17. The Black Seal
Chapter 17
The Black Seal
Rrrrrrrroar! Adoniram turned his head slowly to the side and peered out between the slats on the wall. It sounded for all the world like a lion, he thought, but it couldn’t be. He must be hearing things. He was not. In the distance he saw one of the strangest sights he’d ever seen in Burma. Four of his jailers were dragging a solid wheeled cart along a muddy track towards the prison hut. On the cart was a cage, and in the cage was a full-grown lion.
“Look at what’s coming,” Adoniram told Henry Gouger.
Henry wiggled himself around until he could see out the crack. “Oh,” he groaned. “They’re going to make quite a sport out of us, aren’t they. No doubt they will feed us to the lion when they have drawn a big enough crowd.”
By now all seven men had resigned themselves to dying in custody, but the thought of being torn from limb to limb by a lion was still daunting for Adoniram. The prisoners waited all day, and the following day as well, to see what the purpose of the lion might be.
“The jailers won’t go near it,” observed Captain Laird.
“Maybe they captured it because the lion is the symbol of British power,” suggested Adoniram. It would be a strange reason, but who knew what the Burmese officials were thinking these days?
The weeks went by, and lion’s presence continued to be a mystery. No one fed the lion, and the hungrier the animal got, the more it roared. Sometimes it would roar all night long, and Adoniram would lie awake wondering whether the jailers were just getting it good and ready to eat them. But strangely, and much to everyone’s relief, instead of the prisoners being fed to the hungry lion, the hungry lion died of starvation.
By now, the prisoners, who were being fed well by Henry Gouger’s cook and watched over by Ann, were feeling a little stronger than they had in a long time. Their new jailers were not as vicious as the Spotted Faces and allowed them to go for short walks outside the prison hut (in chains, of course).
Soon after the lion died, Adoniram began to look closely at the cage it had been housed in. The cage was cool and clean, two things the prison hut was not. Soon Adoniram got permission from the head jailer to move into the lion’s cage, with the door locked securely behind him. He was even allowed to sleep there at night, which meant that for the first time in over a year he slept with his feet on the ground, not above his head.
It was the beginning of August before the men got any idea how the war with Great Britain was progressing. A group of officials descended on the prison and demanded that all the prisoners be taken immediately to Amarapura. Once there, the men were each housed in a separate cell. Adoniram wished he’d had time to say good-bye to Ann and Maria. He felt sure the end was near. Indeed, the end was near, though not the end of his life, as he thought, but the end of the war. King Bagyidaw had brought the foreign prisoners to Amarapura to translate papers outlining a treaty to end the war. The British had won, and Sir Archibald Campbell, commander of the British forces, had written out Britain’s terms for Burma’s surrender. However, the only people in the whole country who could translate these terms for the Burmese to understand them were the prisoners and Ann.
The surrender, which involved handing over several Burmese territories to Great Britain, took a long time to negotiate. It was November before the treaty was ratified and the foreign prisoners were finally set free.
The British, though, still had more translation work to do, so they asked Adoniram to visit their camp at Yandabo farther downriver to help out. A boat was provided for the trip, and soon the Judson family was floating serenely down the Irrawaddy River on a beautiful moonlit night. As Adoniram sat with his wife at his side and his baby daughter in his arms, he marveled at the sights and sounds around him. Every moment of life seemed extra precious to him now. He turned to Ann and with a sigh said, “Heaven must be something like this.”
When they reached the British camp, Adoniram went straight to work translating the Treaty of Yandabo. His old friend, Henry Gouger, was already there helping with the translation, and the two of them worked side-by-side.
By March 1826, the work was done, and Adoniram and Ann were escorted back to Rangoon aboard the gunboat Irrawaddy. With all the fighting that had gone on around Rangoon, they wondered whether there would be anything remaining of the mission house they had left over two years before. When the British had bombarded the city, the Wades and the Houghs had been forced to flee to Calcutta, leaving the mission house unattended.
Amazingly, the house was still standing, though it was in bad shape. Adoniram stood in front of it, its doors torn off and many of its exterior boards broken, and wondered where he would find the strength to repair it. He also wondered where he would find the strength to begin work translating the New Testament into Burmese all over again.
Before the night was over, however, Adoniram was in for one of the most wonderful surprises of his life. He learned that on the day the foreign prisoners were taken from the death prison, Maung Ing, a faithful convert who had accompanied Adoniram and Ann when they moved to Ava, had gone to the prison to look for some token to remember his American friend by. All he found was an old pillow, too dirty and worn to be of use even to a Spotted Face, and so the pillow had been thrown in the mud outside the prison wall.
