"Good, and what do the people say?"
"That they will die for Jesus."
"Why, that is good news!" Ma exclaimed with delight. "Go and tell them to be patient and strong, and all will be well."
As there were no missionaries to come up and help her, she went on alone, this time into the great dark forest-land that stretched far to the west of Itu. It was the home of the Ibibios, that naked down-trodden race who had been so long the victims of slave-hunters, "untamed, unwashed, unlovely savages," Ma called them; but it was just because they were so wretched that she pitied them and longed to uplift them. Like Jesus, she wanted to go amongst the worst people rather than amongst the best.
The Government were now making a road through the forest, and as she looked at it stretching away so straight and level and broad, she began to dream again. "I will go with the road," she said, "and build a row of schools and churches right across the land." She had troops of friends amongst the white officers, who all admired and liked her, and they, also, urged her to come, and one said she should get a bicycle.
"Me on a bicycle!" she said. "An old woman like me!"
She had watched their bicycles going up and down the road, and was afraid of them. She said she would not go near them in case they should explode; but one of the officers brought her out a beautiful machine from England, and that cured her. She soon learned to ride, and it became a great help in her work.
One day she took Etim, another of her bright scholars, who was only twelve, and set out for a village called Ikotobong, six miles beyond Itu, in a beautiful spot amongst the hills, and started a school and congregation. Etim was the schoolmaster! And right bravely the little fellow wrought; very soon he had a hundred children deep in the first book.
The head-teacher at Ikotobong, one of those who learned to love Jesus through her, thus tells the story of her coming: