because you are so ill. You will miss the
boat. You are too ill to walk. The wild beasts in the woods will kill
you. The savage warriors are out, and will kill you in the dark--not
knowing who you are."

"But I must go," she answered.

The chief insisted that she must have two armed men with lanterns with
her, and that she must get the chief of a neighbouring village to send
out his drummer with her so that people might know--as they heard the
drum--that a protected person was travelling who must not be harmed.

It was night, and Mary Slessor with her two companions marched out
into the darkness, the lanterns throwing up strange shadows that
looked like fierce men in the darkness. Through the night they walked
till at midnight they reached the village where they were to ask for
the drum.

The chief was surly.

"You are going to a warlike people," he said. "They will not listen to
what a woman says. You had better go back. I will not protect you."

Mary Slessor was on her mettle.

"When you think of the woman's power," she said to the chief, "you
forget the power of the woman's God. I shall go on."

And to the amazement of the savages in the villages she went on into
the darkness. Surely she must be mad. She defied their chief who had
the power to kill her. She had walked on into a forest where ferocious
leopards abounded ready to spring out upon her, and where men were
drinking themselves into a fury of war. And for what? To try with a
woman's tongue to stop the fiery chiefs and the savages of a distant
warlike tribe from fighting. Surely she was mad.

_Facing the Warriors_

She pressed on through the darkness. Then she saw the dim outlines
of huts. Mary Slessor had reached the first town in the war area. She
found the hut where an old Calabar woman lived who knew the white Ma.

"Who is there?" came a whisper from within.

But even as she replied there was a swift patter of bare feet. Out of
the darkness leapt a score of armed warriors. They were all round her.
From all parts dark shadows sprang forward till scores of men with
their chiefs were jostling, chattering and threatening.

"What have you come for?" they asked.

"I have heard that you are going to war. I have come to ask you not to
fight," she replied.

The chiefs hurriedly talked together, then they came to her and said--

"The white Ma is welcome. She shall hear all that we have to say
before we fight. All the same we shall fight. For h