CHAPTER II.

THE BOY.

(Mainly concerning the early life of Moussa Isa Somali.)

Moussa Isa Somali never stole, lied, seduced, cheated, drank, swore,

gambled, betrayed, slandered, blasphemed, nor behaved meanly nor

cowardly--but, alas! he had personal and racial Pride.

It is written that Pride is the sin of Devils and that by it, Lucifer,

Son of the Morning, fell.

If it be remembered that he fell for nine days, be realized that he must

have fallen with an acceleration of velocity of thirty-two feet per

second, each second, and be conceded that he weighed a good average

number of pounds, some idea will be formed of the violence of the

concussion with which he came to earth.

In spite of the terrible warning provided by so great a smash there yet

remain people who will argue that it is better to fall through Pride

than to remain unfallen through lack of it. By Pride, _Pride_ is meant

of course--not Conceit, Snobbishness and Bumptiousness, which are all

very damnable, and signs of a weak, base mind. One gathers that Lucifer,

Son of the Morning, was not conceited, snobbish, nor bumptious. Nor was

Moussa, son of Isa, Somali--but, like Lucifer, Son of the Morning,

Devil, he fell, through Pride, and came to a Bad End.

One has known people who have owned to a sneaking liking and unwilling

admiration for Lucifer, Son of the Morning--people of the same sort as

those who find it difficult wholly to revere the prideless Erect when

comparing them with the prideful Fallen--and, for the life of me, I

cannot help a sneaking liking and unwilling admiration for Moussa Isa

Somali, who fell through Pride.

There was something fine about him, even as there was about Lucifer, Son

of the Morning, and one cannot avoid feeling that if both did not get

more of hard luck and less of justice than some virtuous people one

knows, they certainly cut a better figure. Of course it is a mistake to

adopt any line of action that leads definitely to the position of

Under-Dog, and to fight when you cannot win. It is not Prudent, and

Prudence leads to Favour, Success, Decorations, and the Respect of

Others if not of yourself. It is also to be remembered that whether you

are a Wicked Rebel or a Noble True-Hearted Patriot depends very largely

on whether you succeed or fail.

All of which is mere specious and idle special pleading on behalf of

Moussa Isa, a sinful murderous Somali....

Most of the memories of Moussa Isa centred round scars. When I say

"memories of Moussa Isa" I mean Moussa Isa's own memories, for there are

no memories concerning him. The might, majesty, dominion and power of

the British Empire were arrayed against him, and the Empire's duly

appointed agents hanged him by the neck until he was dead--at an age

when some people are yet at school, albeit he had gathered in his few

years of life a quantity and quality of experience quite remarkable.

'Twas a sordid business, and yet Moussa Isa died, like many very

respectable and highly belauded folk, from the early Christians in Italy

to the late Christians in Armenia, for a principle and an idea.

He was black, he was filthy, he was savage, ignorant and ugly--but he

had his Pride, both personal and racial, for he was a Somali. A Somali,

mark you, not a mere _Hubshi_ or Woolly One, not a common Nigger, not a

low and despicable person--worshipping idols, eating human flesh, grubs,

roots and bark--the "black ivory" of Arabs.

If you called Moussa Isa a Hubshi, he either killed you or marked you

down for death, according to circumstances.

Had Moussa Isa lived a few centuries earlier, been of another colour,

and swanked around in painful iron garments and assorted cutlery, he

would have been highly praised for his fine and proper spirit. Poet,

bard, and troubadour would have noted and published his quickness on the

point of honour. Moussa would have been set to music and have become a

source of income to the gifted. He would have become a Pillar of the

Order of Knighthood and an Ornament of the Age of Chivalry. A wreath of

laurels would have encircled his brow--instead of a rope of hemp

encircling his neck.

For such fine, quick, self-respecting Pride, such resentment of insult,

men have become Splendid Figures of the Glorious Past.

_Autres jours autres moeurs_.

How many people called him _Hubshi_, we know not; but we know, from his

own lips, of the killing of some few. Of the killing of others he had

forgotten, for his memory was poor, save for insult and kindness. And,

having caught and convicted him in one or two cases the appointed

servants of the British Empire first "reformed" and then slew him in

their turn--thus descending to his level without his excuse of private

personal insult and injury....

The scars on Moussa Isa's face with the hole in his ear were connected

with one of his very earliest memories--or one of his very earliest

memories was connected with the scars on his face and the hole in his

ear--a memory of jolting along on a camel, swinging upside-down, while a

strong hand grasped his foot; of seeing his father rush at his captor

with a long, broad-bladed spear, of being whirled and flung at his

father's head; and of seeing his father's intimate internal economy

seriously and permanently disarranged by the two-handed sword of one of

the camel rider's colleagues (who flung aside a heavy gun which he had

just emptied into Moussa's mamma) as his father fell to the ground under

the impact and weight of the novel missile. Though Moussa was unaware,

in his abysmal ignorance, of the interesting fact, the great two-handed

sword so effectually wielded by the supporter of his captor, was exactly

like that of a Crusader of old. It was like that of a Crusader of old,

because it was a direct lineal descendant of the swords of the Crusaders

who had brought the first specimens to the country, quite a good many

years previously. Indeed some people said that a few of the swords

owned by these Dervishes were real, original, Crusaders' swords, the

very weapons whose hilts were once grasped by Norman hands, and whose

blades had cloven Paynim heads in the name of Christianity and the

interests of the Sepulchre. I do not know--but it is a wonderfully dry

climate, and swords are there kept, cherished, and bequeathed, even more

religiously than were the Stately Homes of England in that once

prosperous land, in the days before park, covert, pleasaunce, forest,

glade, dell, and garden became allotments, and the spoil of the

"Working"-man.

Picked up after the raid and pursuit with a faceful of gravel, sand,

dirt, and tetanus-germs, Moussa Isa, orphan, was flung on a pile of dead

Somali spearmen and swordsmen, of horses, asses, camels, negroes, (old)

women and other cattle--and, crawling off again, received kicks and

orders to clean and polish certain much ensanguined weapons sullied with

the blood of his near and distant relatives. Thereafter he was

recognized by the above-mentioned swordsman, and accorded the privilege

of removing his own father's blood from the great two-handed sword

before alluded to--a task of a kind that does not fall to many little

boys. So willingly and cheerfully did Moussa perform his arduous duty

(arduous because the blood had had time to dry, and dried blood takes a

lot of removing from steel by one unprovided with hot water) that the

Arab swordsman instead of blowing off the child's head with his long and

beautiful gun, damascened of barrel, gold-mounted of lock, and

pearl-inlaid of stock, allowed him to rim for his life that he might die

a sporting death in hot blood, doing his devilmost. (These were not

slavers but avengers of enmity to the Mad Mullah and punishers of

friendship to the English.)

"How much law will you give me, O Emir?" asked the child.

"Perhaps ten yards, dog, perhaps a hundred, perhaps more.... Run!"

"_You_ could hit me at a thousand yards, O Emir," was the reply. "Let me

die by a shot that men will talk about...."

"Run, yelping dog," growled the Arab with a sardonic smile.

And Moussa ran. He also bounded, shied, dodged, ducked, swerved,

dropped, crawled, zig-zagged and generally gave his best attention to

evading the shot of the common fighting-man whom he had propitiatorily

addressed as "_Emir_," though a mere wearer of a single fillet of

camel-hair cord around his _haik_. Like a naval gunner--the Arab laid

his gun and waited till the sights "came on," fired, and had the

satisfaction of seeing the child fling up his arms, leap into the air

and fall twitching to the ground. Good shot! The twitches and the last

convulsive spasm were highly artistic and creditable to the histrionic

powers of Moussa Isa, shot through the ear, and inwardly congratulating

himself that he had yet a chance. But then he had had wide opportunity

for observation, and plenty of good models, in the matter of

sudden-death spasms and twitches, so the credit is the less. Anyhow, it

deceived experienced Arab eyes at a hundred yards, and the performance

may therefore be classed as good. To the reflective person it will be

manifest that Moussa's reverence for the sanctity of human life

received but little encouragement or development from the very

beginning....

Returning refugees, a few days later, found Moussa very pleased-with

himself and very displeased with uncooked putrid flesh. Being

exceedingly poor and depressed as a result of the Mad Mullah's vengeful

_razzia_, they sold Moussa Isa, friendless, kinless orphan, and once

again cursed the false English who made them great promises in the

Mahdi's troublous day, and abandoned them to the Mad Mullah and his

Dervishes as soon as the Mahdi was happily dead.

The Mad Mullah they could understand; the English they could not. For

the Mad Mullah they had no blame whatsoever; for the English they had

the bitterest blame, the deepest hatred and the uttermost contempt. Who

blames the lion for seeking and slaying his prey? Who defends the

unspeakable creature that throws its friends and children to the

lion--in payment of its debts and in cancellation of its obligations to

those friends and children? In discussing the raid on their way to

market with Moussa Isa, they mentioned the name of the Mad Mullah with

respect and fear. When they mentioned the English they expectorated and

made a gesture too significant to be particularized. And the tom-toms

once again throbbed through the long nights, sending (by a code that was

before Morse) from village to village, from the sea to the Nile, from

the Nile to the Niger and the Zambesi, from the Mediterranean to the

Cape, the news that once more the Mad Mullah had flouted that failing

and treacherous race, the English, and slaughtered those who lived

within their gates, under the shadow of their flag and the promise of

their protection.

Ere Moussa Isa got his next prominent scar, the signal-drums throbbed

out the news that the gates were thrown open, the flag hauled down, and

the promises shamefully broken. That the representatives of the failing

treacherous race now stood huddled along the sea-shore in fear and

trembling, while those who had helped them in their trouble and had

believed their word were slaughtered by the thousand; that the country

was the home of fire and sword, the oasis-fields yielding nothing but

corpses, the wells choked with dead ... red slaughter, black pestilence,

starvation, misery and death, where had been green cultivation, fenced

villages, the sound of the quern and the well-wheel, the song of women

and the cry of the ploughman to his oxen. News and comments which did

nothing to lessen the pride and insolence of the Jubaland tribesmen, of

the Wak tribesmen, of the bold Zubhier sons of the desert, nor to strike

terror to the hearts of the murderers of Captain Aylmer and Mr. Jenner,

of slave-traders, game-poachers, raiders, wallowers in slaughter....

