The Court of Ava were exceedingly amazed at the insolence of the foreigners. An army supposed to be irresistible was sent off, dancing and singing, in boats down the river, and all the fear was lest the alarm should drive away the white strangers with the "c.o.c.k-feather chief"
before there was time to catch any for slaves. A lady sent a commission for four to manage the affairs of her household, as she heard they were trustworthy; a courtier, for six to row his boat.
The capture of Rangoon was supposed by national pride to be wholly owing to the treachery of spies, and three English merchants were fixed upon as those spies and put under arrest. The King was advised likewise to secure the persons of the missionaries, but he answered, "They are quiet men; let them alone." Unfortunately, however, a receipt for some money paid to Adoniram Judson was found among the papers of one of the merchants, and this to the Burmese mind was proof of his complicity in the plot. Suddenly, an official, accompanied by a dozen men, one of whom had his face marked with spots, to denote his being an executioner, made his appearance demanding Mr. Judson. "You are called by the King," said the official, and at the same moment the executioner produced a cord, threw Mr. Judson on the floor, and tied his arms behind his back. His wife vainly offered money to have his arms unbound, and he was led away, the faithful Ing following at a distance to see what was done with him, while Mrs. Judson retired to her room and poured out her soul "to Him who for our sakes was bound and led away to execution," and great was her comfort even in that moment. She was immediately after summoned to be examined by a magistrate in the verandah, and after hastily destroying all journals and papers, went out to meet him. He took down her name and age, those of four little Burmese girls she had charge of, and of two Bengal servants; p.r.o.nounced them all slaves to the King, and set a guard over them. Mrs. Judson fastened herself and her children into the inner room, while the guards threatened her savagely if she would not show herself, and even put her servants" feet in the stocks till she had obtained their release by promises of money.
Moung Ing had ascertained that his master was in prison; and when, after the most dreadful night she had ever spent, she sent him again in the morning, with a piece of silver to obtain admittance, he brought word that both Judson and Price, with the three English merchants, were in the death-prison, each wearing three pairs of iron fetters and fastened to a long pole. Mrs. Judson immediately sent to the governor of the city with an entreaty to be allowed to visit him with a present. This procured her a favourable reception, and he promised to make the condition of the prisoners more comfortable, but told her that she must consult his head writer as to the means. This man, a brutal-looking fellow, extorted from her a huge bribe, and then promised to release the two teachers from the pole, and to put them into another building where she might send them food daily, and pillows and mats to sleep on. She obtained an order for an interview with her husband, whose looks were so wretched and ghastly that she lost no time in fulfilling these exorbitant demands.
Her hope was in a pet.i.tion to the Queen, but being under arrest herself, she could not go to the Queen in person, and had to approach her through her sister-in-law--a proud, haughty dame, who received her in the most cold, discouraging manner, but who undertook to present the pet.i.tion. She then went to the prison again, but the head writer would not allow her to enter; and on her return home she found that all the property in the mission-house was to undergo a scrutiny; but this was humanely done, and was only inventoried, not seized--_i.e._ the King did not seize it, but the officials helped themselves to whatever took their fancy. The next day the Queen"s answer was obtained--"He is not to be executed; let him remain where he is."
The poor lady"s heart fainted within her, but she thought of the widow and the unjust judge, and persevered day after day in applying to every member of the royal family or of Government to entreat for her husband"s liberation. The King"s mother, sisters, and brother were all interested in his favour, but none of them ventured to apply direct to the King lest they should offend the favourite Queen. All failed, but the hopes that from time to time were excited, kept up the spirits of the sufferers.
During the long weary months while the missionaries continued in fetters, _i.e._ chained by the feet to a bar of bamboo, Mrs. Judson was often not allowed to visit them for ten days at a time, and then only by walking to the prison after dark, two miles, unattended. She could, however, communicate with her husband by means of the provisions she sent him daily. At first she used to write on the dough of a flat cake, which she afterwards baked and concealed in a bowl of rice, while he answered by writing on a tile, where the inscription disappeared when dry but was visible when wet; but latterly they found it most convenient to write on a roll of paper hidden in the long nose of a coffee-pot, in which tea was sent to the prisoners.
