Made strong by the home air and the love of new and kind friends, Ma fared forth again to her lonely outpost in the African backwoods.
The people of Ekenge were glad to see their white mother back, and confessed that they did not seem able to do without her. They came to her like children with all their troubles and sorrows, and she listened to their stories and advised and comforted them. When they quarrelled they said, "Let us go to Ma," and she heard both sides and told them who was wrong and who was right, and they always went away content.
She needed no longer to go to any of the villages round about when a chief died. She just sent a message that there must be no killing. There was a great uproar, but back always came the reply, "We have heard. Our mother has made up her mind. We will obey." They did not know that Ma all the time was in her room kneeling and praying to God.
Some mourned over the old ways. "Ah, Ma," they sighed, "you have spoilt all our good fashions. We used to take our people with us when we went to the spirit land; now we must go alone."
But she had still to be on the alert, for many of the tribes at a distance from Ekenge had not yet given up their dark practices, and whenever they were bent on anything wicked they plunged deep into the heart of the forest to escape her eyes.
One day she heard that a chief had died, and was guided to one of these hidden spots, where she found his free men giving the poison ordeal to a number of prisoners. They thought she would grow tired and go away if they simply sat and waited, but days and nights passed and she remained with them, sleeping on the ground beside a fire. Of the armed men lying around her she was not afraid, but only of the wild beasts that might come creeping up through the darkness and leap upon her. It was not she who became wearied and hungry, but the men themselves, and by and by the prisoners were set free.
Eme Ete helped her most. It was she who told her when wrong-doing was being plotted. In the swift way that only natives know about, Eme Ete received news of it. Calling a trusty messenger she gave him a special kind of bottle.
"Take that to Ma and ask her to fill it with ibok (medicine)—go quick!"
When the messenger arrived at the Mission House and Ma saw the bottle, she knew what it meant. It said to her, "Be ready!" and she would not undress until she heard the cry, "Run, Ma, run!" Once she lay down to rest in her clothes for a whole month before word came, and then she saved the life of a man.
Sometimes a quarrel arose so quickly, and the call was so sudden, that she was not ready to go, and so she took a large sheet of paper and wrote anything on it that came to her mind, and after splashing some sealing-wax on it to make it look important, she sent it off by a swift runner. None of the fighting men could read, and by the time they had fingered it and talked over it Ma appeared.