XISCHOOLBOYS
Upon my first arrival in Africa—at Batanga—Dr. Good, Mr. Kerr and myself immediately prepared for an overland journey to the Bulu interior.
Early one morning, the caravan being ready and in form, we were about to move, when, at the last moment, a small boy, frightfully dirty, came bounding out of the dark forest, all out of breath as if chased by cannibals, and throwing himself at my feet, entreated me to take him to the interior as my personal attendant. Every white man is supposed to have a “boy.” I had expected to engage a Bulu boy upon reaching the interior. But the African has a remarkable talent for importunity. This boy said his name wasLolo, and I half relented at the sound of it. Lolo might have been ten or eleven years old; although, as Dr. Good remarked at the time, it was not easy to understand how he could get so much dirt on him in only ten years.
“Go and wash yourself in the Atlantic Ocean,” I said; “and when I see what colour you are I shall consider the matter of engaging you.”
As a matter of feet, the African is surprisingly clean—for a savage; and this boy had probably accumulated most of his dirt in his desperate plunge through the jungle-paths that he might reach Batanga before the caravan should set out. He proved to be a very handsome boy, of delicate features and intelligent expression, and with irresistibly beautiful eyes. He was lighter incolour than the average. And I take this opportunity of saying that there are as many shades of complexion among Africans as among other people. There are differences between tribes and between individuals of the same tribe. As one goes towards the interior the tribal colour is decidedly lighter. The Mpongwe people are black—sometimes almost coal-black—beside the light-brown Fang. There are individual Fang who are yellow. Ndong Koni is as fair as an average mulatto. And when the skin is smooth and soft this colour is the favourite complexion. But the albino (and they are not uncommon) is an abhorrence.
Lolo’s eyes danced with joy when I engaged him. African eyes as compared with others, besides being remarkable organs of sight, serve a great variety of secondary uses. They can laugh, or sing, or plead, or weep; they can love, or they can break all the commandments. But the most beautiful and expressive eyes in Africa are those of the boys. Lolo at once regarded this new relationship as a kind of fatherhood on my part; and he amply repaid me, not only in faithful service, but also in personal devotion which was quite pathetic, and which in the course of events was put to an extreme test. He was both brave and affectionate—a typical African boy.
On my part, it was my knowledge of Lolo that first inspired me with a strong desire for a school, and enabled me to realize what a moral factor a school of such boys might become in transforming the life of the people. The African baby is a beautiful, solemn-eyed little creature, who looks out at the world as if he were undecided whether to stay. About half of them decide not to stay. The African baby is cunning and bright, but it seldom cries, and it is not given to play nearly as much as the white child. As the child grows older he cheers up. It has been said that only when he reaches years of indiscretiondoes the African become joyful. From that time on he is joyful to the end. But the African boy, before he becomes stupidly happy, bears the strongest stamp of humanity and is more interesting than at any other stage in his career.
On the first long march into the forest, Lolo easily kept up with the caravan and when we arrived in camp busied himself in waiting upon “his white man”—opening my box of clothing and getting everything that I wanted, taking off my shoes, bringing water, making my bed, helping the cook, waiting at supper and a score of other duties. On the first day of this journey we passed through Lolo’s town, about two or three hours from the coast. The chief was Lolo’s own father and there was some likelihood of trouble; for the boy had slipped away without his father’s knowledge. Lolo hid in the bush while I sat down in the palaver-house and called for the chief, thinking it best to tell him that I had employed his boy and in some way to win his consent. He kept me waiting an unusually long time. But when he appeared no explanation was necessary; it was evident that he had been making his toilet. He was dressed in a pink calico Mother Hubbard, which came about to his knees and was longer in front than behind. I thought he had it on wrong side to the front, but I was not sure. It was the more incongruous because he was very tall and strongly built. He was so preoccupied with this new robe of state that it was the easiest thing in the world for him to part with a son; and there was no need of a present, nor even of diplomacy. During my first term in Africa, a year and a half, Lolo was with me all the time.
He had been with me a whole month, and I had about concluded that I had ensnared an angel, when one day I discovered in him a large inheritance of latent savagery. There was another boy at Efulen about the same age asLolo. They used the same bucket to fetch water. A dispute arose as to who should have the bucket first. The dispute developed by rapid stages into a quarrel, and then a fight. An extreme unwillingness to part with the bucket was followed by excessive willingness; and when I came in sight, they were passing it back and forth to each other with deplorable vivacity, which threatened to put the bucket out of service for all time. But their savage yells and distortions of countenance were so amazing and impressive that the flying bucket was reduced to an insignificant detail. As I approached they closed in upon each other, then fell to the ground each with his arms tight around the other’s neck and intent upon nothing short of murder. Having rolled over several times, they came to the edge of a very steep hill that had been cleared for a road. Down this hill they rolled together at such a rate that they continued to cling to each other for safety and because there was nothing else to cling to. They received so many jolts and bruises on the way that about the time they reached the bottom, or soon after, a bond of sympathy united them and they were friends.