Mrs. Judson delighted to send him little surprises, once a mince-pie, which Moung Ing carried with the utmost pride to his imprisoned master.
Mrs. Judson found herself obliged to wear the native dress, though she was so much taller than the Burmese women that she could be hardly taken for one of them. It was a becoming dress; her hair was drawn into a knot on the forehead, with a cocoa-blossom, like a white plume, drooping from it; a saffron vest open in front to show a crimson tunic below; and a tight skirt of rich silk, sloping down behind, made her look to advantage, so that her husband liked to remember her as she stood at his prison door. She never was allowed to come further.
For twenty days she was absent, and then she came with a tiny, pale, wailing, blue-eyed baby on her breast. Poor Judson, clanking up to the door in his chains to welcome his little daughter, commemorated his feelings in some touching verses ending:--
"And when in future years Thou know"st thy father"s tongue, These lines will show thee how he felt, How o"er his babe he sung."
Every defeat by the European forces added to the perils of captives. A favourite old general named Bundoolah had promised, when sent to command the army against Rangoon, that he would release all the white prisoners on his return as a conqueror; and when he was totally defeated, the wrath of the Burmese was so great that at this time the King himself seems to have scarcely acted at all. He was gentle, indolent and indifferent, more intelligent than those around him, scarcely a Buddhist in belief, and very kind-hearted: indeed Judson believed that it was his interposition alone that prevented the lives of the captives from being taken at once; but he was demoralized by self-indulgence, and allowed himself to be governed by his queen, the daughter of a superintendent of gaols; and through her, by her brother, who was cruel, rapacious and violent, and the chief author of all the sufferings inflicted on the prisoners. Among these were seven or eight British officers, and the King had commanded that a daily allowance of rice should be served to these, but scarcely half of it ever reached them; Mrs. Judson did her best to supply them as well as her husband, but their health gave way under their sufferings, and all died but one.
At the end of seven months, it was reported that the English army was advancing into the interior; and in the pa.s.sionate alarm thus excited, the English captives were all loaded with five pairs of fetters and thrown into the common prison among Burman thieves and robbers,--a hundred in a room without a window, and that in the hottest season of the year. Mrs. Judson again besought the governor to relieve them from this horrible condition, by at least allowing them to sit outside the door, and he actually shed tears at her distress, but he told her that he had been commanded to put them all to death privately, and that he was doing his best for them by ma.s.sing them with the rest. The Queen"s brother had really given this order, but the governor delayed the execution in case they should be required of him by the King, and they continued in this frightful state for a whole month, until Mr. Judson sickened with violent fever, and the governor permitted him to be removed into a little bamboo room, six feet long and four wide, where his wife was allowed to visit him and bring him food and medicine, she meantime living in a bamboo house in the governor"s compound, where the thermometer rose daily to 106 degrees, but where she thought herself happy as she saw her husband begin to recover.
One day, however, when the governor had sent for her and was kindly conversing with her, a servant came in and whispered to him that the white strangers had suddenly been taken away, no one knew whither. The governor pretended to be taken by surprise, but there could be no doubt that he had occupied Mrs. Judson to hinder her from witnessing the removal; and it was not till the evening that she learnt that the prisoners had been taken to Umerapoonah, whither she proceeded with her three months old baby and one servant. There she found that the prisoners had been sent on two hours before to a sort of penal settlement called Oung-pen-lay, whither she followed, to find her husband in a lamentable state. He had been dragged out of his little room, allowed no clothing but his shirt and trowsers, a rope had been tied round his waist, and he had been literally driven ten miles in the hottest part of the day. His feet were so lacerated that he was absolutely falling, when a servant of one of the merchants tore a piece from his turban, and this wrapped round his feet enabled him to proceed, but he could not stand for six weeks after; indeed the scars remained for life. In this state he lay chained to Dr. Price. The intention was to sacrifice them both, in order to obtain success for an intended expedition; but before this could be done, a different woongye, or prime minister, came in, and their condition was somewhat improved, for they only wore one bamboo, through two slits in which their feet were forced, and they were allowed to crawl into the enclosure. Meantime, a poor lion, once a great favourite, which was thought to be connected with the lions on the English colours, was placed in a bamboo cage in sight of the prisoners, and there starved to death, in hopes of thus abating the force of the enemy. When its carcase was removed, Mr. Judson, at his own earnest entreaty, was allowed the reversion of its cage, and there, to his great joy, Moung Ing brought him his MS. translation of part of the Burmese Bible, which he had kept in his pillow at Ava till it was torn away by the jailors on his removal.
