This chapter tells how Ma became a gipsy again and lived on a
hill-top, and how after a hard fight she won a new region for
Jesus; gives some notes from her diary and letters to little
friends at home, and pictures her amongst her treasures.
Some distance from Ikpe there is a high hill called Odoro Ikpe, on which
the Government has a rest-house.
Ma climbed up there one Saturday night.
"What a grand view!" she cried, as she looked over the wide plain and
breathed in the cool fresh wind with a great content, "I've never been
so high before."
And then her eyes grew sad. For all that green country was the home of
heathenism. The chiefs had shut and bolted the door of their hearts
against Jesus, and would not let any teachers or missionaries come in
and disturb their ways.
Ma had often gone to them in her wheeled chair, fording rivers, crossing
swamps, pushing through wet forests, and stood and knocked at their
hearts in His name, but in vain. They were afraid that if she came all
their old fashions would tumble down about their ears.
She was not the one to lose courage. As she sat there on the hill-top,
she dreamed that she saw the whole region being won for Jesus, and the
people coming to His house clothed and in their right mind.
"O God!" she prayed, "old and feeble and unworthy as I am, help me to
win them."
And there and then she put on her armour and braced herself for battle.
"Janie," she said, "we'll stay here until we overcome these chiefs."
Janie looked round and grunted. The rest-house had only holes for
windows; there was a doorway, but no door; the floor was of dried mud,
and there was not even a table or a chair. But Ma could be happy with
nothing, she would have been content with bare ground for a bed, and the
starry sky for a covering. She did, indeed, find that it was better to
sleep in the open air than in the stuffy rest-house, and she lay down
every night in the verandah with the cool wind fanning her cheeks.
Day after day she called the chiefs and talked with them; she coaxed the
little boys and girls, who were timid and sullen, to come and learn A B
C; she stood at night in the villages when the women were cooking at
their fires and the young people were dancing to the sound of the drum,
and spoke to all who would listen of the love of Jesus and His power to
free them from sin.
And at last, after a weary struggle, her patience and goodness and
humour melted the hard hearts, and one by one the chiefs came and said
they would allow her to do anything she liked, and they would try to
worship her God and learn the new ways.
[Illustration]
Her heart was full. She went out in the cool of the night and stood
gazing over the dim plain. All was silent and still, and the stars were
shining more gloriously than she had ever seen them before. Her eyes
swept over them, as they often did, and rested on the Southern Cross,
the group she loved most of all, because it was the symbol of her dear
Lord watching over the dark and sinful world, and her thin worn face was
beautiful, for her dream had come true.
She went in and sat on the floor, and leant her weary back against the
wall of the room, and wrote by the light of a candle stuck in its own
grease, telling her friends how happy she was--the happiest woman in all
the world.
"I can't think," she said, "why God has so highly honoured and trusted
me."
She was a wreck, her body was a mass of pain, she was growing deaf and
blind, she was tired and weak, and oh, so lonely! Yet her heart was
bursting with love and gratitude and joy. O wonderful Ma!
All this time she was working three stations--Use, Ikpe, and Odoro Ikpe,
and going constantly between them. She kept a diary, and every
night--often in the middle of the night--she wrote in it the story of
the day. And what a story of toil and heroism it is! Here are several
sentences from it:
Left the beach for Ikpe in the evening, sail in moonlight;
reached Ikpe 4 P. M. next day; ran on to a tree; boys thrown
into the water.
Egbo out all night, screaming and drumming like mad-men till
daylight. All drunk.
First night in new house. Sorry to leave the wee hut I have
enjoyed so much comfort and blessing in.
Patients from early morning; man bitten by rat; another by
snake. School begun, nearly a hundred scholars.
First Christian funeral at Ikpe.
Chiefs here by daybreak for palavers.
Splendid congregation. People changing for the better.
Terrific thunderstorm. School-boys drenched. Got a big fire on
in hall, and all sat round the blaze and I gave them a reading
lesson.
A great reception at Use--thank God for the girls and home.
