull was carried on board and 
 refused to return. 
 
 The ship cast off and threaded its way through 
 the shipping of the harbour out into the open sea. 
 
 " From this moment," said Lull, " I was a new 
 man. All fever left me almost before we were 
 out of sight of land." 
 
 4. The First Battle. 
 
 Passing Corsica and Sardinia, the ship slipped 
 southward till at last she made the yellow coast
 
 The Knight of a New Crusade 13 
 
 of Africa, broken by the glorious Gulf of Tunis. 
 She dropped sail as she ran alongside the busy 
 wharves of Goletta. Lull was soon gliding in a 
 boat through the short ancient canal to Tunis, 
 the mighty city which was head of all the Western 
 Mohammedan world. 
 
 Show Tunis on the brown-paper map, and draw an arrow indicating 
 the direction from which Lull had sailed. The precise journey 
 could be followed on a small map of Europe and Africa. 
 
 He landed and found the place beside the great 
 mosque where the grey-bearded scholars bowed 
 over their Korans and spoke to one another about 
 the law of Mohammed. 
 
 They looked at him with amazement as he 
 boldly came up to them and said, " 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 is indeed the 
 Prophet, I will myself become a follower of him." 
 
 The Moslems, sure of their case, called together 
 their wisest men and together they declaimed to 
 Lull what he already knew very well the watch- 
 word that rang out from minaret to minaret across 
 the roofs of the vast city as the first flush of dawn 
 came up from the East across the Gulf. " There 
 is no God but God ; Mohammed is the Prophet 
 of God." 
 
 " Yes," he replied, " the AJlah of Mohammed 
 is one and is great, but He does not love as does 
 the Father of Jesus Christ. He is wise, but He 
 does not do good to men like our God who so 
 loved the world that He gave His Son Jesus 
 Christ." 
 
 To and fro the argument swung till, after many
 
 14 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 days, to their dismay and amazement the Moslems 
 saw some of their number waver and at last 
 actually beginning to go over to the side of Lull. 
 To forsake the Faith of Mohammed is by their 
 own law to be worthy of death. A Moslem 
 leader hurried to the Sultan of Tunis. 
 
 " See," he said, " this learned teacher, Lull, is 
 declaring the errors of the Faith. He is danger- 
 ous. 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 a 
 dark dungeon to wait the death sentence. 
 
 But another Moslem who had been deeply 
 touched by Lull's teaching craved audience with 
 the Sultan. 
 
 "See," he said, "this learned man Lull if he 
 were a Moslem would be held in high honour, 
 being so brave and fearless in defence of his Faith. 
 Do not slay him. Banish him from Tunis." 
 
 So when Lull in his dungeon saw the door flung 
 open and waited to be taken to his death he found 
 to his surprise that he was led from the dungeon 
 through the streets of Tunis, taken along the canal, 
 thrust into the hold of a ship, and told that he 
 must go in that ship to Genoa and never return. 
 But the man who had before been afraid to sail 
 from Genoa to Tunis, now escaped unseen from the 
 ship that would have taken him back to safety in 
 order to risk his life once more. He said to him- 
 self the motto he had written : " HE WHO LOVES 
 
 NOT, LIVES NOT ; HE WHO LIVES BY THE LlFE CAN- 
 NOT DIE." He was not afraid now even of martyr- 
 dom. He hid among the wharves and gathered
 
 The Knight of a New Crusade 15 
 
 his converts about him to teach them more and 
 more about Christ. 
 
 5. The Last Fight. 
 
 At last, however, seeing that he could do little 
 in hiding, Lull took ship to Naples. After many 
 adventures during a number of years, in a score of 
 cities and on the seas, the now white-haired Lull 
 sailed into the curved bay of Bugia farther west- 
 ward along the African coast. (See map. ) In the 
 bay behind the frowning walls the city with its 
 glittering mosques climbed the hill. Behind rose 
 two glorious mountains crowned with the dark 
 green of the cedar. And, far off, like giant Moors 
 wearing white turbans, rose the distant mountain 
 peaks crowned with snow. 
 
 Lull passed quietly through the arch of the city 
 gateway which he knew so well, for among other 
 adventures he had once been imprisoned in this 
 very city. He climbed the steep street and found 
 a friend who hid him away. There for a year Lull 
 taught in secret till he felt that the time 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 out that seemed to some of them 
 strangely familiar. They hurried toward the sound. 
 There stood the old hero with arm uplifted declar- 
 ing, in the full blaze of the North African day, the 
 Love of God shown in Jesus Christ His Son. 
 
 The Saracens murmured. They could not 
 answer his arguments. They cried to him to stop, 
 but his voice rose ever fuller and bolder. They 
 rushed on him, dragged him by the cloak out of 
 the market-place, down the streets, under the arch- 
 .
 
 1 6 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 way to a place beyond the city walls. There they 
 threw back their sleeves, took up great jagged 
 stones and hurled these grim messengers of hate at 
 the Apostle of Love, till he sank senseless to the 
 ground. 1 
 
 It was word for word over again the story of 
 Stephen ; the speech, the wild cries of the mob, the 
 rush to the place beyond the city wall, the stoning. 2 
 
 Did Lull accomplish anything ? He was dead ; 
 but he had conquered, He had 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 : and the Lull who had showed 
 the white feather of fear at Genoa, now defied 
 death in the market-place of Bugia. And in that 
 love and heroism, in face of hate and death, he had 
 shown men the only way to conquer the scimitar of 
 Mohammed, " the way in which Christ and His 
 Apostles achieved it, namely, by love and prayers, 
 and the pouring out of tears and blood." 
 
 Let one of the boys mark Bugia with a small red cross. This 
 should be kept through the Yarns as a symbol of a man or woman 
 haying died heroically for Africa. When this has been done the 
 leader might read quietly to the boys the verses, Acts vii. 54-60. 
 
 1 June 30, 1315. * Acts vi. 8 yii 60.
 
 II 
 
 The Man who would Go On 
 
 David Livingstone 
 (Dates, b. 1813, d. 1873) 
 
 LEADER'S AIM. 
 
 To show the power of valiant faith and love to conquer hate and 
 destroy evils. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Spread out the brown paper outline map of Africa. Ask the 
 boys how much of it they could fill in. They will know the great 
 rivers Nile, Niger, Congo, Zambesi and will probably be able 
 to fill in the divisions of South Africa : some will have a knowledge 
 of the taking over of the German Colonies in Africa and the place 
 of the Belgian Congo territory, etc. 
 
 Point out that the greatest dunce among them knows infinitely 
 more about Africa than all the wisest geographers in the world did 
 seventy-five years ago. Then men only knew the coast inland 
 from the Cape on the South up to the Kalahari Desert, and up the 
 Nile and to the Sahara on the North ; and the Niger. Some men 
 believed that all in between was one vast desert as big as Europe, 
 India and China all together. Show the boys the old map of Africa 
 in God's Image in Ebony (facing page 14) and the map of Europe, 
 India, etc., superimposed on Africa in Livingstone the Pathfinder 
 (facing page 173). 
 
 There was a man who discovered ten times more about Africa 
 than all the explorers together had found out before him. Do the 
 boys know his name ? Probably most of the boys will fix on him 
 at once. 
 
 Do they know what David Livingstone was like as a boy ? The 
 son of a poor man a tea-hawker David went to work as a small 
 boy at a mill. Used to learn his grammar at the machine at which 
 he worked. Fascinated by reading about a pioneer Prussian mission- 
 ary doctor in China Dr Gutzlaff he worked at the mill to earn 
 enough money to pay for being trained as a doctor, and offered 
 himself to the London Missionary Society, who sent him out to 
 Africa. Landed at the Cape, travelled by bullock wagon to Kuru- 
 man, and was always pressing on to get farther into the interior. 
 He crossed the Kalahari Desert (the first white man to do so) and 
 
 B V
 
 1 8 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 discovered Lake Ngami, and found out that the heart of Africa was 
 not desert but " a land full of rivers and many trees." No man 
 who ever lived had more adventures than Livingstone or was a 
 greater explorer. 1 But he did not go to Africa for adventures. 
 Why did he go ? "I go to Africa," he said, " to try to make an 
 open path for commerce and for Christianity." 
 
 He found a terrible enemy in his path. ' What was it ? Do any 
 of the boys know ? The Apollyon of Africa slave-raiding and 
 slave-trading, through which the Arabs and Portuguese captured 
 tens of thousands of negroes, burning their villages, slaying those who 
 resisted, shackling the others and marching them off to sell them 
 into slavery. Livingstone was the Greatheart to fight this Apollyon. 
 We are going to hear a story of how he fought. 
 
 I. The Skull in the Grass. 
 
 There was a deathly stillness in the hot African 
 air as two bronzed Scots strode along the narrow 
 forest path. 
 
 The one, a young, keen-eyed doctor, 2 glanced 
 quickly through the trees and occasionally turned 
 aside to pick some strange orchid and to slip it 
 into his collecting case. The other strode steadily 
 along with that curious, "resolute forward tread" 
 of his. 8 He was David Livingstone. Behind 
 them came a string of African bearers carrying 
 in bundles on their heads the tents and food of 
 the explorers. 
 
 Suddenly, with a crunch, Livingstone's heel 
 went through a white object half hidden in the 
 long grass a thing like an ostrich's egg. He 
 
 1 It might be well for the boys to have a copy of Livingstone the 
 Pathfinder to hand round among themselves after hearing this Yarn. 
 EDITOR. 
 
 2 Dr Kirk, now Sir John Kirk, G.C.M.G., who, leaning upon his 
 African ebony stick and gazing with his now dimmed eyes into the 
 glow of the fire, told me many stories of his adventures with Living- 
 stone on his Zambesi journeyings, including this one. 
 
 * A friend of mine asked a very old African in Matabeleland whether 
 as a boy he remembered Dr Livingstone. "Oh yes," replied the 
 aged Matabele, " he came into our village out of the bush walking 
 thus," and the old man got up and stumped along, imitating the 
 determined tread of Livingstone, which, after sixty years, was the one 
 thing he remembered.
 
 The Man who would Go On 19 
 
 stooped and his strong, bronzed face was twisted 
 with mingled sorrow and anger, as, looking into 
 the face of his younger friend, he gritted out 
 between his clenched teeth, "The slave-raiders 
 again I " 
 
 It was the whitening skull of an African boy. 
 
 2. On the Trail of the Slave-raider. 
 
 For weeks those two Britons had driven their 
 little steamer (the Asthmatic they called her, 
 because of her wheezing engines) up the 
 Zambesi 1 and were now exploring its tributary 
 the Shire\ 2 
 
 Have these rivers pointed out on a map. One boy with a special 
 keenness on maps should be told off to take the brown paper map 
 home and draw Livingstone's early journeys or all his journeys 
 on them from, e.g., the map at the end of Livingstone the Pathfinder. 
 