The faithful Ing, thinking only to secure a relic of his master, had picked up the pillow and secured the treasure.
Solitude was the greatest boon to Judson, whose fastidious delicacy suffered greatly in the thronged prison, but his faithful Ann was suffering terribly. One of the little Burmese girls who lived with her had caught the small-pox, and was very ill: Mrs. Judson inoculated the other child and her own little Maria, but Maria"s inoculation did not take effect, and she caught the disease, and had it very severely. Then Mrs. Judson herself fell ill of a fever, and remained for two months unable to visit her husband, both of them owing all their food to the exertions of their good Bengalee cook. Poor little Maria was nearly starved, no milk was to be had, and the only food she obtained was when the jailers were bribed to let her father carry her round the village to beg a little nourishment from the nursing mothers. Her moans at night rent the heart of her sick mother, and it is scarcely possible to imagine how either survived. By this time, the English troops were so far advancing that the King was reduced to negotiate, and, being in need of an interpreter, he sent an order for Mr. Judson"s release; but as his wife was not named in it, she had great difficulty in effecting her departure, and half-way through the journey a guard came down and carried him off to Ava without her. Arriving next day, she found him in prison, but under orders to embark in a little boat and go at once to the camp at Maloun. She hastened to prepare all that was needful for his comfort, but all was stolen except a mattress, pillow, and one blanket. The boat had no awning, and was so crowded that there was no room to lie down for the three days and three nights of alternate scorching heat and heavy dew; there was no food but a bag of refuse-rice, and the banks on either side of the Irrawaddy were bordered with glittering white sand, which in sunlight emitted a metallic glare intolerable to the eyes, and heat like a burning furnace. The fever returned upon Judson, and, when he reached Maloun, he was almost helpless; but he found himself lodged in a small bamboo hut in the middle of the white sand, where he could not admit air by rolling up the matting without letting in the distressing glare, and where the heat reflected from the sand was like a furnace. He could not stir when the officers came to summon him to the presence of the Burmese general, and they thought it stubbornness, and threatened him; then they brought him papers and commanded him to translate them, while he writhed in torture and only longed that the fever in his brain would deprive him of his senses. This it must have done, for he had only a confused impression of feet around him, and of fancying that he was going to be burnt alive, until he found himself on a bed in a somewhat cooler room.
As he lay there, papers were continually brought him to explain and translate, and he found that the greatest difficulty was in making the Burmese understand that a State paper could mean what it said, or that truth and honesty were possible. Sometimes, as he tried to explain the commonest principle: of good faith and fair dealing among Christian nations, his auditors would exclaim, "That is n.o.ble," "That is as it should be;" but then they would shake their heads and say, "The teacher dreams; he has a heavenly spirit, and so he thinks himself in the land of the dwellers in heaven."
He remained here six weeks, suffering much at night from cold, for his only covering was a small rug and his well-worn blanket. Then, on the advance of the English, he was sent back to Ava, but was marched straight to the court-house without being suffered to halt for a moment at his own abode, to discover whether his wife was there. He was placed in a shed, guarded all day, and left without food, till Moung Ing found him out in the evening, and replied to his questions, that the Mamma Judson and the child were well; yet there was something about his manner that was unsatisfactory, and Judson, thinking it over, became terribly uneasy, and in the morning, being sent for by the governor of the jail, obtained permission to go to his own house.
At the door he saw a fat, half-naked Burmese woman with a child in her arms, so dark with dirt that it never occurred to him that it could be his own; and entering, he found, lying across the foot of the bed, his wife, ghastly white and emaciated, her hair all cut away, and her whole appearance that of a corpse. She woke as he knelt down by her in despair! She had been ill all this time with a horrible spotted fever.
