Chapter 7

Yet it is actually true that there was born at Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, England, on September 29, 1758, a boy who never knew what fear was. This boy's name was Horatio Nelson,--a name which his fearlessness, ambition, and patriotism made immortal.

Courage even to daring distinguished young Nelson from his boy companions. Many stories illustrating this quality are told of him.

On one occasion, when the future hero of England was but a mere child, while staying at his grandmother's, he wandered away from the house in search of birds' nests. When dinner time came and went and the boy did not return, his family became alarmed. They feared that he had been kidnapped by gypsies, or that some other mishap had befallen him. A thorough search was made for him in every direction. Just as the searchers were about to give up their quest, the truant was discovered sitting quietly by the side of a brook which he was unable to cross.

"I wonder, child," said his grandmother, "that hunger and fear did not drive you home."

"Fear! grand-mamma," exclaimed the boy; "I never saw fear. What is it?"

Horatio was a born leader, who never even in childhood shrank from a hazardous undertaking. This story of his school days shows how the spirit of leadership marked him before he had entered his teens.

In the garden attached to the boarding school at North Walsham, which he and his elder brother, William, attended, there grew a remarkably fine pear tree. The sight of this tree, loaded with fruit was, naturally, a very tempting one to the boys. The boldest among the older ones, however, dared not risk the consequences of helping themselves to the pears, which they knew were highly prized by the master of the school.

Horatio, who thought neither of the sin of stealing the schoolmaster's property, nor of the risk involved in the attempt, volunteered to secure the coveted pears.

He was let down in sheets from the bedroom window by his schoolmates, and, after gathering as much of the fruit as he could carry, returned with considerable difficulty. He then turned the pears over to the boys, not keeping one for himself.

"I only took them," he explained, "because the rest of you were afraid to venture."

The sense of honor of the future "Hero of the Nile" and of Trafalgar was as keen in boyhood as in later life.

One year, at the close of the Christmas holidays, he and his brother William set out on horseback to return to school. There had been a heavy fall of snow which made traveling very disagreeable, and William persuaded Horatio to go back home with him, saying that it was not safe to go on.

"If that be the case," said Rev. Mr. Nelson, the father of the boys, when the matter was explained to him, "you certainly shall not go; but make another attempt, and I will leave it to your honor. If the road is dangerous, you may return; but remember, boys, I leave it to your honor."

The snow was really deep enough to be made an excuse for not going on, and William was for returning home a second time. Horatio, however, would not be persuaded again. "We must go on," he said; "remember, brother, it was left to our honor."

When only twelve years old, young Nelson's ambition urged him to try his fortune at sea. His uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling, commanded the Raisonnable, a ship of sixty-four guns, and the boy thought it would be good fortune, indeed, if he could get an opportunity to serve under him. "Do, William," he said to his brother, "write to my father, and tell him that I should like to go to sea with Uncle Maurice."

On hearing of his son's wishes, Mr. Nelson at once wrote to Captain Suckling. The latter wrote back without delay: "What has poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he, above all the rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea? But let him come, and the first time we go into action, a cannon ball may knock off his head and provide for him at once."

This was not very encouraging for a delicate boy of twelve. But Horatio was not daunted. His father took him to London, and there put him into the stage coach for Chatham, where the Raisonnable was lying at anchor.

He arrived at Chatham during the temporary absence of his uncle, so that there was no friendly voice to greet him when he went on board the big ship. Homesick and heartsick, he passed some of the most miserable days of his life on the Raisonnable. The officers treated the sailors with a harshness bordering on cruelty. This treatment, of course, increased the natural roughness of the sailors; and, altogether, the conditions were such that Horatio's opinion of the Royal Navy was sadly altered.

But in spite of the separation from his brother William, who had been his schoolmate and constant companion, and all his other loved ones, the hardships he had to endure as a sailor boy among rough officers and rougher men, and his physical weakness, his courage did not fail him. He stuck bravely to his determination to be a sailor.

Later, the lad went on a voyage to the West Indies, in a merchant ship commanded by Mr. John Rathbone. During this voyage, his anxiety to rise in his profession and his keen powers of observation, which were constantly exercised, combined to make him a practical sailor.

After his return from the West Indies, his love of adventure was excited by the news that two ships--the Racehorse and the Carcass--were being fitted out for a voyage of discovery to the North Pole. Through the influence of Captain Suckling, he secured an appointment as coxswain, under Captain Lutwidge, who was second in command of the expedition.

All went well with the Racehorse and the Carcass until they neared the Polar regions. Then they were becalmed, surrounded with ice, and wedged in so that they could not move.

Young as Nelson was, he was put in command of one of the boats sent out to try to find a passage to the open water. While engaged in this work he was instrumental in saving the crew of another of the boats which had been attacked by walruses.

His most notable adventure during this Polar cruise, however, was a fight with a bear.

One night he stole away from his ship with a companion in pursuit of a bear. A fog which had been rising when they left the Carcass soon enveloped them. Between three and four o'clock in the morning, when the weather began to clear, they were sighted by Captain Lutwidge and his officers, at some distance from the ship, in conflict with a huge bear. The boys, who had been missed soon after they set out on their adventure, were at once signaled to return. Nelson's companion urged him to obey the signal, and, though their ammunition had given out, he longed to continue the fight.

"Never mind," he cried excitedly; "do but let me get a blow at this fellow with the butt end of my musket, and we shall have him."

Captain Lutwidge, seeing the boy's danger,--he being separated from the bear only by a narrow chasm in the ice,--fired a gun. This frightened the bear away. Nelson then returned to face the consequences of his disobedience.

He was severely reprimanded by his captain for "conduct so unworthy of the office he filled." When asked what motive he had in hunting a bear, he replied, still trembling from the excitement of the encounter, "Sir, I wished to kill the bear that I might carry the skin to my father."

The expedition finally worked its way out of the ice and sailed for home.

Horatio's next voyage was to the East Indies, aboard the Seahorse, one of the vessels of a squadron under the command of Sir Edward Hughes. His attention to duty attracted the notice of his senior officer, on whose recommendation he was rated as a midshipman.

After eighteen months in the trying climate of India, the youth's health gave way, and he was sent home in the Dolphin. His physical weakness affected his spirits. Gloom fastened upon him, and for a time he was very despondent about his future.

"I felt impressed," he says, "with an idea that I should never rise in my profession. My mind was staggered with a view of the difficulties I had to surmount and the little interest I possessed. I could discover no means of reaching the object of my ambition. After a long and gloomy revery in which I almost wished myself overboard, a sudden flow of patriotism was kindled within me and presented my king and my country as my patrons. My mind exulted in the idea. 'Well, then,' I exclaimed, 'I will be a hero, and, confiding in Providence, I will brave every danger!'"

In that hour Nelson leaped from boyhood to manhood. Thenceforth the purpose of his life never changed. From that time, as he often said afterward, "a radiant orb was suspended in his mind's eye, which urged him onward to renown."

His health improved very much during the homeward voyage, and he was soon able to resume duty again.

At nineteen he was made second lieutenant of the Lowestoffe; and at twenty he was commander of the Badger. Before he was twenty-one, owing largely to his courage and presence of mind in face of every danger, and his enthusiasm in his profession, "he had gained that mark," says his biographer, Southey, "which brought all the honors of the service within his reach."

Pleasing in his address and conversation, always kind and thoughtful in his treatment of the men and boys under him, Nelson was the best-loved man in the British navy,--nay, in all England.

When he was appointed to the command of the Boreas, a ship of twenty-eight guns, then bound for the Leeward Islands, he had thirty midshipmen under him. When any of them, at first, showed any timidity about going up the masts, he would say, by way of encouragement, "I am going a race to the masthead, and beg that I may meet you there." And again he would say cheerfully, that "any person was to be pitied who could fancy there was any danger, or even anything disagreeable, in the attempt."