Thank God for sleep!
On roof all day, head and neck aching, hands broken and
bleeding.
Carrying sand, cleaning corn patch, mudding and rubbing walls.
Cut my first two roses from the rose bush--lovely, a tender gift
from God.
After sleepless night found white ants in millions in the
drawers.
Washed a big washing.
Terrific rain storm, no school.
Very feeble, scarcely able to stand upright in church.
Horrid night with cross child.
Lovely letters from dear ones. God is very good to me.
Every boy in school clothed to-day for first time.
Heaps of sick babies.
Full up with work till late at night. Dead tired.
Two women murdered on the way from market and their heads taken
away.
Fever; trying to make a meat safe.
Sleepless night, baby screaming every few minutes.
Splendid fever-sleep full of dreams. Thank God for daily
strength to go on however feeble. Thank God for the girls who
got up and got me tea without any bother.
Reached Rest House at darkening. A fearful night of misery with
mosquitoes and hard filthy ground on which we lay. Rose at
first streak of dawn and never was so glad to leave a place.
Baby yelled all night.
Nothing done, low fever, but a very happy day.
Fever, stupor sleep. Lost count of days.
Useless after utterly sleepless night. Made such sermons and
delivered them all night long.
Her friends in Scotland began to call her home, tempting her with
visions of rest and peace and lazy days in gardens amongst flowers and
all sorts of good and loving things, but though she thought of it with
longing and tears, she said she must first build a house on the hill-top
of Odoro Ikpe to be ready for a missionary when the Church sent one.
After that perhaps....
So she started to put up her last house, and because she was so feeble
and her gang of labourers were such idlers and drones, she found it the
hardest task she had ever tried to do. "The African works well," she
said, "if you are at hand to guide and spur him on, but just leave him
and he sits down and talks or sleeps till you come back." So vexed
sometimes was she with the men dawdling over their trifling bit of work
that she would rise and box their ears, but they just laughed and
thought it a fine joke. Ma did not like to do such things: she wrote to
one of her little correspondents: "You would have thought your
missionary friend was rather hard-hearted, but hard things have to be
done and said when one's heart aches to say and do most melting
things."
Ma had more hope of the children than of the grown-ups, and she tried to
get hold of them and teach them. "Though they are black," she told a boy
in the Highlands, "they are just as bonnie and nice as if they were
white. Indeed the colour does not matter. We are all the same inside our
heads and hearts, and the little lads who know about Jesus are trying as
hard to be good and brave Christians as you boys who are white."
She was specially hopeful about the boys. Once a missionary spoke to her
about one who seemed to have no wish to be a Christian, and she replied,
"Dinna gie up hope. You dinna ken what is behind him and what he has to
fight against. His mother has maybe made him promise not to do
it--perhaps made him chop _mbiam_ (take the solemn oath) over it." And
after she talked with the boy she said, "He's a fine laddie, and ye'll
have him yet."
Many boys came to her for help in their troubles, and how patiently she
listened to what they had to say, and how wisely and tenderly she spoke
to them! She loved them all, and thought about them just as a kind
mother would have done. To those who were going to be taught and trained
she said, "You must be the leaders of your race and help them to rise,
but you can only lead others to Jesus if you follow Him closely
yourself."
That was always what she was telling her own children: "Keep close to
Jesus." "Bairns," she would say, "it's the wee lassie that sits beside
her mother at meal-times that gets all the nice bittocks. The one who
sits far away and sulks disna ken what she misses. Even the pussy gets
more than she does. Keep close to Jesus the Good Shepherd all the way."
When the Government took a number of the Ikpe lads to work on the new
railway being built to the coal-fields they came to Ma and said they
were afraid to go so far.
"God will go with you and keep you," she said. "Try and find out some
one who preaches the Gospel and keep near him."
