The Book of Missionary Heroes Part 23

Then the King fell ill. He believed that the boy Balikudembe, who had warned him not to kill the Bishop, had bewitched him. So M'w.a.n.ga's soldiers went and caught the lad and led him down to a place where they lit a fire, and placing the boy over it, burned him slowly to death.

All through this time Mackay alone had not been really seriously threatened, for his work and what he was made the King and the Katikiro and even Mujasi afraid to do him to death.

Then there came a tremendous thunderstorm. A flash of lightning smote the King's house and it flamed up and burned to ashes. Then King M'w.a.n.ga seemed to go mad. He threatened to slay Mackay himself.

"Take, seize, burn the Christians," he cried. And his executioners and their minions rushed out, captured forty-six men and boys, slashed their arms from their bodies with their cruel curved knives so that they could not struggle, and then placed them over the ghastly flames which slowly wrung the lives from their tortured bodies. Yet the numbers of the Christians seemed to grow with persecution.

The King himself beat one boy, Apolo Kagwa, with a stick and smote him on the head, then knocked him down, kicked and stamped upon him. Then the King burned all his books, crying, "Never read again."

The other men and boys who had become Christians were now scattered over the land in fear of their lives. Mackay, however, come what may, determined to hold on. He set his little printing press to work and printed off a letter which he sent to the scattered Christians. In Mackay's letter was written these words, "In days of old Christians were hated, were hunted, were driven out and were persecuted for Jesus' sake, and thus it is to-day. Our beloved brothers, do not deny our Lord Jesus!"

At last M'w.a.n.ga's mad cruelties grew so frightful that all his people rose in rebellion and drove him from the throne, so that he had to wander an outcast by the lake-side. Mackay at that time was working by the lake, and he offered to shelter the deposed King who had only a short time before threatened his life.

Two years pa.s.sed; and Mackay, on the lake-side, was building a new boat in which he hoped to sail to other villages to teach the people.

Then a fever struck him. He lay lingering for some days. Then he died--aged only forty-one.

If Mackay, instead of becoming a missionary, had entered the engineering profession he might have become a great engineer. When he was a missionary in Africa, the British East Africa Company offered him a good position. He refused it. General Gordon offered him a high position in his army in Egypt. He refused it.

He held on when his friends and the Church Missionary Society called him home. This is what he said to them, "What is this you write--'Come home'? Surely now, in our terrible dearth of workers, it is not the time for anyone to desert his post. Send us only our first twenty men, and I may be tempted to come to help you to find the second twenty."

He died when quite young; homeless, after a life in constant danger from fever and from a half-mad tyrant king--his Christian disciples having been burned.

Was it worth while?

To-day the Prime Minister of Uganda is Apolo Kagwa, who as a boy was kicked and beaten and stamped upon by King M'w.a.n.ga for being a Christian; and the King of Uganda, Daudi, M'w.a.n.ga's son, is a Christian. At the capital there stands a fine cathedral in which brown Baganda clergy lead the prayers of the Christian people. On the place where the boys were burned to death there stands a Cross, put there by 70,000 Baganda Christians in memory of the young martyrs.

Was their martyrdom worth while?

To-day all the slave raiding has ceased for ever; innocent people are not slaughtered to appease the G.o.ds; the burning of boys alive has ceased.

Mackay began the work. He made the first rough road and as he made it he wrote: "This will certainly yet be a highway for the King Himself; and all that pa.s.s this way will come to know His name."

"And a highway shall be there and a way; and it shall be a way of holiness."

But the Way is not finished. And the last words that Mackay wrote were: "Here is a sphere for your energies. Bring with you your highest education and your greatest talents, and you will find scope for the exercise of them all."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 55: There is no record of the precise words, but Mackay gives the argument in a letter home.]

CHAPTER XXI

THE BLACK APOSTLE OF THE LONELY LAKE

_Sh.o.m.olekae_

In the garden in Africa where, you remember, David Livingstone plighted troth with Mary Moffat, as they stood under an almond tree, there lived years ago a chocolate-skinned, curly-haired boy. His name was Sh.o.m.olekae.[56]

His work was to go among the fruit trees, when the peaches and apricots were growing and to shout and make a noise to scare away the birds. If he had not done this they would have eaten up all the fruit.