"Your Excellency must excuse me for bringing one of my midshipmen with me," he said to the governor of Barbados, who had invited him to dine. "I make it a rule to introduce them to all the good company I can, as they have few to look up to besides myself during the time they are at sea." Was it any wonder that his "middies" almost worshiped him?

This thoughtfulness in small matters is always characteristic of truly great, large-souled men. Another distinguishing mark of Nelson's greatness was that he ruled by love rather than fear.

When, at the age of forty-seven, he fell mortally wounded at the battle of Trafalgar, all England was plunged into grief. The crowning victory of his life had been won, but his country was inconsolable for the loss of the noblest of her naval heroes.

"The greatest sea victory that the world had ever known was won," says W. Clark Russell, "but at such a cost, that there was no man throughout the British fleet--there was no man indeed in all England--but would have welcomed defeat sooner than have paid the price of this wonderful conquest."

The last words of the hero who had won some of the greatest of England's sea fights were, "Thank God, I have done my duty."

HOW STANLEY FOUND LIVINGSTONE

In the year 1866 David Livingstone, the great African explorer and missionary, started on his last journey to Africa. Three years passed away during which no word or sign from him had reached his friends. The whole civilized world became alarmed for his safety. It was feared that his interest in the savages in the interior of Africa had cost him his life.

Newspapers and clergymen in many lands were clamoring for a relief expedition to be sent out in search of him. Royal societies, scientific associations, and the British government were debating what steps should be taken to find him. But they were very slow in coming to any conclusion, and while they were weighing questions and discussing measures, an energetic American settled the matter offhand.

This was James Gordon Bennett, Jr., manager of the New York Herald and son of James Gordon Bennett, its editor and proprietor.

Mr. Bennett was in a position which brought him into contact with some of the cleverest and most enterprising young men of his day. From all those he knew he singled out Henry M. Stanley for the difficult and perilous task of finding Livingstone.

And who was this young man who was chosen to undertake a work which required the highest qualities of manhood to carry it to success?

Henry M. Stanley, whose baptismal name was John Rowlands, was born of poor parents in Wales, in 1840. Being left an orphan at the age of three, he was sent to the poorhouse in his native place. There he remained for ten years, and then shipped as a cabin boy in a vessel bound for America. Soon after his arrival in this country, he found employment in New Orleans with a merchant named Stanley. His intelligence, energy, and ambition won him so much favor with this gentleman that he adopted him as his son and gave him his name.

The elder Stanley died while Henry was still a youth. This threw him again upon his own resources, as he inherited nothing from his adopted father, who died without making a will. He next went to California to seek his fortune. He was not successful, however, and at twenty he was a soldier in the Civil War. When the war was over, he engaged himself as a correspondent to the New York Herald.

In this capacity he traveled extensively in the East, doing brilliant work for his paper. When England went to war with King Theodore of Abyssinia, he accompanied the English army to Abyssinia, and from thence wrote vivid descriptive letters to the Herald. The child whose early advantages were only such as a Welsh poorhouse afforded, was already, through his own unaided efforts, a leader in his profession. He was soon to become a leader in a larger sense.

At the time Mr. Bennett conceived the idea of sending an expedition in search of Livingstone, Stanley was in Spain. He had been sent there by the Herald to report the civil war then raging in that country. He thus describes the receipt of Mr. Bennett's message and the events immediately following:--

"I am in Madrid, fresh from the carnage at Valencia. At 10 A.M. Jacopo, at No.--Calle de la Cruz, hands me a telegram; on opening it I find it reads, 'Come to Paris on important business.' The telegram is from James Gordon Bennett, Jr., the young manager of the New York Herald.

"Down come my pictures from the walls of my apartments on the second floor; into my trunks go my books and souvenirs, my clothes are hastily collected, some half washed, some from the clothesline half dry, and after a couple of hours of hasty hard work my portmanteaus are strapped up and labeled for 'Paris.'"

It was late at night when Stanley arrived in Paris. "I went straight to the 'Grand Hotel,'" he says, "and knocked at the door of Mr. Bennett's room.

"'Come in,' I heard a voice say. Entering I found Mr. Bennett in bed.

"'Who are you?' he asked.

"'My name is Stanley,' I answered.

"'Ah, yes! sit down; I have important business on hand for you.

"'Where do you think Livingstone is?'

"'I really do not know, sir.'

"'Do you think he is alive?'

"'He may be, and he may not be,' I answered.

"'Well, I think he is alive, and that he can be found, and I am going to send you to find him.'

"'What!' said I, 'do you really think I can find Dr. Livingstone? Do you mean me to go to Central Africa?'

"'Yes, I mean that you shall go and find him wherever you may hear that he is.... Of course you will act according to your own plans and do what you think best--BUT FIND LIVINGSTONE.'"

The question of expense coming up, Mr. Bennett said: "Draw a thousand pounds now; and when you have gone through that, draw another thousand; and when that is spent, draw another thousand; and when you have finished that, draw another thousand, and so on; but, FIND LIVINGSTONE."

Stanley asked no questions, awaited no further instructions. The two men parted with a hearty hand clasp. "Good night, and God be with you," said Bennett.

"Good night, sir," returned Stanley. "What it is in the power of human nature to do I will do; and on such an errand as I go upon, God will be with me."

The young man immediately began the work of preparation for his great undertaking. This in itself was a task requiring more than ordinary judgment and foresight, but Stanley was equal to the occasion.

On January 6, 1871, he reached Zanzibar, an important native seaport on the east coast of Africa. Here the preparations for the journey were completed. Soon, with a train composed of one hundred and ninety men, twenty donkeys, and baggage amounting to about six tons, he started from this point for the interior of the continent.

Then began a journey the dangers and tediousness of which can hardly be described. Stanley and his men were often obliged to wade through swamps filled with alligators. Crawling on hands and knees, they forced their way through miles of tangled jungle, breathing in as they went the sickening odor of decaying vegetables. They were obliged to be continually on their guard against elephants, lions, hyenas, and other wild inhabitants of the jungle. Fierce as these were, however, they were no more to be dreaded than the savage tribes whom they sometimes encountered. Whenever they stopped to rest, they were tormented by flies, white ants, and reptiles, which crawled all over them.

For months they journeyed on under these conditions. The donkeys had died from drinking impure water, and some of the men had fallen victims to disease.

It was no wonder that the survivors of the expedition--all but Stanley--had grown disheartened. Half starved, wasted by sickness and hardships of all kinds, with bleeding feet and torn clothes, some of them became mutinous. Stanley's skill as a leader was taxed to the utmost. Alternately coaxing the faint-hearted and punishing the insubordinate, he continued to lead them on almost in spite of themselves.

So far they had heard nothing of Livingstone, nor had they any clew as to the direction in which they should go. There was no ray of light or hope to cheer them on their way, yet Stanley never for a moment thought of giving up the search.

Once, amid the terrors of the jungle, surrounded by savages and wild animals, with supplies almost exhausted, and the remnant of his followers in a despairing condition, the young explorer came near being discouraged.

But he would not give way to any feeling that might lessen his chances of success, and it was at this crisis he wrote in his journal:--

"No living man shall stop me--only death can prevent me. But death--not even this; I shall not die--I will not die--I cannot die! Something tells me I shall find him and--write it larger--FIND HIM, FIND HIM! Even the words are inspiring."

Soon after this a caravan passed and gave the expedition news which renewed hope: A white man, old, white haired, and sick, had just arrived at Ujiji.

Stanley and his followers pushed on until they came in sight of Ujiji. Then the order was given to "unfurl the flags and load the guns." Immediately the Stars and Stripes and the flag of Zanzibar were thrown to the breeze, and the report of fifty guns awakened the echoes. The noise startled the inhabitants of Ujiji. They came running in the direction of the sounds, and soon the expedition was surrounded by a crowd of friendly black men, who cried loudly, "YAMBO, YAMBO, BANA!" which signifies welcome.

"At this grand moment," says Stanley, "we do not think of the hundreds of miles we have marched, of the hundreds of hills that we have ascended and descended, of the many forests we have traversed, of the jungle and thickets that annoyed us, of the fervid salt plains that blistered our feet, of the hot suns that scorched us, nor the dangers and difficulties now happily surmounted.

"At last the sublime hour has arrived!--our dreams, our hopes and anticipations are now about to be realized! Our hearts and our feelings are with our eyes, as we peer into the palms and try to make out in which hut or house lives the white man with the gray beard we heard about on the Malagarazi."

When the uproar had ceased, a voice was heard saluting the leader of the expedition in English--"Good morning, sir."

"Startled at hearing this greeting in the midst of such a crowd of black people," says Stanley, "I turn sharply round in search of the man, and see him at my side, with the blackest of faces, but animated and joyous--a man dressed in a long white shirt, with a turban of American sheeting around his head, and I ask, 'Who the mischief are you?'

"'I am Susi, the servant of Dr. Livingstone,' said he, smiling, and showing a gleaming row of teeth.

"'What! Is Dr. Livingstone here?'

"'Yes, sir.'

"'In this village?'

"'Yes, sir.'

"'Are you sure?'

"'Sure, sure, sir. Why, I leave him just now.'

"'Susi, run, and tell the Doctor I am coming.'"

Susi ran like a madman to deliver the message. Stanley and his men followed more slowly. Soon they were gazing into the eyes of the man for news of whom the whole civilized world was waiting.

"My heart beat fast," says Stanley, "but I must not let my face betray my emotions, lest it shall detract from the dignity of a white man appearing under such extraordinary circumstances."

The young explorer longed to leap and shout for joy, but he controlled himself, and instead of embracing Livingstone as he would have liked to do, he grasped his hand, exclaiming, "I thank God, Doctor, that I have been permitted to see you."

"I feel grateful that I am here to welcome you," was the gentle reply.

All the dangers through which they had passed, all the privations they had endured were forgotten in the joy of this meeting. Doctor Livingstone's years of toil and suspense, during which he had heard nothing from the outside world; Stanley's awful experiences in the jungle, the fact that both men had almost exhausted their supplies; the terrors of open and hidden dangers from men and beasts, sickness, hope deferred, all were, for the moment, pushed out of mind. Later, each recounted his story to the other.

After a period of rest, the two joined forces and together explored and made plans for the future. Stanley tried to induce Livingstone to return with him. But in vain; the great missionary explorer would not lay down his work. He persevered, literally until death.

At last the hour of parting came. With the greatest reluctance Stanley gave his men the order, "Right about face." With a silent farewell, a grasp of the hands, and a look into each other's eyes which said more than words, the old man and the young man parted forever.

Livingstone's life work was almost done. Stanley was the man on whose shoulders his mantle was to fall. The great work he had accomplished in finding Livingstone was the beginning of his career as an African explorer.

After the death of Livingstone, Stanley determined to take up the explorer's unfinished work.

In 1874 he left England at the head of an expedition fitted out by the London Daily Telegraph and the New York Herald, and penetrated into the very heart of Africa.

He crossed the continent from shore to shore, overcoming on his march dangers and difficulties compared with which those encountered on his first journey sank into insignificance. He afterward gave an account of this expedition in his book entitled, "Darkest Africa."

Stanley had successfully accomplished one of the great works of the world. He had opened the way for commerce and Christianity into the vast interior of Africa, which, prior to his discoveries, had been marked on the map by a blank space, signifying that it was an unexplored and unknown country.