It was a weak, worn, haggard figure that on the 31st May, 1854, entered the city of Loanda, “labouring under great depression of spirits.” The fever had brought on chronic dysentery. He could not sit on his ox ten minutes at a time. His mind was “depressed by disease and care.” His heart misgave him as to his welcome. But he had finished his course. He had accomplished his superhuman task. He had reached the coast. He had protected and guided his faithful company. He had robbed no man’s goods and taken no man’s life; and all the fourteen hundred miles he had preached the Gospel and argued for freedom and peace. CHAPTER V Livingstone found Loanda a very decayed town, but he did not fail to win many friendships. Mr. Gabriel, the one Englishman in the place, was overwhelmingly kind, and the Roman Catholic bishop scarcely less so. English men-of-war were in the harbour also, keeping both eyes open for slave ships, and Livingstone was able to take his men on board and show them the cannon with which England “was going to destroy the slave trade.” He himself recovered only very slowly from his condition of absolute emaciation, and in August had a severe relapse, which left him a mere skeleton. Everybody was kind to him, physicking him, and nourishing him, and, what was most of all valuable in his depression, providing him with lively and interesting company. He fell in with their plans for him very gratefully, but on one point he was adamant. They had wished to persuade him to go home and rest. The British captains offered him a passage to St. Helena. When this failed they urged him to take the mail-packet, the “Forerunner,” by which all his own precious diaries, and letters, and scientific papers, with maps and so forth, were to be sent. Despite his weakness it was not in him to be idle, and he had laboriously accomplished the writing of this big budget of despatches in time for the mail-boat. On April 23rd, 1852, he had told his wife that he would rejoin her in two years. It was now August, 1854, and his heart cried out for wife and children. But one thing stood in the way. He had promised his twenty-seven “boys” to take them back to their own country; and they were there in Loanda on the faith of Livingstone’s word. It did not consist with his sense of honour to leave them at Loanda, while he went home for a holiday, and he refused all the tempting offers. The reward of honourable men does not always come as it came to him. The “Forerunner” went down with all hands but one, and he escaped an almost certain fate because he kept his promise. But, alas! all his precious papers, the fruit of so much labour, were destroyed; and he had to take up the drudgery of doing everything over again. It was the form of toil most irksome to him; but he just turned to and did it. It was his way.