On the fly-leaf of a Bible she gave one of them, she wrote:
_Ud[:o] Ekpenyo[~n] Edikpo._
_Trusting he will hold by the truths of this Holy Book when in
the midst of strangers he may be exposed to temptation. Never
forget prayer when reading.--Your friend_,
M. SLESSOR.
"This book," she told Ud[:o], "will be a lamp to you and guide you."
These young men returned none the worse for their exile.
The boys who wanted to be good had more to put up with than those at
home. At Ikpe there was an _mbre_, or play, called _ekang_, and all
young men had to join it and pay a fee of L10. Those who would not were
fined ten rods, some fish, some leaves called _akan_, and two jars of
palm wine, and had to appear in the street and dance backwards to the
beat of the drum, and then were flogged and hounded to their homes. This
custom Ma put down.
Once the chiefs gave orders that all men were to hunt in the bush, and
the animals caught were to be sacrificed and eaten in honour of the
_Ndems_ in the town. The lads of the Church refused to go to the hunt or
to eat of the sacrifice. "Then," said the chiefs, "you will be
banished." Word was sent to Ma, who was at Use, and when she came she
told the chiefs that no lad must be forced to do anything against his
conscience, and from that day to this there has been neither hunt nor
sacrifice.
[Illustration: A TOWN _NDEM_.]
The people sacrificed and ate animals before the _Ndems_, because they
believed that it would make the yams on their farms grow big. Ma said
God alone gave them such a blessing, and that the children of the Church
could no longer follow the custom. It was not long before the custom was
stopped.
She was very far out of the world, and seldom saw a white face. How
glad she was when Mr. Bowes from Calabar appeared. They walked together
from Ikpe to Odoro Ikpe. On the road she stopped and helped a woman to
lift a very heavy load of palm nuts to her head. Then she went into the
compound of an old chief who was ill, found out what was the matter, and
arranged to send him medicine. At the entrance were three white chickens
with their heads cut off. "It is a sacrifice," she said. "Oh, the pity
of it." On going up the steep hill Mr. Bowes wanted to carry a bag she
had slung over her shoulder. "Na, na, laddie," she said, "it's my cat
and it helps to balance me."
Writing to Ratcliffe at this time, she says:
I have been without money for nearly a month! What do you think
of that? Sometimes, but not very often, we have been hungry
because we had not enough money to send to the market to buy
food. The workmen make such a hole in my pocket. It is very
difficult to get money brought from Calabar, and then the people
won't take English money when it does come. They use copper
wires, which we buy from the next station. Don't we live a very
funny life? Pure gipsies, only we don't steal.
"It is sometimes a rather wearying kind of living, the gipsying sort of
life," she told Christine; "but while there are no workers to go round
we must do this as the second best way of holding on." And then she
wonders what her little friend is doing and asks, "Are you going to do
something fine in the new year? I trust so. At least you will be good,
and To Be is a better verb than To Do in my estimation."
She began to remember that Christine was growing up, and did not like
the idea. So she says to her: "I shall try and keep you in my heart with
all the sweet mystery of girlhood. I should like, for many things, just
to keep you among the simple loves and pleasures of home, and not to let
you slip over into the womanhood which has such heights and depths that
alternately beckon and frighten one. But God's order is the only right
one, and you have a claim on Him."
"I shall be fifteen this August," Christine replied. "I am rather sorry
we are all getting so big. However, there is one comfort, when we grow
bigger we will be able to go out into the world and do good things, and
perhaps splendid things, and help to make people better and
happier--though, of course, we can do that always."
That was what Ma liked to hear, and when any of her young friends grew
up and married and went out into that world of which Christine spoke,
she would send them lovely messages. Here is one to a grand-niece of Mr.
and Mrs. Goldie (the pioneer missionaries of Calabar who had been so
good to her) when she was about to sail to America:
MY DEAR LASSIE--You do not know me, but your parents and all
belonging to you are very dear to me, and I have always, from
before you were born, loved you all and tried to follow you all.