 Each morning, before they could start the 
 ship's engines, they had been obliged to take 
 poles and push from between the paddles of the 
 wheels the dead bodies of Africans men, women, 
 and children slain bodies which had floated 
 down from the villages that the Arab slave- 
 raiders had burned and sacked. Livingstone 
 was out on the long, bloody trail of the slaver, 
 the trail that stretched on and on into the 
 heart of Africa where no white man had ever 
 been. 
 
 This negro boy's skull, whitening on the path, 
 was only one more link in the long, sickening 
 shackle-chain of slavery that girdled down-trodden 
 Africa. 
 
 The two men strode on. The forest path 
 
 1 Zara-bay-see. 2 Shee-ray.
 
 20 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 opened out to a broad clearing. They were in 
 an African village. But no voice was heard and 
 no step broke the horrible silence. It was a 
 village of death. The sun blazed on the charred 
 heaps which now marked the sites of happy 
 African homes ; the gardens were desolate and 
 utterly destroyed. The village was wiped out. 
 Those who had submitted were far away, trudging 
 through the forest, under the lash of the slaver ; 
 those who had been too old to walk or too brave 
 to be taken without fight were slain. 
 
 The heart of Livingstone burned with one great 
 resolve he would track this foul thing into the 
 very heart of Africa and then blazon its horrors 
 to the whole world. 
 
 The two men trudged back to the river bank 
 again. Now, with their brown companions, they 
 took the shallow boat that they had brought on 
 the deck of the Asthmatic, and headed still 
 farther up the Shird river from the Zambesi 
 toward the unknown Highlands of Central Africa. 
 
 3. 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 stillness 
 as the boat pushed northward against the river 
 current. Dr Kirk sat in the stern with one 
 hand on the tiller and one leg thrown lazily up 
 on the edge of the boat. 
 
 Suddenly the water heaved as though a vol- 
 canic island had been flung up from the bed of 
 the river. Two wicked gleaming eyes glared and 
 there opened a hideous red crater. A hungry
 
 The Man who would Go On 21 
 
 hippopotamus opened his enormous jaws. The 
 lower jaw was under the boat, the upper jaw, 
 with its rim of ghastly teeth, was over Dr Kirk's 
 thigh. In a second the boat would surely be 
 smashed like an egg-shell and Dr Kirk's leg 
 torn away like a twig. 
 
 But to the amazement of the horror-stricken 
 men, the vast jaws swung aside, and the hippo- 
 potamus sullenly sunk in the river, not to be 
 seen again. 
 
 In a solemn and awed voice one of the negroes 
 turned to Dr Kirk and said, "It is God's 
 providence only ! " 
 
 The paddles flashed again, and as the boat 
 came round a curve in the river they were faced 
 by a sight that made every man sit, paddle in 
 hand, motionless with horror. The bank facing 
 them in the next curve of the river was black 
 with men. The ranks of savages bristled with 
 spears and arrows. A chief yelled to them to 
 turn back. Then a cloud of arrows flew over 
 the boat. 
 
 " Go on," said Livingstone quietly to the 
 Africans. Their paddles took the water and the 
 boat leapt toward the savage semi- circle on the 
 bank. The water was shallower now. Before 
 any one realized what was happening Livingstone 
 had swung over the edge of the boat and, up to 
 his 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 a hundred arrows and spears. 
 The men in the boat sat breathless, waiting to see
 
 22 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 their leader fall with a score of spears through 
 his body. But the savages on the bank were 
 transfixed with amazement at Livingstone's sheer 
 audacity. Awed by something godlike in this 
 unflinching and unarmed courage, no finger let 
 fly a single arrow. 
 
 "You think," he called to the chief, "that I am 
 a slave-raider." For Livingstone knew that he 
 had never in all his wanderings been attacked by 
 Africans save where they had first been infuriated 
 by the cruel raiders. 
 
 The chief scowled. 
 
 " See," cried Livingstone, baring his arm to 
 show his white skin as he again and again had 
 done when threatened by Africans, " is this the 
 colour of the men who come to make slaves and 
 to kill ? " 
 
 The savages gazed with astonishment. They 
 had never before seen so white a skin. 
 
 "No," Livingstone went on, "this is the 
 skin of the tribe that has heart toward the 
 African." 
 
 Almost unconsciously the men had dropped the 
 spear points and arrow heads as he was speaking. 
 The chief listened while Livingstone, who was 
 now on the bank, told the savages how he had 
 come across the great waters 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 
 boat up the river and over rapids toward the 
 wonderful shining Highlands in the heart of 
 Africa.
 
 The Man who would Go On 23 
 
 4. The Man who would Go On. 
 
 Dr Kirk was recalled to England by the British 
 Government ; but Livingstone trudged on in 
 increasing loneliness over mountains and across 
 rivers and lakes, plunging through marshes, racked 
 a score of times with fever, robbed of his medicines, 
 threatened again and again by the guns of the 
 slave-raiding Arabs and the spears and clubs of 
 savage head-hunters, bearing on his bent shoulders 
 the Cross of the negroes' agony slavery, till at 
 last, alone and on his knees in the dead of night, 
 our Greatheart crossed his last River, into the 
 presence of his Father in heaven. 
 
 Yet still, though his body was dead, his spirit 
 would go on. For the life Livingstone lived, the 
 death he died, and the record he wrote of the 
 slave-raiders' horrible cruelties thrilled all Britain 
 to heal that "open sore of the world." Queen 
 Victoria made Dr Kirk her consul at Zanzibar, 
 and told him to make the Sultan of Zanzibar 
 order all slave- trad ing through that great market 
 to cease. And to-day, because of David Living- 
 stone, through all the thousands of miles of Africa 
 over which he trod, no man dare lay the shackles 
 of slavery on another. To-day, where Livingstone 
 saw the slave-market in Zanzibar, a grand cathe- 
 dral stands, built by negro hands, and in that 
 cathedral you may 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
 
 24 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 words that sum up the whole life of David 
 Livingstone. 
 
 " He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, 
 To preach deliverance to the captives." 
 
 Why did Livingstone face all the anguish ? He often said that 
 he became a missionary doctor because " God had an only Son and 
 He was a missionary and a physician." 
 
 Before leaving England for the last time Livingstone said, " I go 
 back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and 
 Christianity ; do you carry out the work I have begun. I LEAVE 
 
 IT WITH YOU." 
 SOURCES. 
 
 Blaikie, Personal Life of David Livingstone. (Murray, is. 6d. net.) 
 Mathews, Livingstone the Pathfinder. (Milford, 35. net.)
 
 Ill 
 
 The Knight of the Slave Girls 
 
 George Grenfell 
 (Dates, b. 1849, d. 1906) 
 
 LEADER'S AIM. 
 
 To suggest the power of strong, protective, heroic love to break 
 down fear and hatred in savage people. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 When Livingstone lay dying in his hastily-built hut, 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 htrt (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. 
 
 (The map exercise for this week might be the insertion by a boy 
 of the main course of the Congo on the brown paper map. Another 
 boy might draw the Congo to scale on a penny outline map of 
 Europe. 1 ) 
 
 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, August 21, 1849), who was brought up 
 in Birmingham, and was an old King Edward's School boy. 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, whither he was sent by the 
 
 1 As on page 27 of God's Image in Ebony.
 
 26 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 Baptist Missionary Society. 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 mission- 
 ary, 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 his Society 
 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. [Mark in map.] 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, Grenfall 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 Ibs. 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 was 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. 
 
 GrenfelPs 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. 
 
 i. 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
 
 The Knight of the Slave Girls 27 
 
 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 a 
 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. 1 
 
 The steamer drove up stream while the croco- 
 diles, 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. His name 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. 
 
 1 For photograph of the pilot, see facing pago 294, Hawker's Life of 
 Grenfell, or page 6 of A Hero of the Congo, by Archibald Rae.
 
 28 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 2. 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. GrenfelTs 
 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
 
 The Knight of the Slave Girls 29 
 
 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 plung- 
 ing 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. 
 
 3. 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
 
 30 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 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. 
 
 Ask the boys how they would have dealt with this situation. To 
 fly was to lose the day, for Grenfell wanted to win the people. For 
 the same reason to fight would have been equally fatal to Grenf ell's 
 plans. 
 
 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 Knight of the Slave Girls 31 
 
 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. 
 
 Grenfell went on with his work in face of fever, inter-tribal fight- 
 ing, 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 our 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 can make bricks, 
 build houses, turn a lathe ; engineers, printers, bookbinders, black- 
 smiths, carpenters, worshipping in churches built with their own 
 hands. But beyond, and among the myriad tributaries and the vast
 
 32 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 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. 
 Men are wanted to enter it. 
 
 SOURCES. 
 
 Life of George Grenfell, by G. Hawker. (R.T.S., 6s. net.) 
 The Story of the " Peace." 1 (B.M.S., 3d.) 
 A Hero of the Congo, by A. Rae. (B.M.S., id. net.) 
 George Grenfell and the Congo, by Sir Harry Johnston. (B.M.S., 
 I os. 6d. net.) 
 
 1 Out of print.
 
 IV 
 
 The Woman who conquered 
 Cannibals 
 
 Mary Slessor 
 (Dates, b. 1848, d. 1915) 
 
 LEADER'S AIM. 
 
 To show how God perfects His strength in weakness. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The opening of this Yarn is of a character that makes its own 
 introduction. The material may be too long for use in some groups 
 as one Yarn. In that case, it may easily be divided at the end of 
 Section II. 
 
 Mary Slessor has a secure place among the world's heroines of 
 the order of Florence Nightingale and Sister Dora, but, more than 
 either of these, she is essentially a boy's heroine. In conveying the 
 amazing quality of her courage it is necessary to show her intense 
 shyness and nervousness controlled by a devotion that gave her 
 a frail little woman a command over ferocious and bestial savages 
 and an absolute fearlessness in peril, such as Livingstone himself 
 never surpassed. The main outline of her life is as follows : 
 
 Born in Aberdeen, December 2, 1848, Mary Slessor was the 
 daughter of a Scottish shoemaker. Her mother was a gentle and 
 sweet-faced woman. After her father's death Mary was the main- 
 stay of the home. Working in a weaving shed in Dundee (whither 
 the family moved when Mary was eleven) she like Livingstone 
 educated herself while at her machine. On her conversion she 
 launched into work among the wild larrikins of the slums. She 
 offered herself to the Foreign Mission Committee of the United Free 
 Church of Scotland, and sailed in 1876 to Calabar, West Africa. 
 
 For twelve years she worked at the centre of the mission in Calabar 
 and then flung herself into pioneer work among the terrible tribe 
 of Okoyong. No one had ever been able to influence them. They 
 defied British administration. For fifteen years she strove there, 
 and won a power over the ferocious Okoyong savages such as no 
 one has ever wielded. " I'm a wee, Wee wifie," she said, " no very 
 bookit, but I grip on well none the less." 
 
