"Ballantyne 01 - A Falcon Flies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

They roped the recaptured slaves together with the station servants and freedmen into long lines, and drove them away southwards, leaving Fuller Ballantyne standing with his family huddled about him, a few pathetic possessions which they had managed to save from the flames scattered at their feet, and the smoke from the smouldering, roofless buildings drifting in eddies about them.

It had confirmed in Fuller Ballantyne his hatred of the institution of slavery, and it had given him the excuse for which he had unwittingly been searching, the excuse to rid himself of the encumbrances which had until then prevented him from answering the call of the vast, empty land to the north.

His wife and two small children were packed off back to England for their own good, and with them went a letter to the directors of the-London Missionary Society.

God had made his will clear to Fuller Ballantyne. He was bidden to journey to the north, to carry God's word across Africa, a missionary at large, no longer tied to one small station, but with the whole of Africa as his parish.

The directors were greatly troubled by the loss of their station, but they were further dismayed by the prospect of having to mount what seemed to be a costly expedition of exploration into an area which all the world knew was merely a vast desert, unpeopled and unwatered except around the littoral, a burning sand desert which stretched to the Mediterranean Sea four thousand miles northward.

They wrote hurriedly to Fuller Ballantyne, uncertain where exactly the letter should be addressed, but feeling the need to deny all responsibility and to express their deep concern; they ended by stating strongly that no further funds other than his stipend of 150 per annum. could be voted for Fuller Ballantyne's highly irregular activities. They need not have expended their energy and emotions, for Fuller Ballantyne had departed. With a handful of porters, his Christian gunbearer, a Colt revolver, a percussion rifle, two boxes of medicines, his journals and navigational instruments, Fuller Ballantyne had disappeared.

He emerged eight years later, down the Zambezi river, appearing at the Portuguese settlement near the mouth of that river, to the great chagrin of the settlers there who, after 200 years of occupation, had pushed no further than 100 miles upstream.

Fuller Ballantyne returned to England and his book A Missionary in Darkest Africa created a tremendous sensation. Here was a man who had made the "Transversa', the overland passage of Africa from west to east coast, who had seen, where there should be desert, great rivers and lakes, cool pleasant grassy uplands, great herds of game and strange peoples, but most of all he had seen the terrible depredations of the slave-raiders upon the continent, and his revelations rekindled the anti-slavery zeal of Wilberforce in the hearts of the British people.

The London Missionary Society was embarrassed by the instant fame of their prodigal, and they hurried to make amends. Fuller Ballantyne had chosen the sites for future missionary stations in the interior, and at the cost of many thousands of pounds they gathered together groups of devoted men and women and sent them out to the selected sites.

The British Gbvernment, prevailed upon by Fuller Ballantyne's description of the Zambezi river as a wide roadway to the rich interior of Africa, nominated Fuller Ballantyne Her Majesty's Consul, and financed an elaborate expedition to open this artery of trade and civilization to the interior.

Fuller had returned to England to write his book, but during this period of reunion with his family, they saw almost as little of the great man as when he was in the depths of Africa. When he was not locked in Uncle William's study writing the epic of his travels, he was in London hounding the Foreign Office or the directors of the L. M. S. And when he had gained from these sources all that he needed for his return to Africa, then he was travelling about England lecturing in Oxford or preaching the sermon from the pulpit of Canterbury cathedral.

Then abruptly he was gone again, taking their mother with him. Robyn would always remember the feel of his spiky whiskers as he stooped to kiss his daughter farewell for the second time. In her mind her father and God were somehow the same person, all-powerful, allrighteous, and her duty to them was blind, accepting adoration.

Years later, when the missionary sites chosen by Fuller Ballantyne had proved to be death-traps, when the surviving missionaries had stumbled back to civilization, their fellows and spouses dead of fever and famine, killed by wild animals and by the wilder men whom they had gone out to save, then Fuller Ballantyne's star had begun to fade.

The Foreign Office expedition to the Zambezi river, led by Ballantyne, had faltered and failed upon the terrible rapids and deep falls of the Kaborra-Bossa gorge through which the Zambezi crashed and roared, dropping a thousand feet in twenty miles. Men wondered how Ballantyne, who had claimed to have followed the Zambezi down from its source to the sea, could have not known of such a formidable obstacle to his dreams. They began to question his other claims, while the British Foreign Office, parsimonious as ever, was considerably miffed by the waste of funds on the abortive expedition and withdrew the title of Consul.

The London Missionary Society wrote another of their lengthy letters to Fuller Ballantyne, requesting him in future to confine his activities to the conversion of the heathen and the propagation of God's word.

Fuller Ballantyne had replied by posting them his resignation, thereby saving the society 150 per annum. At the same time he had penned a letter of encouragement to his two children urging them to show fortitude and faith, and sent the manuscript, in which he vindicated his conduct of the expedition, to his publisher. Then he had taken the few guineas that remained from the huge royalties that his other books had earned and had disappeared once more into the interior of Africa. That was eight years previously and no one had heard from him since.

Now here was this man's daughter, already nearly. as notorious as the father, demanding admission to the Society as a working missionary.

Once again, Uncle William had come to Robyn's aid, dear mild bumbling Uncle William with his thick pebble spectacles and wild grey bush of untarnable hair. With her he had gone before the board of directors and reminded them that Robyn's grandfather, Robert Moffat, was one of the most successful of all African missionaries, with tens of thousands of conversions to his credit.

indeed the old man was still working at Kuruman and had only recently published his dictionary of the Sechuana language.

Robyn herself was dedicated and devout, with medical training and a good knowledge of African languages taught her by her now deceased mother, daughter of the same Robert Moffat, and by virtue of the reverence with which the said Robert Moffat was regarded by even the most warlike African king, Mzilikazi of the Ndebele, or as some people called them, the Matabele, the granddaughter would find immediate acceptance amongst the tribes.

The directors had listened stonily.

Then Uncle William had gone on to suggest that Oliver Wicks, the editor of the Standard who had championed the girl against the attempt by the governors of St. Matthew's Hospital to deprive her of her medical qualification, would be interested in their reasons for refusing her application to the Society.

The directors sat up and listened with great attention, conferred quietly and accepted Robyn's application. They had then seconded her to another missionary movement who in turn sent her to the industrial slums of northern England.

It was her brother Zouga who had found the way back to Africa for both of them.

He had returned from India on leave, a man of considerable achievement, already a major in the Indian army, promotion that he had won in the field, with the reputation of being a soldier and military administrator of great promise for one so young.