"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.