 At the age of fifty-four she pushed on to the west of the Cross 
 river to the slave-raiding Arcs tribe and the Ibos and Ibibios, tribes 
 
 C 33
 
 34 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 that offered human sacrifices, winning her way into the fiercest 
 villages, lighting in each place her little beacon fire of Christian life, 
 building her little mud and thatch mission-station, bringing up an 
 African teacher from the central mission, and then again pushing on. 
 
 When she was sixty- two, men came from Ikpe two days' journey 
 away to call her to teach them. Racked with sickness and worn 
 to a thread she went on, and again after strenuous struggles 
 against twin murder and ordeal by poison she had lighted her 
 beacon in Ikpe. At last, on a hilltop near-by at Odoro Ikpe, she 
 settled in an isolated government rest-house, a rough shanty entered 
 by a hen-ladder. She was surrounded by villages and towns that 
 refused to hear anyone. Too weak to walk, she was wheeled in a 
 chair by some of her " twins," now grown to strong children, through 
 the bush to one wild town after another till her influence had opened 
 every place within her reach. 
 
 At last, under the shadow of the Great War, on January 13, 1915, 
 she died, mourned by the natives over the 2000 square miles where 
 her influence spread " the good White Ma who had lived alone." 
 
 I. THE MILL-GIRL. 
 
 i. 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 with wonder, 
 appeared at the window. The carriage door 
 opened and a little African girl was handed down 
 on to 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 stepped from the 
 carriage to the platform, and a third, and then a 
 fourth black girl appeared, the cabmen and porters 
 stood staring in amused curiosity. 
 
 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 her on the railway platform ? 
 
 The telegraph boys and the news-boys gazed
 
 Woman who Conquered Cannibals 35 
 
 at her in astonishment. But they would have 
 been transfixed with amazement if they had known 
 a tenth of the wonder of the story of that heroic 
 woman who, just as simply as she stood there on 
 the Waverley platform, had mastered cannibals, 
 conquered wild drunken chiefs brandishing loaded 
 muskets, had faced hunger and thirst under the 
 flaming heat and burning fevers of Africa, and 
 walked unscathed by night through forests 
 haunted by ferocious leopards, to triumph over 
 regiments of frenzied savages drawn up for battle, 
 had rescued from death hundreds of baby twins 
 thrown out to be eaten by ants and had now 
 brought home to Scotland from West Africa four 
 of these her rescued children. 
 
 Still more would those Scottish boys at 
 Waverley Station have wondered, as they gazed 
 on the little woman and her group of black 
 children, if they had known that the woman who 
 had done these things, Mary Slessor, had been a 
 Scottish factory girl, who had toiled at her 
 weaving machine from six in the morning till six 
 at night amid the whirr of the belts, the flash of 
 the shuttles, the rattle of the looms, and the roar 
 of the great machines. 
 
 2. The Call to Africa. 
 
 Like Livingstone, she taught herself with her 
 book propped up on the machine at which she 
 worked. She read his travels and heard the 
 stories of his fight against slavery for Africa, till 
 he became her hero. 
 
 One day the news flashed round the world : 
 " Livingstone is dead. His heart is buried in
 
 36 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 Central Africa." Mary had thrilled as she read 
 the story of his heroic and lonely life. Now he 
 had fallen. She heard in her heart the words that 
 he had spoken : 
 
 " I go to Africa to try to make an open 
 door . . . ; do you carry out the work which I 
 have begun. I LEAVE IT WITH YOU." 
 
 As Mary sat, tired with her week's work, in her 
 pew in the church on Sunday, and thought of 
 Livingstone's call to Africa, she saw visions of 
 far-off places of which she heard from the pulpit 
 and read in her magazines visions of a steaming 
 river on the West Coast of Africa where the 
 alligators slid from the mud banks into the water ; 
 visions of the barracoons on the shore in which 
 the captured negroes were penned as they waited 
 for the slave-ships ; pictures of villages where 
 trembling prisoners dipped their hands in boiling 
 oil to test their guilt, and wives were strangled to 
 go with 'their dead chief into the spirit-land ; 
 visions of the fierce chiefs who could order a 
 score of men to be beheaded for a cannibal feast 
 and then sell a hundred more to be hounded away 
 into the outer darkness of slavery the Calabar 
 where the missionaries of her church were fighting 
 the black darkness of the most savage people of 
 the world. 
 
 Mary Slessor made up her mind to go out and 
 give her whole life to Africa. So she offered 
 herself, a timorous girl who could not cross a field 
 with a cow in it, as a missionary for cannibal 
 Calabar. 
 
 (Mark Calabar on the brown paper map and show the route from 
 Britain on a general map.)
 
 Woman who Conquered Cannibals 37 
 
 To-day over two thousand square miles of forest 
 and rivers, the dark savages, as they squat at 
 night in the forest around their palaver-fires, tell 
 one another stories of the Great-White-Ma-Who- 
 Lived-Alone, and the stories they tell are like 
 these. 
 
 II. THE HEALING OF THE CHIEF. 
 
 i. Through the Forest in the Rain. 
 
 A strange quiet lay over all the village by the 
 river. For the chief lay ill in his hut. The 
 Calabar people were waiting on the tip-toe of 
 suspense. For if the chief died many of them 
 would be slain to go with him into the spirit- 
 world his wives and some of his soldiers and 
 slaves. 
 
 Suddenly a strange African woman, who had 
 come over from another village, entered the chiefs 
 harem. She spoke to the wives of the chief, saying, 
 "There lives away through the forest at Ekenge 
 a white Ma who can cast out by her magic the 
 demons who are killing your chief. My son's 
 child was dying, but the white Ma l saved her and 
 she is well to-day. Many other wonders has she 
 done by the power of her juju. Let your chief 
 send for her and he will not die." 
 
 There was silence and then eager chattering, for 
 the women knew that their very lives depended on 
 the chief getting well. If he died, they would be 
 killed. 
 
 1 The African uses the word " Ma" as mother, (a) to name a woman 
 after her eldest son, e.g. Mrs Livingstone was called Ma-Robert; and 
 (b) as in this case, for a woman whom they respect.
 
 38 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 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 (value about 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. Go- 
 ing to the courtyard of the chief they told him the 
 story of their sick chief, and their desire that the 
 white Ma who lived in his village should 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 her little 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 faces and nodding heads 
 showed that they knew nothing at all. 
 
 " I must go to him," she declared. She knew 
 that the way was full of perils, and that she might 
 be killed by warriors and wild beasts ; but she 
 knew too that, if she did not go and if the chief 
 died, hundreds of lives might be sacrificed. 
 
 Chief Edem said, " There are warriors out in the 
 woods and you will be killed. You must not go." 
 
 Ma Erne, a tall fat African widow of Ekenge 
 village, who loved Mary Slessor, said, " No, you 
 must not go. The streams are deep ; the rains are 
 come. You could never get there." 
 
 But Mary Slessor said, " I must go."
 
 Woman who Conquered Cannibals 39 
 
 " Then I will send women with you to look after 
 you, and men to protect you," said Chief Edem. 
 
 Mary Slessor went back to her house to prepare 
 to start on her long dangerous journey in the 
 morning. She could not sleep for wondering 
 whether she was indeed right to risk her life and 
 all her work on the off-chance of saving this distant 
 sick chief. She knelt down and asked God 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 the village lay behind them 
 the rain began to pour in sheets. It came down 
 as only an African rain can, unceasing torrents of 
 pitiless deluge. Soon Mary Slessor's soaked boots 
 became impossible to walk in. She took 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 turned and stared at the strange 
 white woman who swiftly passed through their 
 midst 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 till at last, when 
 she had been walking almost ceaselessly for over
 
 40 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 eight hours, she tottered into the village of the 
 sick chief. 
 
 2. The Healing Hand. 
 
 Mary Slessor, aching from head to foot with 
 fever and overwhelming weariness, did not lie down 
 even for a moment's rest, but walked straight 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 and gave a dose to the 
 chief. But she could see at once that more of this 
 medicine was needed than she had with her. She 
 knew that, away on the other side of the 
 river, some hours distant, another missionary was 
 working. 
 
 " 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 goes there." 
 
 She was in despair. Then someone said, " There 
 is a man of that country living in his canoe on the 
 river. Perhaps he would go." 
 
 They ran down to the river and found him. 
 After much persuading he at last went, and re- 
 turned next day with the medicine. 
 
 The chief, whom the women had believed to be 
 almost dead, gradually recovered consciousness, 
 then sat up and took food. At last he was quite 
 well. All the village laughed and sang for joy. 
 There would be no slaying. They gathered round 
 Mary Slessor in grateful wonder at her magic 
 powers. She told them that she had come to them 
 because she worshipped the Great Physician Jesus 
 Christ, the Son of the Father God who made all
 
 Woman who Conquered Cannibals 41 
 
 things. Then she gathered them together in the 
 morning and evening, and led them as with bowed 
 heads they all thanked God for the healing of the 
 chief. 
 
 [If the Yarn is to be made into two, end the first here. Discover 
 from the boys (a) what are the main powers by which Mary Slessor 
 won over this village ; and (b) how she managed to overcome her 
 natural fears of the forest, etc.] 
 
 III. VALIANT IN FIGHT. 
 
 Years passed by and Mary Slessor's name was 
 known in all the villages for many miles. She 
 was, to them, the white Ma who was brave and wise 
 and kind. She was mad, they thought, because 
 she was always rescuing the twin babies whom 
 the Calabar people throw out to die and the 
 mothers and twins whom they often kill. But in 
 some strange way they felt that her wisdom, her skill 
 in healing men, and her courage, which was more 
 heroic than that of their bravest warriors, came 
 from the Spirit who made all things. She would 
 wrench guns from the hands of drunken savage 
 men who were three times as strong as she was. 
 At last she used to sit with their chief as judge 
 of quarrels, and many times in palavers between 
 villages she stopped the people from going to 
 war. 
 
 i. 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 that all 
 the warriors were arming and holding councils 
 of war.
 
 42 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 "I must go and stop it," said Mary Slessor. 
 
 " You cannot," said her friends at Ekenge, 
 " the steamer is coming to take you home to 
 Britain because you are so ill. You will miss 
 the boat. You are too ill to walk. The wild 
 beasts in the woods will kill you. The savage 
 warriors are out, and will kill you in the dark 
 not knowing who you are." 
 
 " But I must go," she answered. 
 
 The chief insisted that she must have two 
 armed men with lanterns with her, and that she 
 must get the chief of a neighbouring village to 
 send out his drummer with her so that people 
 might know as they heard the drum that a 
 protected person was travelling who must not be 
 harmed. 
 
 It was night, and Mary Slessor with her two 
 companions marched out into the darkness, the 
 lanterns throwing up strange shadows that looked 
 like fierce men in the darkness. Through the 
 night they walked till at midnight they reached 
 the village where they were to ask for the drum. 
 