Another very noticeable and remarkable scar broke the fine lines and

smooth contours of Moussa's throat and another memory was as indelibly

established in his mind as was the said scar on his flesh.

At any time that he fingered the horrible ridged cicatrice, he could see

the boundless ocean and the boundless blue sky from a wretched cranky

canoe-shaped boat, in which certain Arab, Somali, Negro, and other

gentlemen were proceeding all the way from near Berbera to near Aden

with large trustfulness in Allah and with certain less creditable goods.

It was a long, unwieldy vessel which ten men could row, one could steer

with a broad oar, and a small three-cornered sail could keep before the

wind.

But the various-clad crew of this cranky craft were gentlemen all, who,

beyond running up the string-tied sail to the clothes-prop mast, or

taking a trick at the wheel--another clothes-prop with a large disc of

wood at the water-end, were far above work.

Trusting in Allah and Mohammed his Prophet is a lot easier than rowing a

lineless, blunt-nosed, unseaworthy boat beneath a tropical sun. So they

trusted in God, and permitted Moussa Isa, slave-boy, to do all that it

was humanly possible for him to do.

Moussa did all that was expected of him, but not so Allah and Mohammed

his Prophet.

The gentle breeze that (sometimes) carries you steadily over a glassy

sea straight up the forty-fifth meridian of east longitude from Berbera

to Aden in the month of October, failed these worthy trustful Argonauts,

and they were becalmed.

But Time is made for slaves, and the only slave upon the Argosy was

Moussa Isa, and so the becalming was neither here nor there. The cargo

would keep (if kept dry) for many a long day--and the greater the delay

in delivery, the greater the impatience of the consignees and their

willingness to pay even more than the stipulated price--its weight in

silver _per_ rifle. But food is made for men as well as slaves, and if

you, in your noble trustfulness, resolutely decline to reduce your daily

rations, there must, with mathematical certitude of date, arrive the

final period to any given and limited supply. Though banking wholly with

Heaven in the matter of their own salvation from hunger, the Argonauts

displayed mere worldly wisdom in the case of Moussa Isa and gave him the

minimum of food that might be calculated to keep within him strength

adequate to his duties of steering, swarming up the mast, baling,

cooking, massaging the liver of the Leading Gentleman, and so forth. And

in due course, the calm continuing, these pious and religious voyagers

came to the bitter end of their water, their rice, their _dhurra_, their

dates--and all (except the salt and coffee which formed part of the

ostensible, bogus cargo) that they had, as they too-slowly drifted into

the track of those vessels that enter and leave the strait of

Bab-el-Mandeb, the Gate of Tears, the tears of the starving, drowning,

ship-wrecked and castaway.

Salt _per se_ is a poor diet, and, for the making of potable coffee,

fresh water is very necessary.

Some of the Argonauts were, as has been said, Negro gentlemen. On the

third day of absolute starvation, one had an Idea and made a suggestion.

The Leading Gentleman entertained it with an open mind and without

enthusiasm.

The Tanga tout acclaimed it as a divine inspiration.

The one-eyed Moor literally smiled upon it. As his eye was single and

his body therefore full of light, he saw the beauty of the notion at

once. Had it been full of food instead, we may charitably suppose he

would not have remarked:--

"A pity we did not feed him up better".

For the suggestion concerned Moussa Isa and food--Moussa Isa as food,

in point of fact. The venerable gentle-looking Arab, whose face beamed

effulgent with benevolence and virtue, murmured:--

"He will have but little blood, the dog. None of it must

be--er--_wasted_ by the--ah--butcher."

The huge man with the neat geometrical pattern of little scars,

perpendicular on the forehead, horizontal on the cheeks and in

concentric circles on the chest (done with loving care and a knife, in

his infancy, by his papa) said only "_Ptwack_" as he chewed a mouthful

of coffee-beans and hide. It may have been a pious ejaculation or a

whole speech in his own peculiar vernacular. It was a tremendous

smacking of tremendous lips, and the expression which overspread his

speaking countenance was of gusto, appreciative, and such as accords

with lip-smacking.

But a very fair man (very fair beside the Negroes, Somalis, Arabs and

others our little black and brown brothers), a man with grey-blue eyes,

light brown hair and moustache, and olive complexion, said to the

originator of the Idea in faultless English, if not in faultless taste

"You damned swine".

A look of profoundest disgust overspread his handsome young face, a face

which undoubtedly lent itself to very clear expression of such feelings

as contempt, disgust and scorn, an unusual face, with the thin

high-bridged nose of an English aristocrat, the large eyes and pencilled

black brows of an Indian noble, the sallow yet cheek-flushed complexion

of an Italian peasant-girl, and the firm lips, square jaw, and prominent

chin of a fighting-man. It was essentially an English face in

expression, and essentially foreign in detail; a face of extraordinary

contradictions. The eyes were English in colour, Oriental in size and

shape; the mouth and chin English in mould and in repose, Oriental in

mobility and animation; the whole countenance English in shape, Oriental

in complexion and profile--a fine, high-bred, strong face, upon which

played shadows of cruelty, ferocity, diabolical cunning; a face admired

more quickly than liked, inspiring more speculation than trust.

The same duality and contradiction were proclaimed in the hands--strong,

tenacious, virile hands; small, fine, delicate hands; hands with the

powerful and purposeful thumb of the West; hands with the supple

artistic fingers and delicate finger-nails of the East.

And the man's name was in keeping with hands and face, with mind, body,

soul, and character, for, though he would not have done so, he could

have replied to the query "What is your name?" with "My name? Well, in

full, it is John Robin Ross-Ellison Ilderim Dost Mahommed Mir Hafiz

Ullah Khan, and its explanation is my descent from General Ross-Ellison,

Laird of Glencairn, and from Mir Faquir Mahommed Afzul Khan, Jam of

Mekran Kot".

In Piccadilly, wearing the garb of Piccadilly, he looked an Englishman

of the English.

In Abdul Rehman Bazaar, Cabul, wearing the garb of Abdul Rehman Bazaar,

he looked a Pathan of Pathans. In the former case, rather more sunburnt

than the average lounger in Piccadilly; in the latter, rather fairer

than the average Afghan and Pathan loafer in Abdul Rehman Bazaar.

"Walking down Unter den Linden in Berlin, with upturned moustache, he

looked a most Teutonic German.

"You observed, my friend?" queried the Leading Gentleman (whose father

was the son of a Negro-Arab who married, or should have married, a

Jewess captured near Fez, and whose mother was the daughter of a

Tunisian Turk by a half-bred Negress of Timbuctoo).

"I observed," replied the fair young man in the mongrel Arabic-Swahili

_lingua franca_ of the Red Sea and East African littorals "that it is

but natural for dogs to prey upon dogs."

"There are times when the lion is driven to prey upon dogs, my dear

son," interposed the mild-eyed, benevolent-looking Arab--a pensive smile

on his venerable face.

"Yes--when he is old, mangy, toothless and deserving of nothing better,

my dear father," replied the fair young man, and his glances at the

white beard, scanty locks and mumbling mouth of the ancient gentleman

had an unpleasantly personal quality. To the casual on-looker it would

have seemed that an impudent boy deliberately insulted a harmless

benevolent old gentleman. To the fair young man, however, it was well

known that the old gentleman's name was famous across Northern and

Eastern Africa for monstrous villainy and fiendish cruelty--the name of

the worst and wickedest of those traders in "black ivory," one of whose

side-lines is frequently gun-running. Also he knew that the

benevolent-looking old dear was desirous that the Leading Gentleman, his

partner, should join with him in a little scheme (a scheme revealed by

one Moussa Isa, eaves-dropper) to give the fair young man some inches

of steel instead of the pounds of Teutonic gold due for services (and

rifles) rendered, when they should reach the quiet spot on the northern

shore of the Persian Gulf where certain bold caravan-leaders would await

them and their precious cargo--a scheme condemned by the Leading

Gentleman on the grounds of the folly of killing the goose that laid the

golden eggs. But then the wealthy Arab patriarch was retiring from the

risky business (already nearly ruined and destroyed by English

gun-boats) after that trip, and the Leading Gentleman was not. Thus it

was that the attitude of the fair young man toward Sheikh Abou ben

Mustapha Muscati did not display that degree of respect that his grey

hairs and beautiful old face would appear to deserve.

The French-speaking Moslem Berber _ex_-Zouave, from Algiers, suggested

that Moussa Isa, a slave, was certainly not fitting food for gentlemen

who fight, hunt, travel, poach elephants, deal in "black ivory," run

guns, and generally lead a life too picturesque for an over-"educated,"

utilitarian and depressing age--but what would you? "One eats--but yes,

one eats, or one ceases to live, and one does not wish to cease to

live--and therefore one eats" and he cocked a yellow and appraising eye

at Moussa Isa. The sense of the meeting appeared to be that though one

would not have chosen this particular animal, necessity knows no

rule--and if the throat be cut while the animal be alive, one may eat of

the flesh and break the Law by so much the less. Moussa Isa must be

_halalled_.[40] But the fair young man drawing a Khyber knife with two

feet of blade, observed that it was now likely that there would be a

plethora of food, as he would most assuredly cut the throat of any

throat-cutter.

[40] To _halal_ is to make lawful, here to cut the throat of a living

animal in order that its flesh may be eatable by good Mussulmans.

Moussa Isa regarded him with the look often seen in the eye of an

intelligent dog.

The venerable Arab smiled meaningly at the Leading Gentleman, and the

Tanga tout asked if all were to hunger for the silly scruples of one.

"If the fair-faced Sheikh did not wish to eat of Moussa, none would urge

it. Live and let live. The gentlemen were hungry; ..." but the fair

young man unreasonably replied, "Then let them eat _thee_ since they can

stomach carrion," and for the moment the subject dropped--largely

because the fair young man was supposed always to carry a revolver,

which was not a habit of his good colleagues. It was another evidence of

his strange duality that revolver and knife were (rare phenomenon)

equally acceptable to him, though in certain environment the pistol

rather suggested itself to his left hand, while in others his right hand

went quite unconsciously to his long knife.

In the present company no thought of the fire-arm entered his head--this

was a knifing, back-stabbing outfit;--none here who stood up to shoot

and be shot at in fair fight....

