The people of Teneriffe are so far behind modern times that the barbers are still the surgeons. Dr. Ingram blistered Ndong’s congested lung and the barber was afterwards called in daily to dress the wound. After six days I took Ndong back to the hotel. He seemed on the way to recovery, and was much stronger on his feet.
Under Mr. Marling’s teaching he had acquired a habit of prayer morning and evening to which he had ever been faithful. Nothing could surpass the pathos of the prayers that he offered thanking God for every kindness that he had received from anybody and pleading for his complete recovery. He knew that he was a great care to me and it troubled him. On one occasion he entreated: “O Father in heaven, please make me well; for I’ve been sick so long; and I’m so little; and I have no father nor mother.”
The day after he returned from the hospital I observed that he was inclined to be impatient; the next day he was more impatient, and was positively disobedient. I was surprised and pained; and I wondered whether it could be possible that my constant care had in any way spoiled a disposition which years of neglect and adversity had only sweetened. But it was soon explained. That evening while he was eating his dinner, in a little room next the dining-room where I was eating mine, I heard him talking excitedly to the waiter. I immediately went to him and carried him to my room. He sat down and covering his face with both his hands held them there without moving. I spoke to him but he did not answer. Then removing his hands from his face, I called him by name. He turned his eyes towards mine in an agony of fear: it was his last sane moment. He uttered a loud shriek, and another, and another. I caught him in my arms as he went into a convulsion and laid him on my bed. But I knew that upon this poor little boy, from his birth marked out for misfortune, and who had now suffered so long, had at last fallen the most terrible of human calamities—insanity; and that, too, just when his recovery seemed hopeful.
All night he continued talking wildly, and shrieking at intervals. In the morning he was more quiet, though not more sane. Nor was there any marked change during the ten long weary days that we still remained in the hotel. He gradually became weaker and more insane. I did not let him out of my sight except when I went to my meals, and then I locked him in my room.
Once when I returned from dinner I found him dressed in a suit of white pajamas of mine. He said to me: “That woman who comes in to attend to the room while you are at dinner is a very foolish person. She came in this evening and looked at me and laughed, and laughed. But all Spaniards seem to be foolish.”
On the 10th of July I returned to Santa Cruz. The next day the Volta arrived and I immediately went on board. I looked forward with dread to the long journey on the steamer with an insane child. I engaged a second-class cabin (although I was a first-class passenger) that I might be removed from the white passengers; for on these steamers there are seldom any white men travelling second-class. Again, by the kindness of the captain, Ndong occupied the cabin with me. He was determined to go all over the ship, but it was more than ever necessary that I should restrain him. He became impatient of the restraint, and regarded me as his prison-keeper. It made a great difference when this child, who had loved me with the utmost devotion, now turned against me. But his own suffering was increased by this feeling; nor was there anything I could do to relieve it. I simply waited for the end and prayed to Him who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.
There were on board sixteen officers of the English army who were expecting to debark at Cape Coast Castle and were bound for the Ashantee territory of the interior, which, as you probably know, has been for several mouths the scene of another great uprising of the natives almost as formidable as that of thirty years ago. When we reached Sierra Leone, we also took on board more than two hundred native soldiers, as deck-passengers. I am glad to testify that among these sixteen officers there were several real gentlemen, in the American sense; others were tolerable; and there were still others. They were not pleasant fellow passengers. We were looking forward with some dread to their last night on board; and they also were looking forward to it, but with feelings entirely different from ours. We were expecting to reach Cape Coast Castle on Thursday. But for the last sixty hours the captain, without telling anybody, used the reserve power of two knots an hour, increasing our full speed from ten to twelve knots. Accordingly, it was with astonishment and unmixed joy that on Wednesday morning, coming on deck, we read on the bulletin: “Cape Coast Castle this morning at eight o’clock!” They had not time to get drunk.
But, in any case, the heartrending scene which we witnessed soon after we had anchored would probably have sobered them. Five missionaries of the Swiss Basle Mission were brought on board in a most pitiful and awful condition. Among them was that great and widely-known veteran, Mr. Ramseyer, whom I had long wished to meet. Mrs. Ramseyer was also in the party, besides two other younger women and another man.