isk that," she said; "as soon as I can get away from here you
will see me."

In order to find out more about the tribes, she sometimes went far up
the Cross River in a canoe, stopping wherever she could get shelter. On
one of her journeys, when she had some of the house-children with her,
the canoe was attacked by a huge hippopotamus. It rushed at the canoe,
and tried to overthrow it. The men thrust their paddles down its throat
and beat it, but it kept savagely nosing and gripping the frail vessel.
Great was the excitement. Its jaws were snapping, the water was in a
whirl of foam, the men were shouting and laying about them with their
paddles, the girls were screaming, Ma was sometimes praying and
sometimes giving orders. At last the canoe was swung clear, and paddled
swiftly away.

The story of this adventure is still told in Calabar, and if you ask
Dan, one of Ma's children, about it, he will say, "Once, when Ma was
travelling in a canoe, she was attacked by hippopotamuses, but when they
looked inside the canoe and saw her, they all ran away!"

What Ma saw and heard made her all a-quiver to go into these strange
lands, but she would not leave the Okoyong people until some one came to
take her place. The Mission had no other lady to send, and so she could
only watch and pray and wait.

Matters became worse. The Aros hated the white rule, and would not
submit to it. They tried to prevent the Government opening up their
country to order and justice and peace, and would not allow the
officials to enter it; they blocked the river so that no white vessel,
or native one either, could pass; they went on with their slave-hunting
and cannibalism. At last the Government lost patience. "We must teach
them a lesson," they said. So a warning went to all the missionaries
along the banks of the river to come down to Calabar at once. Ma Slessor
did not like the order. "Everything is peaceful in Okoyong," she said.
"My people won't fight." The Government said they knew that, but her
life was too precious to risk, and they sent a special steamer for her
and the children.

When she came she found several companies of soldiers, with many
quick-firing guns, already moving up the river. They landed in the Aro
country, and marched through swamps and attacked the hosts of natives
who had gathered to bar their way, and defeated them. Still, the bushmen
would not give in, and the soldiers had many a weary time in the
trackless forests. A