"SPEAK YE, AND SO DO"
Ok Thou, who gavest English speech
To both our Anglo-Saxon breeds,
And didst adown all ages teach
That Art of crowning words with deeds,
May we, who use the speech, be blest
With bravery, that when shall come
In thy full time our hour of test--
That promised hour of Christendom,
We may be found, whate'er our need,
How grim soe'er our circumstance,
Unwilling to be fed or freed,
Or fame or fortune to enhance
By flinching from the good begun,
By broken word or serpent plan,
Or cruelty in malice done
To helpless beast or subject man.
Amen
There was method, of course, behind the difference in treatment
extended to us and to the Greeks. The motive for making Coutlass sell
his mules and stay within the miserable confines of the rest-camp was
to make sure he had money enough to feed himself, and to cut off all
opportunity for swift escape. Not for a second were the Germans
sufficiently unwary to admit collusion with him.
The real ownership of the three mules was left in little doubt when
they were sold at public auction and bought in by Schillingschen. Fred
and Will attended the auction the day following our scene in court, and
extracted a lot of amusement from bidding against Schillinschen,
compelling him finally to pay a good sum more than the mules were worth.
Coutlass was in a strange predicament. The looting of Brown's cattle
had been a bid for fortune on his own account. Yet by causing us to
give chase he had brought us into the German net more handily than ever
they had hoped. So it was reasonable on his part to suppose that if he
could betray us more completely still, he might get rewarded instead of
treated as a broken tool.
Yet he did not dare to approach our camp, for fear lest Fred should
carry out his threat and fight. The fight would certainly be reported
by the askari on watch at the crossroads, and that would destroy his
chance of making believe to be in our confidence. So he kept sending
notes to me when the others were absent, even the native boy who
brought them--not daring to enter our camp, but fastening the message
to a stone and throwing it in through the tent door.
They were strange, illiterate messages, childishly conceived, varying
between straight-out offers to help us escape and dark insinuations
that he knew of something it would pay us well to investigate.
It was an English missionary spending three days in Muanza on his way
to Lake Tanganika, who came to see what he could do for my wound and
cleared up the mystery quite a little by reporting what he had heard in
the non-commissioned mess, where he had been invited to eat a meal.
"The Greek," he said, "is trying to curry favor by pretending he knows
your plans. If he succeeds in worming into your confidence and
persuading you to make plans to escape with him, they will feel
justified in putting you in jail--and that, I understand, is where they
want you."
"Will you do me a favor?" I asked.
He hesitated. It was kindness that had sent him down to ease my pain,
if possible, not anti-Germanism; it was part of German policy to pose
as the friend of all missionaries, and if anything he was prejudiced
against us--particularly against Brown, whom he had visited in jail,
and who assured him the only hymn he ever sang was "Beer, glorious
beer!"
"That depends," he answered.
"We are quite sure any letters we write will be opened," I said.
He answered that he could hardly believe that.
"If we could send a letter unopened to British East it would solve our
worst problem," I told him. "If you know of a dependable messenger who
would carry our letter, I would contribute fifty pounds out of my own
pocket to the funds of your mission."