 The chief was surly. 
 
 "You are going to a warlike people," he said. 
 "They will not listen to what 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, " you forget the power of 
 the woman's God. I shall go on." 
 
 And to the amazement of the savages in the 
 villages she went on into the darkness. Surely 
 she must be mad. She defied their chief who 
 had the power to kill her. She had walked on
 
 Woman who Conquered Cannibals 43 
 
 into a forest where ferocious leopards abounded 
 ready to spring out upon her, and where men 
 were drinking themselves into a fury of war. 
 And for what ? To try with a woman's tongue 
 to stop the fiery chiefs and the savages of a 
 distant warlike tribe from fighting. Surely she 
 was mad. 
 
 2. Facing the Warriors. 
 
 She pressed on through the darkness. Then 
 she saw the dim outlines of huts. Mary Slessor 
 had reached the first town in the war area. She 
 found 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 of the darkness leapt a score of 
 armed warriors. They were all round her. From 
 all parts dark shadows sprang forward till scores 
 of men with their 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 to fight," 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 say before we fight. All the 
 same we shall fight. For here you see are men 
 wounded. We must wipe out the disgrace that 
 is put upon us. Now she must rest. Women, 
 you take care of the white Ma. We will call 
 her at cock-crow when we start." 
 
 This meant an hour's sleep. Mary Slessor lay
 
 44 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 down in a hut. It seemed as though her eyes 
 were hardly shut before she was wakened again. 
 She stood, tottering with tiredness, when she 
 heard the cry 
 
 "Kun, Ma, run!" 
 
 The warriors were off down the hill away to 
 the fight. She ran, but they were quickly out 
 of sight on the way to the attack. Was all her 
 trouble in vain ? She pressed on weak and 
 breathless, but determined. She heard wild yells 
 and the roll of the war drum. The warriors she 
 had followed were feverishly making ready to fight, 
 a hundred yards distant 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 stood the enemy in un- 
 broken ranks of dark warriors. They stood like 
 a solid wall. She hailed them as she walked 
 forward. 
 
 There was an ominous silence. She laughed. 
 
 " How perfect your manners are I " she exclaimed. 
 She was about to walk forward and force them to 
 make way for her when an old chief stepped out 
 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 wounded the chief over 
 there. It was only one of our men who did it. 
 It was not the act of all our town. We ask 
 you that you will speak with our enemy to bring 
 them to peace with us."
 
 Woman who Conquered Cannibals 45 
 
 3. The Healed Chief. 
 
 She looked into the face of the chief. Then 
 she saw to her joy that this was the very chief 
 whom she had toiled through the rain to heal 
 long ago. [See pp. 37-41.] Because of what she 
 had done then, he was now at her feet asking 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 first joyful thought. 
 Then she saw that she must first make her 
 authority stronger over the whole band of 
 warriors. 
 
 " Stay where you are," she said. " Some of you 
 find a place where I can sit 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 two men 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 side and 
 stood on one side of her, while the two chiefs 
 chosen in the village came and threw down their 
 arms and knelt at their feet. 
 
 "Your chief," they said, "was wounded by a 
 drunken youth. Do not let us shed blood through 
 all our villages because of what he did. If you 
 will cease from war with us, we will pay to you 
 any fine that the white Ma shall say." 
 
 She, too, pressed them to stop their fighting. 
 Word went back to the warriors on both sides, 
 who became wildly excited. Some agreed, others 
 stormed and raged till they were in a frenzy.
 
 46 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 Would they fight even over her body ? Furious 
 warriors came moving up from both sides. But 
 by arguing and appealing at last she persuaded the 
 warlike tribe to accept a fine. 
 
 4. The Promise of Peace. 
 
 The town whose drunken youth had wounded 
 the enemy chief at once paid a part of the fine. 
 They use no money. So the fine was paid in 
 casks and bottles of trade gin. Mary Slessor 
 trembled. For as the boxes of gin bottles were 
 brought forward the warriors pranced with excite- 
 ment and made ready to get drunk. She knew 
 that this would make them fight after all. What 
 could she do ? The roar of voices rose. She 
 could not make her own voice heard. A daring 
 idea flashed into her mind. According to the law 
 of these Egbo people, clothes thrown over any- 
 thing give it the protection of your body. She 
 snatched off her skirt and all the clothing she 
 could spare and spread them over the gin. She 
 seized the one glass that the tribe had, and doled 
 out one portion only to each chief to test whether 
 the bottles indeed contained spirit. At last they 
 grew quieter and she spoke to them. 
 
 "I am going," she said, "across the Great 
 Waters to my home, and I shall be away many 
 moons. Promise me here, on both sides, that 
 you will not go to war with one another while 
 I am away." 
 
 " We promise," they said. They gathered 
 around her and she told them the story of Jesus 
 Christ in whose name she had come to them. 
 
 "Now," she said, "go to your rest and fight 
 

 
 Woman who Conquered Cannibals 47 
 
 no more." And the tribes kept 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 of times with fever. She rescued 
 her hundreds of twin babies thrown out to 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 and along the valleys by some 
 of her " twins" now grown to strong children, and 
 died there the conquering Queen of Calabar who 
 ruled in the hearts of even the fiercest cannibals 
 through the power of the Faith, by which out of 
 weakness she was made strong. 
 
 SOURCE. 
 
 Livingstone, Mary Slessor of Calabar, Pioneer Missionary. 
 (Hodder & Stoughton, 43. 6d. net.)
 
 V 
 
 The Boy who could "turn his hand to 
 anything " 
 
 Alexander Mackay (i) 
 (Dates, 1863-1876) 
 
 LEADER'S AIM. (For Yams v VIH.) 
 
 To show how God uses the skilled work of the hands of a man 
 dedicated to Him, to lead other men into His Kindgom. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Open conversation with the boys by asking what they want to 
 fce when men. Many boys of the age for which these " Yarns " 
 are intended have decided views on what they would like to be and 
 do. A considerable proportion of Brigade boys and Scouts would 
 like to do skilled work with their hands. This fact, intensified by 
 the boy's universal passion for railway engines, gives the point of 
 contact that brings them into immediate sympathy with the boy 
 Mackay. 
 
 Another opening, particularly with a rather younger group, 
 would be to ask the boys whether they have ever been down to the 
 station just to see the trains, or to the goods yard to watch the engines 
 shunting. Did they take down the railway numbers ? Now we 
 are going to hear stories of a boy who would go many miles to see a 
 railway engine and who through that found out what he was to be 
 when he grew up. 
 
 I. Mackay and his Father. 
 
 The inquisitive village folk stared over their 
 garden gates at Mr Mackay, the minister of the 
 Free Kirk of Rhynie, a small Aberdeenshire 
 village, as he stood with his thirteen-year-old boy 
 gazing into the road at their feet. The father 
 
 48
 
 "Turn his hand to anything" 49 
 
 was apparently scratching at the stones and dust 
 with his stick. The villagers shook their heads. 
 
 " Fat's the minister glowerin' at, wi' his loon 
 Alic, among the stoor o' the turnpike ? " l asked 
 the villagers of one another. 
 
 The minister certainly was powerful in the 
 pulpit, but his ways were more than they could 
 understand. He was forever hammering at the 
 rocks 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 find something that he had lost 
 in the road. If they had been near enough to 
 Alec and his father they would have heard words 
 like these : 
 
 "You see, Alec, this is the Zambesi River 
 running down from the heart of Africa into the 
 Indian Ocean, and here running into the Zambesi 
 from the north is a tributary, the Shire'. Living- 
 stone going up that river found wild savages 
 who . . ." 
 
 So the father was tracing in the dust of the 
 road with the point of his stick the course of the 
 Zambesi which Livingstone had just explored for 
 the first time. 
 
 Here produce the brown-paper outline map of Africa and recall 
 to the boys Livingstone's journey up the Zambesi and the Shir6. 
 (See Yarn II.) 
 
 On these walks with his father Alec, with his 
 blue eyes wide open, used to listen to stories like 
 the Yarn we have heard of the marvellous adven- 
 
 1 " What is the minister gazing at, with his son Alec, in the dust of 
 the road ? "
 
 50 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 tures of Livingstone. Sometimes Mr Mackay 
 would stop and draw triangles and circles with 
 his stick. Then Alec would be learning a problem 
 in Euclid on this strange "black-board" of the 
 road. He learned the Euclid but he preferred 
 the Zambesi and Livingstone ! 
 
 2. Mackay and the Railway Engine. 
 
 One day Alec was off by himself trudging down 
 the road with a fixed purpose in his mind, a 
 purpose that seemed to have nothing in the world 
 to do with either Africa or Euclid. He marched 
 away from his little village of Rhynie, where the 
 burn runs around the foot of the great granite 
 mountain across the strath. He trudged on for 
 four miles. Then he heard a shrill whistle. 
 Would he be late after all? He ran swiftly to- 
 ward the little railway station. A ribbon of 
 smoke showed over the cutting, away to the right. 
 Alec entered the station and ran to one end of 
 the platform as the train slowed down and the 
 engine stopped just opposite where he stood. 
 
 He gazed at the driver and his mate on the 
 footplate. He followed every movement as the 
 driver came round the engine with his long-nosed 
 oil-can, and opened and shut small brass lids and 
 felt the bearings with his hand to see whether 
 they were hot. The guard waved his green flag. 
 The whistle of the engine shrieked, and the train 
 steamed out of the station along the burn side 
 toward Huntly. Alec gazed down the line till 
 the train was out of sight and then, turning, left 
 the station and trudged homeward. When he 
 reached Rhynie he had walked eight miles to look
 
 "Turn his hand to anything" 51 
 
 at a railway engine for two and a half minutes 
 and lie was happy ! 
 
 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 the 
 forge-fire, where George Lobban, the smith, having 
 hammered a glowing horseshoe into shape, gripped 
 it with his pincers and flung it hissing into the 
 water. 
 
 Having cracked a joke with the laughing smith, 
 Alec dragged himself away from the smithy, past 
 the green, and looked in at the stable to curry- 
 comb the pony and enjoy feeling the little beast's 
 muzzle nosing in his hand for oats. 
 
 He let himself into the manse and ran up to his 
 work-room, where he began to print off some 
 pages that he had set up on his little printing 
 press. 
 
 At supper his mother looked sadly at her boy 
 with his dancing eyes as he told her about the 
 wonders of the railway engine. In her heart she 
 wanted him to be a minister. And she did not 
 see any sign that this boy would ever become one : 
 this lad of hers who was always running off from 
 his books to peer into the furnaces of the gas 
 works, or to tease the village carpenter into letting 
 him plane a board, or to sit, with chin in hands 
 and elbows on knees, watching the saddler cutting 
 and padding and stitching his leather, or to creep 
 into the carding-mill like the Budge and Toddy 
 whose lives he had read "to see weels go 
 round."
 
