who he promised would conduct them to the sea.

Mtemése proved to be by no means an immaculate person. Among other delinquencies he left the pontoon behind, a loss that was keenly felt. He had, too, a prejudice against speedy travel which Livingstone could not be induced to share. He was useful, however, in levying tribute of food throughout Shinté’s dominion, and evidently thought Livingstone a great fool for paying a fair price for what could have been had for nothing. Gradually Shinté’s territory was left behind, and that of Katema was invaded. It seemed to Livingstone that as they moved north the moral conditions darkened. At times the great horror of heathenism laid hold of him. Everywhere was the same unrelieved tragedy of brutality and murder. Sometimes over the camp fires his savage hosts would exult in their customs. They told of the death of chiefs, and the slaughter of enough of their subjects to be an escort to the nether world. The further north Livingstone penetrated the more “bloodily superstitious” did the people become. Yet he must eat with them, chat with them, laugh with them; and the impression of such religious teaching as he could impart was, alas! so superficial. Katema proved peaceable; but his people lived under the perpetual shadow of the slave-trade, and would gladly have been taken away to the Makololo country.

The beginning of March found them for the first time in hostile territory. There had been much rain and flood, wading and swimming. Livingstone himself had had an adventure that thoroughly alarmed his men, and served to evoke their real devotion. He was flung from his ox in midstream, and compelled to strike out for the opposite bank. There was a simultaneous rush on the part of all his men to rescue him. Their delight was unbounded when they found he could swim like themselves. “Who carried the white man across the river but himself,” they said afterwards. It was among the Chiboques that the expedition came nearest to having to fight for their lives; and bloodshed was only averted by Livingstone’s wonderful patience and fearlessness. He sat on a campstool with his double-barrelled gun across his knees, and insisted on arguing with the chief who was endeavouring to levy blackmail. It was characteristic of Livingstone that he argued the legitimacy of passing through their country on the ground that the land belonged to God. If their gardens had been damaged compensation would have been paid, but the earth is the Lord’s. “They did not attempt to controvert this,” he comments, “because it is in accordance with their own ideas.” Finally he told them that if there was to be a fight they must begin it, and the guilt be on their heads. Matters looked critical for some hours; but Livingstone’s tact prevailed and the gift of an ox satisfied them for the time being. They had more trouble later before getting quit of the Chiboques, but there was no actual outbreak. There was thieving, however, of their goods, which were getting sadly reduced; and the attitude of enmity and treachery added to the gloom of a very gloomy forest through which a way had to be found. So thick was the atmosphere that the hanging creepers could not be seen, and again and again the riders were swept off the backs of the oxen. On one occasion Sindbad went off at a plunging gallop, the bridle broke, and Livingstone came down backwards on the crown of his head. At the same time Sindbad completed the triumph by dealing him a kick on the thigh. Livingstone makes light of all this, only remarking that “he does not recommend it as a palliative for fever.” Repeated attacks of fever had reduced him to a skeleton. The sodden blanket which served as a saddle caused abrasions and sores. His “projecting bones” were chafed on the hard bed at nights. He had enough burdens to bear without having to dare the threats of savages. At the last outpost of the Chiboque country their two guides turned traitors and thieves, and escaped with the larger portion of their beads, so necessary for barter. This was almost the last straw; and there was mutiny among Livingstone’s men, for they declared they would go home. He was in despair; and having finally told them that in that case he would go on alone, he went into his little tent and flung himself upon his knees, “with the mind directed to Him who hears the sighing of the soul.” Presently one of the men crept into the tent. “We will never leave you,” he said. “Do not be disheartened. Wherever you lead we will follow.” The others took up the chorus. They were all his children, they told him, and they would die for him. They had only spoken in the bitterness of their feeling and because they felt they could do nothing.

They had one more parley with a bullying chief, but came out victorious, thanks to the opportune appearance of a young military half-caste Portuguese, who afterwards showed them every hospitality. Moreover, they were now able to dispose of certain tusks of ivory presented to them by Sekeletu, the proceeds of which clothed the whole party and partially armed them.

The journey was easy now, save that the intrepid leader had had twenty-seven attacks of fever, and suffered one more humiliation at the hands of Sindbad, being compelled inadvertently to bathe in the Lombé. He had to reassure his men as they drew near to the Atlantic, for they began to be troubled lest after all he should leave them to the cruel mercies of other white men. “Nothing will happen to you but what happens to me,” he told them. “We have stood by one another hitherto, and will do so till the last.” In course of time they crossed the sterile plains near Loanda, and gazed upon the sea. “We marched along with our father,” they said afterwards, “believing that what the ancients had always told us was true, that the world has no end; but all at once the world said to us, ‘I am finished, there is no more of me.’”

It was a weak, worn, haggard figure that on the 31st May, 1854, entered the city of Loanda, “labouring under great depression of spirits.” The fever had brought on chronic dysentery. He could not sit on his ox ten minutes at a time. His mind was “depressed by disease and care.” His heart misgave him as to his welcome. But he had finished his course. He had accomplished his superhuman task. He had reached the coast. He had protected and guided his faithful company. He had robbed no man’s goods and taken no man’s life; and all the fourteen hundred miles he had preached the Gospel and argued for freedom and peace.

CHAPTER V

Livingstone found Loanda a very decayed town, but he did not fail to win many friendships. Mr. Gabriel, the one Englishman in the place, was overwhelmingly kind, and the Roman Catholic bishop scarcely less so. English men-of-war were in the harbour also, keeping both eyes open for slave ships, and Livingstone was able to take his men on board and show them the cannon with which England “was going to destroy the slave trade.” He himself recovered only very slowly from his condition of absolute emaciation, and in August had a severe relapse, which left him a mere skeleton. Everybody was kind to him, physicking him, and nourishing him, and, what was most of all valuable in his depression, providing him with lively and interesting company. He fell in with their plans for him very gratefully, but on one point he was adamant. They had wished to persuade him to go home and rest. The British captains offered him a passage to St. Helena. When this failed they urged him to take the mail-packet, the “Forerunner,” by which all his own precious diaries, and letters, and scientific papers, with maps and so forth, were to be sent. Despite his weakness it was not in him to be idle, and he had laboriously accomplished the writing of this big budget of despatches in time for the mail-boat. On April 23rd, 1852, he had told his wife that he would rejoin her in two years. It was now August, 1854, and his heart cried out for wife and children. But one thing stood in the way. He had promised his twenty-seven “boys” to take them back to their own country; and they were there in Loanda on the faith of Livingstone’s word. It did not consist with his sense of honour to leave them at Loanda, while he went home for a holiday, and he refused all the tempting offers. The reward of honourable men does not always come as it came to him. The “Forerunner” went down with all hands but one, and he escaped an almost certain fate because he kept his promise. But, alas! all his precious papers, the fruit of so much labour, were destroyed; and he had to take up the drudgery of doing everything over again. It was the form of toil most irksome to him; but he just turned to and did it. It was his way.

Fortunately he had not gone far on the homeward track when this news reached him, and there was no lack of hospitality. He was making a circuit round about Loanda to visit some of the more noted Portuguese settlements and estates, always with an eye to the better cultivation of the country and the interest of inland trade. The re-writing of his papers involved long and tedious delay, and there was more trouble through fever among his men. The year of 1855 dawned before he left a hospitable Portuguese home, and struck out along the old trail. It is worth while to remember here that whereas the expedition travelled from Linyanti to Loanda in six and a half months, it took twice that time to return. It was September, 1855, before they saw Linyanti again.

The homeward journey was not devoid of incident and excitement. The passage through the Chiboque territory was once again troublesome. Just when Livingstone was most anxious to be himself, he fell a victim to rheumatic fever. For eight days he lay in his tent, tossing and groaning with pain; and it was twenty days before he began to recover, and the old ambition to be on the march came back to him. His men objected, for he was too weak to move; and at the physical crisis a quarrel broke out between his men and some of the Chiboques. A blow was struck, for which ample compensation was paid; but with the leader on his back the importunities of the tribesmen increased, and matters became threatening. When a forward move was made, an organised attack on the baggage took place, and shots were even fired, though nobody was hurt. It was then that Livingstone snatched up his six-barrelled revolver and “staggered along the path” till most opportunely he encountered the hostile chief. “The sight of the six barrels gaping into his stomach and my own ghastly visage looking daggers at his face seemed to produce an instant revolution in his martial feelings.” He suddenly became the most peaceable man in all Africa, and protested his goodwill. Livingstone advised a practical illustration of this, and bade him go home. The Chief explained that he would do so, only he was afraid of being shot in the back! “If I wanted to kill you,” rejoined Livingstone, “I could shoot you in the face as well.” One of his men, afraid for Livingstone’s own safety, advised him not to give the Chief a chance of shooting him in the back, whereupon Livingstone retorted, “Tell him to observe that I am not afraid of him,” and mounting his ox rode away triumphantly.