Basil Mathews

“ 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. ”

“ He saw the desert in front of him—like a vast rolling ocean of glowing gold it stretched away and away for close on a thousand miles eastward to the Persian Gulf. Forder knew that only here and there in all those blazing, sandy wastes were oases where men could build their houses round some well or little stream that soon lost itself in the sand. All the rest was desert across which man and beast must hurry or die of thirst. He must follow the camel-tracks from oasis to oasis, where they could find a well of water, therefore drink for man and camel, and date-palms. ”

“ The breeze from the south stiffened to a gale. The mast creaked and strained as the gathering storm tore at the mainsail. The ship reeled and pitched as the spiteful waves smote her high bow and swept hissing and gurgling along the deck. She began to jib like a horse and refused to obey her rudder. Wind and current were carrying her out of her course.
In spite of all the captain's sea-craft the ship was being driven nearer to the dreaded, low, shingle beach of the island that stretched along the northern edge of the sea. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At last the long, yellow coast-line of Egypt was sighted. Behind it lay the minarets and white roofs of a city. They were come to the eastern mouth of the Nile, on which stood the proud city of Damietta. The hot rays of the sun smote down upon the army of the Crusaders as they landed. The sky and the sea were of an intense blue; the sand and the sun glared at one another.
Francis would just be able to hear at dawn the cry of the muezzin from the minarets of Damietta, "Come to prayer: there is no God but Allah and Mahomet is his prophet. Come to prayer. Prayer is better than sleep." ”

“ The reef, covered at mid-tide with curling waters mottled with the foam of the broken waves, was alive with men; while the beach beyond was black with crowds of the wild islanders who had come down to see the strange visitors from the ship. The four men sculled the boat on to the edge of the reef and then rested on their oars as Patteson swung himself over the side into the cool water. He waded across the reef between the hosts of savages, and in every hand was a club or spear or a six-foot wooden bow with an arrow ready to notch in its bamboo string. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then a ruddy glow lit up the dark faces of the watchers and the bronzed face of the white man who in the centre of his workshop was blowing 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With a wild yell, and with their tawny manes streaming in the wind, the wreckers rushed down the beach brandishing their spears.
Wilfrid, striding to the side of the ship, raised his hand to show that he wished to speak to the chief. But the island men rushed on like an avalanche and started to storm the ship. Snatching up arms, poles, rope-ends—whatever they could find—the men on board beat down upon the heads of the savages as they climbed up the ship's slippery side. One man after another sank wounded on the deck. ”

“ Livingstone, the lion-hearted pathfinder in Africa, goes out as the fearless explorer, the dauntless and resourceful missionary, faced by poisoned arrows and the guns of Arabs and marched with only his black companions for thousands of miles through marsh and forest, over mountain pass and across river swamps, in loneliness and hunger, often with bleeding feet, on and on to the little hut in old Chitambo's village in Ilala, where he crossed the river. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ As they climbed her side, the anchor was weighed, the Miro swung round, her engines started, and, carried down by the swift stream, she slipped past the packed masses of silent men who lined the banks.
It is a great thing to be a pathfinder through a country which no man has penetrated before. But it is a greater thing to do as these missionary-scouts did on their journey up the Aivai and find a path of friendship into savage lives. To do that was the greatest joy in Tamate's life. ”

“ Soon after this, Papeiha one day heard shrieking and shouting and wild roars as of men in a frenzy. He saw crowds of people round the gods offering food to them; the priests with faces blackened with charcoal and with bodies painted with stripes of red and yellow, the warriors with great waving head-dresses of birds' feathers and white sea-shells. Papeiha, without taking any thought of the peril that he rushed into, went into the midst of the people and said:
"Why do you act so foolishly? Why do you take a log of wood and carve it, and then offer it food? It is only fit to be burned. ”

“ Men, women and children came pouring out to meet their friends: for a desert city is like a port to which the wilderness is the ocean, and the caravan of camels is the ship, and the friends go down as men do to the harbour to meet friends from across the sea.
"May Allah curse him!" they cried, scowling, when they heard that a Christian stranger was in the caravan. "The enemy of Allah and the prophet! Unclean! Infidel!"
Johar, the great Chief of the Jowf, commanded that Forder should be brought into his presence, and proceeded to question him:
"Did you come over here alone?" ”

“ Thrown up by the ocean in the darkness like driftwood, Elikana and his companions lay on the grey shore. Against the dim light of the stars and beyond the beach of darkness they could see the fronds of the palms waving. The five survivors were starving, and the green cocoa-nuts hung above them, filled with food and drink. But their bodies, broken and tormented as they were by hunger and the battering breakers, refused even to rise and climb for the food that meant life. So they lay there, as though dead.
Over the ridge of the beach came a man. ”

“ She went on right through the war to the end and beyond the end, caring for her orphans, looking after the sick in hospital, sending food and clothes to all parts of the country, helping the prisoners. Without caring whether they were British or Turkish, Armenian or Indian, she gave her help to those who needed it. And because of her splendid courage thousands of boys and girls and men and women are alive and well, who—without her—would have starved and frozen to death. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the little ship passes on and after adventures and tempests in many seas at last reaches the far Pacific. There the torch-bearers pass from island to island and the light flames like a beacon fire across many a blue lagoon and coral reef.
One after another the great heroes sail out across strange seas and penetrate hidden continents each with a torch in his hand. ”

“ Fisher Young was the grandson of fierce, foul Pitcairn Island cannibals, and was himself a brave and pure Christian lad. He had faced death with his master many times on coral reefs, in savage villages, on wild seas and under the clubs of Pacific islanders. Now he was face to face with something more difficult than a swift and dangerous adventure—the slow, dying agony of lockjaw. He grew steadily worse in spite of everything that Patteson could do. ”