 52 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 Do you think that he could dp all these things and yet grow up 
 to do something that would satisfy his mother's desire for him to 
 do God's work ? We shall see. 
 
 3. Mackay's Decision. 
 
 It was a bitter cold night in the Christmas 
 vacation fourteen years later. 1 Alec Mackay, now 
 a young engineering student, was lost to all sense 
 of time as he read of the hair-breadth escapes and 
 adventures told by the African explorer, Stanley, 
 in his book, How I found Livingstone. 
 
 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 gentle- 
 ness never forsakes him : his hopefulness never 
 deserts him. His is the Spartan heroism, the 
 inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring resolu- 
 tion of the Anglo-Saxon. The man has con- 
 quered 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 see 
 the railway engine he had been a schoolboy in the 
 Grammar School at Aberdeen, and a student in 
 Edinburgh, and while there had worked in the 
 great shipbuilding yards at Leith amid the clang 
 and roar of the rivetters and the engine shop. He 
 was now studying in Berlin, drawing the designs 
 of great engines far more wonderful than the 
 
 1 December 12, 1875.
 
 "Turn his hand to anything" 53 
 
 railway engine he had almost worshipped as 
 a boy. 
 
 On the desk at Mackay's side lay his diary in 
 which he wrote his thoughts. In that diary were 
 the words that he himself had written : 
 
 "This day last year 1 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 of Africa like Living- 
 stone? It seemed impossible. What was the 
 good of an engineer among the lakes and forests 
 of Central Africa ? 
 
 Ask the boys to suggest what a Christian engineer and smith could 
 do to help the Africans in a wild, primitive country. The boys may 
 suggest, e.g. making roads, wells, or steamboats. 
 
 On the table by the side of Stanley's How 
 I found Livingstone lay a newspaper, the Edin- 
 burgh Daily Review. Mackay glanced at it ; then 
 he snatched it up and read eagerly a letter which 
 appeared there. It was a new call to Central 
 Africa the call, through Stanley, from King 
 M'tesa of Uganda, that home of massacre and 
 torture. These are some of the 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 
 
 1 May 1, 1873.
 
 54 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 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 to anything 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 the boy who has worked 
 in the village at the carpenter's bench and the 
 saddler's table, in the smithy and the mill, when 
 his mother wished him to be at his books ; the 
 lad who has watched the ships building in the 
 docks of Aberdeen, and has himself with hammer 
 and file and lathe built and made machines in 
 the engineering works he is here the "man 
 who can turn his hand to anything." And he 
 had, we remember, already written 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 and paper and wrote to London 
 to the Church Missionary Society which was 
 offering, in the daily paper that lay before him, 
 to send men out to King 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
 
 "Turn his hand to anything" 55 
 
 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 had volunteered for the 
 same great work, was standing on the deck of 
 the SS. Peshawur as she steamed out from 
 Southampton for Zanzibar. 
 
 He was in the footsteps of Livingstone " a 
 Scotsman and a Christian " making for the heart 
 of Africa and " ready to turn his hand to anything " 
 for the sake of Him who as 
 
 "... the Carpenter of Nazareth 
 Made common things for God." 
 
 SOURCES. 
 
 The incidents in this and the three following Yarns are taken from 
 A. M. Mackay (by his Sister), Uganda a Chosen Vessel (C.M.S., 
 6d. net), Two Kings of Uganda 1 (Ashe). See also The Story of 
 Mackay of Uganda (Hodder & Stoughton, 2s. net), Mackay of the 
 Great Lake (by C. E. Padwick, Milford, 33. net). 
 
 1 Out of print, but obtainable from Mission House Libraries.
 
 VI 
 The Roadmaker 
 
 Alexander Mackay (2) 
 (Date, 1878) 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Recall the determination of Mackay (as shown in the previous 
 Yarn) to walk in the footsteps of Livingstone by fighting slavery in 
 Africa ; and by using his powers as an engineer and " a man of all 
 trades " to help the Africans of Uganda who through Stanley 
 had appealed for a missionary. " My heart burns for the deliver- 
 ance of Africa." 
 
 With the aid of a small map of the British Empire, show the 
 journey which Mackay's ship undertook to Zanzibar via Suez. Show 
 map of Africa and recall Livingstone setting out on his last journey, 
 on the slave-trail. ( Yarn II.) The remembrance of it would 
 nerve Mackay through long delays in securing the hundreds of 
 African porters needed to carry inland on their heads all the goods 
 the many, roany bales of cloth and nails and beads, etc., for use 
 in place of money ; the cedar hull and the sections of the boiler of 
 the Daisy, the steam launch, which was intended for use on Victoria 
 Nyanza ; the tools, forge, lathe, grindstone, printing press, and so 
 on. 
 
 I. Opening the Road. 
 
 After many months of delay, Mackay with his 
 companions and bearers started on his tramp of 
 hundreds of miles along narrow footpaths, often 
 through swamps, delayed by fierce greedy chiefs 
 who demanded many cloths before they would 
 let the travellers pass. One of the little band of 
 missionaries had already died of fever. When 
 hundreds of miles from the coast, Mackay was 
 stricken with fever and nearly died. His com- 
 
 56
 
 The Roadmaker 57 
 
 panions sent him back to the coast again to recover, 
 and they themselves went on and put together 
 the Daisy, the boat which the bearers had carried 
 in sections on their heads, on the shore of Victoria 
 Nyanza. So Mackay, racked with fever, was 
 carried back by his Africans over the weary miles 
 through swamp and forest to the coast. At last 
 he was well again, and with infinite labour he 
 cut a great wagon road for 230 miles to Mpapwa 
 (see map). With pick and shovel, axe and saw, 
 they cleared the road of trees for a hundred days. 
 
 Mackay wrote home as he sat at night tired by 
 the side of his half-made road, " This will certainly 
 yet be a highway for the King Himself; and all 
 that pass this way will come to know His Name." 
 
 At length, after triumphing by sheer skill and 
 will over a thousand difficulties, Mackay reached 
 the southern shore of Victoria Nyanza at Kagei, 
 to find that his surviving companions had gone 
 on to Uganda in an Arab sailing-dhow, leaving on 
 the shore the Daisy, which had been too small to 
 carry them. 
 
 Let the boys follow on the brown-paper map Mackay's route from 
 Zanzibar to the Lake. (See map, pp. 94-5.) 
 
 2. Boat Building. 
 
 On the beach by the side of that great inland 
 sea, Victoria Nyanza, in the heart of Africa, 
 Mackay found the now broken and leaking Daisy. 
 Her cedar planks were twisted and had warped in 
 the blazing sun till every seam gaped. A hippo- 
 potamus had crunched her bow between his 
 terrible jaws. Many of her timbers had crumbled
 
 58 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 before the still greater foe of the African boat- 
 builder the white ant. 
 
 Now, under her shadow lay the man " who 
 could turn his hand to anything," on his back with 
 hammer and chisel in hand. He was rivetting a 
 plate of copper on the hull of the Daisy. Already 
 he had nailed sheets of zinc and lead on stern and 
 bow, and had driven cotton wool picked from the 
 bushes by the lake into the seams to caulk some of 
 the leaks. Around the boat stood crowds of 
 Africans, their dark faces 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 a tree- trunk, or made of some 
 planks sewn together with fibres from the banana 
 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 own native 
 Scotland, still separated Mackay from the land of 
 Uganda for which he had left Britain over fifteen 
 months earlier. 
 
 Let the boys follow the voyage up the lake on the big map. Let 
 one boy take the brown-paper map home and draw Great Britain to 
 scale in the bottom left-hand corner to contrast it with Victoria 
 Nyanza, and mark Mackay's route from Zanzibar to Uganda. 
 
 All through his disappointments and difficulties 
 Mackay fought on. With him, as with Living- 
 stone, nothing had power to break his spirit or 
 quench his burning determination to carry on his 
 God-given plan to serve Africa. 
 
 Every use of saw and hammer and chisel, every 
 " trick of the tool's true trade,"
 
 The Roadmaker 59 
 
 all the training in the shipbuilding yards and 
 engineering shops at Edinburgh and in Germany 
 helped Mackay to invent some new daring and 
 ingenious way out of every fresh difficulty. 
 
 3. The Wreck of the Daisy. 
 
 Now at last the Daisy was on the water again ; 
 and Mackay and his bearers went aboard 1 and 
 hoisting sale from Kagei ran northward. Before 
 they had gone far black storm clouds swept across 
 the sky. Night fell. Lightning blazed unceas- 
 ingly and flung up into silhouette the wild outlines 
 of the mountains to the east. The roar of the 
 thunder echoed above the wail of the wind and 
 the threshing of the waves. 
 
 All through the dark, Mackay and those of his 
 men who could handle an oar rowed unceasingly. 
 Again and again he threw out his twenty-fathom 
 line, but in vain. He made out a dim line of 
 precipitous cliffs, yet the water seemed fathomless 
 the only map in existence was a rough one that 
 Stanley had made. At last the lead touched 
 bottom at fourteen fathoms. In the dim light of 
 dawn they rowed and sailed toward a shady beach 
 before the cliffs, and anchored in three and a half 
 fathoms of water. 
 
 The storm passed ; but the waves from the open 
 sea came roaring in and broke over the Daisy, 
 The bowsprit dipped under the anchor chain, and 
 the whole bulwark on the weatherside was carried 
 away. The next sea swept into the open and now 
 sinking boat. By frantic efforts they heaved up 
 
 1 August 23, 1878.
 
 6o Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 the anchor and the next wave swung the Daisy 
 with a crash on to the beach, where the waves 
 pounded her to a complete wreck, wrenching the 
 planks from the keel. But Mackay and his men 
 managed to rescue her cargo before she went to 
 pieces. 
 
 They were wrecked on a shore where Stanley, 
 the great explorer, had years before had a hair- 
 breadth escape from massacre at the hands of the 
 wild savages. But Stanley, living up to the 
 practice he had learned from Livingstone, had 
 turned enemies into friends, and now the natives 
 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 and 
 chisel and saw he worked unsparingly at his task. 
 He cut the middle eight feet from the boat, and 
 bringing her stern and stem together patched the 
 broken ends with wood from the middle part. 
 After two months' work the now dumpier Daisy 
 took the water again, and carried Mackay and his 
 men safely up the long shores of Victoria Nyanza 
 to the goal of all his travelling, the capital of 
 M'tesa, King of Uganda. 
 
 Recall to the boys by questions that it was M'tesa who through 
 Stanley had appealed for a man " who can turn his hand to any- 
 thing." This was the King whom Mackay had travelled so many 
 thousands of miles to meet. At length they were to come face to 
 face. 
 
