FOOTNOTES:

"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 gentleness never forsakes him: his hopefulness never deserts him. His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring resolution of the Anglo-Saxon. The man has conquered 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 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[52]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 Livingstone? it seemed impossible. What was the good of an engineer among the lakes and forests of Central Africa?

On the table by the side of Stanley'sHow I found Livingstonelay a newspaper, the EdinburghDaily 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 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 withhammer 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 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 S.S.Peshawuras 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 NazarethMade common things for God."

FOOTNOTES:[49]"What is the minister gazing at, with his son Alec, in the dust of the road?"[50]SeeChapter XV.[51]December 12, 1875.[52]May 1, 1873.

[49]"What is the minister gazing at, with his son Alec, in the dust of the road?"

[50]SeeChapter XV.

[51]December 12, 1875.

[52]May 1, 1873.

Alexander Mackay

(Date, 1878)

After many months of delay at Zanzibar, 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 companions sent him back to the coast again to recover, and they themselves went on and put together theDaisy, 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. 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 theDaisy, which had been too small to carry them.

On the beach by the side of that great inland sea, Victoria Nyanza, in the heart of Africa, Mackay found the now broken and leakingDaisy. Her cedar planks were twisted and had warped in the blazing sun till every seam gaped. A hippopotamus had crunched her bow between his terrible jaws. Many of her timbers had crumbled 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 theDaisy. 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 forwhich he had left Britain over fifteen months earlier.

All through his disappointments and difficulties Mackay fought on. With him, as with Livingstone, 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,"

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.

The Wreck of the "Daisy"

Now at last theDaisywas on the water again; and Mackay and his bearers went aboard[53]and hoisting sail from Kagei ran northward. Before they had gone far black storm clouds swept across the sky. Night fell. Lightning blazed unceasingly 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 thedim 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 theDaisy. 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 the anchor and the next wave swung theDaisywith a crash onto 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 hairbreadth 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 dumpierDaisytook 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.

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, cruel heavy face in vivid contrast with his spotless 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, vise 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.

One day the wide thatched roof of that workshop 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 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. 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 them with a laugh and pointed to their sleekbodies 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.

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 poisonous 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.

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.

The Baganda[54]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 couldnot 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."

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, 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 forever noble.

FOOTNOTES:[53]August 23, 1878.[54]The people of Uganda.

[53]August 23, 1878.

[54]The people of Uganda.

Alexander Mackay

(Date, 1878)

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 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 crowdedabout 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 baptised with the name Samweli (Samuel); another called Kakumba was baptised 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 sheet of printing from beginning to end in his own language—from "Our Father" down to "the Kingdom, the power and the glory, Amen."

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 negro-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 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 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 Livingstone'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.

Mackay turned to M'tesa and said words like these:[55]

"O 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, O 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 scowledfiercely 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 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.

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 crestfallen 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 hehad 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 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.

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.

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 of 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 enemyfrom 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.

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 baptised 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 carrying 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 buttwo 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 permission of King M'wanga and the Katikiro."

"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.

In the morning Mackay heard that three of the boys who had been captured on the previous day 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 heldtheir 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 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:

"Ah, 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.

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. Behind him will come thousands of white soldiers."

"Send at once and kill him," cried the demented M'wanga.

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 going to kill a white man? Your father did not do so."

But the soldiers went out, travelled east along the paths till they met the great Bishop Hannington being carried in a litter, stricken with fever. They took him prisoner, and, after some days, slew him as he stood defenceless before them. Hannington 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. 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 outcast 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.

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 hima good position. He refused it. General Gordon offered him a high position in his army in Egypt. He refused it.

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."

"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: "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."

FOOTNOTES:[55]There is no record of the precise words, but Mackay gives the argument in a letter home.

[55]There is no record of the precise words, but Mackay gives the argument in a letter home.

Shomolekae

In the garden in Africa where, you remember, David Livingstone plighted troth with Mary Moffat, as they stood under an almond tree, there lived years ago a chocolate-skinned, curly-haired boy. His name was Shomolekae.[56]

His work was to go among the fruit trees, when the peaches and apricots were growing and to shout and make a noise to scare away the birds. If he had not done this they would have eaten up all the fruit. This boy was born in Africa over seventy-five years ago, when Victoria was a young queen.

In the same garden was a grown-up gardener, also an African, with a dark face and crisp, curly hair. The grown-up gardener one day stole some of the fruit off the trees, and he went to the little boy, Shomolekae, and offered him some apricots.

Now, Shomolekae had learned to love the missionary, Mr. Mackenzie, who had come to live in the house at Kuruman. He knew that it was very wrong of the gardener to steal the fruit and throw the blame on the birds. So he said that he would not touch the fruit.He went to an old black friend of his named Paul and said to him:

"The gardener has stolen the apples and plums and has asked me to eat them. He has robbed Mr. Mackenzie. I do not know what to do."

And old Paul went and told John Mackenzie, who took notice of the boy Shomolekae and learned to trust him.

Many months passed by; and two years later John Mackenzie was going to a place further north in Africa than Kuruman. The name of this town was Shoshong, where Mackenzie would live and teach the people about Jesus Christ. So he went to the father of Shomolekae, whose name was Sebolai.

"Sebolai," said John Mackenzie, "I want to take your son, Shomolekae, with me to Shoshong."

Sebolai replied: "I am willing that my son should come to live with you, but one thing I desire. It is that he should be taught his reading and to know the stories in the Bible and such things."

To this John Mackenzie quickly agreed, for he too desired that the boy should read.