The Leading Gentleman looked many times and hard at Moussa Isa during

the second day of his own starvation, which was the third of that of his

companions and the fourth of Moussa's. The Leading Gentleman, who was as

rich as he was ragged and dirty, wore a very beautiful knife, which

(though it reposed in a gaudy sheath of yellow, green and blue beads,

fringed with a dependent filigree, or lace work, of similar beads with

tassels of cowrie-shells) hailed from Damascus and had a handle of ivory

and gold, and an inlaid blade on which were inscribed verses from the

Q'ran.

Moussa Isa knew the pattern of it well by the close of day. The Leading

Gentleman took that evening to sharpening the already sharp blade of the

knife. As he sharpened it on his sandal and the side of the boat, and

tried its edge on his thumb, he regarded the thin body of Moussa Isa

very critically.

His look blended contempt, anticipation, and anxiety.

He broke a long brooding silence with the remark:--

"The little dog will be thinner still, to-morrow "--a remark which

evoked from the fair youth the reply: "And so will you".

Perhaps truth covered and excused a certain indelicacy and callousness

in the statement of the Leading Gentleman, albeit the fair young man

appeared annoyed at it. His British blood and instincts became

predominant when the killing and eating of a fellow-creature were on the

_tapis_--the said fellow-creature being on it at the same time.

A colleague from Dar-es-Salaam, who had an ear and a half, three teeth,

six fingers, innumerable pockmarks and a German accent, said, "He will

have little fat," and there was bitterness in his tone. As a business

man he realized a bad investment of capital. The food in which they had

wallowed should have gone to the fattening of Moussa Isa. Also a fear

struck him.

"He'll jump overboard in the night--the ungrateful dog. Tie him up," and

he reached for a coil of cord.

"He will not be tied up," observed the fair youth in a quiet, obstinate

voice.

"See, my friend," said the Leading Gentleman, "it is a case of one or

many. Better _that_ one," and he pointed to Moussa Isa, "than another,"

and he looked meaningly at the fair young man.

"And yet, I know not," murmured the venerable Arab, "I know not. We are

not in the debt of the slave. We _are_ in the debt of the Sheikh. It

would cancel all obligations if the Sheikh from the North preferred to

offer himself as--"

The young man's long knife flashed from its sheath as he sprang to his

feet. "Let us eat monkey, if eat we must," he cried, pointing to the

Arab--and, even as he spoke, the huge man with the scars, flinging his

great arms around the youth's ankles, partly rose and neatly tipped him

overboard. He had long hated the fair man.

Straightway, unseen by any, as all eyes were on the grey-eyed youth and

his assailant, Moussa Isa cast loose the _toni_[41] that nestled beneath

the stern of the larger boat. He was about to shout that he had done so

when he realised that this would defeat his purpose, and also that the

fair Sheikh was still under water.

[41] Small dug-out canoe.

"Good," murmured the old Arab, "now brain him as he comes up--and secure

his body."

But the fair youth knew better than to rise in the immediate

neighbourhood of the boat. Swimming with the ease, grace and speed of a

seal, he emerged with bursting lungs a good hundred yards from where he

had disappeared. Having breathed deeply he again sank, to re-appear at

a point still more distant, and be lost in the gathering gloom.

"He is off to Cabul to lay his case before the Amir," observed the

elderly Arab with grim humour.

"Doubtless," agreed the Leading Gentleman, "he will swim the 2000 miles

to India, and then up the Indus to Attock." And added, "But, bear

witness all, if the young devil turn up again some day, that _I_ had no

quarrel with him.... A pity! A pity!... Where shall we find his like, a

Prank among the Franks, an Afghan among Afghans, a Frenchman in Algiers,

a nomad robber in Persia, a Bey in Cairo, a Sahib in Bombay--equally at

home as gentleman or tribesman? Where shall we find his like again as

gatherer of the yellow honey of Berlin and as negotiator in Marseilles

(where the discarded Gras breech-loaders of the army grow) and in

Muscat? Woe! Woe!"

"Or his like for impudence to his elders, harshness in a bargain,

cunning and greed?" added the benevolent-looking Arab, who had gained a

handsome sum by the murder.

"For courage," corrected the Leading Gentleman, and with a heavy sigh,

groaned. "We shall never see him more--and he was worth his weight to me

annually in gold."

"No, you won't see him again," agreed the Arab. "He'll hardly swim to

Aden--apart from the little matter of sharks.... A pity the sharks

should have so fair a body--and we starve!" and he turned a fatherly

benevolent eye on Moussa Isa--whom a tall slender black Arab, from the

hills about Port Sudan, of the true "fuzzy-wuzzy" type, had seized in

his thin but Herculean arms as the boy rose to spring into the _toni_

and paddle to the rescue of his benefactor.

The Dar-es-Salaam merchant threw Fuzzy Wuzzy a coil of cord and Moussa

Isa (who struggled, kicked, bit and finding resistance hopeless,

screamed, "Follow the boat, Master," as he lay on his back), was bound

to a cracked and salt-encrusted beam or seat that supported, or was

supported by, the cracked and salt-encrusted sides of the canoe-shaped

vessel.

Although very, very hungry, and perhaps as conscienceless and wicked a

gang as ever assembled together on the earth or went down to the sea in

ships, there was yet a certain reluctance on the part of some of the

members to revert to cannibalism, although all agreed that it was

necessary.

Among the reluctant-to-commence were those who had no negro blood. Among

the ready-to-commence, the full-blooded negroes were the most impatient.

Although very hungry and rather weak they were in different case from

that of European castaway sailors, in that all were inured to long

periods of fasting, all had crossed the Sahara or the Sus, lived for

days on a handful of dates, and had tightened the waist-string by way of

a meal. Few of them ever thought of eating between sunrise and sunset.

The lives of the negroes were alternations of gorging and starving,

incredible repletion and more incredible fasting; devouring vast masses

of hippopotamus-flesh to-day, and starving for a week thereafter; pounds

of prime meat to-day, gnawing hunger and the weakness of semi-starvation

for the next month.

"At sunrise," said the Leading Gentleman finality.

Good! That left the so-desirable element of chance. It left opportunity

for change of programme inasmuch as sunrise might disclose help in the

shape of a passing ship. The matter would rest with Heaven, and pious

men might lay them down to sleep with clear conscience, reflecting that,

should it be the Will of Allah that His servants should not eat of this

flesh, other would be provided; should other not be provided it was

clearly the Will of Allah that His servants should eat of this flesh!

Excellent--there would be a meal soon after sunrise.

And the Argonauts laid them down to sleep, hungry but gratefully

trustful, trustfully grateful. But Moussa Isa watched the wondrous

lustrous stars throughout the age-long, flash-short night and thought of

many things.

Had the splendid, noble Sheikh from the North heard his cry and had he

found the _toni_? How far had he swum ere his strength gave out or, with

sudden swirl, he was dragged under by the man-eating shark? Would he

remove his long cotton shirt, velvet waistcoat and baggy cotton

trousers? The latter would present difficulties, for the waist-string

would tangle and the water would swell the knot and prevent the drawing

of string over string.

Moreover, the garments, though very baggy, were tight round the ankles.

Would he cast off his beautiful yard-long Khyber knife? It would go to

his heart to do that, both for the sake of the weapon itself and because

he would have to go to his death unavenged, seized by a shark without

giving it its death-wound. Had he heard and would he follow the boat in

the moonlight, find the _toni_ and escape? Could he swim to Aden? They

had said not--even leaving sharks out of consideration, and indeed it

must be forty or fifty miles away. Judging by their progress they must

have done about one hundred and fifty miles since they embarked at the

lonely spot on the Berbera coast for the other lonely spot on the Aden

coast, where certain whisperings with certain mysterious camel-riders

would preface their provisioning for the voyage along the weary

Hadramant coast to the Ras el Had and Muscat--just a humble boat-load of

poor but honest toilers and tradesmen, interested in dried fish, dates,

the pearl-fishery and the pettiest trading. No, he would never reach

land, wonderful swimmer as he was. He would be lost in the sea as is the

Webi Shebeyli River in the sands of the South, unless he followed the

drifting boat and found the _toni_. Otherwise, he might be picked up,

but he would have to keep afloat all night to do that, unless he had the

extraordinary luck to be seen by dhow or ship before dark. That could

hardly be, unless the same ship or dhow were visible from their own

boat, and none had been seen.

No, he must be dead--and Moussa Isa would shortly follow him. How he

wished he could have given his life to save him. Had he known, he would

have cried out, "Let them eat me, O Master," and prevented him from

risking his life. If he should get the chance of striking one blow for

his life in the morning he would bestow it upon the scar-faced beast who

had tripped the fair Sheik overboard. If he could strike two he would

give the second to the old Arab who flogged women and children to death

with the _kourbash_,[42] as an amusement, and whose cruelties were

famous in a cruel land; the old Evil who hated, and plotted the death

of, the fair Sheikh, with the leader of the expedition in order that

they might divide his large share of the gun-running proceeds and German

subsidy. If he could strike a third blow it should be at the filthy

Hubshi of the Aruwimi, the low degraded Woolly One from the dark

Interior (of human sacrifice, cannibalism and ju-ju) who had proposed

eating him. Yes--if he could grab the leader's knife and deal three such

stabs as the Sheikh dealt the lion, at these three, he could die

content. But this was absurd! They would _halal_ him first, of course,

and unbind him afterwards.... They might unbind him first though, so as

to place him favourably with regard to--economy. They would use the

empty army-ration tin, shining there like silver in the moonlight, the

tin with which he had done so much weary baling. Doubtless the leader

and the Arab would share its contents. He grudged it them, and hoped a

quarrel and struggle might arise and cause it to be spilt.

[42] Rhinoceros-hide whip.

An unpleasant death! Without cowardice one might dislike the thought of

having one's throat cut while one's hands were bound and one watched the

blood gushing into an old army-ration tin. Perhaps there would be none

to gush--and a good job too. Serve them right. Could he cut his wrists

on a nail or a splinter or with the cords, and cheat them, if there were

any blood in him now. He would try. Yes, an unpleasant death. No one,

no true Somali, that is, objected to a prod in the heart with a

shovel-headed spear, a thwack in the head with a hammered slug, a sweep

at the neck with a big sword--but to have a person sawing at your throat

with weak and shaking hands is rotten....

One quite appreciated that masters must eat and slaves must die, and the

religious necessity for cutting the throat while the animal is alive,

according to the Law--and there was great comfort in the fact that the

leader's knife was inscribed with verses of the Q'ran and would probably

be used for the job. (The leader liked jobs of that sort.) Countless it

would confer distinction in Paradise upon one already distinguished as

having died to provide food for a band of right-thinking,

religious-minded gentlemen, who, even in such terrible straits, forgot

not the Law nor omitted the ceremonies....