 4. The King and the Engineer. 
 
 The rolling tattoo of goat-skin drums filled the 
 royal reception-hall of King M'tesa, as the great 
 tyrant entered with his chiefs. M'tesa, his dark,
 
 The Roadmaker 61 
 
 cruel heavy face in vivid contrast with his spot- 
 less white robe, sat heavily down on his stool of 
 State, while brazen trumpets sent to him from 
 England blared as Mackay entered. The chiefs 
 squatted on low stools and on the rush-strewn 
 mud-floor before the King. At his side stood his 
 Prime Minister, the Katikiro, a smaller man than 
 the King, but swifter and more far-sighted. The 
 Katikiro was dressed in a snowy-white Arab 
 gown covered by a black mantle trimmed with 
 gold. In his hard, guilty face treacherous cunning 
 and masterful cruelty were blended. 
 
 M'tesa was gracious to Mackay, and gave him 
 land on which to build his home. More important 
 to Mackay than even his hut was his workshop, 
 where he quickly fixed his forge and anvil, vice 
 and lathe, and grindstone, for he was now in 
 the place where he could practise his skill. It 
 was for this that he had left home and friends, 
 and pressed on in spite of fever and shipwreck 
 to serve Africa and lead her to the worship of 
 Jesus Christ by working and teaching as our 
 Lord did when on earth. 
 
 5. "The White-Man-of- Work." 
 
 One day the wide thatched roof of that work- 
 shop shaded from the flaming rays of the sun a 
 crowded circle of the chiefs of Uganda with their 
 slaves, who loved to come to " hear the bellows 
 roar." They were gazing 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
 
 62 Yarns on African Pioneers . 
 
 the watchers and the bronzed face of the white 
 man who in the centre of his workshop was blow- 
 ing up his forge fire. Gripping in his pincers the 
 iron hoe that was now red-hot, Mackay hammered 
 it into shape and then plunged it all hissing into 
 the bath of water that stood by him. 
 
 Hardly had the cloud of steam risen from the 
 bath, when Mackay once more gripped the hoe, 
 and moving to his grindstone placed his foot on 
 the pedal and set the edge of the hoe against 
 the whirling stone. The sparks flew high. A 
 murmur came from the Uganda chiefs who stood 
 around. 
 
 " It is witchcraft," they said to one another. 
 " It is witchcraft by which 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 hoes sharp. Surely he is 
 the great wizard." 
 
 Mackay caught the sound of the new name 
 that they had given him Mazunga-wa-Kazi 
 the White-Man-at-Work. They called him by 
 this name because to them it was very strange 
 that any man should work with his 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 with two hands in 
 order that he may work twice as much as he 
 eats." And Mackay held out before them his 
 own hands blackened with the work of the smithy, 
 rough with the handling of hammer and saw, the 
 file and lathe. " But you," and he turned on
 
 The Roadmaker 63 
 
 them with a laugh and pointed to their sleek 
 bodies as they shone in the glow of the forge 
 fire, " you are all stomach and no hands." 
 
 They grinned sheepishly at one another under 
 this attack, and, as Mackay let down the fire 
 and put away his tools, they strolled off to the 
 hill on which the King's beehive-shaped thatched 
 palace was built. 
 
 6. The Well-digging. 
 
 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 
 women were bearing on their heads the water- 
 pots. He knew that the men and women of the 
 land were suffering from fearful illnesses. He 
 now realised that the fevers came from the poison- 
 ous waters of the marsh. He made up his mind 
 how he could help them with his skill. They 
 must have pure water ; yet they knew nothing of 
 wells. 
 
 Would any boy know how to make a well ? Recall how Mr 
 Mackay, senior, took his boy fossil hunting and taught him some 
 geology. Probably some boy will know that water is found at the 
 bottom of a porous stratum when an impervious rock or clay is 
 reached. 
 
 Mackay at once searched the hill-side with his 
 spade and found a bed of clay emerging from the 
 side of the hill. He climbed sixteen feet higher 
 up the hill and, bringing the men who could help 
 him together, began digging. He knew that he 
 would reach spring water at the level of the 
 clay, for the rains that had filtered through the 
 earth would stop there.
 
 64 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 The Baganda 1 thought that he was mad. 
 " Whoever," they asked one another, " 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 up the hill from the marsh." 
 
 They dug and dug till the hole was too deep to 
 hurl the earth up over the edge. Then Mackay 
 made a pulley, which seemed a magic thing to 
 them, for they could not yet understand the 
 working of wheels ; and with rope and bucket 
 the earth was pulled up. Exactly at the depth of 
 sixteen feet the water welled in. The Baganda 
 clapped their hands and danced with delight. 
 
 " Mackay is the great wizard. He is the mighty 
 spirit," they cried. " The King must come to see 
 this." 
 
 Ask the boys to suggest which things in the Yarn on Mackay's 
 boyhood helped him in Africa up to this stage, e.g. tramping to railway 
 station suggests the power to stick to his stiff journey ; engineering 
 shops, smithy, etc., all have parallels in this Yarn. 
 
 King M'tesa himself wondered at the story of 
 the making of the well and the finding of the 
 water. He gave orders that he was to be carried 
 to view this great wonder. His eyes rolled with 
 astonishment as he saw it 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 work hard. Mackay tried to explain 
 this to the King when he sat in his reception-hall. 
 Work, Mackay told M'tesa, is the noblest thing a 
 man can do, and he told him how Jesus Christ, 
 
 1 The people of Uganda.
 
 The Roadmaker 65 
 
 the Son of the Great Father-Spirit who made all 
 things, did not Himself feel that work was a thing 
 too mean for Him. For our Lord, when He lived 
 on earth at Nazareth, worked with His own hands 
 at the carpenter's bench, and made all labour for 
 ever noble.
 
 VII 
 Fighting the Slave Trade 
 
 Alexander Mackay (3) 
 (Date, 1878) 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Recall to the boys that when Mackay made the road for over two 
 hundred miles from the coast inland he wrote home to England, 
 " This will certainly yet be a highway for the King Himself, and all 
 that pass this way will come to know His Name." Draw them on 
 to suggest what Mackay had up to the present done to achieve this 
 among the people of Uganda in their lives. Suggest (if necessary) 
 that he has, in securing influence by his skill, simply cleared a way 
 through the forest, cut down and uprooted trees of prejudice, etc. ; 
 but has not put in the metalling, the foundation and surface for the 
 road. 
 
 How are these foundations to be laid ? Ask the boys which would 
 be the best way, especially seeing that the grown men and women 
 were fixed in their old, cruel, killing habits ? Clearly he must win 
 the younger ones. 
 
 i. The Boy-pages of Uganda. 
 
 In the court of King M'tesa, Mackay always 
 saw many boys who used to drive away the flies 
 from the King's face with fans, carry stools for 
 the chiefs and visitors to squat upon, run messages 
 and make themselves generally useful. Most of 
 these boys were the sons of chiefs. When they 
 were not occupied with some errand, they would 
 lounge about playing games with one another in 
 the open space just by the King's hut. 
 
 Often when Mackay came to speak with the 
 King, he had to wait in this place before he could 
 
 69
 
 Fighting the Slave Trade 67 
 
 have audience of M'tesa. He would bring with 
 him large sheets of paper on which he had printed 
 in his workshop the alphabet and some sentences. 
 The printing was actually done with the little 
 hand-press that Mackay had used in his attic when 
 he was a boy in his old home in Rhynie. He had 
 taken it with him all the way to Uganda, and now 
 was setting up letters and sentences in a language 
 which had never been printed before. 
 
 The Baganda boys who had gathered round the 
 White-Man-of-Work with wondering eyes, as he 
 with his "magic" printed the sheets of paper, 
 now crowded about him as he unrolled one of these 
 white sheets with the curious black smudges on 
 them. Mackay made the noise that we call A and 
 then B, and pointed to these curious- shaped 
 objects which we call the letters of the alphabet. 
 Then he got them to make the noise and point to 
 the letter that represented that sound. At last 
 the keenest of the boys really could repeat the 
 alphabet right through and begin to read whole 
 words from another sheet Baganda words so 
 that at length they could read whole sentences. 
 
 Two of these pioneer boys became very good 
 scholars. One named Mukasa became a Christian 
 and was baptized with the name Samweli (Samuel); 
 another called Kakumba was baptized Yusufu 
 (Joseph). A third boy had been captured from a 
 tribe in the north, and his skin was of a much 
 lighter brown than that of the Baganda boys. 
 This light-skinned captured slave was named 
 Lugalama. 
 
 Each of these boys felt that it was a very proud 
 day when at last he could actually read a whole
 
 68 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 sheet of printing from beginning to end in bis own 
 language from "Our Father" down to "the 
 Kingdom, the power and the glory, Amen." 
 
 2. The Conflict with the Slave Trader. 
 
 One morning these page-boys leapt to their feet 
 as they heard the familiar 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, while his chiefs ranged themselves about 
 him. 
 
 On a stool near the King sat Mackay, the White- 
 Man-of-Work. His bronzed face was set in grim 
 determination, for he knew that on that morning 
 he had a difficult battle to fight. 
 
 Another loud battering of drum-heads filled the 
 air. The entrance to the hut was darkened by a 
 tall, swarthy Arab in long, flowing robes, followed 
 by negrc -bearers, who cast on the ground bales of 
 cloth and guns. The Arab wore on his head a red 
 fez, round which a coloured turban scarf was 
 wound. He was a slave-trader from the coast, 
 who had come from the East to M'tesa in Uganda 
 to buy men and women and children 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 the hills 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. The bronze-skinned boy, 
 Lugalama, was a young slave who had been 
 captured on one of these bloodthirsty raids. And 
 M'tesa, who often sent out his executioners to
 
 Fighting the Slave Trade 69 
 
 slay his own people by the hundred to please the 
 dreaded and horrible god of small-pox, would also 
 sell his people by the hundred to get guns for his 
 soldiers. 
 
 The slave-route from Zanzibar may be here traced on the map. 
 It was roughly that taken by Mackay himself. 
 
 The Arab slave-trader bowed to the earth before 
 King M'tesa, who signalled 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 and children. 
 See, I offer you guns and percussion caps and 
 cloth." And he spread out lengths of the red 
 cloth, and held out one of the guns with its 
 gleaming barrel. 
 
 King M'tesa's eyes lighted up with desire as 
 he saw the muskets and the ammunition. These, 
 he thought, are the things that will make me 
 powerful against my enemies. 
 
 " I will give you," the Arab slave-trader went 
 on, " one of these lengths of red cloth in exchange 
 for one man to be sold to me as a slave ; one of 
 these guns for two men ; and one hundred of 
 these percussion caps for a woman as a slave." 
 
 Mackay looked into the cruel face of M'tesa, and 
 he could see how the ambitious King longed for 
 the guns. Should he risk the favour of the King 
 by fighting the battle of a few slaves? Yet 
 Mackay remembered as he sat there, how Living- 
 stone's great fight against the slave-traders had 
 made him, as a student, vow that he too would go 
 out and fight slavery in Africa. The memory 
 nerved him for the fight he was now to make.
 