This boy was born in Africa over seventy-five years ago, when Victoria was a young queen.

In the same garden was a grown-up gardener, also an African, with a dark face and crisp, curly hair. The grown-up gardener one day stole some of the fruit off the trees, and he went to the little boy, Sh.o.m.olekae, and offered him some apricots.

Now, Sh.o.m.olekae had learned to love the missionary, Mr. Mackenzie, who had come to live in the house at Kuruman. He knew that it was very wrong of the gardener to steal the fruit and throw the blame on the birds. So he said that he would not touch the fruit. He went to an old black friend of his named Paul and said to him:

"The gardener has stolen the apples and plums and has asked me to eat them. He has robbed Mr. Mackenzie. I do not know what to do."

And old Paul went and told John Mackenzie, who took notice of the boy Sh.o.m.olekae and learned to trust him.

Many months pa.s.sed by; and two years later John Mackenzie was going to a place further north in Africa than Kuruman. The name of this town was Shoshong, where Mackenzie would live and teach the people about Jesus Christ. So he went to the father of Sh.o.m.olekae, whose name was Sebolai.

"Sebolai," said John Mackenzie, "I want to take your son, Sh.o.m.olekae, with me to Shoshong."

Sebolai replied: "I am willing that my son should come to live with you, but one thing I desire. It is that he should be taught his reading and to know the stories in the Bible and such things."

To this John Mackenzie quickly agreed, for he too desired that the boy should read.

So the sixteen oxen were yoked to the big wagon, and amid much shouting and cracking of whips and lowing of oxen and creaking of wagon-joints, John Mackenzie, Sh.o.m.olekae, and the others, started from Kuruman northward to Shoshong.

Now, at Shoshong the chief was Sekhome, who, you remember, in our last story, was father to Khama. So when they were at Shoshong, Sh.o.m.olekae, the young man who was cook, and Khama, the young man who was the son of the chief, worshipped in the same little church together. It was not such a church as you go to in our country--but just a little place made of mud bricks that had been dried in the sun. There were holes instead of windows, and there was no door in the open doorway; and on the top of the little building was a roof of rough, reedy gra.s.s.

These were the days that you heard of in the last story, when Khama, seeing his tribe attacked by the fierce Lobengula, rode out on horseback at the head of his regiment of cavalry and fought them and beat them, and drove away Lobengula with a bullet in his neck.

For two years Sh.o.m.olekae, learning to read better every day, and serving John Mackenzie faithfully in his house, lived at Shoshong.

Sometimes Sh.o.m.olekae took long journeys with wagon and oxen, and at the end of two years he went with Mackenzie a great way in order to buy windows, doors, hinges, nails, corrugated iron, and timber with which to build a better church at Shoshong.

When Sh.o.m.olekae came back again with the wagons loaded up there was great excitement in the tribe. Hammers and saws, screw-drivers and chisels were busy day after day, and the missionary and his helpers laid the bricks one upon another until there rose up a strong church with windows and a door--a place in which the people went to worship G.o.d the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Again Sh.o.m.olekae went away by wagon, and this time he travelled away by the edge of the desert southward until at last he reached the garden at Kuruman where as a boy he used to frighten the birds from the fruit trees. He was now a very clever man at driving wagons and oxen.

This, as you know, is not so easy as driving a wagon with two horses is in Britain. For there were as many as sixteen and even eighteen oxen harnessed two by two to the long iron chains in front of the wagon.

There were no roads, only rough tracks, and the wagon would drag through the deep sand, or b.u.mp over great boulders of rock, or sink into wet places by the river. But at such times one of the natives always led the two front oxen through the river with a long thong that was fastened to their horns.

So, in order to drive a wagon well, Sh.o.m.olekae needed to be able to manage sixteen oxen all at once, and keep them walking in a straight line. He needed to know which were the bad-tempered ones and which were the good, and which pulled best in one part of the span and which in another; and how to keep them all pulling together and not lunging at one another with their horns.

Sh.o.m.olekae also had to be so bold and daring that, if lions came to eat the oxen at night, he could go with the gun and either frighten them away or actually shoot them.

So you see Sh.o.m.olekae was very clever, and was full of good courage.

While he was living at Kuruman a man came to him one day and said: