At last they came to him in such numbers that Martyn was obliged to say to many of them that he could not see them.  He hated sending them away.  What was it forced him to do so?

The Race against Time

It was because he was running a race against time.  He knew that he could not live very long, because the disease that had smitten his lungs was gaining ground every day.  And the thing that he had come to Persia for—­the object that had made him face the long voyage, the frightful heat and the freezing cold of the journey, the life thousands of miles from his home in Cornwall—­was that he might finish such a translation of the New Testament into Persian that men should love to read years and years after he had died.

So each day Martyn finished another page or two of the book, written in lovely Persian letters.  He began the work within a week of reaching Shiraz, and in seven months (February, 1812) it was finished.  Three more months were spent in writing out very beautiful copies of the whole of the New Testament in this new translation, to be presented to the Shah of Persia and to the heir to the throne, Prince Abbas Mirza.

Then he started away on a journey right across Persia to find the Shah and Prince so that he might give his precious books to them.  On the way he fell ill with great fever; he was so weak and giddy that he could not stand.  One night his head ached so that it almost drove him mad; he shook all over with fever; then a great sweat broke out.  He was almost unconscious with weakness, but at midnight when the call came to start he mounted his horse and, as he says, “set out, rather dead than alive.”  So he pressed on in great weakness till he reached Tabriz, and there met the British Ambassador.

Martyn was rejoiced, and felt that all his pains were repaid when Sir Gore Ouseley said that he himself would present the Sacred Book to the Shah and the Prince.  When the day came to give the book to Prince Abbas, poor Henry Martyn was so weak that he could not rise from his bed.  Before the other copy could be presented to the Shah, Martyn had died.  This is how it came about.

The Last Trail

His great work was done.  The New Testament was finished.  He sent a copy to the printers in India.  He could now go home to England and try to get well again.  He started out on horseback with two Armenian servants and a Turkish guide.  He was making along the old track that has been the road from Asia to Europe for thousands of years.  His plan was to travel across Persia, through Armenia and over the Black Sea to Constantinople, and so back to England.

For forty-five days he moved on, often going as much as ninety miles, and generally as much as sixty in a day.  He slept in filthy inns where fleas and lice abounded and mosquitoes tormented him.  Horses, cows, buffaloes and sheep would pass through his sleeping-room, and the stench of the stables nearly poisoned him.  Yet he was so ill that often he could hardly keep his seat on his horse.