The White Queen of Okoyong Part 15

I may not get to the big function, which will make me rather cross, as I have looked forward to it. Anyhow if I am not there will you pop my collection into the plate for me, like a bonnie la.s.sie? I wish it were multiplied by ten.

I wanted you and me to have a loan of that pretty picture-book of your mother's. It has all the blouses and hats and togs that they keep in the store in Edinburgh, and I was just set on our sitting together and picking out a nice coat and hat and pinafore, all of our own choosing, for you to wear in Scotland.

Oh! but you may be going to England? Oh well, they are much the same. But here we can't do it, for it will be too late to get them for you to land in. Anyhow ask that dear Mummy of yours to help you to choose, and you will buy them with these "filthy lucre" pennies. Mind, the Bible calls them "filthy lucre," so I am not saying bad words!

Now, dear wee blue eyes, my bonnie birdie, are we never to have a play again or a snuggly snug? We shall see, but I shall never forget those days with old Brown and Mittens and the Puddleduck relations, and all your gentle ways and winsome plays. Be Mama's good la.s.sie and help her with all the opening day's work, and you yourself will be the bonniest there. If I am there you will sit beside me!

Ma's mind was as restless as her body. She was for ever planning what more she could do for Jesus. Her new dream was a beautiful one, perhaps the best of all. To understand it you must know that the women and girls in West Africa all belonged to households, and were bound, by native law, to obey the heads of these--their masters. The compounds were their only homes. If they became Christians they still had to do what their heathen masters told them. When they were given orders which as true servants of Jesus they could not obey without doing wrong, they were in a fix, for if they left the compounds it was not easy for them to live, as they had no houses in which to stay and no farms where they could work and grow food. Ma had often thought of the problem, and now she made up her mind that the women and girls must be taught simple trades, so that if they had to leave the compounds they would be able to support themselves.

And this was her dream. She would start a home for women and girls where she would take in waifs and refugees and other helpless ones, and train them to do things, such as the weaving of baskets, the making of bamboo furniture, shoe-making, and so on. They could also rear fowls and goats and cows, and dig, and grow food-plants and fruit-trees. And best of all, they would learn to be clean and tidy and womanly.

Ma was never long in making her dreams begin to take form. She went out one morning to look round the land at Use. Why, Use was the very place for the settlement! She would begin in a small way with just a few cottages and a garden, and gradually make it bigger. She started at once, and soon had many useful trees and plants in the ground, and fowls and goats and a cow in the yard.

That cow was a wild one, and a great bother, as it was always breaking out and wandering into the forest. Ma had no tinkling bell, but she tied a tin pail to the beast so that the rattling noise might tell where it was.

The stock had to be watched, for wild animals roamed about after dark, and leopards often sprang into the yard in search of prey.

One or two rooms at Use were kept for visitors. The doors of these were sealed up with strips of bamboo and mud until they were wanted. Once two lady missionaries arrived, and had to sleep a night before the doors were hung. Not long before a leopard had carried off the cow's calf, and the ladies thought it wise to barricade the hole. Ma looked on smiling, and said:

"There will be rats and lizards and centipedes, and maybe a snake, but a leopard would never come in ... even though it did it would just look at you and go away again."

"We'll not give it the chance, Ma," said the ladies.

"Well, I'll give you the cat: it will scare the rats at any rate."

This cat, a big yellow one, had been found, when a kitten, meowing piteously by the side of a bush track, and was taken to the Mission House, where it became a favourite with Ma. It always travelled with her, lying in a canvas bag at the bottom of the canoe, or motor-car, and sometimes she carried it on her shoulder.

The night did turn out to be a lively one, for although no leopard came, every other kind of creeping and jumping and flying thing paid the ladies a visit, and there was not much rest for them, nor for the yellow cat, which hunted the rats until the dawn.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A WEST AFRICAN LEOPARD.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A STYLE OF HAIRDRESSING.]

CHAPTER IX

Ma goes farther up the Creek and settles in a heathen town in the wilds; she enters into happy friendships with young people in Scotland; has a holiday in a beautiful island, where she makes a secret compact with a lame boy; and is given a Royal Cross for the heroic work she has done.

One day there came out of the unknown a black boy with a number of strange-looking men.

"Mokomo Ma," he said, "I salute you. We come to see you. We are from Ikpe. The soldiers and the people fought there and the people fled. I know about you and I told them and they want your help."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Ikpe?" echoed Ma. "Where is that? I never heard of it."

"Far up the Creek," he replied vaguely; "two days by canoe. A big town."

