narrow. Listen and I will explain"--he raised himself from the deck on
his elbow and gestured with the amber mouth-piece of his
chibouk--"Patriotism has passed through five distinct stages; first, it
was only love of family--of parents and kindred; then, as the family
grows and expands into the tribe, it, too, as merely a large family,
becomes the object of affection, of patriotic devotion. This is the
second stage--the stage of the tribe, the dan. In the third stage, the
tribe has sought protection behind the inclosure of walls. It is the
age of cities; patriotism is the devotion to the city; men are Athenians
ere Grecians, Romans ere Italians. In the next period, patriotism means
affection for the state, for the county, for the province; and
Burgundian, Norman and Fleming gave freely of their breast-blood for
Burgundy, Normandy and Flanders; while we of to-day form the latest, but
not the last, link of the lengthening chain by honouring, loving and
serving the _country_ above all considerations, be they of tribe, or
town, or tenure. Yet I do not believe this to be the last, the highest,
the noblest form of patriotism.
"No," continued Bab Azzoun, "this development shall go on, ever
expanding, ever mounting, until, carried upon its topmost crest, we
attain to that height from which we can look down upon the world as our
country, humanity as our countrymen, and he shall be the best patriot
who is the least patriotic."
"Ah-h, _fichtre_!" exclaimed Santander, listlessly, throwing a cushion
at Bab Azzoun's head; "_va te coucher_. It's too hot to theorise;
you're either a great philosopher, Bab, or a large sized"--he looked at
him over the rim of his tin cup before concluding--"idiot." ...
But Bab Azzoun had gone on talking in the meanwhile, and now finishing
with "and so you must not blame me, if, looking upon them" (he meant the
Arabs) "and theirs, in this light, I find this African campaign a sorry
business for France to be engaged in,--a vast and powerful government
terrorising into submission a horde of half-starved fanatics," he
yawned, "all of which is very bad--very bad. Give me some more
seltzer."
We were aroused by the sudden stoppage of the scow. A detachment of
"Zephyrs," near us upon the right bank, scrambled together in a hollow
square. A battalion of Coulouglis, with _haik_ and _bournous_ rippling,
scuttled by us at a gallop, and the Twenty-Third Chasseurs d'Afrique in
the front line halted at an "order" on the crest of a sand ridge, which
hid the horizon from sight. The still, hot air of the Sahara was
suddenly pervaded with something that roused us to our feet in an
instant. Thevenot whipped out his ever-ready sketch-book and began
blocking in the landscape and the position of the troops, while
Santander snatched his note-book and stylograph.
Of the scene which now gathered upon us, I can remember little, only out
of that dark chaos can I rescue a few detached and fragmentary
impressions--all the more vivid, nevertheless, from their isolation, all
the more distinct from the grey blur of the background against which
they trace themselves.
Instantly, somewhere disquietingly near, an event, or rather a whirl of
events that rushed and writhed themselves together into a maze of
dizzying complexity, suddenly evolved and widened like the fierce, quick
rending open of some vast scroll, and there were zigzag hurryings to and
fro and a surging heavenward of a torrent of noises, noises of men and
noises of feet, noises of horses and noises of arms, noises that hustled
fiercely upward above the brown mass and closed together in the desert
air, blending or jarring one with another, joining and separating,
reuniting and dividing; noises that rattled; noises that clanked; noises
that boomed, or shrilled, or thundered, or quavered. And then came sight
of blue-grey tumulous curtains--but whether of smoke or dust, I could
not say, rumbling and billowing, bellying out with the hot
tempest-breath of the battle-demon that raged within, and whose
outermost fringes were torn by serrated files of flashing steel and
wavering ranks of red.
And this was all at first. I knew we had been attacked and that behind
those boiling smoke-billows, somewhere and somehow, men, infuriated into
beasts, were grappling and struggling, each man, with every sinew on the
strain, striving to kill his fellow.
And now we were in the midst of a hollow square of our soldiery, yet how
we came there I cannot recall, though I remember that the water of the
Jeliffe made my clothes heavy and uncomfortable, although a mortal fear
sat upon me of being shot down by some of our own frenzied soldiers.
And then came that awful rib-cracking pressure, as, from some outward,
unseen cause, the square was thrown back upon itself. And with it all
the smell of sweat of horses, and of men, the odour of the powder-smoke,
the blinding, suffocating, stupefying clouds of dust, the horrible fear,
greater than all others, of being pushed down beneath those thousands of
trampling feet, the pitch of excitement that sickens and weakens, the
momentary consciousness--vanishing as soon as felt--that this was what
men called "war," and that we were experiencing the reality of what we
had so often read.