Where now was the fair-faced master who so resembled the English but was

so much braver, fiercer, so much more staunch? Though fair as they, and

knowing their speech, he could not be of a race that led whole tribes to

trust in them, called them "Friendlies" and then forsook them; came to

them in the day of trouble asking help, and then scuttled away and

deserted their allies, leaving them to face alone the Power whose wrath

and vengeance their help-giving had provoked. Yet there were good men

among them--there was Kafil[43] Bey for example. Kafil Bey whose last

noble fight he had witnessed. If the fair-faced Sheikh had any of the

weak English blood in his veins it must be of such a man as Kafil Bey.

[43] Corfield?

Was he still swimming? Had he been picked up? Was he shark's food? To

think that _he_ should have come to his death over such a thing as a

slave boy (albeit a Somali and no Hubshi).

This was an Emir indeed.

An idea!... He called aloud: "Are you there, Master? The _toni_ is loose

and must be near," again and again, louder and louder. Perhaps he was

following and would hear. Again, louder still.

The one-eyed man, disturbed by the cry, stirred, threw his arms abroad,

stretched, and put his foot on the mouth of a neighbour lying

head-to-foot beside him. The neighbour snored loudly and turned his face

sideways under the foot. He had slept standing jammed against the wall

in the Idris of Omdurman, one of the most terrible jails of all time,

and a huge foot on his face was a matter of no moment.

The Tanga tout suddenly emitted a scream, a blood-curdling scream, and

immediately scratched his ribs like a monkey.... Moussa Isa held his

peace.

Anon the scar-faced man turned over, moving others.

Could it be near dawn already, and were his proprietors waking up? He

could see no change in the East, no paling of the lustrous stars. Was it

an hour ago or eight hours ago that the night had fallen? Had he an hour

to live or a night? Would he ever see Berbera again, steer a boat down

its deep inlet, gaze upon its two lighthouses, its fort, hospital,

barracks, piers, warehouses, bazaars; drive a camel along by its seven

miles of aqueduct, look down from the hills upon this wonderful and

mighty metropolis, greater and grander than Jibuti, Zeyla, Bulhar and

Karam, surely the greatest and most marvellous port and city of the

world, ere driving on through the thorn-bush and acacia-jungle into the

vast waterless Haud? Would he ever again see the sun rise in the desert,

smell the smoke of the camel-dung cooking-fires.... What was that? The

sky was paling in the East, growing grey, a rose-pink flush on the

horizon--dawn and death were at hand.

Before the heralds of the sun, the moon slowly veiled her face with

lightest gossamer while the weaker stars fled. The daily miracle and

common marvel proceeded before the tired eyes of the bound slave; the

rim of the sun appeared above the rim of the sea; the moon more deeply

veiled her face from the fierce red eye, and gracefully and gradually

retired before the advance of the usurping conqueror--and the slave

seemed to hear the fat croaking voice of the leader saying, "At

sunrise".

Broad day and all but he asleep. Well--it had come at last. When would

they awake? Was the toni anywhere near?

The man with the geometrical pattern of scars on his face and chest

suddenly sat bolt upright like a released spring, yawned, looked at the

sky and the limp sail, and then at Moussa Isa. As his eye fell upon the

boy he smiled copiously, protruded a very red tongue between very white

teeth, and licked huge blue-black lips. He leaned over and awakened the

Leading Gentleman. Then he pointed to the Victim. Both watched the

horizon where, beyond distant Bombay and China, the sun was appearing,

rising with the rapidity of the minute hand of a big clock. Neither

looked to the West.

The child knew that when the sun had risen clear of the sea, he might

look upon it for a minute or two--and no more. A puff of wind fanned his

cheek; the sail filled and drew. The boat moved through the water and

the one-eyed gentleman, arising and treading upon the out-lying tracts

of the sleepers, stumbled to the rudder, which was tied with

coconut-fibre to an upright stake. The breeze strengthened and there was

a ripple of water at the bows. Was he saved?

The one-eyed person looked more disappointed than pleased, and observed

to the Leading Gentleman: "We cannot live to Aden, though the wind hold.

We must eat," and he regarded the figure of Moussa Isa critically,

appraisingly, with mingled favour and disfavour. His expressive

countenance seemed to say, "He is food--but he is poor food".

Nevertheless an unmistakable look of relief overspread his face as the

Leading Gentleman replied with conviction, "We must eat...." and added,

"This is but a dawn-breeze and will not take us half a mile".

"Then let us eat forthwith," said the one-eyed man, and he fairly beamed

upon Moussa Isa, doubtless with the said light of which his body was

full, in consequence of his singleness of vision. The whole party was by

this time awake and Moussa Isa the cynosure of neighbouring eyes. The

Leading Gentleman drew his beautiful knife from its tawdry sheath and

gave it a last loving strop on his horny palm.

Willing hands dragged the head of Moussa Isa across the beam and willing

bodies sat upon him, that he might not waste time, and something more

precious, by thoughtless wriggling, delaying breakfast. The Leading

Gentleman crawled to an advantageous position, and having bowed in

prayer, sawed away industriously.

Moussa Isa wished to shriek to him that he was a fool and a bungler;

that throats were not to be cut in that fashion, with hackings and

sawing at the gullet. Knew the clumsy fumbler nothing of big

blood-vessels?... but he could not speak.

"_That_ is not the way," said the benevolent-looking old Arab. "Stab,

man, stab under the ear--don't cut ... not there, anyhow."

The Leading Gentleman tried the other side of the double-edged blade,

continuing obstinately, and Moussa Isa contrived a strange sound which

died away on a curious bubbling note and he grew faint.

Suddenly the one-eyed individual at the rudder screamed aloud, and

disturbed the Leading Gentleman's earnest endeavour to prevent waste.

Not from sensibility did the one-eyed scream, nor on account of his

growing conviction that the Leading Gentleman was getting more than his

share, but because, as all realized upon looking up, a great ship was

bearing down upon them from the West.

So intent had all been upon the preparation of breakfast that the

steamer was almost audible when seen.

Good! Here came water, rice, bread, sugar, flour, and perhaps meat, for

poor castaways, and probably money--from kindly lady-passengers, this

last, for the ship was obviously a liner. The wretched Moussa Isa's

carcase was now superfluous--nay dangerous, and must be disposed of at

once, for Europeans are most kittle cattle. They will exterminate your

tribe with machine-guns, gin, small-pox, and still nastier things, but

they are fearfully shocked at a bit of killing on the part of others.

They call it murder. And though they will well-nigh depopulate a country

themselves, they will wax highly indignant if any of the survivors do a

little slaying, even if they kill but a miserable slave, like this

Somali dog.

Heave him overboard.

No. Ships carry the "far-eye," the magic instrument that makes the

distant near, that brings things from miles away to within a few yards.

Doubtless telescopes were on them already. Keep in a close group round

the body, smuggle it under the palm-mats and make believe to have been

trying to kindle a fire in an old kerosine-oil tin.... Signals of

distress appeared and Moussa Isa disappeared. The great steamer

approached, slowed down, and came to a standstill beside the boat of the

starving castaways. From her cliff-like side the passengers, crowding

the rails of her many decks, looked down with interest upon a

prehistoric craft in which lay a number of poor emaciated blacks and

Arabs, clad for the most part in scanty cotton rags. These poor

creatures feebly extended skinny hands and feebly raised quavering

voices, as they begged for water and a little rice, only water and a

little rice in the name of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate. Their

tins, lotahs and goat-skins were filled, bags of rice, bread and flour

were lowered to them; a box of sugar and a packet of biscuit were added;

and a gentle little rain of coins fell as though from Heaven.

Kodaks clicked, clergymen beamed, ladies said, "How sweetly

picturesque--poor dears"; the Captain murmured, "Damnedest scoundrels

unhung--but can't leave 'em to starve"; the "poor dears" smiled largely

and ate wolfishly; Moussa Isa bled, and the great steamer resumed her

way.

"Pat" Brighte (she was Cleopatra Diamond Brighte who married Colonel

Dearman of the Gungapur Volunteer Bines) found she had got a splendid

snap-shot when her films were developed at Gungapur. A little later she

got another when the look-out saw, and a boat picked up, a man who was

lying in a little dug-out or _toni_. When able to speak, he told the

_serang_[44] of the lascars that he was the sole survivor of a

bunder-boat which had turned turtle and sunk. He understood nothing but

Hindustani.... Miss Brighte pitied the poor wretch but thought he looked

rather horrid....

[44] Native boatswain.

The hearts of the castaways were filled with contentment as their

stomachs were filled with food, and so busily did they devote themselves

to eating, drinking, and sleeping that they forgot all about Moussa Isa

beneath the palm-mats.

When they chanced upon him he was just alive, and his wound was closed.

The attitude in which he had been dumped down upon the cargo (the

ostensible and upper strata thereof, consisting of hides and salt, with

a hint of ostrich-feathers, coffee, frankincense and myrrh) had favoured

his chance of recovery, for, thanks to a friendly bundle, his head was

pressed forward to his chest and the lips of the gaping wound in his

throat were shut.

Moussa Isa was tougher than an Indian chicken.

Near Aden his proprietors were captured by an officious and

unsympathetic police (Moussa was sent to what he dreamed to be Heaven

and later perceived to be a hospital) and while they went to jail, a

number of bristly-haired Teutonic gentlemen at the Freidrichstrasse,

Arab gentlemen at Muscat, and Afghan gentlemen at Cabul, were made to

exercise the virtue of patience. So the would-be murderers of John Robin

Ross-Ellison Ilderim Dost Mahommed unintentionally saved him from jail,

but never received his acknowledgments....

Discharged from the hospital, Moussa became his own master, a gentleman

at large, and, for a time, prospered in the coal-trade.

He steered a coal-lighter that journeyed between the shore and the

ships.

One day he received a blow, a curse, and an insult, from the _maccudam_

or foreman of the gang that worked in the boat which he steered. Neither

blows nor curses were of any particular account to Moussa, but this man

Sulemani, a nondescript creature of no particular race, and only a man

in the sense that he was not a woman nor a quadruped, had called him

"_Hubshi_" Woolly One. Had called Moussa Isa of the Somal a _Hubshi_, as

though he had been a common black nigger. And, of course, it was

intentional, for even this eater of dogs and swine and lizards knew the

great noble, civilized and cultured Somal, Galla, Afar and Abyssinian

people from niggers. Even an English hide-and-head-buying tripper and

_soi-disant_ big-game hunter knew a Zulu from a Hottentot, a Masai from

a Wazarambo, and a Somali from a Nigger!

