“I, Khama, your chief, order that you shall not make beer.  You take the corn that God has given to us in answer to our prayers and you destroy it.  Nay, you not only destroy it, but you make stuff with it that causes mischief among you.”

There was some murmuring.

His eyes flashed like steel.

“You can kill me,” he said, “but you cannot conquer me.”

* * * * *

The Black Prince of Eighty

If you rode as a guest toward Khama’s town over seventy years after those far-off days when Livingstone first went there, as you came in sight of the great stone church that the chief has built, you would see tearing across the African plain a whirlwind of dust.  It would race toward you, with the soft thunder of hoofs in the loose soil.  When the horses were almost upon you—­with a hand of steel—­chief Khama would rein in his charger and his bodyguard would pull up behind him.

Over eighty years old, grey and wrinkled, he would spring from his horse, without help, to greet you—­still Khama, the Antelope.  Old as he is, he is as alert as ever.  He heard that a great all Africa aeroplane route was planned after the Great War.  At once he offered to make a great aerodrome, and the day at last came when Khama—­eighty-five years old—­who had seen Livingstone, the first white man to visit his tribe—­stood watching the first aeroplane come bringing a young officer from the clouds.

He stands there, the splendid chief of the Bamangwato—­“steel-true, blade-straight.”  He is the Black Prince of Africa—­who has indeed won his spurs against the enemies of his people.

And if you were to ask him the secret of the power by which he has done these things, Khama the silent, who is not used to boasting, would no doubt lead you at dawn to the Kgotla before his huts.  There at every sunrise he gathers his people together for their morning prayers at the feet of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Captain and King of our Great Crusade for the saving of Africa.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 46:  In 1875.]

[Footnote 47:  The chiefs open-air enclosure for official meetings.]

[Footnote 48:  These are Khama’s own words taken down at the time by Hepburn.]

CHAPTER XVII

THE KNIGHT OF THE SLAVE GIRLS

George Grenfell

(Dates, b. 1849, d. 1906)

The Building of the Steamship

When David Livingstone lay dying in his hastily-built hut, in the heart of Africa, with his black companions Susi and Chumah attending him, almost his last words were, “How far away is the Luapula?”

He knew that the river to which the Africans gave that name was only a short distance away and that it flowed northward.  He thought that it might be the upper reaches of the Nile, which had been sought by men through thousands of years, but which none had ever explored.