The day she had fallen ill, the Burmese woman had offered to take charge of little Maria, and the Bengalee cook had attended on her. Dr. Price was released from prison and had cut off her hair, bled, and blistered her, but she could hardly move when the tidings came of her husband being in the town, and she had sent Moung Ing to him. The husband and wife were at last together again, and Dr. Price was sent to conduct the treaty at the English camp.
As soon as Sir Archibald Campbell heard of the sufferings of the Judsons, he demanded them as well as the English subjects; but the King was aware that they were not English, and would not let them go. This attempt at a treaty failed; but its failure, and the alarm consequent upon a report of the advance of the English, led to Mr. Judson"s being sent off, almost by force, with two officials, to promise a ransom if Ava were spared. Sir Archibald Campbell undertook that the city should not be attacked, provided his terms were complied with before he reached it; and among these was the stipulation that not only English subjects, but all foreigners should have free choice whether to go or to stay. Some of the officials tried to persuade Mr. Judson to stay, declaring that he would become a great man, but he could not refuse the freedom offered him after such cruel sufferings, and he was wont to declare that the joy of finding himself floating down the Irrawaddy in a boat with his wife and baby, made up for their twenty-one months of peril and misery.
They were received with courtesy, and indeed with grat.i.tude, respect, and veneration at the English camp. The Englishmen who had been in captivity bore witness to the kindness with which Mrs. Judson had relieved their wants, as well as those of her husband: how she had brought them food, mended their clothes, obtained new ones, and, as they believed, by her arguments and appeals to the ignorant and barbarous Government, had not only saved their lives, but convinced the authorities of the necessity of accepting the British terms of peace.
These terms included the cession of a large portion of the Burmese territory; and this it was that decided the missionaries to leave Ava; for the state of exasperation and intolerance into which this brought the Court, made it vain to think of continuing to give instruction where they would be regarded with enmity and suspicion. Meantime, the officers in the English camp, who had not seen a lady for nearly two years, could not make enough of the graceful, gentle woman, so pale and fragile, yet such a dauntless heroine, and always ready to exert herself beyond her strength for every sufferer who came in her way.
There was a curious scene at a dinner given to the Burmese commissioners, in a magnificent tent, with all the military pomp the camp could furnish.
When Sir Archibald appeared with Mrs. Judson on his arm, and seated her by his side, there was such a look of discomfiture on the faces of the guests, that he asked her if they were not old acquaintance who had treated her ill. "That fellow with the pointed beard," he said, "seems taken with an ague fit." Then Mrs. Judson told how, when her husband lay in a burning fever with the five pairs of fetters, she had walked several miles with a pet.i.tion to this man, had been kept waiting till the noontide sun was at its height, and not only was she refused, but as she departed her silk umbrella was torn out of her hand by his greediness; and when she begged at least to let her have a paper one to go home with, the officer only laughed at her, and told her that she was too thin to be in danger of a sunstroke! The English gentlemen could not restrain their countenances at least from expressing their indignation; and the Burmese, who thought she was asking for their heads, or to have them laid out in the sun with weights upon their chests, were yellow with fright, and trembled visibly. Mrs. Judson kindly turned to them with a smile, a.s.suring them that they had nothing to fear, and, on repeating her words to Sir Archibald Campbell, he confirmed them to the frightened barbarians.
That visit to the English camp was one of the few s.p.a.ces of comfort or repose in those busy lives. It concluded by the husband and wife being forwarded to their old home at Rangoon.
It was in the height of the war, when anxieties for the fate of Mr. and Mrs. Judson were at the utmost, that, on the 4th of July, 1825, George Boardman and Sarah Hall were married, and sailed for Calcutta, thinking it possible that they might find their predecessors martyred, and that they were coming "to step where their comrades stood."
At Calcutta they found Mr. and Mrs. Wade, who had with great difficulty escaped, and soon after they heard of the rescue of the Judsons, and welcomed Dr. Price. Rangoon, in the meantime, had been occupied by the English, and then besieged by the Peguans; the mission-house was ruined, and the people dispersed, and Moung Shwaygnong had died of cholera, faithful to the last. The city was to be restored to the Burmese, and the King, though willing to employ Judson politically, refused toleration to his subjects; so that, as the provinces on the Martaban river were to be ceded to the English, it seemed wise to take advantage of the reputation which the Judsons had established to found a mission-station under their protection in the new town of Amherst, which Sir Archibald Campbell proposed to build on the banks of the Martaban river.