The only question was as to _how_ the scoundrel should be killed, for

he was large and strong, and never far from a shovel, crow-bar,

boat-hook or some weapon. Not much hope of being able to fasten on his

throat like a young leopard on a dibatag, kudu or impala buck.

As Moussa sat behind him at the tiller, he would regard the villain's

neck with interest, his fat neck, just below and behind the big ear.

If he only had a knife--such as the beauty that once cut his throat--or

even a scrap of iron or of really hard pointed wood, honour could be

satisfied and a stain removed from the scutcheon of Moussa Isa of the

Somal race, insulted.

One lucky night he got his next scar, the fine one that ornamented his

cheek-bone, and a really serviceable weapon of offence against the

offender Sulemani.

On this auspicious night, a festive English sailor flung a bottle at

him, in merry sport, as he passed beneath the verandah of the temple of

Venus and Bacchus in which the sailor sprawled. It struck him in the

face, broke against his cheek-bone, and provided him with a new scar and

a serviceable weapon, a dagger, convenient to handle and deadly to slay.

The bottle-neck was a perfect hilt and the long tapering needle-pointed

spire of glass projecting from it was a perfect blade--rightly used, of

course. Only a fool would attempt a heart-stab with such a dagger, as it

would shatter on the ribs, leaving the fool to pay for his folly. But

the neck-stab--for the big blood-vessels--oho! And Moussa Isa licked

his chops just as he had seen the black-maned lion do in his own

fatherland; just as did the lion from whom the fair Sheikh had saved

him.

Toward the sailor, Moussa felt no resentment for the assault that had

laid him bleeding in the gutter. Had he called him "_Hubshi_" it would

have been a different matter--perhaps very different for the sailor.

Moussa Isa regarded curses, cruelties, blows, wounds, attempts at

murder, as mere natural manifestations of the attitude of their

originators, and part of the inevitable scheme of things. Insults to his

personal and racial Pride were in another category altogether.

Yes--the bottle must have been thus usefully broken by the hand of the

Supreme Deity himself, prompted by Moussa's own particular and private

_kismet_, to provide Moussa with the means of doing his duty by himself

and his race, in the matter of the dog who had likened a long-haired,

ringletty-haired aquiline-nosed, thin-lipped son of the Somals to a

Woolly One--a black beast of the jungle!

Our young friend had never heard of the historical glass-bladed daggers

of the _bravos_ of Venice, but he saw at a glance, as he rose to his

feet and stared at the bottle, that he could do his business (and that

of the foreman) with the fortunately--shaped fragment, and eke leave the

point of the weapon in the wound for future complications if the blow

failed of immediate fatal effect.

He bided his time....

One black night Moussa Isa sat on the stern of his barge holding to a

rope beneath the high wall of the side of the P. & O. liner, _Persia_,

in shadow and darkness undispelled by the flickering flare of a brazier

of burning fuel, designed to illuminate the path of panting, sweating,

coal-laden coolies up and down narrow bending planks, laid from the

lighter to the gloomy hole in the ship's side.

The hot, still air was thick with coal-dust and the harmless necessary

howls of the hundreds of sons of Ham, toiling at high pressure.

In the centre of a vast, silent circle of mysterious lamp-spangled sea

and shore, and of star-spangled sky, this spot was Inferno, an offence

to the brooding still immensity.

And suddenly Moussa Isa was dimly conscious of his enemy, of him who had

insulted the great Somal race and Moussa Isa. On the broad edge of the

big barge Sulemani stood, before, and a foot below him, in the darkness,

yelling directions, threats, promises and encouragement to his gang. If

only there had been a moon or light by which he could see to strike!

Suddenly the edge of a beam of yellow light from a port-hole struck upon

Sulemani's neck, illuminating it below and behind his ear. Mrs. "Pat"

Dearman, homeward bound, had just entered her cabin and switched on the

electric light. (When last she passed Aden she had been Miss Cleopatra

Diamond Brighte, bound for Gungapur and the bungalow of her brother.)

It was Mrs. Pat Dearman's habit to read a portion of the Scriptures

nightly, ere retiring to rest, for she was a Good Woman and considered

the practice to be not only a mark of, but essential to, goodness.

Doubtless the Powers of Evil smiled sardonically when they noted that

the light which she evoked for her pious exercise lit the hand of Moussa

Isa to murder, providing opportunity. Moussa Isa weighed chances and

considered. He did not want to bungle it and lose his revenge and his

life too. Would he be seen if he struck now? The light fell on the very

spot for the true infallible death-stroke. Should he strike now, here,

in the midst of the yelling mob?

Rising silently, Moussa drew his dagger of glass from beneath his only

garment, aimed at the patch of light upon the fat neck, and struck.

Sulemani lurched, collapsed, and fell between the lighter and the ship

without an audible sound in that dim pandemonium.

Even as the "dagger" touched flesh, the light was quenched, Mrs. Pat

Dearman having realized that the stuffy, hot cabin was positively

uninhabitable until the port-hole could be opened, after coaling

operations were completed.

Moussa Isa reseated himself, grabbed the rope again, and with clear

conscience, duty done, calmly awaited that which might follow.

Nothing followed. None had seen the deed, consummated in unrelieved

gloom; the light had failed most timely....

The next person who mortally affronted Moussa Isa, committing the

unpardonable sin, was a grievously fat, foolish Indian Mohammedan youth

whose father supported four wives, five sons, six daughters and himself

in idleness and an Aden shop.

It was a remarkably idle and unobtrusive shop and yet money flowed into

it without stint, mysteriously and unostentatiously, the conduits of its

flow being certain modest and retiring Arab visitors in long brown or

white _haiks_, with check cotton head-dresses girt with ropes of

camel-hair, who collogued with the honest tradesman and departed as

silently and unobtrusively as they came....

One of them, strangely enough, ejaculated "_Himmel_" and

"_Donnerwetter_" as often as "_Bismillah_" and "_Inshallah_" when he

swore.

The very fat son of this secretive house in an evil hour one

inauspicious evening took it upon him to revile and abuse his father's

servant, one Moussa Isa, an African boy, as he performed divers domestic

duties in the exiguous "compound" of the dwelling-place and refused to

do the fat youth's behest ere completing them.

"Haste thee at once to the bazaar, thou dog," screamed the fat youth.

"Later on," replied Moussa Isa, using the words that express the general

attitude of the East.

"Now, dog. Now, Hubshi, or I will beat thee."

"I will kill _you_," replied Moussa Isa, and again bided his time.

"Hubshi, Hubshi, Hubshi," goaded the misguided fat one.

His Kismet led the youth, some weeks later, to lay him down and sleep in

the shade of the house upon some broad flagstones. Here Moussa found him

and regretted the loss of his glass-dagger,--last seen in the neck of a

foreman of coal-coolies toppling into the dark void between a barge and

a ship,--but remembered a big heavy stone used to facilitate the scaling

of the compound wall.

Staggering with it to the spot where the fat youth lay slumbering

peacefully, Moussa Isa, in the sight of all men (who happened to be

looking), dashed it upon his fez-adorned head, and established the

hitherto disputable fact that the fat youth had brains.

To the Magistrate, Moussa Isa offered neither excuse nor prayer.

Explanation he vouchsafed in the words:--

"He called _me_, Moussa Isa of the Somali, a _Hubshi!_"

Being of tender years and of insignificant stature he was condemned to

flogging and seven years in a Reformatory School. He was too juvenile

for the Aden Jail. The Reformatory School nearest to Aden is at Duri in

India, and thither, in spite of earnest prayers that he might go to hard

labour in Aden Jail like a man and a Somali, was Moussa Isa duly

transported and therein incarcerated.

At the Duri Reformatory School, Moussa Isa was profoundly miserable,

most unhappy, and deeply depressed by a sense of the very cruellest

injustice.

For here they simply did not know the difference between a Somal and a

woolly-haired dog of a negro. They honestly did not know that there was

a difference. To them, a clicking Bushman was as a Nubian, an

earth-eating Kattia as a Kabyle, a face-cicatrized, tooth-sharpened

cannibal of the Aruwimi as a Danakil,--a _Hubshi_ as a Somal. They

simply did not know. To them all Africans were _Hubshis_ (just as to an

English M.P. all the three or four hundred millions of Indians are

Bengali babus). They meant no insult; they knew no better. All Africans

were black niggers and every soul in the place, from Brahmin to

Untouchable, looked down upon the African, the Black Man, the Nigger,

the Cannibal, the _Hubshi_, sent from Africa to defile their Reformatory

and destroy their caste.

Here, the proud self-respecting Moussa, jealous champion of the honour

of his, to him, high and noble race, found himself a god-send to the

Out-castes, the Untouchables, the Depressed Classes, Mangs, Mahars, and

Sudras,--they whose touch, nay the touch of whose very shadow, is

defilement! For, at last, they, too, had some one to look down upon, to

despise, to insult. After being the recipients-of-contempt as naturally

and ordainedly as they were breathers-of-air, they at last could apply a

salve, and pass on to another the utter contempt and loathing which they

themselves received and accepted from the Brahmins and all those of

Caste. They had found one lower than themselves. _Moussa Isa of the

Somali_ was the out-cast of out-casts, the pariah of pariahs, prohibited

from touching the untouchables, one of a class depressed below the

depressed classes--in short a _Hubshi!_

Even a broad-nosed, foreheadless, blubber--lipped aborigine from the

hill-jungles objected to his presence!

In the small, self-contained, self-supporting world of the Reformatory,

it was Moussa Isa against the World. And against the World he stood up.

It had to learn the difference between a Somali and a _Hubshi_ at any

cost--the cost of Moussa's life included.

What added to the sorrow of the situation was the realization of how

charming and desirable a retreat the place was in itself,--apart from

its ignorant and stupid inhabitants.

Expecting a kind of torture-house wherein he would be starved, sweated,

thrashed by brutal _kourbash_-wielding overseers, he found the most

palatial and comfortable of clubs, a place of perfect peace, safety,

and ease, where one was kindly treated by those in authority,

sumptuously fed, luxuriously lodged, and provided with pleasant

occupation, attractive amusements and reasonable leisure.