So the sixteen oxen were yoked to the big wagon, and amid much shouting and cracking of whips and lowing of oxen and creaking of wagon-joints, John Mackenzie, Shomolekae, and the others, started from Kuruman northward to Shoshong.

Now, at Shoshong the chief was Sekhome, who, you remember, in our last story, was father to Khama. So when they were at Shoshong, Shomolekae, the young man who was cook, and Khama, the young man who was the son of the chief, worshipped in the same littlechurch together. It was not such a church as you go to in our country—but just a little place made of mud bricks that had been dried in the sun. There were holes instead of windows, and there was no door in the open doorway; and on the top of the little building was a roof of rough, reedy grass.

These were the days that you heard of in the last story, when Khama, seeing his tribe attacked by the fierce Lobengula, rode out on horseback at the head of his regiment of cavalry and fought them and beat them, and drove away Lobengula with a bullet in his neck.

For two years Shomolekae, learning to read better every day, and serving John Mackenzie faithfully in his house, lived at Shoshong.

Sometimes Shomolekae took long journeys with wagon and oxen, and at the end of two years he went with Mackenzie a great way in order to buy windows, doors, hinges, nails, corrugated iron, and timber with which to build a better church at Shoshong.

When Shomolekae came back again with the wagons loaded up there was great excitement in the tribe. Hammers and saws, screw-drivers and chisels were busy day after day, and the missionary and his helpers laid the bricks one upon another until there rose up a strong church with windows and a door—a place in which the people went to worship God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Again Shomolekae went away by wagon, and this time he travelled away by the edge of the desert southward until at last he reached the garden at Kuruman where as a boy he used to frighten the birds from thefruit trees. He was now a very clever man at driving wagons and oxen.

This, as you know, is not so easy as driving a wagon with two horses is in Britain. For there were as many as sixteen and even eighteen oxen harnessed two by two to the long iron chains in front of the wagon.

There were no roads, only rough tracks, and the wagon would drag through the deep sand, or bump over great boulders of rock, or sink into wet places by the river. But at such times one of the natives always led the two front oxen through the river with a long thong that was fastened to their horns.

So, in order to drive a wagon well, Shomolekae needed to be able to manage sixteen oxen all at once, and keep them walking in a straight line. He needed to know which were the bad-tempered ones and which were the good, and which pulled best in one part of the span and which in another; and how to keep them all pulling together and not lunging at one another with their horns.

Shomolekae also had to be so bold and daring that, if lions came to eat the oxen at night, he could go with the gun and either frighten them away or actually shoot them.

So you see Shomolekae was very clever, and was full of good courage.

While he was living at Kuruman a man came to him one day and said:

"John Mackenzie is alone at Shoshong, and there is no one who can drive his wagon well for him."

The man who told him this was, as it happened, going by wagon to Shoshong, where John Mackenzie lived.

"Let me go with you," said Shomolekae.

So he got up into the wagon, and away they went day after day northward on the same journey that Shomolekae had taken when he was a boy.

So Shomolekae served Mackenzie for years as wagon driver at Shoshong.

At last the time came when Mackenzie himself left the tribe at Shoshong—left Khama and all his people—and travelled southward to build at Kuruman a kind of small school where he could train young black men to be missionaries to their own people. And Shomolekae himself went to Kuruman with Mackenzie. He set to work with his own hands, and he helped to make and lay bricks, to put in the doors and windows, and to place the roof on the walls, until at last the little school was built.

And when it was actually built Shomolekae himself went to be a student there, and Mackenzie began to train him to be a preacher and a teacher to his own people.

For three years Shomolekae worked hard in the college, learning more and more about Jesus Christ, preparing himself to go among his own people to tell them about Him.

At last the time came when he was ready to go; and he started out, and travelled long, long miles through sandy places, and then by a river, until at last he reached a town of little thatched huts called Pitsani, which means "The Town of the Little Hyena."

In that town he gathered the men and women andthe boys and girls together and taught them the things that he knew.

While Shomolekae was at Pitsani there came into that part of Africa a new missionary, whose name was Mr. Wookey.

It was decided that Mr. Wookey should go a long, long journey and settle down by the shores of Lake Ngami, which, you remember, David Livingstone had discovered long years before.

Shomolekae wished to go out with Mr. Wookey into this country and to help. So he took the wagon and yoked the oxen to it, loaded it up with food and all the things needed for cooking as they travelled along, and drove the oxen dragging the wagon over many hundreds of miles of country in which leopards barked and lions roared, until at last they came to the land near Lake Ngami.

When they came into this land, and found a place in which to settle down, clever Shomolekae mixed earth into mud just as boys and girls do in order to make mud-pies, but he made the mud into the shape of bricks, and then placed the bricks of mud out into the sun to dry.

The sunshine was very, very hot indeed—so hot that the bricks became hard and dry and strong. Day after day Shomolekae worked until he had made a big heap of bricks. With these he built a little house for Mr. Wookey to live in. But these sun-dried bricks soon spoil if they get wet, so he had to build a verandah to keep the rain from the walls.

When the house was built and Mr. Wookey was settled in it, they travelled still further up the river to learn what people were living there.

After a while it was decided that Shomolekae should go and live in a small village by the river, and there again begin his work of telling the men and women of Jesus Christ, and teaching the boys and girls to read.

In his satchel, which was made of odd bits of calico print of different patterns, Shomolekae had a hymn-book with music. The hymn-book was written in the language of the people—the Sechuana language—and Shomolekae taught them from the book to sing hymns. The music was the sol-fa notation.

This is one of the hymns:

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