1.07.16. Book 7: 16. The New Adventure
16. THE NEW ADVENTURE
IT was a shining December day when R. R. Meadows and David Fenn, who had spent the year in Tamil study, took a surf-boat and crossed to the ship to welcome their leader back.
Out of the dancing boat they clambered eagerly, were up on deck in a moment, and all three clasped hands in a most delightful excitement. Then Ragland led the way to his cabin, and life together began with prayer that knit heart to heart. Still together, they crossed the surf, and thereafter through all the surfy tossing of this difficult life those two were what he believed they would be to him when he looked into their eyes in his cabin that day. "Your greatest trial may be your fellow-missionaries," said a wise old Chinese missionary to the writer years ago. Yes, or your greatest joys.
"I could hardly have chosen two such men to my mind, had I had the whole Church to choose from," thus Ragland nine days later. And all in the highest spirits, ("Too high spirits, perhaps" was his cautious word; but no, blessed be gaiety), they bought tents, ponies, and the miscellaneous impedimenta of camp life, and before the stars had paled in the sky of that Wednesday morning, January 18, 1854, they set forth on their joyful adventure. The season was the best in the year for a new adventure. (And, difficult as it is to keep it in mind in a day when everywhere Ragland’s thought has been accepted and developed, let it be remembered that it was nothing less.) The mighty rains of the north-east monsoon had cooled the land that opened before them, enchanting in its new green dress. Before them, too, lay the lure of the unknown, and each day beckoned through wonderful and lovely changes; starlight, for they rose long before starset; dawn, seen over vast spaces through air like sparkling crystal; sunlight, so lavish, so golden to eyes toned to northern grey that at first, "Oh what a beautiful day!" is the involuntary exclamation, and the amused smile of the accustomed who would prefer an English day strikes curiously; sunset and after-glow, dreams of wonder these, when the after-glow falls on the red soil of the South, kindling the dust to rubies. And the nights; who can forget the first nights in the East? There is the night of velvet depths when the stars burn in ordered distances, one beyond the other for ever and for ever. And there is the night when the sky, lit with a little moon, is asleep in gauzy blue and the constellations appear in bright groups, and again there are full-moon nights, when every colour of the earth shows clear (only most strangely holy) and you feel it ungrateful to go to sleep while the very trees stand awake and conscious and worshipful.
All this our three passed through and apprehended before the blinding heat of later months turned day into one long gridiron, with briefest respites at either end, and night herself ached with the hot men tossing on hot camp-cots. Slowly they journeyed through the perfect hours each morning, facing south all the time, led night by night by the Cross in the sky that sets far south-west over the sea. And as he travelled, Ragland found life he thought lost. On these hills, towards the end of the hot weather, forest fires seem to spring from the ground. Night after night, till the foresters get it under, those in the Plains below see an awful but brilliant pageant. Great snakes of fire coil round the crags, lick up the grassy summits, swing across the ravines and leap upon the forest trees, which then can be seen to stand like mighty candles alight. No one who loves the forest can endure that sight. But come up a few months later, and you gaze astonished. Sheets of burnt and rain-washed bamboo lie like shining yellow cornfields thrown on the steep slopes. The rounded hilltops are emeralds. The sunlight picks out the crimson and orange colours of young shoots of jungle trees, and they are jewels alive. There it is, found again, life we thought lost.