"Call to him," said Grenfell.
Her thin childish voice rang out. But no one heard it among the warriors. Again she cried out to her brother. The only answer was a hail of spears and arrows.
Grenfell turned rapidly and shouted an order to the engineer. Instantly a shriek, more wild and piercing than the combined yells of the whole tribe, rent the air. Again the shriek went up. The warriors stood transfixed with spear and arrow in hand like statues in ebony. There was a moment's intense and awful silence. They had never before heard the whistle of a steamer!
"Shout again—quickly," whispered Grenfell to the little African girl.
In a second the child's shrill voice rang out in the silence across the water, crying first her brother's name, and then her own.
The astonished warrior dropped his spear, caught up his paddle and—in a few swift strokes—drove his canoe towards the steamer. His astonishment at seeing his sister aboard overcame all his dread of this shrieking, floating island that moved without sails or paddles.
Quickly she told her story of how the strange white man in the great canoe that smoked had found her in the village of their enemies, had saved her from slavery, and—now, had brought her safely home again. The story passed from lip to lip. Every spear and bow and arrow was dropped.
The girls were quickly put ashore, and as Grenfell walked up the village street every warrior who had but a few moments before been seeking his blood was now gazing at this strange friend who had brought back to the tribe the daughters whom they thought they had lost for ever.
Grenfell went on with his work in face of fever, inter-tribal fighting, slave-raiders, the horrors of wife and slave-slaughter at funerals, witch-killing—and in some ways worse still, the horrible cruelties of the Belgian rubber-traders—for over a quarter of a century.
In June 1906, accompanied by his negro companions, he lay at Yalemba, sick with fever. Two of the Africans wrote a letter for help to other missionaries: