[Under a tree near the temporary Mission House, Igumale, Nigeria, September, 1925. It is late afternoon. Mrs. NORCROSS sits in a chair, sewing, LEFT. JESSIE, native girl, sits on ground beside her, threading needles. Mrs. NORCROSS pauses in her work and looks up, her eyes fixed on distance, and sighs. Then she speaks aloud.]
Mrs. NORCROSS: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday - four days to the mail! … That needle ready, Jessie?
JESSIE: Ih, Ma. [offering it]. [Enter Mr. NORCROSS, RIGHT. He is dressed in shirt and trousers, with sun helmet.]
NORCROSS: Well! … still busy? [Glances at wrist-watch] Half-past five. It will be dark in half-an-hour.
Mrs. N.: [looking at hers]: Half-past five! So it is! Jessie, run and put the kettle on. I will come in a few minutes.
JESSIE: Ih, Ma. [Gets up and goes, RIGHT.]
NORCROSS [stretches his arms and yawns]: O-ho-ho! Well, there’s another day’s work done—outside, at any rate. I must do a bit more at the translation to-night. [Throws himself down on ground beside Mrs. N.] Lonely, old girl?
Mrs. N. [evasively]: Oh, there’s plenty to do.
NORCROSS [laughing]: We certainly don’t lack for that! Now, what have I done to-day? [Ticking off on hisfingers] Sawed up and planed various lengths of plank and scantling; prepared a hundredweight or two of cement (and wondered how far I could make it go!); attended to a dozen sick folk; sold two primers to aspiring scholars; mended the water-tank of a promising leak; settled two heated palavers; captured … let me see [consults note-book] seven new words and one fresh idiom, and …. oh, I forget the rest! What is your husband, Mrs. Norcross?
Mrs. N.: Oh, he’s a pretty useful and frightfully busy man - and the husband of a fairly useful wife, who is also sometimes busy!
NORCROSS: Thank you, kindly, ma’am, and I beg your pardon! …. Well, it’s all got to be done, and it’s good fun enough. Only you want to be getting at the real thing. When you know that there are sixty to eighty thousand Okpotos more in need of a New Testament than anything else in the whole world, all this business of purlins and scantlings, nuts and bolts and cement, rather gets on your nerves.
Mrs. N.: We’ll be able to get on with the main thing all the better, my lad, when the house is finished.
NORCROSS: True for you! And so I’m all the more anxious to get on with it. Our term’s wearing away, and we’ll be glad enough to have a look at the old England again—but the break in the work is a nuisance. If only we could keep going!
Mrs. N.: Yes, it’s slow work for few hands. I often wonder whether they can realise at home what it is really like. It looks romantic from a distance, but there are days and weeks of unbroken toil and drudgery.
NORCROSS: And yet there are thrills—even in the thick of it. I got one the other day when we stopped the work on the house for that dedication prayer. One felt, here’s another foundation stone planted for the Church of God in Africa - another claim pegged out.
Mrs. N.: I felt that, too, and even the native boys were impressed, I think.
NORCROSS: Yes, the dead silence was eloquent. [Laughs] I fancy I mystified them a bit by sticking that P.M. Leader in a bottle and burying it in the foundation. Anyhow, it all helped to produce the effect on them of something very solemn and important. And, after all, it is a great romance—the whole business—that we should be here, nearly 200 miles up-country, establishing the outpost of Primitive Methodism. Just over thirty years it has taken to get here, from the first commencement at Archibongville. There was the strategic move across the river to Jamestown and Oron, which brought us to the open door of Nigeria. From there our Efik evangelisation developed; then we advanced into Ibo country, and a wonderful chapter that has been. And now here we are amongst the Okpotos.
Mrs. N.: And all from the beginning in Fernando Poo!
NORCROSS: All from the little island. Yes, this heritage has come down to us from the first adventure. We are helping to fulfil a dream which was cherished by a long succession of toilers.
Mrs. N.: Is a great vision ever lost?
NORCROSS: Not if God can help it, nor so long as His Spirit can find men and women willing to pursue it. [Rising to his feet] My word! it’s a chain of wonderful links, when you think of it! Clarke and his Jamaica congregations - Mamma Job (herself an Ibo)—Hands—Burnett and Roe and all their successors to Fairley and Brown—then the rest, including the girls, and the growing native agency. John Enang Gill, Efik-born, the Training Institutes and all their products, and their further promise.
Mrs. N.: “Ours is a goodly heritage.”
NORCROSS: Yes, you and I may be only humble specimens, my dear, but we are privileged to be the advance guard of all this great story. We - we must keep the charge...[Changing his tone] That is, of course, I’m the humble specimen—journeyman-jack-of-all-trades. You [taking off his hat to her]—you are the most wonderful—
Mrs. N.: [breaking in]: Now, don’t be silly!
NORCROSS: You should let me finish!—the most wonderful provider a tired and hungry man ever had!
Mrs. N.: Yes, it’s nearly dark. I will go and help Jessie [gathering up her things.]
[Enter JERRY, native interpreter, RIGHT. He wears an indelible broad smile.]
NORCROSS: Well, Jerry! still smiling! You’d brighten up the wettest of wet weeks. What is it now?
JERRY: You want me for book-palaver to-night sah?
NORCROSS: Yes, Jerry. We must get on with the translation again to-night. Make you ready for I call.
JERRY: Yes, sah. [Departs, RIGHT, still smiling.]
NORCROSS: Don’t know what I’d do without old Jerry. He’s useful as an interpreter, but as a smiler he’s beyond price.
Mrs. N.: Poor Jerry! And he has something to put up with, with that bush wife of his. [Making as if to go] Are you coming now?
NORCROSS: Yes. [She starts to go, but N. detains her, looking out towards audience, and they stand together arm-in-arm.] Wait a second! Let us watch the sunset. Isn’t it gorgeous! One never gets tired of them. … And so another day is done. … and so much waits on to-morrow! Oh, surely the Church at home will not fail us! They won’t let the story come to an end and make us lose our heritage! They will never cause our labour to be in vain! They must rise to the occasion and answer the call, and ensure an even more glorious to-morrow!
Mrs. N. [slowly] I think they will stand by us. … I am sure they will!
[They stand silent for a moment, then turn and walk slowly off, RIGHT.]
In the Reformed Methodist Church, Malabo (Equatorial Guinea) a memorial plaque is erected in the memory of the British explorer Richard L. Lander who discovered the lower Niger river and died in Fernando Po (today Malabo).
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