away. The next
sea swept into the open and now sinking boat. By frantic efforts they
heaved up the anchor and the next wave swung the _Daisy_ with a crash
onto the beach, where the waves pounded her to a complete wreck,
wrenching the planks from the keel. But Mackay and his men managed to
rescue her cargo before she went to pieces.

They were wrecked on a shore where Stanley, the great explorer, had
years before had a hairbreadth escape from massacre at the hands
of the wild savages. But Stanley, living up to the practice he had
learned from Livingstone, had turned enemies into friends, and now the
natives made no attack on the shipwrecked Mackay.

For eight weeks Mackay laboured there, hard on the edge of the lake,
living on the beach in a tent made of spars and sails. With hammer and
chisel and saw he worked unsparingly at his task. He cut the middle
eight feet from the boat, and bringing her stern and stem together
patched the broken ends with wood from the middle part. After two
months' work the now dumpier _Daisy_ took the water again, and carried
Mackay and his men safely up the long shores of Victoria Nyanza to the
goal of all his travelling, the capital of M'tesa, King of Uganda.

The rolling tattoo of goat-skin drums filled the royal reception-hall
of King M'tesa, as the great tyrant entered with his chiefs. M'tesa,
his dark, cruel heavy face in vivid contrast with his spotless white
robe, sat heavily down on his stool of State, while brazen trumpets
sent to him from England blared as Mackay entered. The chiefs squatted
on low stools and on the rush-strewn mud-floor before the King. At his
side stood his Prime Minister, the Katikiro, a smaller man than the
King, but swifter and more far-sighted. The Katikiro was dressed in a
snowy-white Arab gown covered by a black mantle trimmed with gold. In
his hard, guilty face treacherous cunning and masterful cruelty were
blended.

M'tesa was gracious to Mackay, and gave him land on which to build
his home. More important to Mackay than even his hut was his workshop,
where he quickly fixed his forge and anvil, vise and lathe, and
grindstone, for he was now in the place where he could practise his
skill. It was for this that he had left home and friends, and pressed
on in spite of fever and shipwreck to serve Africa and lead her to the
worship of Jesus Christ by working and teaching as our Lord did when
on earth.

One day the wide thatched roof of that workshop shad