Ruatoka staggered into his home, laid the
sick man upon the only bed he had, and then himself laid down upon the
floor, wearied almost to death. There he slept while his wife nursed
and tended the fever-stricken Neville back to life.

* * * * *

Over a thousand years before that day Wilfrid[43] had brought life and
joy to the starving Saxons of the South coast of England. A hundred
years before that day white men, the great-great-grandchildren of
those Saxons, had started out in _The Duff_ and, sailing across the
world, had taken life and joy in the place of the terror of demons and
the death by the club to the men of the Islands of the Seas.

Now Ruatoka, the South Sea islander, having in his heart the same
brave spirit of the Good Shepherd--that spirit of the Good Samaritan,
of help and preparedness, of courage and of chivalry, had carried life
and joy back to the North Sea islander, the Briton who had fallen by
the roadside in Papua.

Ruatoka was a brown Greatheart. It was with him as it must be with all
brave sons who serve that great Captain, Jesus Christ: he wanted to be
in the front of the battle. When the great Tamate was killed and eaten
by the cannibals of Goaribari, Ruatoka wrote a letter to a missionary
who lived and still lives in Papua. This is the end of the letter:

"Hear my wish. It is a great wish. The remainder of my strength I
would spend in the place where Tamate was killed. In that village I
would live. In that place where they killed men, Jesus Christ's name
and His word I would teach to the people that they may become Jesus'
children. My wish is just this. You know it. I have spoken.

RUATOKA."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 42: James Chalmers: see Chapter XIII.]

[Footnote 43: See Chapter II.]

Book Three: THE PATHFINDERS OF AFRICA

CHAPTER XV

THE MAN WHO WOULD GO ON

_David Livingstone_

(Dates born 1813, died 1873)

There was a deathly stillness in the hot African air as two bronzed
Scots strode along the narrow forest path.

The one, a young, keen-eyed doctor,[44] glanced quickly through the
trees and occasionally turned aside to pick some strange orchid and to
slip it into his collecting case. The other strode steadily along
with that curious, "resolute forward tread" of his.[45] He was David
Livingstone. Behind them came a string of African bearers carrying in
bundles on their heads the tents and food of the explorers.

Suddenly