A RACE AGAINST TIME
_Henry Martyn_
(Dates, b. 1781, d. 1812. Time of Incident 1810-12)
In the story of Sabat that was told in the previous chapter you will
remember that, for a part of the time that he lived in India, he
worked with an Englishman named Henry Martyn.
Sabat was almost a giant; Henry Martyn was slight and not very strong.
Yet--as we shall see in the story that follows--Henry Martyn was
braver and more constant than Sabat himself.
As a boy Henry, who was born and went to school in Truro, in Cornwall,
in the West of England, was violently passionate, sensitive, and
physically rather fragile, and at school was protected from bullies by
a big boy, the son of Admiral Kempthorne.
He left school at the age of fifteen and shot and read till he was
seventeen. In 1797 he became an undergraduate at St. John's College,
Cambridge. He was still very passionate.
For instance, when a man was "ragging" him in the College Hall at
dinner, he was so furious that he flung a knife at him, which stuck
quivering in the panelling of the wall. Kempthorne, his old friend,
was at Cambridge with him. They used to read the Bible together and
Martyn became a real Christian and fought hard to overcome his violent
temper.
He was a very clever scholar and became a Fellow of Jesus College in
1802. He at that time took orders in the Church of England. He became
very keen on reading about missionary work, e.g. Carey's story of
nine years' work in _Periodical Accounts_, and the L.M.S. Report on
Vanderkemp in South Africa. "I read nothing else while it lasted," he
said of the Vanderkemp report.
He was accepted as a chaplain of the East India Company. They could
not sail till Admiral Nelson gave the word, because the French were
waiting to capture all the British ships. Five men-of-war convoyed
them when they sailed in 1805. They waited off Ireland, because the
immediate invasion of England by Napoleon was threatened. On board
Martyn worked hard at Hindustani, Bengali and Portuguese. He already
knew Greek, Latin and Hebrew. He arrived at Madras (South India) and
Calcutta and thence went to Cawnpore. It is at this point that our
yarn begins.
A voice like thunder, speaking in a strange tongue, shouted across an
Indian garden one night in 1809.
The new moon, looking "like a ball of ebony in an ivory cup,"--as one
who was there that night said--threw a cold light over the palm trees
and aloes, on the man who was speaking and on those who were seated
around him at the table in the bungalow.
Beyond the garden the life of Cawnpore moved in its many streets;
the shout of a donkey-driver, the shrill of a bugle from the barracks
broke sharply through the muffled sounds of the city. The June wind,
heavy with the waters of the Ganges which flows past Cawnpore, made
the night insufferably hot. But the heat did not trouble Sabat, the
wild son of the Arabian desert, who was talking--as he always did--in
a roaring voice that was louder than most men's shouting. He was
telling the story of Abdallah's brave death as a Christian martyr.[62]
Quietly listening to Sabat's voice--though he could not understand
what he was saying--was a young Italian, Padre Julius Cæsar, a monk of
the order of the Jesuits. On his head was a little skull-cap, over his
body a robe of fine purple satin held with a girdle of twisted silk.
Near him sat an Indian scholar--on his dark head a full turban, and
about him richly-coloured robes. On the other side sat a little, thin,
copper-coloured Bengali dressed in white, and a British officer in his
scarlet and gold uniform, with his wife, who has told us the story of
that evening.
Not one of these brightly dressed people was, however, the strongest
power there. A man in black clothes was the real centre of the group.
Very slight in build, not tall, clean-shaven, with a high forehead
and sensitive lips, young Henry Martyn seemed a stripling beside the
flaming Arab. Yet Sabat, with all his sound and fury, was no match for
the swift-witted, clear-brained young Englishman. Henry Martyn was a
chaplain in the army of the East India Company, which then ruled in
India.
He was the only one of those who were listening to Sabat who could
understand what he was saying. When Sabat had finished his story,
Martyn turned, and, in his clear, musical voice translated it from
the Persian into Latin mixed with Italian for Padre Julius Cæsar,
into Hindustani for the Indian scholar, into Bengali for the Bengal
gentleman, and into English for the British officer and his wife.
Martyn could also talk to Sabat himself both in Arabic and in Persian.
As Martyn listened to the rolling sentences of Sabat, the Christian
Arab, he seemed to see the lands beyond India, away across the Khyber
Pass, where Sabat had travelled--Mesopotamia, Arabia, Persia.
Henry Martyn knew that in all those lands the people were Mohammedans.
He wanted one thing above everything else in the world: that was
to give them all the chance of doing what Sabat and Abdallah had
done--the chance of reading in their own languages the one book in the
world that could tell them that God was a Father--the book of letters
and of biographies that we call the New Testament.
_The Toil of Brain_
There was not in the world a copy of the New Testament in good
Persian. To make one Henry Martyn slaved hard, far into the hot,
sultry Indian nights, with scores of mosquitoes "pinging" round his
lamp and his head, grinding at his Persian grammar, so that he could
translate the life of Jesus Christ into that language.