 70 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 Ask the boys what they would have said or done in Mackay's 
 place to hinder King M'tesa from selling his people (who were his 
 absolute property) to the slave-traders. 
 
 Mackay turned to M'tesa and said words like 
 these : l 
 
 " King M'tesa, you are set as father over all 
 your multitude of people. They are your children. 
 It is they who make you a great King. 
 
 "Remember, King, that the Sultan of 
 Zanzibar himself has signed a decree that no slaves 
 shall be taken in all these lands and sold to other 
 lands down beyond the coast, whither this Arab 
 would lead your children. Therefore if you sell 
 slaves you break his law. 
 
 " Will you, then, sell your own people that they 
 may be taken out of their homeland into a strange 
 country ? They will be chained to one another, 
 beaten with whips, scourged and kicked, and many 
 will be left at the wayside to die ; till the peoples 
 of the coast shall laugh at Uganda and say, ' That 
 is how King M'tesa lets strangers treat his 
 children!" 
 
 We can imagine how the Arab turned and 
 scowled fiercely at Mackay. His heart raged, and 
 he would have given anything to plunge the 
 dagger hidden in his robe into Mackay's heart. 
 Who was this white man who dared to try to stop 
 his trade ? But Mackay went on. 
 
 " See," he said, pointing to the boys and the 
 chiefs, "your children are wonderfully made. 
 Their bones, which are linked together, are clothed 
 with flesh ; and from the heart in their breasts the 
 blood that gives men life flows to and fro through 
 
 1 There is no record of the precise words, but Mackay gives the 
 argumeiit in a letter home.
 
 Fighting the Slave Trade 71 
 
 their bodies, while the breath goes in and out of 
 their lungs and makes them live. God the Father 
 and Maker of all men alone can create such 
 wonders. No men who ever lived could, if they 
 worked all through their lives, make one thing so 
 marvellous as one of these boys. Will you, then, 
 sell one of these miracles, one of your children, for 
 a bit of red rag which any man can make in 
 a day?" 
 
 All eyes turned to King M'tesa to learn what 
 he would say. 
 
 What result do the boys think Mackay's speech would have ? 
 
 The King with a wave of his hand dismissed 
 the scowling Arab, while he took 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. The crest-fallen Arab and his men 
 gathered up their guns and cloths, marched down 
 the hill to buy ivory instead of slaves for their 
 bales of red cloth, and went out of the dominions 
 of King M'tesa, across the Great Lake homeward. 
 
 Mackay had won the first battle against slavery. 
 His heart was very glad. Yet he knew that, 
 although he had scored a triumph in this fight 
 with the slave-dealer, he had not won in his great 
 campaign. The King was generally kind to 
 Mackay, for he was proud to have so clever a 
 white man in his country. But he could not 
 make up his mind to become a Christian. 
 M'tesa's heart had not really changed. His slave- 
 raiding of other tribes might still go on. The
 
 72 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 horrible butcherings of his people to turn away 
 the dreaded anger of the gods would continue. 
 Mackay felt he must press on with his work. He 
 was slowly opening a road through the jungle of 
 cruelty and the marshes of dread of the gods that 
 made the life of the Baganda people dark and 
 dreadful
 
 VIII 
 The Boy Heroes of Uganda 
 
 Alexander Mackay (4) 
 (Dates, 1884-1890) 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The boys who have heard the last three Yarns on Mackay will have 
 a vivid sense of his versatile skill and resource and determined will 
 in overcoming difficulties and winning men all fused into one burn- 
 ing passion for serving Africa. This will be combined with a feeling 
 of God's power to use all kinds of gifts in a boy or man dedicated to 
 His service. 
 
 This fourth Yarn reveals Mackay's power both to endure the most 
 severe of all tests, that of the fear of death ; and, greater still, his 
 power to inspire the same fearless heroism in the sons of the most 
 degraded and treacherous savages. The series on Mackay, and 
 indeed the Yarns as a whole, will only have achieved their purpose 
 if they communicate to those who hear them the contagion of 
 Mackay's spirit of sacrificial heroism and devotion to his Lord. 
 
 In beginning this Yarn let the boy who took home the brown-paper 
 map after Yarn VI produce it, and show the line of Mackay's journey 
 as he has traced it on the map. The boys will recall that this was 
 also roughly the route along which the discomfited slave-trader 
 would return after M'tesa had driven him from Uganda. 
 
 I. Poisoning M'wanga's Mind. 
 
 All Uganda waited breathless one day as 
 though the end of the world had 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 new king was selected by the 
 chiefs from the sons of the dead ruler. 
 
 73
 
 74 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 At last a great cheer went up from the Palace. 
 " M'wanga has eaten Uganda ! " they shouted. 
 
 By this the people meant that M'wanga, a 
 young son of M'tesa only eighteen years old- 
 had been made King. He was, however, a boy 
 with no power the mere feeble tool of the 
 Katikiro (the Prime Minister) and of Mujasi, the 
 Captain of the King's own bodyguard of soldiers. 
 Both these great men of the kingdom fiercely 
 hated Mackay, for they were jealous of his power 
 over the old King. So they whispered into the 
 young M'wanga's ears stories like this : " You 
 know that men say that Uganda 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 of white 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 King was afraid to 
 attack him, he began to lay plots against the boys. 
 
 2. Mujasi's First Attack. 
 
 One morning Mackay started out from his house 
 with five or six boys and the crew of his boat 
 to march down to the lake. Among the boys 
 were young Lugalama the fair-haired slave-boy, 
 now a freed-slave and a servant to Mackay and 
 Kakumba, who had (you remember) been baptized 
 Joseph. The King and the Katikiro had given 
 Mackay permission to go down to the lake and 
 sail across it to take letters to a place called 
 Msalala from which the carriers would bear them 
 down to the coast. 
 
 Down the hill the party walked, the crew carry-
 
 The Boy Heroes of Uganda 75 
 
 ing the baggage and the oars on their heads. 
 Mackay and his colleague Ashe, who had come 
 out from England to work with him, walked 
 behind. 
 
 To their surprise there came running down the 
 path behind them and past 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 to capture some of the 
 King's wives who have run away." 
 
 Another and yet another body of soldiers 
 rushed past them. Mackay became more and 
 more suspicious that some foul plot was being 
 brewed. He and his company had walked ten 
 miles, and the lake was but two miles away, 
 divided from them by a wood. Suddenly there 
 leapt out from behind the trees of the wood 
 hundreds of men headed by Mujasi himself. 
 
 They levelled their guns and spears at Mackay 
 and his friends and yelled, " Go back ! Go 
 back!" 
 
 "We are the King's friends," replied Mackay, 
 "and we have his leave to travel. How dare 
 you insult us ? " 
 
 And they pushed forward. But the soldiers 
 rushed at them ; snatched their walking-sticks 
 from them and began to jostle them. Mackay and 
 Ashe 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 per- 
 mission of King M'wanga and the Katikiro."
 
 7 6 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 " You are a liar ! replied Mujasi. 
 
 Mujasi stood back and the soldiers rushed at 
 the missionaries, dragged them to their feet and 
 held the muzzles of their guns within a few inches 
 of their chests. Mackay turned with his boys 
 and marched back to the capital. 
 
 He and Ashe were allowed to go back to their 
 own home on the side of the hill, but the five 
 boys were marched to the King's headquarters 
 and imprisoned. The Katikiro, when Mackay 
 went to him, refused to listen at first. Then he 
 declared that Mackay was always taking boys out 
 of the country, and returning with armies of 
 white men and hiding them with the intention 
 of conquering Uganda. 
 
 The Katikiro waved them aside and the angry 
 waiting mob rushed on the missionaries 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 back the 
 King and the Prime Minister and Mujasi by 
 gifts, so that their imprisoned boys would be freed 
 from danger. 
 
 Mackay spoke to his other boys, telling them 
 to go and fly for their lives or they would be 
 killed. 
 
 3. The Boys in the Flames. 
 
 In the morning Mackay heard that three of the 
 boys who had been captured on the previous clay 
 were not only bound as prisoners, but that Mujasi
 
 was threatening to burn them to death. The boys 
 were named Seruwanga, Kakumba, and Lugalama. 
 The eldest was fifteen, the youngest twelve. 
 
 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). 
 You believe you will rise from the dead. I shall 
 burn you, and you will see if this is so." 
 
 A hideous roar of laughter rose from the mob. 
 The boys were led down the hill towards the edge 
 of a marsh. Behind them was a plantation of 
 banana trees. Some men who had carried bundles 
 of firewood on their heads threw the wood into a 
 heap ; others laid hold of each of the boys and cut 
 off their arms with hideous curved knives so that 
 they should not struggle in the fire. 
 
 Seruwanga, the bravest, refused to utter a cry 
 as he was cut to pieces, but Kakumba shouted to 
 Mujasi, who was a Mohammedan, "You believe in 
 Allah the Merciful. Be merciful ! " But Mujasi 
 had no mercy. 
 
 We are told that the men who were watching 
 held their breath with awed amazement as they 
 heard a boy's voice out of the flame and smoke 
 singing, 
 
 " 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 not fight 
 only throw me into the fire." 
 
 But they did their ghastly work, and threw the 
 mutilated boy on a wooden framework above the
 
 78 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 slow fire where his cries went up, till at last there 
 was silence. 
 
 One other Christian stood by named Musali. 
 Mujasi, with eyes bloodshot and inflamed with 
 cruelty, came towards him and cried : 
 
 "Ai, you are here. I will burn you too and 
 your household. You are a follower 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's fire and knife what Peter dared 
 not say when the servant-maid in Jerusalem 
 laughed at him. Perhaps the heroism of Musali 
 awed even the cruel-hearted Mujasi. In any case 
 he left Musali alone. 
 
 4. M'wanga's frenzy. 
 
 For a little time M'wanga ceased to persecute 
 the Christians. But the wily Arabs whispered in 
 his ear that the white men were still trying to 
 " eat up " his country. M'wanga was filled with 
 mingled anger and fear. Then his fury burst all 
 bounds when Mujasi said to him : " There is a 
 great white man coming from the rising sun. Be- 
 hind him will come thousands of white soldiers." 
 
 " Send at once and kill him," cried the demented 
 MVanga. 
 
 A boy named Balikudembe, a Christian, heard 
 the order and he could not contain himself, but 
 broke out, " Oh, King M'wanga, why are you go- 
 ing to kill a white man ? Your father did not do 
 so."
 
 The Boy Heroes of Uganda 79 
 
 But the soldiers went out, travelled east along 
 the paths till they met the great Bishop Hanning- 
 ton being carried in a litter, stricken with fever. 
 They took him prisoner, and, after some days, slew 
 him as he stood defenceless before them. Hanning- 
 ton had been sent out to help Mackay and his 
 fellow-Christians. 
 
 Then the King fell ill. He believed that the 
 boy Balikudembe, who had warned him not to kill 
 the Bishop, had bewitched him. So M'wanga's 
 soldiers went and caught the lad and led him down 
 to a place where they lit a fire, and placing the 
 boy over it, burned him slowly to death. 
 
 All through this time Mackay alone had not 
 been really seriously threatened, for his work and 
 what he was made the King and the Katikiro and 
 even Mujasi afraid to do him to death. | 
 
 Then there came a tremendous thunderstorm. 
 A flash of lightning smote the King's house and it 
 flamed up and burned to ashes. Then King 
 M'wanga seemed to go mad. He threatened to 
 slay Mackay himself. 
 
 "Take, seize, burn the Christians," he cried. 
 And his executioners and their minions rushed out, 
 captured forty-six men and boys, slashed their 
 arms from their bodies with their cruel curved 
 knives so that they could not struggle, and then 
 placed them over the ghastly flames which slowly 
 wrung the lives from their tortured bodies. Yet 
 the numbers of the Christians seemed to grow with 
 persecution. 
 
 The King himself beat one boy, Apolo Kagwa, 
 with a stick and smote him on the head, then 
 knocked him down, kicked and stamped upon him.
 
 8o Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 Then the King burned all his books, crying, " Never 
 read again." 
 
 The other men and boys who had become 
 Christians were now scattered over the land in fear 
 of their lives. Mackay, however, come what may, 
 determined to hold on. He set his little printing 
 press to work and printed off a letter which he sent 
 to the scattered Christians. In Mackay's letter 
 was written these words, " In days of old Christians 
 were hated, were hunted, were driven out and were 
 persecuted for Jesus' sake, and thus it is to-day. 
 Our beloved brothers, do not deny our Lord Jesus ! " 
 
 At last M'wanga's mad cruelties grew so frightful 
 that all his people rose in rebellion and drove him 
 from the throne, so that he had to wander an out- 
 caste by the lake-side. Mackay at that time was 
 working by the lake, and he offered to shelter the 
 deposed King who had only a short time before 
 threatened his life. 
 
 Two years passed ; and Mackay, on the lake- 
 side, was building a new boat 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 he died aged only forty-one. 
 
 5. Was it worth while ? 
 
 If Mackay, instead of becoming a missionary, 
 had entered the engineering profession he might 
 have become a great engineer. When he was a 
 missionary in Africa, the British East Africa 
 Company offered him a good position. He refused 
 it. General Gordon offered him a high position 
 in his army in Egypt. He refused it.
 
 The Boy Heroes of Uganda 81 
 
 He held on when his friends and the Church 
 Missionary Society called him home. This is 
 what he said to them, " What is this you write 
 ' Come home ' ? Surely now, in our terrible 
 dearth of workers, it is not the time 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 danger from fever and from a half- 
 mad tyrant king his Christian disciples having 
 been burned. 
 
 Was it worth while ? 
 
 To-day the Prime Minister of Uganda is Apolo 
 Kagwa, who as a boy was kicked and beaten and 
 stamped upon by King M'wanga for being a 
 Christian ; and the King of Uganda, Daudi, 
 M'wanga's son, is a Christian. At the capital there 
 stands a fine cathedral in which brown Baganda 
 clergy lead the prayers of the Christian people. 
 On the place where the boys were burned to death 
 there stands a Cross, put there by 70,000 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 are not slaughtered to appease the 
 gods ; the burning of boys alive has ceased. 
 
 Mackay began the work. He made the first 
 rough road and as he made it he wrote: "This 
 will certainly yet be a highway for the King 
 Himself; and all that pass this way will come to 
 know His name."
 
 82 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 6. The Unfinished Way. 
 
 "And a highway shall be there and a way; 
 and it shall be a way of holiness." 
 
 But the Way is not finished. And the last 
 words that Mackay wrote were: "You sons of 
 England, here is a sphere for your energies. Bring 
 with you your highest education and your greatest 
 talents, and you will find scope for the exercise of 
 them all." 
 
 Some groups of boys will be interested in searching for passages 
 in the New Testament giving parallels to this persecution. Such 
 are, for instance, Mark xiv. 66-72 ; Acts vii. 59, viii. 4 ; i Peter iv. 
 12-19 (this passage was printed at the end of the above letter) ; 
 2 Cor. xi. 24-33 ; Hebrews xi. 32 xii. 2.
 
 IX 
 A Black Prince of Africa 
 
 Khama 
 (Dates, c. 1850-1918) 
 
 LEADER'S AIM. 
 
 To show the power of God to equip an African as the liberator of 
 his own people. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 One day David Livingstone, before the time when he met the ' 
 adventure told in Yarn II.,. entered a village in South Africa. The 
 chief, Sekhome, came out to meet the traveller. By Sekhome's side 
 trotted his eldest son, a boy who gazed in wonder at the strange 
 white man. That boy is alive to-day and is the chief of all his tribe 
 of the Bamangwato. (Show the place on the map.) He is the 
 best-known chief, and, indeed, the best chief in South Africa. He 
 has had many adventures, and we are going to hear now the story of 
 his life. 
 
 This Yarn is likely to need less discussion and question work than 
 any in this book, as the incidents cover most of the periods of Khama's 
 life, and their significance is clear and requires little elaboration. 
 
 I. The Fight with the Lion. 
 
 The leaping flames of a hunting camp-fire threw 
 upon the dark back-ground of thorn trees weird 
 shadows of the men who squatted in a circle on 
 the ground, talking. 
 
 The men were all Africans, the picked hunters 
 from the tribe of the Bamangwato. They were 
 out on the spoor of a great lion that had made 
 himself the terror of the tribe. Night after niorht 
 
 o o 
 
 the lion had leapt among their oxen and had slain
 
 84 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 the choicest in the chiefs herds. Again and 
 again the hunters had gone out on the trail of the 
 ferocious beast ; but always they returned empty- 
 handed, though boasting loudly of what they 
 would do when they should face the lion. 
 
 "To-morrow, yes, to-morrow," cried a young 
 Bamangwato hunter rolling his eyes, "I will slay 
 tau e bogale the fierce lion." 
 
 The voices of the men rose on the night air 
 as the whole group declared that the beast should 
 ravage their herds no more the whole group, 
 except one. This man's tense face and the keen 
 eyes that glowed in the firelight showed his con- 
 tempt for those who swaggered so much and did 
 so little. He was the son of Sekhome, the chief 
 of the great Bamangwato tribe. The wild flames 
 gleamed on him as he stood there, full six feet of 
 tireless manhood leaning on his gun, like a superb 
 statue carved in ebony. Those swift, spare limbs 
 of his, that could keep pace with a galloping horse, 
 gave him the right to his name, Khama the 
 Antelope. 1 
 
 The voices dropped, and the men, rolling them- 
 selves in the skins of wild beasts, lay down and 
 slept all except one, whose eyes watched in the 
 darkness as sleeplessly as the stars. 
 
 The night passed. As the first flush of dawn 
 paled the stars, and the men around the cold 
 ashes of the fire sat up, they gazed in awed 
 amazement. For they saw, striding toward them, 
 their tall young chieftain ; and over his shoulders 
 hung the tawny skin and mane of a full-grown 
 
 1 The antelope in the Zoological Gardens called Cama is of the species 
 from which Khama is named.
 
 A Black Prince of Africa 85 
 
 king lion. Alone in the night he had slain the 
 terror of the tribe ! 
 
 The men who had boasted of what they meant 
 to do and had never performed, never heard Khama 
 either at that time or later make any mention 
 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 crafty father 
 Sekhome and his treacherous, cowardly younger 
 brother Khamane, said, " Khama is our boikanyo 
 our confidence." 
 
 2. The Fight with the Witch-doctors. 
 
 The years went by ; and that fierce old villain 
 Sekhome plotted and laid ambush against the 
 life of his valiant son, Khama. For Khama had 
 become a Christian and Sekhome was a heathen 
 witch-doctor. Khama would have 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 in- 
 cantations, though his father smoked with anger 
 against him. Under a thousand insults and 
 threats of death Khama stood silent, never insult- 
 ing or 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.
 
 86 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 "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 name- 
 less 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.
 
 A Black Prince of Africa 87 
 
 3. The Fight with Kaffir Beer. 
 
 At last Khama's treacherous old father, Sekhome, 
 died. Khama was acclaimed the supreme chief of 
 all the Bamaogwato. 1 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 un- 
 clean 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 
 
 1 In 1875.
 
 88 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 should Khama rule you ? Eemember lie 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 drink- 
 ing 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." 
 
 4. The Fight with the White man's " Fire-water." 
 
 Khama had conquered for the moment. But 
 white men, Englishmen, came to the town. They
 
 A Black Prince of Africa 89 
 
 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. Our own commerce has been 
 responsible to a terrible extent for sending out the " fire-water" to 
 Africa. 
 
 Khama called them 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 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 mission- 
 ary. Mr Hepburn lay ill with fever. Khama 
 told him what the white men had done. Hep-
 
 90 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 burn 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. 
 
 5. 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 * 
 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," 2 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 
 
 1 The chiefs open-air enclosure for official meetings. 
 
 1 These are Khama's own words taken down at the time by Hepburn.
 
 A Black Prince of Africa 91 
 
 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 for- 
 get 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 ring-leader 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
 
 92 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 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." 
 
 6. The Black Prince to-day. 
 
 To-day (1916) if you ride as a guest toward 
 Khama's town, as you come in sight of the great 
 stone church that the chief has built, you will see 
 tearing across the African plain a whirlwind of 
 dust. It races toward you. You hear the soft 
 thunder of hoofs in the loose soil. The horses are 
 almost upon you, when with a hand of steel 
 chief Kbama reins in his charger and his body- 
 guard pull up behind him. 
 
 He is over eighty years old, grey and wrinkled ; 
 but he springs from his horse, without help, to 
 greet you still Khama, the Antelope. 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
 
 A Black Prince of Africa 93 
 
 and King of our Great Crusade for the saving 
 of Africa. 
 
 A new attempt has been recently made by traders to force 
 spirits on the Bamangwato, and Khama has to face afresh the fight, 
 not against people of his own blood but against the greed of white 
 men who wish to make money by destroying the African. Ask the 
 boys what they feel should be the ideal of the British Empire. Is 
 it simply to make money for the white man or is it finally for the 
 good of the governed ? Is not our task (whether as trader, civil 
 servant, soldier or missionary) to free Africa ?
 
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 Yarns of South Sea Pioneers 
 
 By Basil Mathews, M.A. 
 
 Yarns on Heroes of China 
 
 By W. P. Nairne 
 
 Yarns on Heroes of India 
 
 By J. Claverdon Wood 
 
 Yarns on African Pioneers 
 
 By Basil Mathews, M.A. 
 
 Yarns on Heroes of the 
 Lone Trail 
 
 By Arthur P. Shepherd, M.A. 
 
 Yarns of the Near East 
 
 By Basil Mathews, M.A. 
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