Mr. Marling died in the fall of 1896, Ndong Mba being then, probably, seven or eight years old. Long before this, however, the people of his town had moved far away, leaving him behind, and were quite lost sight of. He was now without friends, white or black, at the age of eight. In a distant bush-town there was a woman who had formerly lived in Ndong’s town: he made his way to her and begged her to take him in. There, in a town remote from missionary influence, in which there was not one person related to him, the poor little stranger lived for three years, during which no missionary either saw him or heard of him. His position in the town was not much better than that of everybody’s slave. His frailty, instead of insuring greater kindness, only made him contemptible. Whenever he spoke of those three years it was always of his sufferings there, and his back was injured by the heavy loads that had been put upon him. He was the only Christian in the town; but there is no doubt that through those hard and lonely years the little Christian was constant and faithful in profession and practice;—as strange, upon its human side, as that a lighted candle should withstand a winter’s storm.
At the end of this time a long-wished-for opportunity came; he joined a company of travellers and again reached Angom, hoping to find a missionary there. There was no missionary there at the time and he found the station closed; but, in a town close by, a woman was visiting who years before had lived in Ndong’s town. She was probably a Christian woman, for she was compassionate. Her heart was touched and she took him with her to her home near the coast. It was only a few weeks after this that I met him, at the beginning of this year.
I was gathering a class of Fang boys who had already received a primary education in the school at Angom, hoping that with time and training they might become teachers, and later on, in the providence of God, perhaps preachers. I heard of this boy, and immediately I visited the town where he was staying. The name of the town was typical, Ebol Nzok: Rotten Elephant. It seems that when the people of this town still lived in the interior bush they sent a delegation down the river to choose a site for a new town near the coast. The delegation selected a beautiful site, where the river broadens out into the great estuary. They returned and reported their success, and the whole large town at once prepared to move. As they approached the chosen site, and while they were still at a distance, they found the atmosphere of the new country pervaded with a most disagreeable smell which grew worse and worse,—a horrible stench which made them hold their noses, a breath from Gehenna, almost palpable. They forced a passage through it and went on until they reached the middle of the chosen site, where they found the huge carcass of an elephant in an acute stage of decomposition. They thought it proper to commemorate this historical incident in the name of their town, which they called Rotten Elephant: Ebol Nzok.
When I visited Ebol Nzok and asked for Ndong Mba they told me he was away in the distant gardens at work; so I left word that I would like to see him at Baraka as soon as he could come. One morning, not long after, a tiny little boy came into my study and stood before me, his body thin and frail, but unusually clean, and with extraordinary eyes, dark and sparkling beneath long black lashes. Looking up eagerly into my face and very much excited, he said: “I’m Ndong Mba; I’ve come; and I’m so glad you sent for me. I have not seen a missionary since Mr. Marling died; and I’ve not been to church, and I’ve not been to school, and I thought the missionaries had thrown me away. And there were no Christians where I live. I was alone; and I prayed and prayed all the time to come back to the mission; and now I’m here; and I’m so glad; and I will do anything you ask if you let me stay here; for I can work, and you won’t be sorry if you let me be your boy.” Thus he went on with his pathetic appeal. And this was really Ndong Mba, of whom I had so often heard!
The unusual intelligence of the eyes that looked into mine, eyes in which the tears were now quivering, the faded rag—but very clean—which was the sum of his clothing, and other marks of neglect and suffering, moved me deeply. Drawing the poor little waif close to me I said: “I am glad to see you, Ndong Mba,” which he accepted as a sufficient answer.
I took him into my class and also assigned him certain work for which I said I would pay him, so that he could buy the little clothing and other things that he needed. He replied: “Little boys don’t need money; I only want a father to take care of me, and I’ll work for him all the time.” I thought best, however, to insist upon paying him, but at the same time I told him that I would take care of him as long as we were together. All that day, throughout its duties and its noise, those wonderful appealing eyes seemed still to be looking up into mine. I felt that God had given into my charge one of His little ones, that I might help to fit him for a great service to his people in years to come. Through all the weeks and months that followed, during which he was continually with me, he fully justified my first impression of him.
This is the little boy that I took with me from Gaboon in May. The second day he had what seemed to be a light attack of malarial fever. The ship’s doctor said that he had only caught cold, and assured me that he would be better next day. But the next day he was worse, and the next still worse. One of our missionary physicians came on board at Batanga, going home on furlough. He found Ndong Mba very sick indeed. He had pneumonia—a very severe attack—and pleurisy with it, causing him great pain; this, together with a hard fever. The situation was distressing. I was sick myself and scarcely able to be out of bed, and had brought Ndong along to wait on me. But now he was worse than myself and I was waiting on him.
When we reached Fernando Po, where I had expected to land and to wait for the south-bound steamer, there was scarcely a hope that he would live; and whatever small hope there was would have been cut off by moving him and taking him away from the doctor’s care. I had therefore no choice but to remain on board; and I went on to Teneriffe, where I waited three weeks, until the return of this same steamer from England. Indeed, on my own account it would not have been advisible to land at Fernando Po. For I had been attending Ndong almost day and night, and my health-change had thus far been only a change for the worse. Others on board, fellow missionaries, had been kind in trying to relieve me; but as Ndong suffered more, and the fever raged, they could not control him; and after a few minutes they would be obliged to call me. But they remarked that when I came I had only to speak his name, and he was quiet; and the brave little man even tried not to let me see how sick he was.
I greatly regretted the necessity of going on to Teneriffe; for I had expected to be away from my work only one month and had arranged it accordingly, and this extension of my trip would keep me away three months and the consequences to the work distressed me. I no more enjoyed the trip than if I had been a prisoner in irons. Besides, there was difficulty in regard to my accommodations on board, a difficulty that was increasing at each port as we took on more passengers. I had engaged only a deck-passage for Ndong; but Captain Button whose kindness I can never forget, had told me to take him into my cabin. Thus far I had occupied the cabin alone, but I could not expect that favour to continue longer, as other passengers were coming onboard, and already there were two persons in each of the other cabins. The full price of the cabin for myself and Ndong to Teneriffe and return would have been about five hundred dollars. It was therefore a considerable favour that I was accepting from the captain, and it was now at the cost of possible discomfort to others. But this difficulty, I thought, would not last long, for it did not seem that Ndong would live more than a few days. The captain told me not to think of the matter of accommodations at all; that he would leave me that cabin as long as he possibly could, and if it should become impossible, he actually said that I should bring Ndong up to his own cabin and occupy it. One would need to have been on the coast to have any just appreciation of such extraordinary kindness towards a little black boy. Moreover, almost every morning the captain came to my cabin door and asked for the boy.
Again the unexpected happened. Ndong, one might almost say, neither died nor lived. He simply lingered, and lingered on, through weary weeks. After a while the worst of his suffering was past, but in his extreme weakness he required almost as much attention as ever. He was quite unable to walk and could only leave his bed as some one carried him, but it was no difficult matter to carry him for he had rapidly wasted away until he was no heavier than a baby. I need not relate the history of those weeks; there were few incidents to recount; but I wish that you might have witnessed the patience of the poor little sufferer.