He had always heard and believed that the English were mad, and now he

knew it.

As a punishment for murder he had got a birching that merely tickled

him, and a free ticket to seven years' board, lodging, clothing,

lighting, medical care, instruction and diversion!

_Wow_!

Were it not for the presence of the insolent, ignorant, untravelled,

inexperienced, soft-living, lily-livered dogs of inhabitants, the place

was the Earthly Paradise. They were the crocodile in the ointment.

A young Brahmin, son of a well-paid Government servant, and incarcerated

for forgery and theft, was his most annoying persecutor. He was at great

pains to expectorate and murmur "_Hubshi_" in accents of abhorrent

contempt, whenever Moussa Isa chanced between the wind and his nobility.

The first time, Moussa replied with pitying magnanimity and all

reasonableness:--

"I am not a _Hubshi_, but a Somali, which is quite different--even as a

lion is different from a jackal or a man from an ape".

To which the Brahmin replied but:--

"_Hubshi_," and pointed out that there was danger of Moussa Isa's shadow

touching him, if Moussa were not careful.

"I must kill you if you call me _Hubshi_, understanding that I am of the

Somals," said Moussa Isa.

"_Hubshi_," would the Brahmin reply and loudly bewail his evil Luck

which had put him in the power of the accursed Feringhi Government--a

Government that compelled a Brahmin to breathe the same air as a filthy

negro dog, a Woolly One of Africa, barely human and most untouchable, a

living Contamination ... and Moussa cast about for a weapon.

His first opportunity arose when he found the Brahmin, who was in the

book-binding and compositor department, working one day in the same

gardening-gang with himself.

He had but a watering-can by way of offensive weapon, but good play can

be made with a big iron watering-can wielded in the right spirit and the

right hand.

Master Brahmin was feebly tapping the earth with a kind of single-headed

pick, and watching him, Moussa Isa saw that, in a quarter of an hour or

so, he might plausibly and legitimately pass within a yard or two of

this his enemy, as he went to and fro between the water-tap and the

strip of flower-border that he was sprinkling.... Would they hang him if

he killed the Brahmin, or would they feebly flog him again and give him

a longer sentence (that he be supported, fed, lodged, clothed and cared

for) than the present seven years?

There was no foretelling what the mad English would do. Sometimes they

acquitted a criminal and gave him money and education, and sometimes

they sent him to far distant islands in the South and there housed and

fed him free, for life; and sometimes they killed him at the end of a

rope.

Doubtless Allah smote the English mad to prevent them from stealing the

whole world.... If they were not mad they would do so and enslave all

other races--except their conquerors, the Dervishes, of course.... It

was like the lying hypocrites to call the Great Mullah "the Mad Mullah"

knowing themselves to be mad, and being afraid of their victorious enemy

who had driven them out of Somaliland to the coast forts....

Oh, if they would only treat him, Moussa Isa, as an adult, and send him

to the Aden Jail to hard labour. There folk knew a Somali from a

_Hubshi_; a gentleman of Afar and Galla stock, of Arab blood, Moslem

tenets, and Caucasian descent, from a common nigger, a low black

Ethiopian, an eater of men and insects, a worshipper of idols and

_ju-ju_.

In Aden, men knew a Somali from a _Hubshi_ as surely as they knew an

Emir from a mere Englishman.

Here, in benighted, ignorant, savage India, the Dark Continent indeed,

men knew not what a Somali was, likened him to a Negro, ranked him lower

than a Hindu even--called him a _Hubshi_ in insolent ignorance. If only

the beautiful Reformatory were in Berbera, and tenanted by Africans.

Better Aden Jail a thousand times than Duri Reformatory.

What a splendid joke if the dog of a Brahmin who persistently insulted

him--even after he had been shown his error and ignorance--should be the

unwitting means of his return to Aden--where a Somali gentleman is

recognized. There is no harm about a Jail as such. Far from it. A jail

is a wise man's paradise provided by fools. You have excellent and

plentiful food, a roof against the sun, unfailing water supply,

clothing, interesting occupation, and safety--protection from your

enemies. No man harries you, you are not chained, you are not tortured;

you have all that heart can desire. Freedom?... What _is_ Freedom?

Freedom to die of thirst in the desert? Freedom to be disembowelled by

the Great Mullah? Freedom to be sold as a slave into Arabia or Persia?

Freedom to be the unfed, unpaid, well-beaten property of gun-runners in

the Gulf, or of Arab _safari_ ruffians and "black-ivory" men? Freedom to

be left to the hyaena when you broke down on the march? Freedom to die

of starvation when you fell sick and could not carry coal? Thanks.

If the mad English provided beautiful refuges, and made the commission

of certain crimes the requisite qualification for admission, let wise

men qualify.

Take this Reformatory--where else could a little Somali boy get such

safety, peace, food, and sumptuous luxury; everything the heart could

desire, in return for doing a little gardening? Even a house to himself

as though he were the honoured, favourite son of some chief.

To Moussa Isa, the dark and dingy cell with its bare stone walls, mud

floor, grated aperture and iron door was a fine safe house; its iron

bed-frame with cotton-rug-covered laths and stony pillow, a piece of

wanton luxury; its shelf, stool and utensils, prideful wealth. If only

the place were in Africa or Aden! Well, Aden Jail would do, and if the

Brahmin's death led to his being sent there as a serious and respectable

murderer, it would be a real case of two enemies on one spear--an insult

avenged and a most desired re-patriation achieved.

That would be subtilty,--at once washing out the insult in the

Brahmin's blood and getting sent whither his heart turned so constantly

and fondly. They had treated him as a juvenile offender because he was

so small and young, and because the killing of the fat Mussulman was his

first offence, as they supposed. Surely they would recognize that he was

a man when he had killed his second enemy--especially if he told them

about Sulemani. What in the name of Allah did they want, to constitute a

real sound criminal, fit for Aden Jail, if three murders were not

enough? Well, he would go on killing until they did have enough, and

were obliged to send him to Aden Jail. There he would behave beautifully

and kill nobody until they wanted to turn him out to starve. Then, since

murder was the requisite qualification, he would murder to admiration.

He knew they could not send him over the way to the Duri Jail, since he

belonged to Aden, had been convicted there, and only sent to the Duri

Reformatory because Aden boasted no such institution....

Yes. The Brahmin's corpse should be the stepping-stone to higher things

and the place where people knew a Somali from a Negro.

If only he were in the carpentry department with Master Brahmin, where

there were axes, hammers, chisels, knives, saws, and various pointed

instruments. Fancy teaching the young gentleman manners and ethnology

with an axe! However, after one or two more journeys between the tap and

the flower-bed, he would pass within striking-distance of the dog as he

worked his slow way along the tract of earth he was supposed to be

digging up with the silly short-handled pick.

Should he try and seize the pick and give him one on the temple with it?

No, the Brahmin would scream and struggle and the overseer would be on

Moussa Isa in a single bound. He must strike a sudden blow in the act of

passing.

A few more journeys to the water-tap....

_Now!_ "_Hubshi_," eh?

Halting beside the crouching Brahmin youth, Moussa Isa swung up the

heavy watering-can by the spout and aimed a blow with all his strength

at the side of his enemy's head. He designed to bring the sharp strong

rim of the base behind the ear with the first blow, on the temple with

the second, and just anywhere thereafter, if time permitted of a

thereafter.

But the aggravating creature tossed his head as Moussa, with a grunt of

energy, brought the vessel down, and the rim merely struck the top of

the shaven skull. Another--harder. Another--with frenzied strength and

the force of long-suppressed rage and sense of wrong.

And then Moussa was knocked head over heels and sat upon by the overseer

in charge of the garden-gang, while the Brahmin twitched convulsively on

the ground. He was by no means dead, however, and the sole immediate

results, to Moussa, were penal diet, solitary confinement in his

palatial cell, a severe sentence of corn-grinding with the heavy quern,

and most joyous recollections of the sound of the water-can on the pate

of the foe.

"I have still to kill you, of course," he whispered to his victim, the

next time they met, and the Brahmin went in terror of his life. He was

a very clever young person and had passed an astounding number of

examinations in the course of his brief career. But he was not

courageous, and his "education" had given him skill in nothing

practical, except in penmanship, which skill he had devoted to forgery.

"Why did you violently commit this dastardish deed, and assault the

harmless peaceful Brahmin?" asked the Superintendent, a worthy and

voluble babu, and then translated the question into debased Hindustani.

"He called me _Hubshi_, and I will kill him," replied Moussa.

"Oho! and you kill everyone who calls you _Hubshi_, do you, Master

African?"

"I do. I wish to go to Aden Jail for attempting murder. It will be

murder if I am kept here where none knows a man from a dog."

"Oho! And you would kill even _me_, I suppose, if I called you

_Hubshi_."

"Of course! I will kill you in any case if I am not sent to Aden Jail."

The babu decided that it was high time for some other institution to

shelter this touchy and truculent person, and that he would lay the case

before the next weekly Visitor and ask for it to be submitted to the

Committee at their ensuing monthly meeting.

The Visitor of the week happened to be the Educational Inspector. "Wants

to leave India, does he?" said the Inspector, looking Moussa over as he

heard the statement of the Superintendent. "I admire his taste. India is

a magnificent country to leave."

The Educational Inspector, a very keen, thoughtful and competent

educationist, was a disappointed man, like so many of his Service. He

felt that he had, for quarter of a century, strenuously woven ropes of

sand. When his liver was particularly sluggish he felt that for quarter

of a century he had worked industriously, not at a useless thing, but at

an evil thing--a terrible belief.

Moreover, after quarter of a century of faithful labour and strict

economy, he found himself with a load of debt, broken health, and a

cheaply educated family of boys and girls to whom he was a complete

stranger--merely the man who found the money and sent it Home, visiting

them from time to time at intervals of four or five years. India had

killed his wife, and broken him.

He had had what seemed to him to be bitter experience also. An

individual, notoriously slack and incompetent, ten years his junior, had

been promoted over his head, because he was somebody's cousin and the

kind of fatuous ass that only labours industriously in drawing-rooms and

at functions, recuperating by slacking idly in offices and at duties--a

paltry but paying game much practised by a very small class in India.

Another individual, by reason of his having come to India two boats

earlier than the Inspector, drew Rs. 500 a month more than he did, this

being the Senior Inspector's Allowance. That he was reported on as lazy,

eccentric, and irregular, made no difference to the fact that he was a

fortnight senior to, and therefore worth Rs. 500 a month more than, the

next man. The recipient regarded the extra trifle (£400 a year) as his

bare right and merest due. The Inspector regarded it as an infamous

piece of injustice and folly that for fifteen years the whole of this

sum should go to a lazy fool because he happened to set sail from

England on a certain date, and not a fortnight later. So he loathed and

detested India where he had had bad luck, bad health and what he

considered bad treatment, and sympathized with the desire of Moussa Isa.

"Why do you want to go back to Aden?" he inquired in the _lingua franca_

of the Indian Empire, of Moussa whose heart beat high with hope.

"Because here, where there are no lions, wolves think a lion is a dog;

here where there are no men, asses think a man is a monkey. I am a

Somal, and these ignorant camels think I am a negro--a filthy Hubshi."

"And you tried to kill another boy because he called you 'Hubshi,' eh?"

"I did, Sahib, and I will kill him yet if I be not sent to Aden. If that

fail I will kill myself also."

"Stout fella," commented the Inspector in his own vernacular, and added,

musing aloud:--

"You'll come to the gallows through possessing pride, self-respect and

determination, my lad. You're behind the times--or rather you maintain a

spirit for which Civilization has no use. You must return to the Wilds

of the Earth or else you must be content to become good, grubby, and

grey, dull and dejected, sober and sorrowful, respectable and

unenterprising--like me; and you must cultivate fat, propriety, smugness

and the Dead Level.... What, you young Devil! You'd have self-respect

and pride, would you; be quick upon the point of honour, eh? revive the

duello, what? Get thee to a--er--less civilized and respectable age or

place ... in other words, Mr. Toshiwalla, bring the case before the

Committee of Visitors. I'll put up a note to the effect that he had

better be sent back to Aden. This is a Reformatory, and there's nothing

very reformatory about keeping him to plan murder and suicide because he

has been (quite unjustifiably) transported as well as flogged and

imprisoned. Yes, we'll consider the case. Meanwhile, keep a sharp eye on

him--and give him all the corn-grinding he can do. Sweat the Original

Sin out of him ... and see he does not secrete any kind of weapon."

Accordingly was Moussa segregated, and to the base women's-work of

corn-grinding in the cook-house, wholly relegated. It was hard,

soul-breaking work, ignoble and degrading, but he drew two crumbs of

comfort from the bread of affliction. He was developing his arm-muscles

and he was literally watering the said bread of affliction with the

sweat of labour. As the heavy drops trickled from chin and nose into the

meal around the grindstone, it pleased Moussa Isa to reflect that his

enemy should eat of it. Since the shadow of Moussa was pollution to

these travesties of men and warriors, let them have a little concrete

pollution also. But in the cook-house, while arm and soul wearied

together, one heavy day of copper sky and brazen earth, first eye and

then foot, fell upon a piece of tin, the lid of some empty milk-tin or

like vessel. The prehensile toes gathered in the trove, the foot gently

rose and the fingers of the pendant left hand secured the disc, while

the body swayed with the strenuous circlings of the right hand chat

revolved the heavy upper millstone.

That night, immediately after being locked in his cell, that there

might be the fullest time for bleeding to death, he slashed and slashed

while strength lasted at wrist and abdomen--but without succeeding in

penetrating the abdominal wall and reaching the viscera.

This effected his transfer to the Reformatory hospital and underlined

the remark of the Inspector in the Visitors' Book to the effect that one

Moussa Isa would commit suicide or murder, if kept at Duri, and would

certainly not be "reformed" in any way. In hospital, Major Jackson of

the Royal Army Medical Corps, a Visitor of the Duri Jail, paying his

periodical visits, grew interested in the sturdy bright boy and soon

came to like him for his directness, cheery courage, and refreshing

views. When the boy was convalescent he took him on the surrounding Duri

golf-links as his caddie in his endless games with his poor friend

Sergeant-Major Lawrence-Smith, _ex_-gentleman.

Moussa was grateful and, fingering the scar on his throat, likened Major

Jackson to his hero, the fair Sheikh who had saved him from the lion and

had lost his life through intervening on Moussa's behalf in the boat.

But _he_ was not mad like these English. He would not, with infinite

earnestness, seriousness and mingled joy at success and grief at

failure, have pursued a little white ball with a stick, mile after mile,

knocking it with infinite precautions, every now and then, into a little

hole, and taking it out again.

No, _his_ idea of sport across country with an iron-shod stick would

rather have been lion-hunting with an assegai (yet, curiously enough,

one, Robin Ross-Ellison, lived to play more than one game of golf with

Major Jackson on these same Duri Links). To see this adult white man

behaving so, _coram publico_, made Moussa bitterly ashamed for him.

And, as the sun set, Moussa Isa earned a sharp rebuke for inattentive

slacking, as he stood sighing his soul to where it sank in the West over

Aden and Somaliland.... Wait till his chance of escape arrived; he would

journey straight for the sunset, day after day, until he reached a

sea-shore. There he would steal a canoe and paddle and paddle straight

for the sunset, day after day, until he reached a sea-shore again. That

would be Africa or Arabia, and Moussa Isa would be where a Somal is

known from a _Hubshi_.... Should he make a bolt for it now? No, too

weak, and not fair to this kind Sahib who had healed him and sympathized

with him in the matter of the ignorance and impudence of those who

misnamed a son of the Somals.... In due course, the Committee of

Visitors met at the Reformatory one morning, and found on the agenda

paper _inter alia_ the case of Moussa Isa, a murderer from Aden, his

attempt at murder and suicide, and his prayer to be sent to Aden Jail.

On the Committee were the Director of Public Instruction, the Collector,

the Executive Engineer, the Superintendent of Duri Jail, the Educational

Inspector, the Cantonment Magistrate, Major Jackson of the Royal Army

Medical Corps, and a number of Indian gentlemen. To the Chairman's

inquiries Moussa Isa made the usual replies. He had been mortally

affronted and had endeavoured to avenge the insult. He had tried to do

his duty to himself--and to his enemy. He had been put to base

women's-work as a punishment for defending his honour and he had tried

to take his life in despair. Was there _no_ justice in British lands?

What would the Sahib himself do if his honour were assailed? If one rose

up and insulted him and his race? Called him baboon, born of baboons,

for example? Or had the Sahib no honour? Why should he have been

transported when he was not sentenced to transportation? What had he

done but defend his honour and avenge insults? Unless he were now tried

for murder and suicide, and sentenced to hard labour in Aden Jail, he

would go on murdering until they did send him there. If they said,

"Well, you shan't go there, whatever you do," he would kill himself. If

he could get no sort of weapon he would starve himself (he did not in

his ignorance quote the gentle and joyous Pankhurst family) or hold his

breath. So they had better send him, and that was all he had got to say

about it.

"Send him for trial before the City Magistrate and recommend that he go

to Aden Jail at once, before he hurts somebody else," said the native

members of the Committee. "Why should we be troubled with the

off-scourings of Aden?"

"Certainly not," opined the Collector of Duri. A pretty state of affairs

if every criminal were to be allowed to select his own place of

punishment, and to terrorize any penitentiary that had the misfortune to

lack favour in his sight. Let the boy be well flogged for the assault

and attempted suicide, and then let him rejoin the ordinary gangs and

classes. It was the Superintendent's duty to watch his charges and keep

discipline in what was, after all, a school.

"Sir, he is one violent and dangerous character and will assault the

peaceful and mild. Yea--he may even attack _me_," objected the babu.

"Are we to understand that you admit your inability to maintain order in

this Reformatory?" inquired the Director of Public Instruction from the

Chair.

Anything but that. They were to understand, on the contrary, that the

babu was respectfully a most unprecedented disciplinarian.

"You don't expect cock angels in a Reformatory, y' know," said the

engineer, suddenly awaking to light a fat black cheroot. "Got to use

the--ah--strong hand;--on their--ah--_you_ know," and he resumed his

slumbers, puffing mechanically and unconsciously at his cheroot.

So Moussa Isa was flogged and sent back to gardening, lessons and

drawing.

Yes--the Somali was taught drawing. Not mere utilitarian drawing-to-scale

and making plans and elevations, but "freehand"-drawing, the reproducing

of meaningless twirly curves and twiddly twists from symmetrical

conventional "copies". He copied copies and drew lines--but never copied

things, nor drew things. In time he could, with infinite labour, produce

a copy of a flat "copy" that a really observant eye could identify with

the original, but had you asked him to draw his foot or the door of the

room, his desk, his watering-can or book, he would probably have

replied, "_They_ are not drawing-copies," and would have laughed at your

absurd joke. No, he was not taught to draw _things_, nor to give

expression to impression.

And he had a special warder all to himself, who watched him as a cat

watches a mouse. However, warders cannot prevent looks and smiles, and

whenever Moussa Isa saw the Brahmin youth, he gave a peculiar look and a

meaning smile. It was borne in upon the clever young man that the Hubshi

looked at his neck, below his ear, when he smiled that dreadful smile.

Sometimes a significant gesture accompanied the meaning smile. For

Moussa Isa had decided, upon the rejection of his prayer by the

Committee, to wait until he was a little older and bigger, more like a

proper criminal and less of a wretched little "juvenile offender," and

then to qualify, by murder, for the Aden Jail--with the unoffered help

of the Brahmin boy.

Allah would vouchsafe opportunity, and when he did so, Moussa Isa, his

servant, would seize it. Doubtless it would come as soon as he was big

enough to receive the privileges of an adult and serious criminal.

Anyhow, the insult would be properly punished and the honour of the

Somal race avenged....

Came the day when certain of the sinful inhabitants of the Duri

Reformatory were to be conducted to a neighbouring Government High

School, a centre for the official Drawing Examinations for the district,

there to sit and be examined in the gentle art of Art.

To this end they had been trained in the copying of lines and in the

painting of areas of conventional shape, not that they might be made to

observe natural form, express themselves in reproduction, render the

inner outer, originate, articulate ... but that they might pass an

examination in copying unnatural things in impossible colours. Thus it

came to pass that, in the big hall of this school, divers of the

Reformed found themselves copying, and colouring the copy of, a curious

picture pinned to a blackboard--the picture of a floral wonder unknown

to Botany, possessed of delicate mauve leaves, blue-veined, shaped some

like the oak-leaf and some like the ivy; of long slender blades like

those of the iris, but of tenderest pink; of beautiful and profusely

chromatic blossoms, reminding one now of the orchid, now of the

sunflower and anon of the forget-me-not; and likewise of clustering

fulgent fruit.

