Mr. Robert E. Speer stopt from a British India steamer at Muscat
to visit Rev. Peter Zwemer, who was working there alone. Mr.
Zwemer took his visitor up to his house, where, he said, his
family were staying. There, sitting on benches about the room,
were eighteen little black boys. They had been rescued from a
slave-ship that had been coming up the eastern coast of Arabia
with those little fellows, to be sold on the date plantations
along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The British consul had
seized them from the traders, and Mr. Zwemer had undertaken to
keep them until they were eighteen years old, when they would be
given their manumission papers.
“When I got them,” said Mr. Zwemer, “the whole eighteen huddled
together in the middle of the floor, like jack-rabbits, and
every time I came close, they huddled a little nearer. They
mistrusted every one. On each little cheek-bone was the brand
of the slave’s iron, and for months and months they had known
nothing but hatred and beatings, and had been shut down in the
hold of the slave-ship, in order that they might make no noise
and betray their presence.”
As Mr. Speer saw them they looked happy and confident, and they
sang for him, “Jesus loves me, this I know,” looking as if the
realization that all their blessings had come from that divine
Source had already sunk deep into their hearts. (Text.)
(1907)