Hither was transported the old zayat of Rangoon; and Mount Ing, Moung Shwaba, and a few other of the flock accompanied their teachers, to form the nucleus of the mission. Sir Archibald Campbell had made a great point of Mr. Judson"s accompanying the English emba.s.sy that was to conclude the treaty at Ava; and he, hoping to obtain something for the Christian cause, complied, leaving that most brave and patient woman, his wife, with her little delicate girl, in a temporary house in Amherst, which, as yet, consisted only of barracks, officers" houses, and fifty native huts by the riverside in the s.p.a.ce of freshly-cleared jungle.
There she set to work with energy that enfeebled health could not daunt, to prepare the way for the Wades and the Boardmans, to superintend a little school, of which Moung Ing was master, and to have a house built for her husband.
She had just moved into it, when she was attacked with remittent fever, and, though attended by an English army surgeon and nursed by a soldier"s wife, she sank under it, and died on the 24th of October, 1826. She was buried under a _hopia_, or, as her friends loved to call it, a hope tree; and the Wades, coming shortly after, took charge of poor little Maria, who lived to be embraced by her father, on his arrival after three months" absence; but she continued to pine away, and only survived her mother six months.
Judson endured patiently, thought of his wife"s sufferings as gems in her crown, wrote cheerful letters, and toiled indefatigably, without breaking down, but he was never the same man again. Amherst was probably unhealthy, for several of the Rangoon converts died there, among them one of the little Burmese girls who had been with Mrs. Judson throughout her troubles. Those who died almost always spoke with joy of their hope of seeing Mamma Judson in heaven. "But first," said one woman, "I shall fall down before the Saviour"s feet, and thank Him for sending us our teachers."
It was shortly before little Maria"s death that Mr. and Mrs. Boardman arrived, bringing with them a daughter born at Calcutta. Moulmein, the town near at hand, was decided on as their station, and they removed to a mission-house on the border of the jungle, about a mile from the cantonments, with a beautiful range of hills behind them, and the river in front. Opposite lay the Burman province of Martaban, which had been desolated during the war, and was now the haunt of terrible Malay pirates, who came and robbed in the town, and then fled securely to the opposite bank, where they could not be pursued. The English officers had entreated the Boardmans to reside within the cantonments, but they wished to be among the people, so as to learn the language more readily and become acquainted with them.
One night, Mrs. Boardman awoke and found the lamp gone out. She rose and re-lighted it. Every box and drawer lay overthrown and rifled, nothing left but what the thieves deemed not worth taking. She turned round to the mosquito curtain which concealed her husband; it was cut by two long gashes, the one close to his head, the other to his feet. There the robber-sentry must have kept watch, ready to destroy the sleepers if they had wakened for a moment! Nearly every valuable had been carried away, and not a trace of any was ever found. After this, Sir Archibald Campbell gave them a Sepoy guard; and, as population increased, the danger diminished. Indeed, Amherst proved an unsuccessful attempt, and was gradually abandoned in favour of Moulmein, which became the head-quarters both of Government and of the Mission.
The Boardmans were specially devoted to that, because of the work which regarded the Karens. These were a wandering race who occupied a strip of jungle, a hilly country to the south of Burmah, living chiefly by hunting and fishing, making canoes, and clothed in cotton cloth. They had very scanty ideas either of religion or civilization, but were not idolaters, and had a good many of what Judson calls the gentler virtues of savages, though their habits were lazy and dirty. They had been a good deal misused by the Burmese, but occasionally wandered into the cities; and there Judson had asked questions about them which had roused the interest of his Burman converts. During the war, one of these Burmese found a poor Karen, named Ko-Thah-byoo, in bondage for debt, paid the amount, made him his own servant, and, on the removal to Moulmein, brought him thither. He proved susceptible of instruction, and full of energy and zeal; and not only embraced Christianity heartily himself, but introduced it to his tribe, and a.s.sisted the missionaries in acquiring the language.
