Chatterbox, 1906 Part 74

'And a soldier's wife must be brave, too,' she said to herself.

For many, many weeks after that Billikins and his mother were very anxious, though Billikins tried his best to be cheerful, and not let Mother see that he felt sad. News came to them--sometimes, good news, and then Mother brightened.

At last, one happy day, they heard that the war was over.

'Father will be home soon,' said Billikins, joyfully.

'Yes, dear, thank Heaven, very soon now,' said Mother, and kissed him fervently.

As the time pa.s.sed Mother grew more and more cheerful. The s.h.i.+p that was bringing Father home would soon be due.

'Billikins, do you think you can stay here alone, dear, while I go out and do a bit of shopping?' Mother asked one evening, and Billikins answered, 'Yes, Mother; I will be good while you are gone.'

Mother put on her bonnet and cape, took a basket, and sallied forth.

Left alone, Billikins sat at the window, and gazed out at the busy street. There was a great deal of noise going on overhead. The Jones children, who lived in the 'flat' above, were always rather noisy.

Billikins had seen Mrs. Jones go out with a basket some time ago, so he knew that they were all alone. Suddenly there was a great crash, a sound of breaking gla.s.s, and then wild screams of distress, which seemed to come from upstairs.

Billikins rushed out.

Two Jones children were flying wildly downstairs, while a third followed more slowly, crying and sobbing.

'What _is_ the matter?' asked Billikins.

'Oh, oh, we have upset the lamp!' sobbed little Lizzie Jones. 'The rooms is on fire, it's all ablaze! What shall I do? What shall I do? I am so frightened!'

'Where's the baby?' gasped Billikins. He knew there was a Jones baby--a new and tiny one.

'Oh, I don't know! I don't know!' sobbed Lizzie. 'In the cradle, I think.'

Billikins simply tore upstairs. A great puff of smoke came out on the landing from the Jones's door, and nearly choked him. For an instant he hesitated; then he seemed to hear his mother's voice----

'Remember, Billikins, you are a soldier's son; you must never run away from danger, always face it.'

He rushed across the room, half-blinded by smoke, feeling the flames scorch him, he reached the cradle. The baby was in it. Already the flames were beginning to lick the sides. With a strong effort he lifted the baby, feeling the flames scorch his arms as he did so. Oh, the heat and the smoke that were stifling him! Would he _ever_ reach the door? He staggered, and nearly fell.

'A soldier's son, a soldier's son,' seemed to ring in his ears. He staggered forward and reached the landing, to be caught in the arms of a splendid man in a bra.s.s helmet. And then all grew dark, and he knew no more.

When he woke he was lying on a strange bed, in a strange place; his head was bandaged all over the top, and his arms were all bandaged, too. He felt very weak.

'Where--am--I?' he said, feebly, and some one, in a white cap and a large white ap.r.o.n, came to the bedside and bent over him.

'Where--is--Mother?' said Billikins. 'And--who--are--you?'

'Mother will be here soon, and I am Nurse Katherine,' said a sweet voice, and a soft, cool hand was laid on Billikins' forehead.

He smiled gratefully, and then from sheer exhaustion he fell asleep.

When he woke again Mother was sitting by the bed, talking to Nurse Katherine.

'Yes, going on nicely,' he heard Nurse say. And--and--_who_ was that sitting by the other side of the bed? A tall, bearded figure----

'Father!' cried Billikins, joyfully.

'My brave, brave boy!' said Father, and his voice was not quite steady.

'My own son! To think how nearly I lost him!'

Then remembrance came to Billikins. 'The baby?' he managed to say.

'The baby is safe, darling,' said Mother, from her side of the bed.

'Thanks to my brave little Billikins, who risked his life to go and fetch it.'

Billikins smiled feebly.

'I--was not--brave,' he said; 'I--only remembered--what you told me, that--I was--a--soldier's son.'

And he was so tired that he only wondered faintly why Father made a funny sound in his throat, as if he were choking, and why Nurse Katherine wiped her eyes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He staggered forward and reached the landing."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Lieutenant Fogan led a gallant resistance."]

STORIES FROM AFRICA.

VIII.--SOME MEN WHO WON THE BLESSING.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I leave the work with you,' said Livingstone in the Senate House at Cambridge, after speaking in burning words of the needs of Africa. He went back himself to the land from which he returned only to his grave in Westminster Abbey, and around the slab in the nave which bears his name, we read his words to those who should take up the work he left them: 'May Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one, American, English, Turk, who will help to heal this open sore of the world.'

The 'open sore' was the traffic carried on in those days, without let or hindrance, in the great slave-market of Zanzibar. The crowds of men, women, and children who were paraded up and down, examined, and bargained for, and then taken across to the clove plantations in Pemba, or kept as domestic slaves in Zanzibar, were brought from the interior by the Arabs, the great slave-dealers of East Africa. Sometimes a native village had been attacked and set on fire, some of the inhabitants shot down among their blazing huts, and the rest carried off. Sometimes the Arabs would settle for some time in a neighbourhood for elephant-hunting, and, when they had secured as much ivory as they required, would stir up a quarrel between two villages and offer their powerful aid to one side or the other, on condition of receiving all the prisoners in payment. Then came the horrible journey to the coast. The luckless slaves were yoked in gangs, often with their necks fastened into forked sticks. The sick or feeble, unable to keep up with the rest, were either killed or left to the mercy of wild beasts. Babies, whose mothers were hindered by their weight, were flung aside upon the terrible track. Those who reached the coast alive were packed in the hold of a slave-dhow, and, after enduring untold miseries upon the voyage, were sold in the market of Zanzibar. No wonder that the sight of such things as these roused the loving heart of Livingstone to a white heat of indignation, and sent him home to infect his countrymen with his own anger.

