s on his mat on the mud floor.
Having examined him she took from her little medicine chest a drug and
gave a dose to the chief. But she could see at once that more of this
medicine was needed than she had with her. She knew that, away on the
other side of the river, some hours distant, another missionary was
working.

"You must go across the river to Ikorofiong for more medicine."

"No, no!" they said, "we dare not go. They will slay any man who goes
there."

She was in despair. Then someone said, "There is a man of that country
living in his canoe on the river. Perhaps he would go?"

They ran down to the river and found him. After much persuading he at
last went, and returned next day with the medicine.

The chief, whom the women had believed to be almost dead, gradually
recovered consciousness, then sat up and took food. At last he was
quite well. All the village laughed and sang for joy. There would be
no slaying. They gathered round Mary Slessor in grateful wonder at
her magic powers. She told them that she had come to them because
she worshipped the Great Physician Jesus Christ, the Son of the
Father--God who made all things. Then she gathered them together in
the morning and evening, and led them as with bowed heads they all
thanked God for the healing of the chief.

III. VALIANT IN FIGHT

Years passed by and Mary Slessor's name was known in all the villages
for many miles. She was, to them, the white Ma who was brave and wise
and kind. She was mad, they thought, because she was always rescuing
the twin babies whom the Calabar people throw out to die and the
mothers of twins whom they often kill. But in some strange way they
felt that her wisdom, her skill in healing men, and her courage, which
was more heroic than that of their bravest warriors, came from the
Spirit who made all things. She would wrench guns from the hands of
drunken savage men who were three times as strong as she was. At last
she used to sit with their chief as judge of quarrels, and many times
in palavers between villages she stopped the people from going to war.

_Through the Forest Perilous_

One day a secret message came to her that, in some villages far away,
a man of one village had wounded the chief in another village and that
all the warriors were arming and holding councils of war.

"I must go and stop it," said Mary Slessor.

"You cannot," said her friends at Ekenge, "the steamer is coming to
take you home to Britain