Even while he was listening to Sabat's story in the bungalow at
Cawnpore, Martyn knew that he was so ill that he could not live for
many years more. The doctor said that he must leave India for a time
to be in a healthier place. Should he go home to England, where all
his friends were? He wanted that; but much more he wanted to go on
with his work. So he asked the doctor if he might go to Persia on the
way home, and he agreed.
So Martyn went down from Cawnpore to Calcutta, and in a boat down the
Hoogli river to the little Arab coasting sailing ship the _Hummoudi_,
which hoisted sail and started on its voyage round India to Bombay.
Martyn read while on board the Old Testament in the original Hebrew
and the New Testament in the original Greek, so that he might
understand them better and make a more perfect translation into
Persian. He read the Koran of Mohammed so that he could argue with
the Persians about it. And he worked hard at Arabic grammar, and read
books in Persian. Yet he was for ever cracking jokes with his fellow
travellers, cooped up in the little ship on the hot tropical seas.
From Bombay the governor granted Martyn a passage up the Persian Gulf
in the _Benares_, a ship in the Indian Navy that was going on a cruise
to finish the exciting work of hunting down the fierce Arab pirates
of the Persian Gulf. So on Lady Day, 1811, the sailors got her under
weigh and tacked northward up the Gulf, till at last, on May 21, the
roofs and minarets of Bushire hove in sight. Martyn, leaning over the
bulwarks, could see the town jutting out into the Gulf on a spit of
sand and the sea almost surrounding it. That day he set foot for the
first time on the soil of Persia.
_Across Persia on a Pony_
Aboard ship Martyn had allowed his beard and moustache to grow. When
he landed at Bushire he bought and wore the clothes of a Persian
gentleman, so that he should escape from attracting everybody's notice
by wearing clothes such as the people had never seen before.
No one who had seen the pale, clean-shaven clergyman in black silk
coat and trousers in Cawnpore would have recognised the Henry
Martyn who rode out that night on his pony with an Armenian servant,
Zechariah of Isfahan, on his long one hundred and seventy mile journey
from Bushire to Shiraz. He wore a conical cap of black Astrakhan fur,
great baggy trousers of blue, bright red leather boots, a light tunic
of chintz, and over that a flowing cloak.
They went out through the gates of Bushire on to the great plain of
burning sand that stretched away for ninety miles ahead of them. They
travelled by night, because the day was intolerably hot, but even at
midnight the heat was over 100 degrees. It was a fine moonlight night;
the stars sparkled over the plain. The bells tinkled on the mules'
necks as they walked across the sand. All else was silent.
At last dawn broke. Martyn pitched his little tent under a tree,
the only shelter he could get. Gradually the heat grew more and more
intense. He was already so ill that it was difficult to travel.
"When the thermometer was above 112 degrees--fever heat," says Martyn,
"I began to lose my strength fast. It became intolerable. I wrapped
myself up in a blanket and all the covering I could get to defend
myself from the air. By this means the moisture was kept a little
longer upon the body. I thought I should have lost my senses. The
thermometer at last stood at 126 degrees. I concluded that death was
inevitable."
At last the sun went down: the thermometer crept lower: it was night
and time to start again. But Martyn had not slept or eaten. He could
hardly sit upright on his pony. Yet he set out and travelled on
through the night.
Next morning he had a little shelter of leaves and branches made, and
an Arab poured water on the leaves and on Martyn all day to try to
keep some of the frightful heat from him. But even then the heat
almost slew him. So they marched on through another night and then
camped under a grove of date palms.
"I threw myself on the burning ground and slept," Martyn wrote. "When
the tent came up I awoke in a burning fever. All day I had recourse to
the wet towel, which kept me alive, but would allow of no sleep."
At nine that night they struck camp. The ground threw up the heat that
it had taken from the sun during the day. So frightfully hot was the
air that even at midnight Martyn could not travel without a wet towel
round his face and neck.
As the night drew on the plain grew rougher: then it began to rise
to the foothills and mountains. At last the pony and mules were
clambering up rough steep paths so wild that there was (as Martyn
said) "nothing to mark the road but the rocks being a little more
worn in one place than in another." Suddenly in the darkness the pony
stopped; dimly through the gloom Martyn could see that they were on
the edge of a tremendous precipice. A single step more would have
plunged him over, to be smashed on the rocks hundreds of feet below.
Martyn did not move or try to guide the beast: he knew that the pony
himself was the safest guide. In a minute or two the animal moved, and
step by step clambered carefully up the rock-strewn mountain-side.
At last they came out on the mountain top, but only to find that they
were on the edge of a flat high plain--a tableland. The air was pure
and fresher; the mules and the travellers revived. Martyn's pony began
to trot briskly along. So, as dawn came up, they came in sight of a
great courtyard built by the king of that country to refresh pilgrims.
Through night after night they tramped, across plateau and mountain
range, till they climbed the third range, and then plunged by a
winding rocky path into a wide valley where, at a great town called
Kazrun, in a garden of cypress trees was a summer-house.
Martyn lay down on the floor but could not sleep, though he was
horribly weary. "There seemed," he said, "to be fire within my head,
my skin like a cinder." His heart beat like a hammer.
They went on climbing another range of mountains, first tormented
by mosquitoes, then frozen with cold; Martyn was so overwhelmed with
sleep that he could not sit on his pony and had to hurry ahead to keep
awake and then sit down with his back against a rock where he fell
asleep in a second, and had to be shaken to wake up when Zechariah,
the Armenian mule driver, came up to where he was.
They had at last climbed the four mountain rungs of the ladder to
Persia, and came out on June 11th, 1811, on the great plain where the
city of Shiraz stands. Here he found the host Jaffir Ali Khan, to whom
he carried his letters of introduction. Martyn in his Persian dress,
seated on the ground, was feasted with curries and rice, sweets cooled
with snow and perfumed with rose water, and coffee.
Ali Khan had a lovely garden of orange trees, and in the garden Martyn
sat. Ill as he was, he worked day in and day out to translate the life
of Jesus Christ in the New Testament from the Greek language into
pure and simple Persian. The kind host put up a tent for Martyn in the
garden, close to some beautiful vines, from which hung lovely bunches
of purple grapes. By the side of his tent ran a clear stream
of running water. All the evening nightingales sang sweetly and
mournfully.
As he sat there at his work, men came hundreds of miles to talk with
this holy man, as they felt him to be. Moslems--they yet travelled
even from Baghdad and Bosra and Isfahan to hear this "infidel" speak
of Jesus Christ, and to argue as to which was the true religion.
Prince Abbas Mirza invited him to come to speak with him; and as
Martyn entered the Prince's courtyard a hundred fountains began to
send up jets of water in his honour.
At last they came to him in such numbers that Martyn was obliged to
say to many of them that he could not see them. He hated sending them
away. What was it forced him to do so?
_The Race against Time_
It was because he was running a race against time. He knew that he
could not live very long, because the disease that had smitten his
lungs was gaining ground every day. And the thing that he had come
to Persia for--the object that had made him face the long voyage,
the frightful heat and the freezing cold of the journey, the life
thousands of miles from his home in Cornwall--was that he might finish
such a translation of the New Testament into Persian that men should
love to read years and years after he had died.
So each day Martyn finished another page or two of the book, written
in lovely Persian letters. He began the work within a week of reaching
Shiraz, and in seven months (February, 1812) it was finished. Three
more months were spent in writing out very beautiful copies of the
whole of the New Testament in this new translation, to be presented to
the Shah of Persia and to the heir to the throne, Prince Abbas Mirza.
Then he started away on a journey right across Persia to find the Shah
and Prince so that he might give his precious books to them. On the
way he fell ill with great fever; he was so weak and giddy that he
could not stand. One night his head ached so that it almost drove him
mad; he shook all over with fever; then a great sweat broke out. He
was almost unconscious with weakness, but at midnight when the call
came to start he mounted his horse and, as he says, "set out, rather
dead than alive." So he pressed on in great weakness till he reached
Tabriz, and there met the British Ambassador.
Martyn was rejoiced, and felt that all his pains were repaid when Sir
Gore Ouseley said that he himself would present the Sacred Book to
the Shah and the Prince. When the day came to give the book to Prince
Abbas, poor Henry Martyn was so weak that he could not rise from his
bed. Before the other copy could be presented to the Shah, Martyn had
died. This is how it came about.
_The Last Trail_
His great work was done. The New Testament was finished. He sent a
copy to the printers in India. He could now go home to England and
try to get well again. He started out on horseback with two Armenian
servants and a Turkish guide. He was making along the old track that
has been the road from Asia to Europe for thousands of years. His plan
was to travel across Persia, through Armenia and over the Black Sea to
Constantinople, and so back to England.
For forty-five days he moved on, often going as much as ninety miles,
and generally as much as sixty in a day. He slept in filthy inns where
fleas and lice abounded and mosquitoes tormented him. Horses, cows,
buffaloes and sheep would pass through his sleeping-room, and the
stench of the stables nearly poisoned him. Yet he was so ill that
often he could hardly keep his seat on his horse.
He travelled through deep ravines and over high mountain passes and
across vast plains. His head ached till he felt it would split; he
could not eat; fever came on. He shook with ague. Yet his remorseless
Turkish guide, Hassan, dragged him along, because he wanted to get the
journey over and go back home.
At last one day Martyn got rest on damp ground in a hovel, his eyes
and forehead feeling as though a great fire burnt in them. "I was
almost frantic," he wrote. Martyn was, in fact, dying; yet Hassan
compelled him to ride a hundred and seventy miles of mountain track to
Tokat. Here, on October 6th, 1812, he wrote in his journal:
"No horses to be had, I had an unexpected repose. I sat in the orchard
and thought with sweet comfort and peace of my God--in solitude my
Company, my Friend, my Comforter."
It was the last word he was ever to write.
Alone, without a human friend by him, he fell asleep. But the book
that he had written with his life-blood, the Persian New Testament,
was printed, and has told thousands of Persians in far places, where
no Christian man has penetrated, that story of the love of God that is
shown in Jesus Christ.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 62: See Chapter XXIII.]