Shortly afterwards I fell sick with a fever and lay in bed several weeks, first in a tent and then in a native hut. It was through those long, weary weeks that I fully tested the patience and the devotion of Lolo, and the little servant of the jungles became a friend whom I shall never forget. As I grew worse the people when approaching had to be warned not to make a noise, and warned again after their arrival, and warned once a minute while they remained. When Lolo was not doing this or engaged in some other urgent service he was sitting beside my bed, sometimes keeping cold water on my head, or fanning me, and if no immediate service was necessary he still sat there so as to be on hand when I required him. There was nothing to look at but barkwalls and an earthen floor and he could not even see those very well, for empty salt-bags had been hung over the windows to darken the room. I marvelled at his devotion, which I had done nothing in the world to earn, except that I was fond of him. It was no sense of duty that impelled him, nor any moral obligation—the African is not strong on morals—but it was purely a service of love, and it would have done credit to any white friend. Often when he thought I was asleep I felt his hand laid on my forehead to see if the fever was high. Often, indeed, the little African boy in the service of the white man regards him with an abandoned devotion peculiar to his race, and with a love which his own father has never awakened, although there is bound up with it all the moral possibilities of the boy.
After leaving Kamerun I still kept track of Lolo. Others followed me who were at least as good to him as I was; and it is a great satisfaction to know that he did not grow up into a savage. And yet of such stuff are savages made. Hamlet, in the churchyard, reflecting sadly upon the base uses to which our bodies may return, observes that imagination may trace the noble dust of Alexander till one finds it stopping a bung-hole; and that “Imperius Cæsar, dead and turned to clay, May stop a hole to keep the wind away.” It is a matter for at least as grave reflection that out of the same living boy may be made the bloodthirsty savage, or the kind of man which is called “the noblest work of God.” Which of the two a boy is destined to become depends somewhat on whether his name happens to beLolo, orJohn.
It was years after that I opened, at Baraka, in the French Congo, a boarding-school for Fang boys. At the beginning of the term I gathered the boys and brought them to Baraka with theDorothy. The mountain does not come to Mahomet, so Mahomet goes and fetches it.As they were scattered over the entire area of the great Fang field, the opening of the school was a formidable labour of two weeks; and it was also the most exhausting and trying experience of the whole year. For these two weeks were spent not in actual travel, but nearly all of it in the towns in red-hot contentions with the parents of the boys, who at the first were always unwilling to let them come to the school. In the more remote towns many of them suspected that I wanted to sell the boys into slavery, or even to kill them for some unknown purpose. There were days, before the school was well known, when I was utterly disheartened by their continual refusal, in town after town, to let me have their boys, though there were many bright lads in most of the towns.
The boys themselves would have come; the trouble was with their parents. Sometimes I was constrained to say that the parental institution was an intolerable nuisance; or, at least, that the African child might well envy the blessed Melchizedek who was without father or mother. But orphans are not to be found. Each child has a score of parents; for a child’s parents include all his uncles and aunts even several degrees removed. The child of course knows his own parents and makes a difference between them and the rest; but he addresses them all as “Father” or “Mother,” and they divide parental authority among them, all taking a hand in the child’s bringing-up: and it must be admitted that no better way could be devised for bringing up a first-class savage.
I usually held a service in the town. Then I asked the people for boys for my school, explaining the purpose of the school. The first reply was always a loud general consent—which did not deceive me; for I knew that it was only general and did not apply to any particular boy. As soon as a boy jumps up and says, “I want to go,” immediately several fathers and a score of mothersorder him to sit down; another boy expresses his desire to come, and another score of parents protest. Then the war is on; and during its progress I usually receive a goodly share of cursing and abuse. With some I argue, with some I plead; sometimes I flatter, sometimes I scold—anything to get the boy. Besides diplomacy, a present of a piece of laundry soap was a necessity. I carried the yellowest kind of it, in long bars which I cut off by the inch.