For some time the conscience of Christian Europe had been awakening to the duty of putting an end to these horrors, and, as in the case of the pirates of Algiers, it was England who first played the part of policeman. Early in 1873, Sir Bartle Frere was sent to Zanzibar to confer with the Sultan, Seyid Barghash, on the suppression of the slave-trade, and, a few months later, he was followed by six English men-of-war, reinforced by two French and one American s.h.i.+p. The effect of these nine good arguments for reform was that, on June 6th, 1873, a treaty was signed, by which the slave-traffic was abolished and the Zanzibar market closed for ever.

For years after that, however, the Arab dealers managed from time to time to evade the law, and to s.h.i.+p their cargo of miserable human beings, kidnapped from their homes on the mainland, from Zanzibar and Pemba. Therefore, there was plenty of work for the officers and men of H.M.S. _London_, appointed to watch the coast for slavers, and with authority to search suspected vessels. Many were the exciting chases and triumphant rescues made by the English sailors; many, too, the disappointments when the dhow proved to be empty, the slaves having been hastily smuggled on sh.o.r.e and hidden among the undergrowth till the search was over. As a rule the Arabs, though expert in tricks and s.h.i.+fts, did not offer armed resistance, but now and again they showed fight, and the rescue of their captives cost the life of more than one brave Englishman.

In 1881 the gallant Captain Brownrigg was killed in a struggle with an Arab slaver, owing chiefly to his own punctilious respect for the French flag under which the dhow was sailing. Not wis.h.i.+ng to begin hostilities, he came alongside the Arab without arming his men, who were powerless to make any resistance when boarded by the enemy. The Captain, who wore his sword, kept up a gallant fight single-handed, even killing one man with his telescope before he fell at last bleeding from twenty wounds.

Six years later a pinnace from H.M.S. _Turquoise_, with Lieutenant Fegan in command, was watching the creeks and bays running up into the coast of Pemba Island. At daybreak one May morning, a dhow was seen making for an opening known as Fungal Gap, and the dinghy, or small boat, with three men, was sent to hail her. The dhow replied by a volley, and, as Lieutenant Fegan turned his nine-pounder gun upon her, she left the small boat and bore down upon the pinnace. The Arab crew numbered twenty desperate men armed with swords and rifles; the Englishmen were ten, of whom three were in the dinghy, but Lieutenant Fegan, shouting to his lads to stand firm, led a gallant resistance to the fierce, dark-faced men who sprang upon the deck as the two boats crashed together. Two men he shot down, and ran another through with his cutla.s.s before he received a severe wound, disabling his sword-arm. Only the timely help of a sailor, who cut down his opponent, saved him from being killed outright. The dhow, finding the pinnace a tougher vessel than she had antic.i.p.ated, tried to escape, but the English, though four of their number were wounded, at once gave chase, and were presently reinforced by the men in the dinghy.

Some of the Pemba Arabs, hearing the shots, came down to the sh.o.r.e and fired upon the pinnace, but the gallant vessel held on to her prize until the dhow foundered at last in shallow water and capsized, the crew jumping into the sea and trying to save themselves by swimming. Their well-wishers on the sh.o.r.e were soon dispersed by the English fire, and those of the crew who were not utterly disabled by their wounds, turned to the task of rescuing the living cargo of the dhow. The wretched slaves, crowded together in the hold and terrified by the firing, saw the kindly faces of the English sailors looking down upon them, and learnt by degrees that they were safe and among friends.

It was ten days before a doctor could be had to attend to the wounded; one man died, but the gallant fight had won freedom for fifty-two slaves, and in many cases not only freedom, but teaching and training such as they would never have had but for their short, bitter experience of captivity and the rescue that had ended it. The Universities' Mission was the direct result of Livingstone's appeal to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; it offered to take charge of slave children released in Zanzibar, and in the girls' school at Mbweni, the Boys' Home at Kilmani, and the College for elder lads at Kiungani, a new generation was growing up of children saved from degradation and misery for a happy, useful Christian life.

And the most striking sign of the change that has been worked, is the scene which now meets the eye of the visitor to Zanzibar when he seeks the site of the old slave-market. The ground was bought by a member of the Universities' Mission, and upon the spot once given over to injustice and cruelty arose the stately Cathedral of Zanzibar: a church full of memories, where Bishop Steere was master-builder, watching over the mixing of the mortar and the laying of the stones, studying brick-making in England that he might put it into practice in East Africa. It was he who suggested the material for the roof--pounded coral, of which the island of Zanzibar actually consists, mixed with Portland cement and forming a solid arch across the church.

'It is supported by charms until the opening day,' said the Arabs; 'then it will fall and crush the Christians.' But the roof of Zanzibar Cathedral stands sure and firm after twenty-six years, and on the opening day, Christmas 1879, the hymns, 'Hark, the herald angels sing,'