It was not inspiring; there was no romance, no poetry about it; there
was nothing in it but the hideous jar, one against the other, of men
drunk with the blood-lust that eighteen hundred years had not quenched.
I looked at Bab Azzoun; he was standing at the gunwale of the scow
(somehow we were back on the scow again) with an unloaded pistol in his
hand. He was watching the battle on the bank. His nostrils quivered,
and he shifted his feet exactly like an excited thorough-bred. On a
sudden, a trooper of the Eleventh Cuirassiers came spinning round and
round out of the brown of the battle, gulping up blood, and pitched,
wheezing, face downwards, into the soft ooze where the river licked at
the bank, raising ruddy bubbles in the water as he blew his life-breath
in gasps into it, and raking it into gridiron patterns as his quivering,
blue fingers closed into fists. Instantly afterward came a mighty rush
across the river beneath our very bows. Forty-odd cuirassiers burst
into it, followed by eighty or a hundred Kabyles.
I can recall just how the horse-hoofs rattled on the saucer-like cakes
of dry mud and flung them up in countless fragments behind them. They
were a fine sight, those Kabyles, with their fierce, red horses, their
dazzling white _bournouses_, their long, thin, murderous rifle-barrels,
thundering and splashing past, while from the whole mass of them, from
under the shadow of every white _haik_, from every black-bearded lip,
was rolling their war-cry: "Allah, Allah-il-Allah!"
Some long dormant recollections stirred in Bab Azzoun at this old
battle-shout. As he faced them now, he was no longer the cold, cynical
_boulevardier_ of the morning. He looked as he must have looked when he
played, a ten year-old boy, about the feet of the horses in his father's
black tent. He saw the long lines of the _douars_ of his native home; he
saw the camels, and the caravan crawling toward the sunset; he saw the
women grinding meal; he saw his father, the bearded sheik; he saw the
Arab horsemen riding down to battle; he saw the palm-broad spear-points
and the blue yataghans. In an instant of time all the long years of
culture and education were stripped away as a garment. Once more he
stood and stepped the Kabyle. And with these recollections, his
long-forgotten native speech came rushing to his tongue, and in a long,
shrill cry, he answered his countrymen in their own language:
"_Allah-il-Allah, Mohammed ressoul Allah._"
He passed me at a bound, leaped from the scow upon the back of a
riderless horse, and, mingling with the Kabyles, rode out of sight.
And that was the last I ever saw of Bab Azzoun.
_*A Defense of the Flag*_
It had been the celebration of the feast of the Holy St. Patrick, and
the various Irish societies of the city had turned out in great
force--Sons of Erin, Fenians, Cork Rebels, and all. The procession had
formed on one of the main avenues and had marched and countermarched up
and down through the American city; had been reviewed by the mayor
standing on the steps of the City Hall and wearing a green sash; and had
finally disbanded in the afternoon in the business quarter of the city.
So that now the streets in that vicinity were full of the perspiring
members of the parade, the emerald colour flashing in and out of the
slow moving maze of the crowd, like strands of green in the warp and
woof of a loom.
There were marshals of the procession, with batons and big green
rosettes, breathing easily once more after the long agony of sitting
upon a nervous horse that walked sideways. There were the occupants of
the endless line of carriages, with their green sashes, stretching their
cramped and stiffened legs. There were the members of the various
political clubs and secret societies, in their one good suit of
ready-made clothes, cotton gloves, and silver-fringed scarfs. There was
the little girl, with green tassels on her boots, who had walked by her
father's side carrying a set bouquet of cut flowers in a lace
paper-holder. There was the little boy who wore a green high hat, with
a pipe stuck in the brim, and who carried the water for the band; and
there were the members of the groups upon the floats, with overcoats and
sacques thrown over their costumes and spangles.
The men were in great evidence in and around the corner saloons talking
aloud, smoking, drinking, and spitting, and calling for "Jim," or
"Connors," or "Duffy," over the heads of the crowd, and what with the
speeches, and the beer, and the frequent fights, and the appropriate
damning of England and the Orangemen, the day promised to end in right
spirit and proper mood.
It so came about that young Shotover, on his way to his club, met with
one of these groups near the City Hall, and noticed that they
continually looked up towards its dome and seemed very well pleased with
what they saw there. After he had passed them some little distance,
Shotover, as well, looked up in that direction and saw that the Irish
flag was flying from the staff above the cupola.
Shotover was American-bred and American-born, and his father and mother
before him and their father and mother before them, and so on and back
till one brought up in the hold of a ship called the _Mayflower_,
further back than which it is not necessary to go.
He never voted. He did not know enough of the trend of national
politics even to bet on the presidential elections. He did not know the
names of the aldermen of his city, nor how many votes were controlled by
the leaders of the Dirigo or Comanche Clubs; but when he was told that
the Russian _moujik_ or the Bulgarian serf, who had lived for six months
in America (long enough for their votes to be worth three dollars), was
as much of an American citizen as himself, he thought of the Shotovers
who had framed the constitution in '75, had fought for it in '13 and
'64, and wondered if this were so. He had a strange and stubborn
conviction that whatever was American was right and whatever was right
was American, and that somehow his country had nothing to be ashamed of
in the past, nor afraid of in the future, for all the monstrous
corruptions and abuses that obtained at present.
But just now this belief had been rudely jarred, and he walked on slowly
to his club, the blood gradually flushing his face up to the roots of
his hair. Once there, he sat for a long time in the big bay-window,
looking absently out into the street, with eyes that saw nothing, very
thoughtful. All at once he took up his hat, clapped it upon his head
with the air of a man who has made up his mind, and went out, turning in
the direction of the City Hall.
Whence arrived there, no one noticed him, for he made it a point to walk
with a brisk, determined air, as though he were bent upon some
especially important business, "which I am," he said to himself as he
went on and up through tessellated corridors, between court-rooms and
offices of clerks, commissioners, and collectors.
It was a long time before he found the right stairway, which was a
circuitous, ladder-like flight that wormed its way upward between the
two walls of the dome. The door leading to the stairway was in a kind
of garret above the top floor of the building proper, and was sandwiched
in between coal-bunkers, water-tanks, and gas-meters. Shotover tried
it, and found it locked. He swore softly to himself, and attempted to
break it open. He soon concluded that this would make too much noise,
and so turned about and descended to the floor below. A negro, with an
immense goitre and a black velvet skull-cap, was cleaning the woodwork
outside a county commissioner's door. He directed Shotover to the
porter in the office of the Weather Bureau, if he wished to go up in the
cupola for the view. It was after four by this time, and Shotover found
the porter of the Weather Bureau piling the chairs on the tables and
sweeping out after office-hours.
"Well you see," said this one, "we don't allow nobody to go up in the
cupola. You can get a permit from the architect's office, but I guess
they'll be shut up there by now."
"Oh, I'm sorry," said Shotover; "I'm leaving town to-morrow, and I
particularly wanted to get the view from the cupola. They say you can
see well out into the ocean."
The porter had ignored him by this time, and was sweeping up a great
dust. Shotover waited a moment. "You don't think I could arrange to
get up there this afternoon?" he went on. The porter did not turn
around.
"We don't allow no one up there without a permit," he answered.
"I suppose," returned Shotover, "that you have the keys?"
No answer.
"You have the keys, haven't you--the keys to the door there at the foot
of the stairs?"
"We don't allow no one to go up there without a permit. Didn't you hear
me before?"
Shotover took a five-dollar gold piece from his pocket, laid it on the
corner of a desk, and contemplated it with reflective sadness. "I'm
sorry," he said; "I particularly wanted to see that view before I left."
"Well, you see," said the porter, straightening up, "there was a young
feller jumped off there once, and a woman tried to do it a little while
after, and the officers in the police station downstairs made us shut it
up; but 's long as you only want to see the view and don't want to jump
off, I guess it'll be all right," and he leaned one hand against the
edge of the desk and coughed slightly behind the other.
While he had been talking, Shotover had seen between the two windows on
the opposite side of the room a very large wooden rack full of
pigeon-holes and compartments: The weather and signal-flags were tucked
away in these, but on the top was a great folded pile of bunting. It
was sooty and grimy, and the new patches in it showed violently white
and clean. But Shotover saw, with a strange and new catch at the heart,
that it was tri-coloured.
"If you will come along with me now, sir," said the porter, "I'll open
the door for you."
Shotover let him go out of the room first, then jumped to the other side
of the room, snatched the flag down, and, hiding it as best he could,
followed him out of the room. They went up the stairs together. If the
porter saw anything, he was wise enough to keep quiet about it.