I would not take any boy, whom I had not had before, without his parents’ consent. And if I failed to obtain their consent, however unreasonable they might be, I declined to take the boy, though I often left him crying on the bank, or sometimes fighting a whole mob of his numerous relations single-handed. But if the boy had been in my school before and I had expended months of labour upon him the question was quite different. I then felt that I had a claim upon him, and I would take him if I possibly could, even in spite of his parents.
In one town I met a fine boy, Ndong Nzenye, a tiny and handsome child, who had already been in my school. Of course he wished to return, and I was delighted that there seemed to be no parental objections. But at the last moment the inevitable mother appeared, and on general principles vetoed his coming. When she saw that she was unable to prevail she flew at him to give him a parting blow. He ran the length of the street—the woman following at his heels—and back again, and towards me for protection. I also ran towards him; but she was gaining on him, and just before we met she struck him, on the back, a blow with her fist that hurt him badly, and with a cry he fell into my arms. She said: “Now you can go with your white father;” and she went into the house looking as if she thought she had done a good deed.
He was leaving home for six months and that was his farewell. One naturally wonders whether there are any moral possibilities for a boy who comes of such stock and from such a home. Yet that boy, as I knew him for two years, in the school and out of it, was gentle, obedient and lovable; though if he had remained in that town he would have grown up a savage like his people.
Although such mothers are not uncommon, yet as a rule when it was settled that the boy was coming to school his mother would prepare him some little delicacy to eat on the way; and occasionally, though seldom, I have been touched by evidences of real tenderness. In a certain far-away bush-town, more than one hundred miles in the interior, I approached an old woman to plead her consent for her boy who was eager to come with me. The Fang word fornoiskoko(kaw-kaw). As soon as I had spoken she began shaking her head, in regular time with her words, and repeating in a continuous monotone: “Ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko,” on and on, like an agitated crow, all the time I was talking, and seeming not to stop for breath. I talked loud however, and she heard. I told her how much the other boys who belong to that town would in future surpass her boy, until at length I saw that her judgment was convinced and was gaining a slow victory over her feelings. She was still shaking her head, and she continued the ceaseless “Ko-ko-ko-ko”; but big tears were rolling down her cheeks, for she knew that she was going to yield. She was gradually lowering her voice, while I went on to say that I would take good care of her boy and that I could teach him many things that she did not know. By this time, though she was still shaking her head very slowly, her voice had died out. I gave the woman a big piece of laundry soap—four inches perhaps.
EKANG.A little scholar.
EKANG.A little scholar.
EKANG.A little scholar.
DISPENSARY—THE DAILY CLINIC.At the extreme end, on the spectator’s left, Mendam (see pp.191,198) is the boy who is kneeling, and has his hands on another boy’s shoulders.
DISPENSARY—THE DAILY CLINIC.At the extreme end, on the spectator’s left, Mendam (see pp.191,198) is the boy who is kneeling, and has his hands on another boy’s shoulders.
DISPENSARY—THE DAILY CLINIC.At the extreme end, on the spectator’s left, Mendam (see pp.191,198) is the boy who is kneeling, and has his hands on another boy’s shoulders.
In one town a father whose boy had been in my school refused to let him come the second time, giving as his reason that I was teaching him not to kill people, while he wished him to kill. The father had heard him, after he had been in my school, teaching the people of the town a new commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” I tried my best to get the boy back again in the school in spite of his father; but I did not succeed. I wonder how many he has killed by this time!
In a certain town at the head of one of the smaller rivers of the lower Gaboon there was one of my boys, named Ekang, a little fellow whom I regarded as the brightest boy in school; at least he led them all in French. I reached the town about ten o’clock at night. The people were all asleep; but Ekang soon heard my voice in the street and came quickly. He approached making amusing and mysterious signs to me, enjoining silence, which he explained when he came up by whispering: “She’s asleep.”
There was no need to explain who “she” was. But even while he was speaking “she” had awakened and was charging furiously down the street. The boy proposed that I should take his hand and run; but the suggestion did not appeal to me; so I turned and faced the foe. Ekang got behind me, and for further safety put his arms around my waist. She made a dash at him, but he circled around to the other side. Then began a gymnastic performance of which I was literally the centre, the two revolving about me, first one way, then the other, the boy’s arms still around my waist, and both of them keeping up a lively and impressive conversation, which, with the African, is inseparable from action. If I have the slightest degree of that personal dignity that would seem to be the right of a man who believes the first chapter of Genesis, neither mother nor son recognized it. Failing to lay hold of him in this manner shethen tried to catch his hands at my waist; but here I asserted my rights and kept her at full arms’ length. When I told her that I really could not have her so near to me, she replied: “I’m not after you [which greatly relieved me]: I’m after my boy; for I’m his mother.”