And now God is calling you to live your life and to witness for
Him in a strange land; and doubtless you will have fits of
home-sickness, and times when you will want those who have
hitherto made your world for you, and sometimes your husband
will feel the same, for marriage does not--if it be a wholesome
and sane one--destroy the old loves, but as one who knows what
the leaving home means, I know that you will find your Saviour
_near_, and _all-sufficient_ for all times and things.
Do you know a good old practice of ours in a strange land has
been to sing the 2nd Paraphrase every Saturday night. You tell
your husband to try it. At worship every Saturday night you sing
that, and though your voices break, you will find it a tonic.
You will have all your things packed up and ready and your
purchases all made, but as there are always a few small odds and
ends, as hairpins and button-hooks, etc., left at the end when
you are ready to embark and your boxes not at hand, I enclose a
few shillings to have in your pocket for that emergency.
I remember Mrs. Goldie having forgotten gloves and safety-pins
in Liverpool, and we rushed out of the cab to get them on our
way to the steamer!
May every blessing go with you, and may your married life be a
long and useful and happy one. He who hath hitherto led you will
still compass your path.--Yours affectionately,
MARY SLESSOR.
Ma loved to hear how the girls at home were working for Jesus. How
interested she was in all the new things that were being started--the
Girls' Auxiliaries, the Study Circles, and Guilds! "The Church," she
said, "is wise in winning the young, for they are going to be the
mothers of the future and shape the destiny of the nation, and they will
be all the wiser and the better mothers and Church members and citizens
for what they are doing."
Some of her little friends were quite young. There was Dorothy, for
instance, who was only five. She sent out Ma a picture-book which she
had made herself, and Ma wrote back saying, "I wish I could give you a
kiss and say 'Thank you' to your very real self by my very real self,
instead of sending you a mere message on paper. But you see I cannot fly
over the sea, and you can't come here, so what better can we do?"
The letters from home Ma kept, along with other treasures, in an old
chest of drawers that she loved because it had been her mother's. If the
bairns had been extra good she would gather them about her there after
the lamp was lit, and show them everything. The letters were read over
and over, and the children knew all about Dorothy's doll that could
speak and sleep, and Jim's rocking-horse which Santa Claus had brought,
and the new little brother that had come to Mary's home. Then the
photographs of Dorothy, and Fay and her brother, and Christine and
Happy, and others would be spread out and talked about and admired
again. There were also the little gifts sent to her, just trifles, but
very precious to her, because some bairn at home had worked at them.
"To think of the trouble they took," she would say.
And the heather! How Ma loved it! These dry bits of plants brought tears
to her eyes and sent her thoughts away across the wide sea to the
homeland, and she saw in vision the glint of the sun, and the shadow of
the cloud on the purple moors, and felt the scent of the heather and the
tang of the salt sea breeze, and heard again the cry of the whaup.
"That's the Bonkle heather," she would say; "oh, the kind hearts there."
"And that's the Blairgowrie heather and bog myrtle; never a year but it
comes, and it is like a call across the sea."
One package she opened very tenderly, for it held the wee toys and
well-worn books of a little boy who had died. They had been sent out to
her from the heart-broken mother. Ma could never look at this beautiful
gift without her eyes growing misty with tears.
In another corner was a cupboard filled with china and coloured glass,
very common, but very rare in Ma's eyes, because they were gifts bought
by the bairns at market or factory with their odd pennies and shyly
offered to her. She often scolded them well for wasting their money in
such a way, but all the same she was proud of these tokens of their
love.
Then, softened by sweet memories and kind feelings, the family went to
evening prayers. The children, squatting on the floor, read verses
round, and Ma talked to them simply about higher things, sometimes in
Scots, sometimes in Efik, after which they would sing old psalms or
hymns, like "Now Israel may say," which was one of Ma's favourites. No
books were used, and woe betide the bairn or visitor who did not know
the beginning of the next verse! Ma, however, liked the children to
learn new hymns, and sometimes they could be heard singing the tuneful
ones in the yard or away in the bush or on the road.
[Illustration: MASK USED IN NATIVE PLAYS.]
[Illustration: MA'S LAST VOYAGE.]