Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (44 page)

Livingstone didn’t mention the epiphany that transpired as that arm was crushed in a lion’s jaws almost thirty years before. ‘The shock produced a stupor similar to that which seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of the cat,’ Livingstone had described the encounter just after it happened. ‘It caused a sort of dreaminess, in which there was no sense of pain nor feeling of terror, though I was quite conscious of all that was happening. It was like what patients partially under the influence of chloroform describe, who see all the operation, but feel not the knife. This singular condition was not the result of any mental process. The shake annihilated fear, and allowed no sense
of horror in looking round at the beast. This peculiar state is probably produced in all animals killed by the
carnivora
; and if so, is a merciful provision by our benevolent Creator for lessening the pain of death.’

That rendezvous with God’s mercy had rendered death powerless before Livingstone. The transcendent ability to walk alone through the wilds of Africa had been born that day in 1843. He planned to continue walking alone long after returning to Tabora, and long after Stanley had gone to England. He approached the coming time of hardship and potentially fruitless exploration without fear.

On 7 January 1872, the New York
Herald
’s London correspondent continued Bennett’s anti-British ridicule, writing that ‘British munificence at times presents queer aspects. No sum is thought too large to devote to Christianizing the Fiji islanders, or for the purpose of carrying Bibles and warming pans to the benighted heathens of Central Africa or Nova Zambia. But for furthering in comparatively the greatest work of the nineteenth century — that of the discovery and exploration — the British government manifests an apathy and infirmity of purpose singularly at variance with both past policy and with present interest.’

The very next day
The Times
of London ran a story about Livingstone, reporting the new search. Wholly unaware — like all the world outside Ujiji — that the explorer had been found three months earlier, Nightingale had almost single-handedly raised four thousand pounds to fund the Second Livingstone Search and Relief Expedition. The RGS added five hundred more pounds from their own coffers. On 9 February, the expedition left London by train from Charing Cross station. In command was Lieutenant L. S. Dawson, who earned his exploration stripes along China’s Yangtze. Lieutenant W. Henn of the Royal Navy was second-in-command.

The third member gave the rescue an emotional heft. Twenty-year-old Oswell Livingstone was off to find his father. He was a timid young man, more comfortable in
the city than the wilderness. He hadn’t been to Africa since he was a child and had been in the presence of his father for fewer than five years of his life, but the time had come to follow in his father’s large footsteps — if only to save him.

Bennett, though, didn’t let sentimentality interfere with his attacks. The
Herald
mocked the new expedition as a reaction to American intervention, and one whose purposes paled in comparison with Stanley’s. ‘When the
Herald
equipped an expedition to explore Africa,’ a Bennett editorial reported on 13 February 1872, ‘it marked a new era in journalism as the ripest phase of modern civilization.’ On 14 and 17 February the
Herald
continued its taunts by printing assurances from the RGS and the expedition members that Stanley would fail.

By that time, back in equatorial Africa, Stanley and Livingstone had left Ujiji and were en route to Tabora. Following the southern route to avoid Mirambo, they made good time. By 14 February, they were in the village of Ugunda, just four days’ march from Tabora. Word of their coming had already reached Tabora. Ferrajjii and Cowpereh, the two special messengers Stanley had enlisted to carry his early
Herald
dispatches from Tabora back to the coast, had returned from Zanzibar carrying letters and newspapers. Even as the
Herald
dispatches were just beginning their hundred-day voyage by American merchant ship from Zanzibar to New York, the two messengers met the two explorers in Ugunda.

As the mail was eagerly opened, Stanley was stunned to read a letter from a furious Consul Webb, informing him that Bennett had refused to honour Stanley’s debts. Stanley, usually so full of bravado, was so staggered by the news that he couldn’t open any more of his mail. Even as Livingstone was absorbed in his own letters from home, Stanley merely sat and ruminated about the financial impossibility of repaying Webb. ‘There was no doubt of it,’ Stanley wrote in his journal. ‘Bennett was about to treat me as I had heard he had treated others of his unfortunate correspondents.’

After an hour and a half of worry and fear, Stanley found the strength to sort through the mailbag again. He came upon a letter from the
Herald
, and opened it. Inside was the telegram from London, the one Bennett had authorized before his hunting trip with Buffalo Bill, dated 25 September 1871 — Bennett had changed his mind. All Stanley’s expenses were covered. A relieved Stanley cast off his gloom and spent the rest of the day chatting with Livingstone about all the news from the outside world.

They left Ugunda the next morning, and arrived in Tabora on 18 February 1872. ‘Doctor,’ Stanley had told Livingstone as they walked into Stanley’s old house arm in arm, still unaware of the stir they were creating in the outside world, ‘we are at last home.’ Livingstone learned that a man named Shaw had died there some months before. His grave was two hundred yards to the left of the front door, in a cradle of trees, dried scrub and low hills.

Stanley remained at Livingstone’s side for another month. On the morning of 14 March, they bade one another farewell. Livingstone was devastated, and Stanley had to turn away so Livingstone wouldn’t see him crying. When Stanley began marching out of town towards Zanzibar, Livingstone had insisted on accompanying him for a while. They walked side by side, singing. Stanley kept looking over at Livingstone, trying to imprint the aged explorer’s features upon his memory. Finally, when he could bear the anguish of parting no longer, Stanley begged Livingstone to go back.

‘You have done what few men could do,’ Livingstone told his young protégé. In their time together, Livingstone had paid Stanley the ultimate compliment by asking the journalist to return to Africa one day and carry on the explorer’s work. It was an implicit acknowledgement that death would likely intrude on Livingstone finding the Source. ‘And I am grateful for what you have done for me. God guide you for what you have done for me. God guide you safe home and bless you, my friend. Farewell.’