I said that it was impossible that she could be his mother; that mothers love their children, and that she talked as if she wanted to kill this child; and seeing that he was one of my favourite boys I must take him away from her cruelty. A long and trying altercation followed, despite the late hour, and a hard day’s work. At last she was so far reduced, or so sleepy that it was only a matter of judging how much soap it would take to complete the victory. It took nearly half a bar; but it sealed a strong friendship.
I could almost write a poem on laundry soap. I had never before imagined the intimate relation of soap and sentiment. Even in our own land it ranks about next to godliness: but in Africa godliness usually takes a second place to laundry soap. My own method was to try godliness first and then to follow up the effect with laundry soap.
One mother, who was not in town when her husband let me have their boy, having heard upon her return that the boy had gone, immediately followed us in a canoe, and overtook us at the next town. She came close to the launch and, shrieking like a maniac, took a rank poison which she had provided for the purpose, and holding it up in her hand declared that if I would not deliver the boy to her instantly she should swallow the poison. I parleyed with her a while until I felt that she probably meant what she said. After death, she assured me, she would haunt me and cause me all kinds of trouble as long as I lived. My wives would fall in love with other men and would run away; as fast as I couldmarry others they also would leave me. This was an appalling prospect for a single man; so I gave her the boy.
Towards the close of a tour of this kind the nights were uncomfortable because of the many that had to be accommodated in the launch. I have never laid claim to genius except on the ground that I could put more boys into one bed than any man of my generation. The launch was supposed to provide sleeping room for six persons. But more than once I made it accommodate as many as thirty, ten of them being adults. The retiring of such a company at bedtime was a strategic performance that required strict and skilful oversight and called for some very precise manœuvres.
It was much more difficult to get boys from the towns of the upper river. The people were more ignorant and savage. One day on one of these trips, after several successive failures, I called at a certain town,Ikala, where I held a service and asked for boys and after much talking procured one boy. Then I went further up the river to a town namedMfu, where I anchored for the night. It was the hot season of the year. I had left Angom at daylight that morning, had done some hard work on the engine, had called at several towns and had held a service in each, preaching in undershirt, overalls and grease. Besides there was the responsible work of navigating in these rapid waters of the upper river—in short I was dead tired. After a hasty supper, I went ashore and held a long service at Mfu. The attendance was very large and was followed by endless conversation; for a white face was a rare sight and the message of the Gospel quite strange. When I asked for boys one boy said he wanted to come; but he had overlooked the consideration of his mother’s consent. A little later she burst upon the scene in a tropical rage. She was fairly crazed with anger. I tried to persuade her that I had nointention of eating her boy, nor of turning him into a monkey or a hobgoblin. On the matter of the monkey she was not easily convinced, for she had heard of white men doing such things and selling the monkeys on passing steamers. “Moreover (observing my eye-glasses), what was that thing that I wore on my eyes,” she would like to know, “but the very diabolical fetish by which I changed people into monkeys? and I had best take care how I looked at her through that fetish, for she was not a person to be trifled with, but very dangerous when roused, though naturally good.”
She was so ugly with anger, and so ferocious that if my glasses had really been endowed with power to change her into an average monkey I might have been tempted to use them for the improvement of her looks and her manners. There was no use in talking that night; she scarcely heard me; and about ten o’clock I returned to the launch, without the boy, and dreadfully tired.
In the interval of my absence, the man of Ikala who had given me his boy, repenting of his goodness (the only thing the savage ever repents of), had followed me up the river with several friends, all armed, and had stolen the boy from the launch. Nor did he even have the good manners to leave the two inches of soap that I had given him.
Next morning before breakfast I again landed, hoping by more substantial eloquence to persuade the woman of Mfu. For the boy, whose name wasMfega, was a very manly little fellow and wanted to come as much as I wanted to have him. I took with me a pair of bright, brass arm-rings that had cost seven cents—the largest present I ever made for the purpose. I turned them about in the sunlight as I passed her house, and indifferently rattled them. After a while I went straight toher house and offered her the rings for the boy. Notwithstanding Paul’s contempt, I found the eloquence of sounding brass more persuasive than the tongue of an angel, which I had before assumed. She surrendered him to me, not even prescribing how he should be cooked. Mfega returned to his town after several months and he taught these same people to sing our hymns and told them many things he had learned about the true God; and my reception ever after that was friendly and cordial.