"I won't bother about waiting for you," said he, as he swung the door
open. "Just lock the door when you come down, and leave the key with me
at the office. If I ain't there, just give it to the fellow at the
news-stand on the first floor, and I can get it in the morning."
"All right," answered Shotover, "I will," and he hugged the flag close
to him, going up the narrow stairs two at a time.
After a long while he came out on the narrow railed balcony that ran
around the lantern, and paused for breath as he looked around and below
him. Then he turned quite giddy and sick for a moment and clutched
desperately at the hand-rail, resisting a strong impulse to sit down and
close his eyes.
Seemingly insecure as a bubble, the great dome rolled away from him on
all sides down to the buttresses around the drum, and below that the
gulf seemed endless, stretching down, down, down, to the thin yellow
ribbon of the street. Underneath him, the City Hall itself dropped
away, a confused heap of tinned roofs, domes, chimneys, and cornices,
and beyond that lay the city itself spreading out like a great gray map.
Over it there hung a greasy, sooty fog of a dark-brown color. In places
the higher buildings over-topped the fog. Here, it was pierced by a
slender church-spire. In another place, a dome bulged up over it, or,
again, some sky-scraping office-building shouldered itself above its
level to the purer, cleaner air. Looking down at the men in the
streets, Shotover could see only their feet moving back and forth
underneath their hat-brims as they walked. The noises of the city
reached him in a subdued and steady murmur, and the strong wind that was
blowing brought him the smell of the vegetable-gardens in the suburbs,
the odour of trees and hay from the more distant country, and
occasionally a faint whiff of salt from the ocean.
The sight was a sort of inspiration to Shotover. The great American
city, with its riches and resources, boiling with the life and energy of
a new people, young, enthusiastic, ambitious, and so full of hope and
promise for the future, all striving and struggling in the fore part of
the march of empire, building a new nation, a new civilisation, a new
world, while over it all floated the Irish flag.
Shotover turned back, seized the halyards, and brought the green banner
down with a single movement of his arm. Then he knotted the other
bundle of bunting to the cords and ran it up. As it reached the top,
the bundle twisted, turned on itself, unfolded, suddenly caught the
wind, and then, in a single, long billow, rolled out into the stars and
bars of Old Glory.
Shotover shut his teeth against a cheer, and the blood went tingling up
and down through his body to his very finger-tips. He looked up,
leaning his hand against the mast, and felt it quiver and thrill as the
great flag tugged at it. The sound of the halyards rattling and
snapping came to his ears like music.
He was not ashamed then to be enthusiastic, and did not feel in the
least melodramatic or absurd. He took off his hat, and, as the great
flag grew out stiffer and snapped and strained in the wind, looked up at
it and said over softly to himself: "Lexington, Valley Forge, Yorktown,
Mexico, the Alamo, 1812, Gettysburg, Shiloh, the Wilderness."
Meanwhile the knot of people on the sidewalk below, that had watched his
doings, had grown into a crowd. The green badge was upon every breast,
and there came to his ears a sound that was out of chord with the minor
drone, the worst sound in the human gamut, the sound of an angry mob.
The high, windy air and the excitement of the occasion began to tell on
Shotover, so that when half an hour later there came a rush of many feet
up the stairway, and a crash upon the door that led up to the lantern,
he buttoned his coat tightly around him, and shut his teeth and fists.
When the door finally went down and the first man jumped in, Shotover
hit him.
Terence Shannon told about this afterward. "It was a birdie. Ah, but
say, y' ought to of seen um. He let go with his left, like de piston-rod
of de engine wot broke loose dat time at de power-house, an' Duffy's had
an eye like a fried egg iver since."
The crowd paused, partly through surprise and partly because the body of
Mr. Duffy lay across their feet and barred their way. There were about
a dozen of them, all more or less drunk. The one exception was Terence
Shannon, who was the candidate of the boss of his ward for a number on
the force. In view of this fact, Shannon was trying to preserve order.
He took advantage of the moment of hesitation to step in between
Shotover and the crowd.
"Aw, say, youse fellows rattle me slats, sure. Do yer think the City
Hall is the place to scrap, wid the jug only two floors below? Ye'll be
havin' the whole shootin'-match of the force up here in a minute. Maybe
yer would like to sober up in the 'hole in the wall.' Now just pipe
down quiet-like, an' swear um in reg'lar at the station-house
down-stairs. Ye've got a straight disturbin'-the-peace case wid um.