Livingstone watched Stanley walk into the rising sun, then he walked back to the house in Tabora that had once
provided Stanley with refuge and a place to rest, and now would do the same for him. Livingstone was alone once again with the powerful Chuma and light-hearted Susi.

‘My Dear Doctor,’ Stanley wrote in a letter to Livingstone the next day. ‘I have parted from you too soon. I am entirely conscious of it from being so depressed … In writing to you, I am not writing to an idea now, but to an embodiment of warm good fellowship, of everything that is noble and right, of sound common sense, of everything practical and right-minded … Though I am not present with you bodily you must think of me daily, until the caravan arrives. Though you are not before me visibly, I shall think of you constantly, until your least wish has been attended to. In this way the chain of remembrance will not be severed.’

The focus of Stanley’s mission changed as he turned away from Livingstone. No longer was he racing into the unknown. Africa was not an obstacle in that sense any more. Now it was an impediment to sharing the news about Livingstone. The travails between him and Zanzibar — the Ugogo, the Makata swamp, fevers, thorns and the rainy season — were no less than before. If anything the journey would be more daunting, for Stanley planned to travel at breakneck speed.

He carried Livingstone’s journals and a packet of sealed letters from the explorer. They were Livingstone’s communiqués to the outside world, and the key to unlocking the mysteries of his whereabouts those many years. To Stanley, however, they were something just as vital and important: proof.

ON 25 APRIL 1872, WITH
Stanley bearing down on Bagamoyo, Mount Vesuvius erupted in Italy. An immense explosion of lava, mud and smoke poured from the long-dormant volcano. The eruption continued for a solid week. Newspapers the world over ran stories about the thick black plumes billowing from the crater, turning the day into night.

Then just as Vesuvius grew quiet, another explosion rocked the newspaper world. It was Thursday, 2 May. ‘Dr Livingstone’,
The Times
reported, ‘is safe with Stanley.’

Stanley’s dispatch about the meeting, sent by special messenger from Ujiji the previous November, had arrived in Zanzibar in March. By sheer coincidence, the British steamer
Abydos
was in port, offloading the Second Livingstone Search and Relief Expedition.
Abydos
then raced from Zanzibar, eager to be away before the April monsoons. Even as Webb sent Stanley’s dispatches back to New York via merchant ship — transporting them to either Bombay or Aden for transmittal via the British-run
telegraph network was far too risky — the British steamer carried the verbal message about Stanley and Livingstone into Bombay. There news soon flashed around the world by telegraph wire.

Ironically, the
Herald
wasn’t alone in breaking the story in America. The New York
Times
pounced on the news out of Bombay. Hidden in a thicket of lengthy stories about the recently concluded Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, where New York
Tribune
owner Horace Greeley was selected to run against President Grant in the coming national election, was a small, hopeful item about Livingstone. ‘A telegram has been received in this city from Bombay announcing the safety of Dr Livingstone. The steamer
Abydos
, which carried the Livingstone Search Expedition to Zanzibar, had arrived at Bombay from that place with the intelligence that the great traveller was safe with the American Stanley,’ the story declared. ‘The report is brought by negroes and believed there.’

The
Herald
soon regained the upper hand, however, publishing column after column boasting about the ‘Grand Triumph of American Enterprise’. So many Livingstone stories were published in the
Herald
on 3 and 4 May that one reader — in a letter published on 5 May — asked the paper to let up, suggesting that Livingstone’s heirs must have a financial interest in the newspaper.

On the evening of 6 May 1872, the day after the
Herald
printed a brand new Kirk letter (in which Kirk promised British officials that Stanley would fail), Stanley arrived safely in Bagamoyo. Since leaving Tabora, he had marched 525 miles in 52 days — a swift 32 days less than on the outbound journey to Tabora. Thirteen months after marching away to the fanfare of the local people and the
a cappell
singing of his men, Stanley strode into town. He was tanned, thin and toughened by Africa — almost unrecognisable as the unsure young man he was when he left. Against all odds, he was returning alive to the little town on the Indian Ocean with the white sand beach and sensual trade winds. A red-headed Englishman
called out to him as he strolled down streets that were muddy and puddle-ridden from the worst monsoon season on record. It was Lieutenant Henn of the RGS’s Livingstone Search and Relief Expedition, freshly arrived on the African continent. ‘Won’t you walk in?’ he cried out from the door of a small, fly-infested bar. ‘What will you have to drink — beer, stout, brandy? By George, I congratulate you on your splendid success!’

Stanley sat down with Henn and told of Livingstone. Stanley was glad for the drink and thankful for the warm welcome, but he didn’t stay in Bagamoyo long. On 7 May 1872, after just one night in the beach-front town, Stanley sailed for Zanzibar. His now-tattered American flag flew high above his dhow as he turned his back on Africa. It was a moment filled with more emotion than he ever could have imagined during those times when he first arrived in Africa, suffering nightmares and pondering suicide. ‘Farewell,’ he had written in his journal two nights before, thinking of what it would be like to leave the continent behind, ‘Oh Wagogo with their wild effrontery and noisy culture. Farewell to you Arabs and your sinful work — your lying tongues and black hearts. Farewell to fever remittent and intermittent, to the Makata Swamps and crocodiles, to brackish waters and howling plains … Above all, fare thee well Oh Livingstone, hero and Christian. Be thou healthy and prosperous wheresoever thou goest …’

‘That bright flag whose stars have waved over inner Africa,’ Stanley then wrote of the American flag Mrs Webb had sewn for him, ‘which promised relief to the harassed Livingstone when in dire need in Ujiji. Which though not so rich, yet vied in beauty with America’s flag. Return once more to sea, its proper domain. Torn it is, but not dishonoured, tattered but not disgraced …’