I then crossed the river to another town, calledFula, where the government had lately established a post, which was in charge of two black soldiers of Senegal, imported by the French. I visited in Fula a while and then set out to a bush-town, or group of towns, calledNkol Amvam, more than two hours from the river. I have said elsewhere that there is no such thing as amilein Africa, and that periods of time are used as terms of linear distance. The road was at the very worst, much of the way knee-deep in mud, for it was the wet season. The boys called itebol nzen—a rotten road. The part of one that was above ground was kept moist by the dripping undergrowth that met across the path, which was also full of thorns and briers. Seldom had I travelled on any such road, and not at all since the days, long past, when I had walked with Dr. Good in the Bulu interior. I had now been in Africa a long time, and this road was almost too much for me.
I had with me for guide one of my schoolboys, Mendam, who lived in a town a little further down the river. Mendam was one of the characters of the school, independent and original, a chucklesome boy with the best laugh in the school. Mendam thought that the walk over such a road was too much for “his white man” in his present state of health, and I was touched by the feeling of regard and sympathy that he showed. Wecame to a running stream almost to our knees, clear and cool, so grateful and refreshing that I halted and stood in the middle of it for some time, quite tired. Immediately Mendam was on his knees washing the mud off my feet and trousers.
Though I had never before been in Nkol Amvam I had had five of their boys in my school the preceding year. The chief had brought them out to the river. I was therefore not entirely a stranger, and as usual the exceedingly kind reception which I received from all the people was in striking contrast to that of those towns from which I had never had boys in the school; and the boys themselves fairly shouted for joy. This time they wanted me to take all the boys in the town. I held a service and then started back to the river taking nine boys from Nkol Amvam.
I reached Fula at noon, just in time to prevent a quarrel between my crew and the two soldiers who were in charge of the government post. These natives of Senegal, although they know French, and many of them have some education, are still savages; and it is a pity that they should ever be armed and left among a people who are foreign to them without the supervening authority of a white man. They are cruel and bestial. These two men were a terror to all the husbands in the surrounding towns. This day they had come into the town, and seeing two of my men, Ndong Koni and Toko, who were chatting freely with the people and naturally attracting a good deal of attention, they thought they would let the townspeople see that they were the superiors of these coastmen. To their insolence my men responded with contempt, and the quarrel had gone about as far as mere words could go when I arrived. I soon settled that palaver and we hurried on board, and started down the river.
We had great difficulty in turning the launch. The current was exceedingly swift, a roaring torrent, and the channel narrow and dangerous. As we began to turn, the bow necessarily came close to the bank into slack water, while the stern was in the strong middle-current. And before we could get sufficient way on her the stern would be carried down leaving her bow still up-stream and headed for the bank. Twice we had to drop the anchor. Then we threw out a line from the stern and passed it around a tree, and weighing the anchor let the bow turn with the current. We were soon rushing down the river through rapids and whirlpools, and swirling currents. We called at one or two towns on the way, and reached Angom about three o’clock, where I had work for the rest of the day. It was a great relief to get back into the well-known channel of the broad deep river that “flows unvexed to the sea.”
On the way up the river the preceding day, we had stopped at a town where one of my former schoolboys, Ngema, whose father refused to let him come again, said that he would like to go up the river with me to the towns beyond, expecting to stop on the way back. I told him that I could not stop at his town coming down; so he took a small canoe in tow. Next day, when we made our last stop before passing his town, he got into the canoe and was towed behind us; but when he was near home he suddenly scrambled upon the launch and as we passed by he cut the tow-line and called out to the people to send some one after the canoe, that he was going back to school with me. I of course consented to his coming, for he had already been in my school two terms and I had a claim on him. I was delighted with the plan and greatly enjoyed carrying him swiftly past his town while a concourse of his scandalized parents stood on the bank executing fantastic gestures of remonstrance;for, standing beside the engine, I could not hear their words. I waved back at them pleasantly as we swept around a curve out of their sight.
Later in the day, when we were at Angom, Ngema came to me with a peculiar expression that combined amusement and annoyance, with his head inclined to one side as if he were too weak to hold it up, being quite overcome by some piece of intelligence. He said, “Mr. Milligan, father has come.” At the same time a loud noise, increasing as it approached, confirmed the news. But I was not alarmed, as I had the man at a disadvantage, away from his own town. Supposing that we might stop at Angom, he had followed us in a canoe. The boy kept close to me, while I went on with my work, not paying much attention to the father’s loud remonstrance, but occasionally jesting with him on the score of the boy’s success in getting away from his town. The African likes to be teased; it is the consummate expression of brotherly love. In the evening when I was about to start for the coast I went to him and said: “Now don’t you think you have cursed me enough for this trip? Can’t we be friends before I go?”
