CHAPTER XV
THE MAN WHO WOULD GO ON
_David Livingstone_
(Dates born 1813, died 1873)
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,[44] 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.[45] 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 gra.s.s--a thing like an ostrich"s egg.
He 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!"
It was the whitening skull of an African boy.
For weeks those two Britons had driven their little steamer (the _Asthmatic_ they called her, because of her wheezing engines) up the Zambesi river and were now exploring its tributary the Shire.
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, b.l.o.o.d.y 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 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 Shire river from the Zambesi toward the unknown Highlands of Central Africa.
_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.
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 realised what was happening Livingstone had swung over the edge of the boat and, up to his waist in water, was wading ash.o.r.e 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 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 G.o.d-like 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 man 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 pa.s.sed on in his boat up the river and over rapids toward the wonderful shining Highlands in the heart of Africa.
_"Deliverance to the Captives"_
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-trading through that great market to cease. And to-day, because of David Livingstone, 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 church 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 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."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 44: 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 Livingstone on his Zambesi journeyings, including this one. See next chapter.]
[Footnote 45: 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.]
CHAPTER XVI
THE BLACK PRINCE OF AFRICA
_Khama_
(Dates 1850--the present day)
One day men came running into a village in South Africa to say that a strange man, whose body was covered with clothes and whose face was not black, was walking toward their homes. He was coming from the South.
Never before had such a man been seen in their tribe. So there was great excitement and a mighty chattering went through the round wattle of mud huts with their circular thatched roofs.
The African Chief, Sekhome--who was the head of this Bamangwato tribe and who was also a noted witch-doctor--started out along the southward trail to meet the white man. By his side ran his eldest son. He was a lithe, blithe boy; his chocolate coloured skin shone and the muscles rippled as he trotted along. He was so swift that his name was the name of the antelope that gallops across the veldt. Cama is what the Bamangwato call the antelope. Khama is how we spell the boy"s name.
He gazed in wonder as he saw a st.u.r.dy man wearing clothes such as he had not seen before--what we call coat and hat, trousers and boots.
He looked into the bronzed face of the white man and saw that his eyes and mouth were kind. Together they walked back into the village. Chief Sekhome found that the white man"s name was David Livingstone; and that he was a kind doctor who could make boys and men better when they were ill, with medicines out of a black j.a.panned box.