“My master,” he cried, “how can I take this message? The Dutchmen of
South Africa will not listen to me, they will say I am an Englishman.
And the Englishmen will say: ‘Who is this fellow who comes preaching
peace, peace, peace? Has he not been a year in the country and he has
not a share in a single company? Can anything he says be worth hearing?
If he were a man of any sense he would have made five thousand pounds at
least.’ And they will not listen to me. Give me another labour!”
And the stranger said: “Take a message to one man. Find him, whether he
sleep or wake, whether he eat or drink; and say to him: ‘Where are the
souls of the men that you have bought?’
“And if he shall answer you and say: ‘I bought no men’s souls! The souls
that I bought were the souls of dogs?’ Then ask him this question, say
to him, ‘Where are the--’
“And if he cry out, ‘You lie, you lie! I know what you are going to say.
What do I know of envoys? Was I ever afraid of the British Government?
It is all a lie!’ Then question him no further. But say: ‘There was a
rushlight once. It flickered and flared, and it guttered down, and went
out--and no man heeded it: it was only a rushlight.
“‘And there was a light once; men set it on high within a lighthouse,
that it might yield light to all souls at sea; that afar off they might
see its steady light and find harbour, and escape the rocks.
“‘And that light flickered and flared, as it listed. It went this way
and it went that; it burnt blue, and green, and red; now it disappeared
altogether, and then it burnt up again. And men, far out at sea, kept
their eyes fixed where they knew the light should be: saying, ‘We are
safe; the great light will lead us when we near the rocks.’ And on
dark nights men drifted nearer and nearer; and in the stillness of the
midnight they struck on the lighthouse rocks and went down at its feet.
“‘What now shall be done to that light, in that it was not a rushlight;
in that it was set on high by the hands of men, and in that men trusted
it? Shall it not be put out?’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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