Looking somewhat abashed, but no longer unfriendly, he replied quietly: “A bar of soap would settle the palaver.”
The African savage is more than “half child.” I was sure that when I would take these boys back to their towns, no matter what might have been the circumstances under which I obtained them, their parents would be the best friends I had in the town.
That evening I started down the river with theEvangelinein tow, which had been at Angom while we were up the river. I made two short stops to take on more boys. An entertaining episode occurred at one of these places. Eight boys, seeing theDorothycomingdown the river, came out in a large canoe, some of them expecting to go with me to Baraka. They had not the least idea of the speed or the momentum of theDorothy, and they ran straight across her bow. It was an exciting moment when the river suddenly closed over a canoe and eight boys and a terrific yell. I scarcely knew which of the submerged elements formed the largest bubbles on the surface. But they all came up—boys, canoe, and yell—and we secured them.
I had in all fifty-one persons on board theDorothyand theEvangeline. I ran all that night and reached Baraka in the early morning. But I must tell the story of that night; for we encountered a tornado on the way.
I usually left Gaboon in the morning so as to have the first thirty miles of the journey past and get into the river before the sea breeze became strong. In returning it was not so easy to choose the time for this part of the journey; and I sometimes encountered a rough sea. On this occasion I had intended to anchor over night at a point sixty miles from Gaboon and finish the journey in the early hours of the next day. But I felt the strain of responsibility for this big human cargo and I was anxious to reach home. Sleep would be impossible for me in the crowded launch. When I considered also that the sea is usually more quiet at night, I decided to go on the remaining sixty miles to Gaboon. The moon and the stars were shining brightly above us, and almost as brightly in the depths of the swift, silent river. When we reached the sea it was as smooth as satin, and it continued so for a few hours. The air was so still that at length the stillness became ominous, and I began to fear that it was the calm that precedes a storm.
A black cloud loomed up from the horizon which we recognized as the signal of the tornado. As usual there seemed to be two skies, the one revolving within theother, in opposite directions. But the black cloud hurried towards the zenith, spreading abroad, until in the course of a few minutes it covered the entire sky, blotting out every star. We hastily closed all the windows and shutters and carried down some of the stuff from the top of the launch; but there was not time to save all. The darkness above and around us seemed palpable like smoke, and beneath us the sea was like ink. There was not a light on sea or land to guide us and of course we could not see the shore-line, which we had always followed instead of steering by the compass. We could only take the soundings and keep out in deep water. I do not want to frighten my readers as I was frightened that night; so I hasten to say that nothing came of it except the fright. But, having the sole responsibility for the lives of those fifty persons, the strain was great and I could have taken Jonah’s place and have been flung overboard for the safety of the rest. We moderns are more practical, however, and I took the soundings, myself heaving the lead. In such a moment I could not trust a native to do it—except Ndong Koni, and he was at the wheel. For the native is accustomed to the canoe, and in a storm his instinct would be to go to the shore. In a moment of peril he would be not unlikely to follow his own instinct instead of my orders.
Suddenly the wind came; the tempest was unchained. We first heard its roar in the distance; and in a moment the tornado was on. I fairly lost my breath at the first swoop of it. The launch quivered and trembled like a frightened horse. Once or twice she swayed so far over that the small boys screamed, and then realizing that this was a life-and-death struggle, and that it depended entirely upon her, she braced herself for the battle. The poorDorothy! Like some of her fellow missionaries she was overworked. Intended only for inland waters,she was not only greatly overloaded, but also required to fight her way through a tropical tornado on a wide sea. We gave her half speed and steered right into the storm. The first blast carried away all that was on top of the launch. The wind raged fiercer and louder; but theDorothysomehow held right on. Fortunately she had to contend only with the wind; and not with wind and wave, for the sea was not yet rough. At last the welcome rain came, falling as it falls only in the tropics. Soon afterwards the wind died down, but the rain continued to fall for hours, and it seemed ice-cold.
Through all that storm, when theDorothywas toiling in the sea, and afterwards through the rain, for more than two hours, I stood outside on the small forward deck throwing the heavy lead without stopping, and directing the man at the wheel. As we anchored the day was breaking, which made twenty-four hours of continuous work. But all the following day, whether at work or rest, I was thinking of the long overdue furlough.