Ah, sure, straight goods. I ain't givin' yer no gee-hee."
But the crowd stood its ground and glared at Shotover over Shannon's
head. Then Connors yelled and drew out his revolver. "B'yes, we've got
a right," he exclaimed. "It's the boord av alderman gave us the permit
to show the green flag of ould Ireland here to-day. It's him as is
breaking the law, not we, confound you." ("Confound you" was not what
Mr. Connors said).
"He's dead on," said Shannon, turning to Shotover. "It's all ye kin do.
Yer're actin' agin the law."
Shotover did not answer, but breathed hard through his nose, wondering
at the state of things that made it an offense against the American law
to protect the American flag. But all at once Shannon passed him and
drew his knife across the halyards, and the great flag collapsed and
sank slowly down like a wounded eagle. The crowd cheered, and Shannon
said in Shotover's ear: "'Twas to save yer life, me b'y. They're out
for blood, sure."
"Now," said Connors, using several altogether impossible nouns and
adjectives, "now run up the green flag of ould Ireland again, or ye'll
be sorry," and he pointed his revolver at Shotover.
"Say," cried Shannon, in a low voice to Shotover--"say, he's dead stuck
on doin' you dirt. I can't hold um. Aw, say, Connors, quit your
foolin', will you; put up your flashbox--put it up, or--or--" But just
here he broke off, and catching up the green flag, threw it out in front
of Shotover, and cried, laughing, "Ye'll not have the heart to shoot
now."
Shotover struck the flag to the ground, set his foot on it, and catching
up Old Glory again, flung it round him and faced them, shouting:
"_Now shoot!_"
But at this, in genuine terror, Shannon flung his hat down and ran in
front of Connors himself, fearfully excited, and crying out: "F'r Gawd's
sake, Connors, you don't dast do it. Wake up, will yer, it's mornin'.
Do yer want to hiv' us all jugged for twenty years? It's treason and
rebellion, and I don't now _what_ all, for every mug in the gang, if yer
just so much as crook dat forefinger. Put it up, ye damned fool. This
is a cat w'at has changed colour."
Something of the gravity of the situation had forced its way through the
clogged minds of the others, and, as Shannon spoke the last words,
Connors's fore-arm was knocked up and he himself was pulled back into
the crowd.
You can not always foretell how one man is going to act, but it is easy
to read the intentions of a crowd. Shotover saw a rush in the eyes of
the circle that was contracting about him, and turned to face the danger
and to fight for the flag as the Shotovers of the old days had so often
done.
In the books, the young aristocrat invariably thrashes the clowns who
set upon him. But somehow Shotover had no chance with his clowns at
all. He hit out wildly into the air as they ran in, and tried to guard
against the scores of fists. But their way of fighting was not that
which he had learned at his athletic club. They kicked him in the
stomach, and, when they had knocked him down, stamped upon his face. It
is hard to feel like a martyr and a hero when you can't draw your breath
and when your mouth is full of blood and dust and broken teeth.
Accordingly Shotover gave it up, and fainted away.
When the officers finally arrived, they made no distinction between the
combatants, but locked them all up under the charge of "Drunk and
Disorderly."
_*Toppan*_
When Frederick Woodhouse Toppan came out of Thibet and returned to the
world in general and to San Francisco in particular, he began to know
what it meant to be famous. As he entered street cars and hotel
elevators he remarked a sudden observant silence on the part of the
other passengers. The reporters became a real instead of a feigned
annoyance and the papers at large commenced speaking of him by his last
name only. He ceased to cut out and paste in his scrap-book, everything
that was said of him in the journals and magazines. People composed
beforehand clever little things to say to him when they were introduced,
and he was asked to indorse new soaps and patented cereals. The great
magazines of the country wrote to him for more articles, and his
"Through the Highlands of Thibet", already in its fiftieth thousand, was
in everybody's hands.
And he was hardly thirty.
To people who had preconceived ideas as to what an Asiatic explorer
should be like, Toppan was disappointing. Where they expected to see a
"magnificent physique" in top boots and pith helmet, flung at length
upon lion skins, smoking a nargile, they saw only a very much tanned
young gentleman, who wore a straw hat and russet leather shoes just like
any well dressed man of the period. They felt vaguely defrauded because
he looked ordinary and stylish and knew what to do with his hands and
feet in a drawing-room.