"But I never knew of trading canoes going there."

"No, Ma, they don't allow Calabar men at Ikpe."

"Oh, I see, a closed market. Well, what do they wish?"

"They want to be G.o.d-men and learn book."

She talked long with the men, whose cry was "Come yourself, Ma, come back with us."

It was known that she was always ready to go anywhere at a moment's notice.

"No, not now, I cannot, but I'll come soon"; and having her promise they went away with light hearts.

She was growing very, very feeble, and she shrank from entering a new place, where she would have no friends amongst the natives and could see no white faces, but the spirit of adventure still tugged at her heart, and one morning she boarded a canoe and went up the river.

It was a wonderful thing, even for her, to lie in the canoe and watch the changing beauty of the Creek. They pa.s.sed the places she knew, and then came to a region that was strange to her. Hour after hour they sped, pushing through the tangle of water-lilies, watching the fishermen plunging their spears into the mud after fish, pa.s.sing farms where the green corn was sprouting, and bare landing-beaches where long canoes lay side by side, coasting along stretches of thick jungle where the water was green and the air cool; where lovely flowers and ferns grew on the branches, and monkeys gambolled and swung by their tails; where b.u.t.terflies and dragon-flies glinted in the sunlight, and snakes slid down old trunks and stole rustling away.

Now and again she saw the snout of a hippopotamus, with its beadlike eyes, watching them, and noted that the banks were scored by their ma.s.sive feet. After they had done eight hours' paddling one of these monsters rose angrily in front and opened its enormous jaws as if it would swallow the canoe and the paddlers and Ma and all. The stream was narrow and darkness was falling, and Ma said, "Well, well, old hippo, we won't dispute your right to turn us aside." The canoe made for the bank, and Ma stayed all night in a dirty little hut swarming with mosquitoes.

The chief here had heard of her and the Jesus religion, and was already praying to what was to him the unknown G.o.d. "And my people just laugh at me," he said. Ma prayed with him and cheered him and left him happier.

In the lovely morning light the canoe went on, until the Creek became like one of these little streams which feed the mills in Scotland. Ma had at last to get out and walk through the bush. She came to Ikpe, a large mud town, very dirty and smelly, where all sorts of tribes mingled, and found that the people wore little or no clothes, that the girls and boys ran about naked, and that all, old and young, seemed more wicked and shameless than any natives she had seen.

Only a few welcomed her, and these, having heard of her promise, and knowing that she always kept her word, had begun to build a church, with two rooms at the end for her to live in. It was situated in a circle of tall palm trees among which monkeys romped and chattered.

She remained some days, living on native food, and when she left told the people she would come back.

Several times she returned, and always the people asked:

"Ma, have you come to stay?"

"No, not yet."

"Oh, Ma, when are you coming?"

What could she reply? How could she leave the work at Use? She begged the Church to send up other ladies, but the months pa.s.sed, and meanwhile two churches were ready in the district, and the people were beseeching her to come.

"It's another call," she said, "and I must obey. I'm an old woman and not very fit, but I'll do my best, and I'll carry on the work at Use too. No more idleness for me!"

So up and down the Creek she went. The journey always took the best part of two days. A canoe, with ten paddlers, was sent down from Ikpe to the beach near Itu. What a bustle there was at Use before everything was ready! Then the house had to be shut up. This was done by nailing the windows, and building in the doorways with strips of wood and clay.

In the afternoon the household set off, Ma sitting in the centre of the canoe on a chair, and the children and babies round her, and the yellow cat in its bag at her feet. When it grew dark they landed at some village and spent the night, and before daybreak at four o'clock they were off again. Ma did not like the bit which was haunted by hippos.

"But," she would say, "they haven't touched me yet; they just push up their ugly heads and stare at me."

When the sun became strong and they were all hot and tired they went ash.o.r.e at a clearing, and the paddlers lit a fire and cooked some food, Ma joking all the time to keep everybody happy. Ikpe beach was reached about four in the afternoon, and there was still a long walk before them, and it was a very weary company that lay down to rest.

The paddlers were just the wild boys of Ikpe, very good-hearted under all their badness, as Ma told the Sunday School children of Wellington Church, Glasgow:

They are ungrudging hard workers too. They paddle the whole day, singing as merrily as if the sun were not beating on them like a blazing fire. When we came up a month ago we had such a heavy load of timber for building purposes that they could hardly get a seat. One chief on the road asked me to put a part of it at his beach as they would never be able to take it up, but the boys st.u.r.dily answered, "The canoe is good, let us go on."