To be nearer to these people, the Boardmans removed to Tavoy, where they had a Burmese congregation; and Mr. Boardman made an expedition among the Karens, who were, for the most part, by no means unwilling to listen, and with little tradition to pre-occupy their minds, as well as intelligence enough to receive new ideas. At one place, the people were found devoted to an object that was thought to have magic power, and which they kept with great veneration, wrapt up in many coverings. It proved to be an English Common Prayer Book, printed at Oxford, which had been left behind by a Mahometan traveller. On the whole, this has been a flourishing mission; the Karens were delighted to have their language reduced to writing, and the influence of their teachers began to raise them in the scale; but all was done under the terrible drawback of climate. Mrs.
Boardman never was well from the time she landed at Moulmein, and her beautiful flower-covered house at Tavoy was the constant haunt of sickness, under which her elder child, Sarah, died, after showing all that precocity that white children often do in these fatal regions. A little boy named George had by this time been born, and shared with his mother the dangers of the Tavoy rebellion, an insurrection stirred up by a prince of the Burmese royal blood, in hopes of wresting the province from the English.
One night, a Burmese lad belonging to the school close to the Boardmans"
house, was awakened by steps; and, peeping through the braided bamboo walls of his hut, saw parties of men talking in an undertone about lost buffaloes. Some went into the town, others gathered about the gate, and, when their numbers began to thicken, a cloud of smoke was seen in the morning dawn, and yells from a thousand voices proclaimed, "Tavoy has risen!"
Boardman awoke and rushed out to the door, but a friendly voice told him that no harm was intended him. The revolt was against the English, and never was a movement more perilous. The commandant, Colonel Burney, was absent at Moulmein, the English officer next in command was ill of a fatal disease, the gunner was ill, and the whole defence of a long, straggling city was in the hands of a hundred Sepoys, commanded by a very young surgeon, a.s.sisted by Mrs. Burney, who had a babe of three weeks old. The chief of the fight was at the powder magazine, not very far from the Boardmans" abode. It was attacked by two hundred men with clubs, knives, spears, but happily with very few muskets, and defended by only six Sepoys, who showed great readiness and faithfulness. Just as their bullets seemed to be likely to endanger the frightened little family, a savage-looking troop of natives were seen consulting, with threatening gestures aimed at the mission-house, and Mr. Boardman, fully expecting to be ma.s.sacred, made his wife and her baby hide in a little shed, crouching to escape the bullets; but this alarm pa.s.sed off, and, at the end of an hour, the whole of the gates had been regained by the Sepoys, and the attack on the magazine repulsed. Mr. Boardman took this opportunity of carrying his family to the Government house, where they were warmly welcomed by Mrs. Burney; but it was impossible to continue the defence of so large an extent as the town occupied, and therefore the tiny garrison decided on retiring to a large wooden building on the wharf, whither the Sepoys conveyed three cannon and as much powder as they expected to want, throwing the rest down wells. This was not done without constant skirmishing, and was not completed till three o"clock, when the refugees were collected,--namely, a hundred Sepoys, with their wives and children, stripped of all their ornaments, which they had buried; some Hindoo and Burmese servants; a few Portuguese traders; a wily old Mussulman; Mrs. Boardman and Mrs. Burney, each with her baby; and seven Englishmen besides Mr. Boardman. Among them rode the ghastly figure of the sick officer, who had been taken from his bed, but who hoped to encourage his men by appearing on horseback; but his almost orange skin, wasted form, sunken eyes, and perfect helplessness, were to Mrs. Boardman even more terrible than the yells of the insurgents around and the shots of their scanty escort.
Three hundred persons were crowded together in the wooden shed, roofed over, and supported on posts above the water, with no part.i.tions. The situation was miserable enough, but they trusted that the enemy, being only armed with spears, could not reach them. By and by, however, the report of a cannon dismayed them. The jingals, or small field-pieces, were brought up, but not till evening; and the inexperienced rebels took such bad aim that all the b.a.l.l.s pa.s.sed over the wharf into the sea, and the dense darkness put a stop to the attempt; but all night the trembling inmates were awakened by savage yells; and a Sepoy, detecting a spark of light through the c.h.i.n.ks of the floor, fired, and killed an enemy who had come beneath in a boat to set fire to the frail shelter!
In the morning the firing from the walls was renewed, but at long intervals, for there was a great scarcity of powder, though the unhappy besieged apprehended every moment that the right direction would be hit upon, and then that the b.a.l.l.s would be among them. They could send nowhere for help, though there was a Chinese junk within their reach, for it could not put to sea under the fire of the rebels; and two more days, and two still more terrible nights, pa.s.sed in what must have been almost a black hole. The fifth night was the worst of all, for the town was set on fire around, and by the light of the flames the enemy made a furious attack; but just in time to prevent the fire from attaining the frail wooden structure, a providential storm quenched it, and the muskets of the Sepoys again repulsed the enemy. By this time the provisions were all but exhausted, and there were few among even the defenders who were not seriously ill from the alternate burning sun and drenching rain.
Death seemed hovering over the devoted wharf from every quarter; when at last, soon after sunrise on the fifth day, the young doctor quietly beckoned the Colonel"s wife to the door that opened upon the sea, and pointed to the horizon, where a little cloudy thread of smoke was rising.
It was the steamer bringing Colonel Burney back, in perfect ignorance of the peril of Tavoy and of his wife! But he understood all at a glance.
The women and children were instantly transferred to the steamer, and she was sent back to Moulmein, but Colonel Burney and the few men who came with him landed, and restored courage and spirit to the besieged. Not only was a breastwork thrown up to protect the wharf, but the Colonel led a trusty little band of Sepoys to the wall where the cannon stood, recaptured them, and had absolutely regained Tavoy before the tidings of the insurrection had reached Moulmein. Mrs. Burney"s babe died soon after the steamer had brought the two mothers and their infants to their refuge; but little George Boardman did not suffer any ill effects from these dreadful days and nights, and was, in fact, the only child of his patents who outlived infancy. Another son, born a few months afterwards, soon ended a feeble existence, and Mrs. Boardman was ill for many months.
Her husband, delicate from the first, never entirely recovered the sufferings at the wharf; yet in spite of an affection of the lungs, he would often walk twenty miles a day through the Karen villages, teaching and preaching, and at night have no food but rice, and sleep on a mat on the floor of an open zayat.
The Moulmein station was a comparative rest, and the husband and wife removed thither to supply the place of Judson and of the Wades, who were making another attempt upon Burmah Proper; the Wades taking up their residence at Rangoon, and Judson going on to Prome, the ancient capital, where he preached in the zayats, distributed tracts, and argued with the teachers in his old fashion; but the Ava Government had become far more suspicious, and interfered as soon as he began to make anything like progress, requesting the English officer now in residence at the Court to remonstrate with him, and desire him not to proceed further than Rangoon.
He was obliged to yield, and again to float down the river in his little boat, baffled, but patient and hopeful.
A great change had come upon the bright, enthusiastic, lively young man who had set out, with his beautiful Ann, to explore the unknown Eastern world. Suffering of body had not altered him so much as bereavement, and bereavement without rest in which to face and recover the shock. A strong ascetic spirit was growing on him. Already on his first return to Moulmein, after joining in the emba.s.sy, he had thought it right to cut short the ordinary intercourse of society, to which his residence in the camp had given rise, and had announced his intention in a letter to Sir Archibald Campbell. He was much regretted, for he was a particularly agreeable man; and it is evident, both from all testimony and from the lively tone of his letters, that he was full of good-natured sympathy, and, however sad at heart, was a cheerful and even merry companion.
But through these years, throughout constant care and unrelaxed activity of mind and body, his heart was aching for the wife he had no time to mourn; and the agony thus suppressed led to an utter loathing for all that he thought held him back from perfect likeness to the glorified Saint whom he loved. He took delight in the most spiritual mystical writings he could find,--a Kempis, Madame Guyon, Fenelon, and the like,--and endeavoured to fulfil the Gospel measure of holiness. He gave up his whole patrimony to the American Baptist Mission Board (now separate from England and Serampore), mortified to the very utmost his fastidious delicacy by ministering to the most loathsome diseases; and to crush his love of honour, he burnt a letter of thanks for his services from the Governor-General of India, and other doc.u.ments of the same kind.
He fasted severely, and having by nature a peculiar horror of the decay and mouldering of death, he deemed it pride and self-love, and dug a grave beside which he would sit meditating on the appearance of the body after death. He had a bamboo hermitage on the borders of the jungle, where he would live on rice for weeks together--only holding converse with those who came to him for religious instruction; and once, when worn out with his work of translation, he went far into the depths of the wildest jungle, near a deserted paG.o.da, and there sat down to read, pray, and meditate. The next day, on returning to the spot, he found a seat of bamboo, and the branches woven together for a shelter. Judson never learnt whose work this was, but it was done by a loving disciple, who had overcome the fear of tigers to provide by night for his comfort, though the place was thought so dangerous that his safety, during the forty days that he haunted it, was viewed by the natives as a miracle. He spent several months in retirement. It was indeed four years after his bereavement, but it is plain that he was taking the needful rest and calm that his whole nature required after the shock that he had undergone, but which he had in a manner deferred until the numbers of workers were so increased that his constant labour could be dispensed with. He came forth from his retirement renovated in spirit, for the second period of his toils.
Meantime, the Boardmans had returned to Tavoy, where they were eagerly welcomed by their Karen flock, and found many candidates for baptism.
Weak as he was, Mr. Boardman examined them. He was sometimes able to sit up in his chair and speak for himself, but oftener so weak that his wife sat on his couch and interpreted his feeble whispers; but he was so happy that tears of joy often filled his eyes. The actual baptism, performed by going down into the water like Philip with the Ethiopian, could hardly have been carried out by a man in his state; but Moung Ing, who had been admitted to the pastorate, touched at Moulmein, on a mission to Mergui, and undertook the baptisms. The Karens carried Mr. Boardman to the water in his cot, along a street filled with lamaseries, whence the yellow-clothed priests looked down in scorn, and the common people hooted and reviled: "See! see your teacher, a living man borne as if he were already dead!" with still worse unfeeling taunts. The Christians, about fifty in number, reached the spot, a beautiful lake, nearly a mile in circ.u.mference, and bordered by green gra.s.s overshadowed by trees. There they all knelt down and prayed, and then Moung Ing baptized the nineteen new disciples, while the pastor lay pale and happy, and his wife watched him with her heart full of the last baptism, when it had been he who poured the water and spoke the words.
Mr. Boardman lived on into the year 1831, and welcomed a new arrival from America, Francis Mason and his wife, on the 23rd of January, and a week later set out to introduce the former to the Karens, a band of whom had come down to convey the party. Mr. Boardman was carried on his bed, his wife in a chair, and on the third day they reached a spot where the Karens, of their own accord, had erected a bamboo chapel beside a beautiful stream beneath a range of mountains. Nearly a hundred had a.s.sembled there, of whom half were candidates for baptism. They cooked, ate, and slept in the open air, but they had made a small shed for Mr.
Mason, and another for the Boardmans, too small to stand upright in, and so ill-enclosed as to be exposed to sun by day and cold air by night.
The sufferer rapidly became worse, but he had an ardent desire to see this last baptism, and all the thirty-four women, who were sufficiently prepared, were baptized in his sight, though he was so spent as scarcely to be able to breathe without the fan and smelling-bottle. In the evening he contrived to speak a few words of exhortation to the disciples, and to give them each a tract or a portion of Scripture. The next morning the party set out on their return, but in the afternoon were overtaken by a great storm of thunder and lightning, with rain that drenched his mattress and pillows; and when they reached a house, they found it belonged to heathens, who would scarcely let the strange teacher lie in the verandah.
His cot was so wet that he was forced to lie on the bamboo floor, and the rain continued all night. A boat was expected at twelve the next day, and it was resolved to wait for this, while the Tavoyans looked grimly on, and refused even to sell a chicken to make broth for the sick man. By nine o"clock he was evidently dying, and the Karens rubbed his hands and feet as they grew cold. Almost immediately after being conveyed to the boat, the last struggles came on, and in a few minutes he had pa.s.sed away. He was buried at Tavoy, beside his little Sarah; all the Europeans in the town attending, as well as a grateful mult.i.tude of Burmese and Karens.
"The tree to which the frail creeper clung Still lifts its stately head, But he, on whom my spirit hung, Is sleeping with the dead,"