Now I am sleepy. Good-bye. May God make us all worthy of what He
has done for us.

The people were good for a time, but soon fell back into the habit of
centuries, and did in secret what they used to do openly. Ma saw that
the struggle was only just beginning, and she threw herself into it with
all her courage and strength.

She was always studying her Bible, and learning more of the love and
power of Jesus, and so much did she lean on Him that she was growing
quite fearless, and would go by herself into the vilest haunts in the
town or far out into lonesome villages. Often she took a canoe and went
up the river and into the creeks and visited places where no white woman
had been before, healing the sick, sitting by the wayside listening to
the tales of the people, and talking to them about the Saviour of the
world. Sometimes there was so much to say and do that she could not get
back the same day, and she slept on straw or leaves in the open air, or
on a bundle of rags in an evil-smelling hut.

Once she took the house-children and went a long river journey to visit
an exiled chief who lived in a district haunted by elephants. They were
to start in the morning, but things are done very leisurely in Africa,
and it was night before they set off by torchlight. Eyo Honesty VII.,
the negro king of Creek Town, who was a Christian and always very kind
to Ma, had sent a State canoe, brightly painted, with the message:

"Ma must not go as a nameless stranger to a strange people, but as a
lady and our Mother, and she can use the canoe as long as she pleases."

There was a crew of thirty-three men dressed only in loin-cloths.

As they dipped the paddles and sped onwards over the quiet water, a
drummer drummed his drum, and the crew chanted a song in her praise:

Ma, our beautiful beloved mother is on board,
Ho, ho, ho!

The motion of the canoe was like a cradle, and the song like a mother's
crooning, and she fell asleep; and all through the night, amongst these
wild black men, she lay in God's keeping like a little child.

At dawn they came to a beach and a village, where she was given a mud
room in the chief's yard, and here for a whole fortnight she lived in
the company of dogs, fowls, rats, lizards, and mosquitoes. Many of the
people had never seen a white person, and were afraid to touch her. She
was very sorry for them, they were so poor and naked and dirty, and she
busied hersel