Under Many Flags

by Katharine Scherer Cronk; Elsie Singmaster

He had run only a short distance when he sat down to think. He believed that he had either killed Mr. Grubb outright or that Mr. Grubb would soon die from his wounds or that he would be slain by a jaguar whose tracks they had crossed. He decided craftily that he would set out straightway for the mission and say that he had seen a jaguar about to leap, and that, shooting at the jaguar, he had killed Mr. Grubb.

He had not gone very far when he met an Indian with paint marks on his body, which showed that he was in mourning. Poit supposed this meant that Mr. Grubb was dead—someone must have found Mr. Grubb's body before the jaguar devoured it. He ran back into the forest. By this time he was out of his mind with fear. For hundreds and hundreds of years the Indians had killed foreigners without thinking anything about it; but now there was a change. Here was an Indian mourning for a foreigner! Poit was puzzled and frightened. He did not yet know that all the Indians were crying out for vengeance upon the man who had tried to murder their benefactor.

But what neither Poit nor the mourning Indian knew was that Mr. Grubb was still alive. How he reached the mission was a miracle. He was more dead than alive from the wound which pierced his lung, and from exhaustion. Sometimes he staggered along leaning on two Indians; sometimes he rode a horse on whose back he had to be supported. Often his companions had to lay him down on the ground lest he should die. He suffered from the heat by day and was tortured by the mosquitoes by night. As though this were not enough, one night a goat belonging to an Indian jumped on him by accident!

But at last he reached the mission and had proper medical attention, and all along the weary way the Indians saw his agony and understood that he was suffering because he had come to help them. They thought not only of him, but of the Master about whom he had told them, and they believed that he had been saved by a miracle.

Though Mr. Grubb still lived, the Indians decided that Poit must die, and they searched for him until they captured him. He pleaded with them desperately, reminding them that he was their relative whom they had known all their lives and that Mr. Grubb was only a stranger; but they would not listen.

When he heard that Poit was to die, Mr. Grubb tried to save him, but in vain. He did, however, succeed in saving Poit's family whom the Indians would have killed also. This forgiving spirit amazed and touched them still more.

Now this story is sad and dreadful and there would not be any reason for telling it if Poit's death were the end. But in a way, it was only a beginning.

Mr. Grubb had to make two journeys for further medical attention, one to Ascuncion, nearly four hundred miles away, and one to Buenos Ayres, nine hundred miles away. It was December when Poit attacked him; it was June before he was able to take up his work. When he did so, the seed so strangely sown by poor Poit had ripened. Two Indians who had been impressed by Mr. Grubb's devotion and by his almost miraculous recovery asked to be baptized. Thus the foundation of the Church in the Chaco was laid.

Mr. Grubb is still working, and the extent of his influence has greatly increased. The Indians in the distant settlements no longer wait for him to seek them out; they come to see for themselves what he has done and to hear the story he has to tell. The government has named him the "pacificator of the Indians."

Do you not suppose that sometimes as he thinks of his years in the Chaco, he thinks with pity of poor Poit and hopes that his cry "Ak kai! Ak kai!" showed repentance as well as fear of punishment?