But his chief love was music. He was passionately fond of it, and he had a good tenor voice. Shortly after I first knew him, when he was so unhappy, I began to give him some instruction on the organ each day after class. My only intention was to lighten his misery and relieve his solitude. I had not the least thought of any return in missionary service. The little organ which I used in itinerating I left with him between journeys. It was a new and delightful way of spending the hours, and he became more cheerful. In two years a very great change had taken place in him. He was both cheerful and devout. When the time of harvest came in the Fang field and I had need of catechists he was well equipped for the work and I sent him. He took the organ with him; for he played the Fang hymns and played them well. When a secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions afterwards visited Africa he found Robert Boardman among the Fang, preaching and singing, and he made special mention of him on his return to America.
Robert, through the agency of my matrimonial bureau, married a Fang woman, Nze, who loved him devotedly. She was a remarkably good-looking woman—almost beautiful. Poor blind Robert never saw her; and one day, after he had been married for some time, I delighted him—and saddened him too—by giving him a minute description of her. For a while after his marriage I placed him at Ayol, which was Nze’s town. After several months, when I was at Ayol, I decided to take him to another town. Then the heathen relations of Nze suddenly discovered that he had not given sufficient dowry, although he had given all they asked. It was never half so hard to get my African friends married as to keep them married.
The family of Nze secured her in a house while they talked the palaver with Robert, telling him that he had not paid what they had asked. The street was filled with people and there was the wildest excitement. The chief of the town was not there, and when I saw that my powers of persuasion were not adequate for the occasion, I told Robert that as it was now late in the night we would go without Nze, and that I myself would afterwards talk the palaver with the chief and would do all that I possibly could to get Nze back. He yielded, but he was almost broken-hearted.
We got into our canoe and started for the Dorothy, which was anchored a little below the town. When we came alongside whom should we find in the launch but Nze! She had broken out of her prison-house when night came—but I can’t imagine how, unless some Christian woman helped her—and stealing through the dreadful mangrove swamp, had reached her canoe and had gone to the launch. At the very moment that I saw her we heard the wildest yelling behind us. The people of the town had just discovered her escape; and they, of course, thought that we had stolen her. I shouted to the crew to “stand by” for their lives. We sprang aboard, and while weighing the anchor put out all the lights. What if the anchor should be fouled, as it was last time, when it delayed us half an hour!
Our pursuers were rapidly drawing nearer and were almost upon us. They included, I presume, every heathen savage in the town, each of them yelling like ten, and perhaps engaged meanwhile in loading their guns with such deadly material as broken pots and barbed wire. At last, “All right,” shouted the mate; and we moved off just as the enemy in a fleet of canoes came round the last curve of the narrow river. I had made our party, including Nze, lie down flat in the bottom of the launch; only Ndong Koni at the wheel and myself at the engine remained standing. Despite rage and excitement I did not expect that they would fire upon us. But I very much feared that a stray shot, intended only to intimidate us, might do us as much damage as the “bow drawn at a venture” did to a certain king a long time ago. We were soon beyond their range; and then Robert’s gladness and the unbounded joy of Nze were a sufficient reward for us all. For my part, I was exceedingly glad that Nze’s husband was present; otherwise an elopement would have been credited to me.
A short time before I left Africa I was conducting a prayer-meeting in an Mpongwe town, at which Robert was present. He rose and told the people about his work among the Fang and what great changes were taking place through the preaching of the Gospel, which must surely be the power of God. Then in closing he told them something of the new joy that had come into his own life. He said that although at first he had been bitter and rebellious against the fate that had turned his day into night, yet he had lived to thank God for sending even this affliction; for, in his blindness, he had wearied of the “far country,” and like the prodigal had come home. In Christ he had found pardon and peace; and finally he had been permitted to go as a missionary to the Fang, whom he had learned to love, and many of whom, he was sure, loved him.
“I know,” said he, “that I shall never see this world again, nor the faces of my friends; but I am walking in the light of heaven.”
In a deep undertone, full of wonder, full of sympathy, full of tears, they all responded: “A-y, Bobbie! A-y, Bobbie!”