Maung Ing recognized it as Adoniram’s pillow and took it home to wash it. Only then did he notice how unusually lumpy it felt. He investigated and found the entire translation of the New Testament into Burmese, which Adoniram had spent nine years working to complete.
Overjoyed at the discovery, Maung Ing had kept the manuscript safe. Now Adoniram was free, and Ann was no longer under suspicion. It was time to return the translation. Adoniram could hardly believe the story, but there was no doubt it was true. Maung Ing held the pages of the Burmese translation in his hands. Over the next few days, Adoniram and Ann worked hard to locate the little band of Christian converts they had left behind. Only Maung Shway-gnong could be found. They had expected this. The war had disrupted the lives of many people in Burma, especially those in the coastal provinces. As a result, people had been scattered to various parts of the country. This led Adoniram and Ann to ask an important question. Since the church had been dispersed, should they stay in Rangoon to rebuild it, or should they move to Amherst? Now that things had settled down in Burma, the Wades had moved from Calcutta to Amherst.
Amherst was a brand-new city about one hundred miles southeast of Rangoon on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Martaban. It had been set up by the British to govern the parts of Burma they had won in the Treaty of Yandabo, and many Burmese people were moving there. Adoniram had been assured there would be no problems if he decided to establish a mission there. Indeed, Lord Amherst, the British governor general after whom the town was named, promised to give the missionaries his full support.
The offer was tempting. It meant there would be no more officials arriving at the door to collect some new tax, and no more “gifts” would have to be given to gain a hearing with a top government official. And there would be no worrying about their Burmese converts being harassed, since the British had promised religious freedom in Amherst.
On July 2, 1826, the Judson family arrived in Amherst, where they found board with an Englishman, Captain Fenwick. However, their time together there was short. The East India Company had plans for Adoniram—though not to deport him back to England, as they had tried to do in India years before, but to do translation work for them. They wanted Adoniram to aid them in translating and negotiating a trade arrangement with the Burmese government so that goods could be imported to and exported from the country. At first Adoniram flatly refused. His missionary work—not trade arrangements—was what mattered most to him. But now that Henry Gouger had left Burma, Adoniram was the only person in the country who could do the job. Finally, the East India Company made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: not money, but the promise that along with the trade agreement the company would try to get the Burmese government to agree to religious freedom for every citizen in the country.
Even though it meant his returning to Ava and the family’s being separated yet again, Adoniram and Ann agreed that it was a heaven-sent opportunity. Imagine, they told each other, if Burmese people were free to be Christians, there would be no more secret baptisms and no more whispered sermons behind closed doors. Adoniram waved to Ann from the deck of the small steamboat that was to take him upriver to Ava. He hoped the negotiations would go well so that he could be back with his family soon.
To Adoniram and Ann’s dismay, the negotiations dragged on endlessly. The Burmese government haggled over every word in the agreement, and by October Adoniram was wondering whether he would ever get home to Ann and Maria. He eagerly awaited the arrival of each new letter from Ann. Some of the letters bothered him, however. Maria was sickly and weak, and sometimes Ann wrote about her concern that Maria would not live to see her second birthday.
November 24, 1826, was a day Adoniram would never forget. He was staying at Dr. Price’s house in Ava when a servant handed him a letter. Adoniram’s hand shook as he carried it to his room. The letter had a black seal, a customary way for the writer to let the reader know it brought news of a death. He thought of little Maria as he shut the door behind him, and he hoped that Ann had not become sick with grief. After all, Maria was their third child to die in infancy.
Reluctantly Adoniram broke the seal and opened the envelope to read the details. He noted that the letter was dated a month before, October 26, 1826. He read on: “My Dear Sir: To one who has suffered so much and with such exemplary fortitude, there needs but little preface to tell a tale of distress. It were cruel indeed to torture you with doubt and suspense. To sum up the unhappy tidings in a few words—Mrs. Judson is no more.”
Adoniram sat still, his eyes fixed on the words before him, trying desperately to grasp the meaning of what he had just read. Mrs. Judson is no more. Ann? The bride who had followed him to Burma? The woman who had risked everything to stay near him while he was in prison? His best friend in all the world? Ann was dead? It didn’t seem possible.
After several motionless minutes, Adoniram read on. Ann had apparently developed a severe fever that the doctor could not cure. Despite the best medical care available, she had slipped into unconsciousness and died. Her body had been buried under a hopia tree. The letter went on to say that Maria was in the care of Jonathan and Deborah Wade, the missionary couple who had accompanied Ann back to Burma after her trip to New England three years before.
Adoniram folded the letter and laid his head on the desk. Tears flowed down his face and onto his jacket sleeve. He began to sob, quietly at first and then so loudly that Dr. Price came to see what the trouble was. There was nothing he could do to comfort Adoniram. Nothing could wipe away the words, Mrs. Judson is no more.
