THE MAN WHO WOULD GO ON
_David Livingstone_
(Dates born 1813, died 1873)
There was a deathly stillness in the hot African air as two bronzed
Scots strode along the narrow forest path.
The one, a young, keen-eyed doctor,[44] glanced quickly through the
trees and occasionally turned aside to pick some strange orchid and to
slip it into his collecting case. The other strode steadily along
with that curious, "resolute forward tread" of his.[45] He was David
Livingstone. Behind them came a string of African bearers carrying in
bundles on their heads the tents and food of the explorers.
Suddenly, with a crunch, Livingstone's heel went through a white
object half hidden in the long grass--a thing like an ostrich's egg.
He stooped--and his strong, bronzed face was twisted with mingled
sorrow and anger, as, looking into the face of his younger friend, he
gritted out between his clenched teeth, "The slave-raiders again!"
It was the whitening skull of an African boy.
For weeks those two Britons had driven their little steamer (the
_Asthmatic_ they called her, because of her wheezing engines) up the
Zambesi river and were now exploring its tributary the Shiré.
Each morning, before they could start the ship's engines, they had
been obliged to take poles and push from between the paddles of the
wheels the dead bodies of Africans--men, women, and children--slain
bodies which had floated down from the villages that the Arab
slave-raiders had burned and sacked. Livingstone was out on the long,
bloody trail of the slaver, the trail that stretched on and on into
the heart of Africa where no white man had ever been.
This negro boy's skull, whitening on the path, was only one more
link in the long, sickening shackle-chain of slavery that girdled
down-trodden Africa.
The two men strode on. The forest path opened out to a broad clearing.
They were in an African village. But no voice was heard and no step
broke the horrible silence. It was a village of death. The sun blazed
on the charred heaps which now marked the sites of happy African
homes; the gardens were desolate and utterly destroyed. The village
was wiped out. Those who had submitted were far away, trudging through
the forest, under the lash of the slaver; those who had been too old
to walk or too brave to be taken without fight were slain.
The heart of Livingstone burned with one great resolve--he would track
this foul thing into the very heart of Africa and then blazon its
horrors to the whole world.
The two men trudged back to the river bank again. Now, with their
brown companions, they took the shallow boat that they had brought
on the deck of the _Asthmatic_, and headed still farther up the Shiré
river from the Zambesi toward the unknown Highlands of Central Africa.
_Facing Spears and Arrows_
Only the sing-song chant of the Africans as they swung their paddles,
and the frightened shriek of a glittering parrot, broke the stillness
as the boat pushed northward against the river current.
The paddles flashed again, and as the boat came round a curve in the
river they were faced by a sight that made every man sit, paddle in
hand, motionless with horror. The bank facing them in the next curve
of the river was black with men. The ranks of savages bristled with
spears and arrows. A chief yelled to them to turn back. Then a cloud
of arrows flew over the boat.
"Go on," said Livingstone quietly to the Africans. Their paddles took
the water and the boat leapt toward the savage semi-circle on the
bank. The water was shallower now. Before any one realised what was
happening Livingstone had swung over the edge of the boat and, up to
his waist in water, was wading ashore with his arms above his head.
"It is peace!" he called out, and waded on toward the barbs of a
hundred arrows and spears. The men in the boat sat breathless, waiting
to see their leader fall with a score of spears through his body.
But the savages on the bank were transfixed with amazement at
Livingstone's sheer audacity. Awed by something god-like in this
unflinching and unarmed courage, no finger let fly a single arrow.
"You think," he called to the chief, "that I am a slave-raider." For
Livingstone knew that he had never in all his wanderings been attacked
by Africans save where they had first been infuriated by the cruel
raiders.
The chief scowled.
"See," cried Livingstone, baring his arm to show his white skin as
he again and again had done when threatened by Africans, "is this the
colour of the men who come to make slaves and to kill?"
The savages gazed with astonishment. They had never before seen so
white a skin.
"No," Livingstone went on, "this is the skin of the tribe that has
heart toward the African."
Almost unconsciously the man had dropped the spear points and arrow
heads as he was speaking. The chief listened while Livingstone, who
was now on the bank, told the savages how he had come across the great
waters from a far-off land with a message of peace and goodwill.
Unarmed and with a dauntless heroism the "white man who would go on"
had won a great victory over that tribe. He now passed on in his boat
up the river and over rapids toward the wonderful shining Highlands in
the heart of Africa.
_"Deliverance to the Captives"_
Dr. Kirk was recalled to England by the British Government; but
Livingstone trudged on in increasing loneliness over mountains and
across rivers and lakes, plunging through marshes, racked a score of
times with fever, robbed of his medicines, threatened again and again
by the guns of the slave-raiding Arabs and the spears and clubs of
savage head-hunters, bearing on his bent shoulders the Cross of the
negroes' agony--slavery, till at last, alone and on his knees in
the dead of night, our Greatheart crossed his last River, into the
presence of his Father in heaven.
Yet still, though his body was dead, his spirit would go on. For the
life Livingstone lived, the death he died, and the record he wrote
of the slave-raiders' horrible cruelties thrilled all Britain to heal
that "open sore of the world." Queen Victoria made Dr. Kirk her consul
at Zanzibar, and told him to make the Sultan of Zanzibar order all
slave-trading through that great market to cease. And to-day, because
of David Livingstone, through all the thousands of miles of Africa
over which he trod, no man dare lay the shackles of slavery on
another. To-day, where Livingstone saw the slave-market in Zanzibar,
a grand church stands, built by negro hands, and in that cathedral you
may hear the negro clergy reading such words as--
"The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
Make His paths straight,"
and African boys singing in their own tongue words that sum up the
whole life of David Livingstone.
"He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted,
To preach deliverance to the captives."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 44: Dr Kirk, now Sir John Kirk, G.C.M.G., who, leaning upon
his African ebony stick and gazing with his now dimmed eyes into
the glow of the fire, told me many stories of his adventures with
Livingstone on his Zambesi journeyings, including this one. See next
chapter.]
[Footnote 45: A friend of mine asked a very old African in
Matabeleland whether--as a boy--he remembered Dr. Livingstone. "Oh,
yes," replied the aged Matabele, "he came into our village out of
the bush walking thus," and the old man got up and stumped along,
imitating the determined tread of Livingstone, which, after sixty
years, was the one thing he remembered.]