She went on right through the war to the end and beyond the end, caring for her orphans, looking after the sick in hospital, sending food and clothes to all parts of the country, helping the prisoners.  Without caring whether they were British or Turkish, Armenian or Indian, she gave her help to those who needed it.  And because of her splendid courage thousands of boys and girls and men and women are alive and well, who—­without her—­would have starved and frozen to death.

To-day, in and around Konia (an Army officer who has been there tells us), the people do not say, “If Allah wills,” but “If Miss Cushman wills!” It is that officer’s way of letting us see how, through her brave daring, her love, and her hard work, that served everybody, British, Armenian, Turk, Indian, and Arab, she has become the uncrowned Queen of Konia, whose bidding all the people do because she only cares to serve them, not counting her own life dear to her.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 64:  In reading this part of the story to younger children discretion should be exercised.  Some of the details on this page are horrible; but it is right that older children should realize the evil and how Miss Cushman’s courage faced it.]

CHAPTER XXVII

ON THE DESERT CAMEL TRAIL

Archibald Forder

(Time of Incident 1900-1901)

The Boy Who Listened

An eight-year-old schoolboy sat one evening in a crowded meeting in Salisbury, his eyes wide open with wonder as he heard a bronzed and bearded man on the platform telling of his adventures in Africa.  The man was Robert Moffat.

It was a hot summer night in August (1874).  The walls of the building where the meeting was held seemed to have disappeared and the boy Archibald Forder could in imagination see “the plain of a thousand villages,” that Livingstone had seen when this same Robert Moffat had called him to Africa many years before.  As the boy Archibald heard Moffat he too wished to go out into the foreign field.  Many things happened as he grew up; but he never forgot that evening.

At the age of thirteen he left home and was apprenticed to the grocery and baking business.  In 1888 he married.  At this time he read in a magazine about missionary work in Kerak beyond the River Jordan—­in Moab among the Arabs—­where a young married man ready to rough it was needed.  He sailed with his wife for Kerak on September 3, 1891, and left Jerusalem by camel on September 30, on the four days’ journey across Jordan to Kerak.  Three times they were robbed by brigands on this journey.  Mr. Forder worked there till 1896.  He then left and travelled through America to secure support for an attempt to penetrate Central Arabia with the first effort to carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ there.

The story that follows tells how Forder made his pioneer journey into the Arabian desert.