Only three days later, Dr. Price himself needed comfort when his Burmese wife, along with their baby, died during childbirth. Now the two men were widowers grieving together.
It was two months later, at the end of January 1827, before Adoniram’s work for the East India Company was finished and he was free to return to Amherst. Adoniram felt bitter about his dealings with the East India Company. The final treaty had no clause guaranteeing religious freedom for all the people of Burma. Adoniram felt used and that his time had been wasted. This was not just any time that had been wasted; it had been his last opportunity to be with the only woman he had ever loved. The trip back downriver to Amherst was sad and lonely.
When Adoniram arrived and little Maria was brought out onto the veranda to be reunited with her father, she clung fearfully to Deborah Wade. It was obvious she did not recognize her own father. Adoniram wept, for he knew it would be only a matter of time before Maria forgot her mother as well.
Adoniram sought out Dr. Richardson, who had treated Ann until she died. In his opinion, the years of not eating enough or taking care of her health had weakened Ann to the point where a fever could kill her. This made Adoniram feel worse, not better. He was the one who had been in the death prison, yet ironically he had lived through the ordeal while the stress of the situation on Ann had helped to end her life.
Still, there was work to be done. The Baptist mission society in the United States was sending out more missionaries. Soon George Boardman and his beautiful blonde, blue-eyed wife, Sarah, arrived in Burma, along with their baby daughter.
More than ever, Adoniram felt the need to keep on with his translation work. As well, he preached several times a week in a hastily built zayat. Freed from the laws governing religion in the rest of Burma, many citizens of Amherst were eager to learn about the gospel. But despite all his busyness, Ann was never far from his thoughts.
Six months to the day after Ann’s death, Maria died. She was two years, three months old. Adoniram buried her beside her mother. In July 1827, Adoniram received a letter from his mother informing him that his father had died. Although his father had been an old man, this was still a difficult death for Adoniram to cope with. Not long afterwards, he received word that his brother Elnathan, who was thirty-five years old, had died. Soon after that, Elnathan’s widow and his only daughter also died. Such news greatly depressed Adoniram, who began to think that his mother would never have any grandchildren who lived past the age of ten. He also began to wonder about the point of living. Slowly he began to cut himself off from any social contact. He informed the governor and other British dignitaries that he no longer wanted to be invited to their parties.
By the second anniversary of Ann’s death, Adoniram was spending his days sitting quietly in a jungle hut. The other missionaries tried to interest him in the daily running of the mission, but it was an uphill battle. All Adoniram wanted was to be left alone with his God and with the memories of his dead wife and children.
It was the beginning of 1830 before the cloud of depression began to lift from Adoniram. Cephas Bennett and his family arrived in Burma from the United States. Cephas was a printer, and once again Adoniram found his thoughts turning towards things the mission could print: tracts, the New Testament, and Psalms, which he had also translated. At the same time, he decided it was time to start focusing his attention back on translating the rest of the Old Testament.
About this time, word reached Adoniram that Dr. Price had died, leaving Sarah and George Boardman to care for his two children. By now the Boardmans were living in the highlands of Burma. They had two boys of their own, Judson and George, who had both been born in Burma. Their oldest child, Sarah, had died. It seemed to Adoniram that death was still all around him, but somehow he now had strength to go on with his missionary work. He decided to leave Amherst and its painful memories behind and move to Moulmein, about forty miles north of Amherst, where a small band of Burmese Christians needed a leader.
All around him, Adoniram saw encouraging signs that Burma was changing. In March, he traveled to Rangoon for the festival at Shwe Dagon pagoda. Cephas Bennett had printed ten thousand tracts for the occasion, and Adoniram distributed them all to people who asked. Six thousand people came to the mission house to ask questions about what they had read. Adoniram was delighted. He wrote of this in his journal:
Some [inquirers] come two or three months’ journey, from the borders of Siam and China—“Sir, we hear that there is an eternal hell. We are afraid of it. Do give us a writing that will tell us how to escape it.” Others come from the frontiers of Kathay, a hundred miles north of Ava—“Sir, we have seen a writing that tells about an eternal God. Are you the man that gives away such writings? If so, pray give us one, for we want to know the truth before we die.” Others come from the interior of the country, where the name of Jesus Christ is little known—“Are you Jesus Christ’s man? Give us a writing that tells about Jesus Christ.”
Adoniram marveled at the change the war had made in the openness of the Burmese people to Christianity. It had taken him nine years of hard work to win the first eighteen Burmese converts. Now, in 1831 alone, there had been two hundred seventeen baptisms. This brought the total number of baptized Christians in Burma to two hundred forty Burmese and one hundred thirteen foreigners. Adoniram was only sorry that Ann was not at his side to see it all for herself.