And at the back of all these budding artists and blossoming jail-birds,

and in the same small desk sat the Brahmin youth and--Oh Merciful

Allah!--Moussa Isa, Somali.

The native gentleman in charge of the party from the Duri Reformatory

had duly escorted his charges into the hall, handed them over to Mr.

Edward Jones, the Head of the High School, and been requested to wait

outside with similar custodians of parties. (Mr. Edward Jones had known

very strange things to happen in Examination Halls to which the friends

and supporters of candidates had access during the examination.)

To Mr. Edward Jones the thus deserted Brahmin boy made frantic and

piteous appeal.

"Oh, Sir," prayed he, "let me sit somewhere else and not beside this

African."

"You'll stay where you are," replied Mr. Edward Jones, suspicious of the

appeal and the appellant. If the fat glib youth objected to the African

on principle, Mr. Edward Jones would be glad, metaphorically speaking,

to rub his Brahminical nose in it. If this were not his reason, it was,

doubtless, one even less creditable. Mr. Edward Jones had been in India

long enough to learn to look very carefully for the motive.

Moussa Isa licked his chops once again, and, as Mr. Jones turned away,

the unhappy Brahmin cried in his anguish of soul:--

"Oh, Sir! Watch this African carefully."

"All will be watched carefully," was the suspicious and cold reply.

Moussa smiled broadly upon his erstwhile contemptuous and insulting

enemy, and began to consider the possibilities of a long and

well-pointed lead-pencil as a means of vengeance. Pencils were intended

for marking fair surfaces--might one not be used on this occasion for

the cleaning of a sullied surface, that of a besmirched honour?

One insulter of the Somal race had died by the stab of a piece of broken

bottle. Might not another die by the stab of a lead-pencil?

Doubtful. Very risky. The stabbing and piercing potentialities of a lead

pencil are not yet properly investigated, tabulated, established and

known. It would be a pity to do small damage and incur a heavy

corn-grinding punishment. He might never get another chance of

vengeance either, if he bungled this one.

Well, there were three hours in which to decide ... and Moussa Isa

commenced to draw, pausing, from time to time, to smile meaningly at the

Brahmin, and to lick his chops suggestively. Anon he rested from his

highly uninteresting and valueless labours, laid his pencil on the desk,

and gazed around in search of inspiration in the matter of the best

method of dealing with his enemy.

His eye fell upon a picture of a lion that ornamented the wall of the

hall; he stiffened like a pointer and fingered some scars on his right

arm. He had never seen a picture of a lion before and, for a fraction of

a second, he was shocked and alarmed--and then, while his body sat in an

Indian High School hall, his spirit flew to an East African desert, and

there sojourned awhile.

Moussa Isa was again the slave of an ivory-poaching, hide-poaching,

specimen-poaching, slave-dealing gang of Arabs, Negroes, and Portuguese

half-castes, led by a white man of the Teutonic persuasion. He could

feel the smiting heat, see the scrub, jungle, and sand shimmering and

dancing in the heat haze. He could see the line of porters, bales on

heads, the Arabs on horseback, the white man in a litter swinging from a

long bamboo pole beneath which half a dozen Swahili loped along. He

could see the velvet star-gemmed night and the camp-fires, smell the

smoke and the savoury odours of the cooking, hear the sudden shrieks and

yells that followed the roar of the springing lion, feel the crushing

crunch of its great teeth in his arm as it seized him from beside the

nearest fire and stood over him.... Yes, that was the night when the

fair Sheikh from the North had showed the mettle of his pastures and

bound Moussa Isa to him for ever in the bonds of worshipping gratitude

and love. For, while others shrieked, yelled, fled, flung burning brands

and spears, or fired hasty, unaimed, ineffectual shots, the fair Sheikh

from the North had sprung at the lion as it stood over Moussa Isa and

driven his knife into its eye, and as it smote him to the earth, buried

its fangs in his shoulder and started to drag him away, had stabbed

upward between the ribs, giving it a second death-blow, transfixing its

heart. Thus it was he had earned the name by which he was known from

Zanzibar to Berbera, "He-who-slays-lions-with-the-knife," had earned the

envy and hatred of the fat white man and the Arabs, the boundless

admiration of the Swahili askaris, hunters and porters, and the deep

dog-like affection of Moussa Isa....

And then Moussa's spirit returned to his body and he saw but the picture

of a lion on a High School wall. He commenced to draw again and suddenly

had an inspiration. Deliberately he broke the point of his pencil and,

rising, marched up to the dais, whereon, at a table, sat Mr. Edward

Jones.

Mr. Edward Jones had been shot with bewildering suddenness from

Cambridge quadrangles into the Indian Educational Service. Of India he

knew nothing, of education he knew less, but boldly took it upon him to

combine the two unknowns for the earning of his living. If wise and

beneficent men offered him a modest wage for becoming a professor and

exponent of that which he did not know, he had no objection to accepting

it; but there were people who wondered why it should be that, out of

forty million English people, Mr. Edward Jones should be the chosen one

to represent England to the youth of Duri, and asked whether there were

no keen, strictly conscientious, sporting, strong Englishmen available;

no enthusiastic educational experts left in all the British Isles, that

Mr. Edward Jones of all people had come to Duri?

"What do you want?" he asked (how he hated these poverty-stricken,

smelly, ignoble creatures. Why was he not a master at Eton, instead of

at Duri High School. Why wouldn't somebody give him a handsome income

for looking handsome and standing around beautifully--like these

aide-de-camp Johnnies and "staff" people. Since there was nothing on

earth he could do well, he ought to have been provided with a job in

which he could look well).

"May I borrow the Sahib's knife?" asked Moussa Isa, "I have broken my

pencil and cannot draw." Mr. Edward Jones picked up the penknife that

lay on his desk, the cheap article of restricted utility supplied to

Government Offices by the Stationery Department, and handed it to Moussa

Isa. Even as he took it with respectful salaam, Moussa Isa summed up its

possibilities. Blade two inches long, sharp-pointed, handle six inches

long, wooden; not a clasp knife, blade immovable in handle. It would

do--and he turned to go to his seat and presumably to sharpen his

pencil.

Idly watching the boy and thinking of other things, Jones saw him try

the point of the knife on his thumb, walk up behind the other occupant

of his desk, his Brahmin neighbour, seize that neighbour by the hair,

push his head sharp over on to the shoulder, and plunge the knife into

his neck; seat himself, and commence to draw with the unfortunate

Brahmin's pencil.

Jones sprang to his feet and rushed to the spot, to find that he had not

been dreaming. No--on the back seat drooped a boy bleeding like a stuck

pig and another industriously drawing, his face illuminated by a smile

of contentment.

Jones pressed his thumbs into the neck of the sufferer, as he called to

an assistant-supervisor to run to the hospital for Dr. Almeida, hoping

to be able to close the severed jugular from which welled an appalling

stream of blood.

"It is quite useless, Sahib," observed Moussa, "nor can a doctor help.

When one has got it _there_, he may give his spear to his son and turn

his face to the wall. That dog will never say '_Hubshi_' to a Somal

again."

"Catch hold of that boy," said Mr. Edward Jones to another

assistant-supervisor who clucked around like a perturbed hen.

"Fear not, Sahib, I shall not escape. I go to Aden Jail," said Moussa

cheerfully--but he pondered the advisability of attempting escape from

the Reformatory should he be sentenced to be hanged. It had always

seemed an impossibility, but it would be better to attempt the

impossible than to await the rope. But doubtless they would say he was

too small and light to hang satisfactorily, and would send him to Aden.

Thanks, Master Brahmin, realize as you die that you have greatly obliged

your slayer....

* * * * *

"Now you will most certainly be hanged to death by rope and I shall be

rid of troublesome fellow," said the Superintendent to Moussa Isa when

that murderous villain was temporarily handed over to him by the

police-sepoy to whom he had been committed by Mr. Jones.

"I have avenged my people and myself," replied Moussa Isa, "even as I

said, I go to Aden Jail--where there are _men_, and where a Somal is

known from a Hubshi"

"You go to hang--across the road there at Duri Gaol," replied the babu,

and earnestly hoped to find himself a true prophet. But though the wish

was father to the thought, the expression thereof was but the wicked

uncle, for it led to the undoing of the wish. So convinced and

convincing did the babu appear to Moussa Isa, that the latter decided to

try his luck in the matter of unauthorized departure from the

Reformatory precincts. If they were going to hang him (for defending and

purging his private and racial honour), and not send him to Aden after

all, he might as well endeavour to go there at his own expense and

independently. If he were caught they could not do more than hang him;

if he were not caught he would get out of this dark ignorant land, if he

had to walk for a year....

When he came to devote his mind to the matter of escape, Moussa Isa

found it surprisingly easy. A sudden dash from his cell as the door was

incautiously opened that evening, a bound and scramble into a tree, a

leap to an out-house roof, another scramble, and a drop which would

settle the matter. If something broke he was done, if nothing broke he

was within a few yards of six-foot-high crops which extended to the

confines of the jungle, wherein were neither police, telegraph offices,

railways, roads, nor other apparatus of the enemy. Nothing broke--Duri

Reformatory saw Moussa Isa no more. For a week he travelled only by

night, and thereafter boldly by day, getting lifts in _bylegharies_,[45]

doing odd jobs, living as the crows and jackals live when jobs were

unavailable, receiving many a kindness from other wayfarers, especially

those of the poorer sort, but always faring onward to the West, ever

onward to the setting sun, always to the sea and Africa, until the

wonderful and blessed day when he believed for a moment that he was mad

and that his eyes and brain were playing him tricks.... After months and

months of weary travel, always toward the setting sun, he had arrived

one terrible evening of June at a wide river and a marvellous bridge--a

great bridge hung by mighty chains upon mightier posts which stood up on

either distant bank. It was a _pukka_ road, a Grand Trunk Road suspended

in the air across a river well-nigh great as Father Nile himself.

[45] Bullock carts.

On the banks of this river stood an ancient walled city of tall houses

separated by narrow streets, a city of smells and filth, wherein there

were no Sahibs, few Hindus and many Mussulmans. In a mud-floored

miserable _mussafarkhana_,[46] without its gates, Moussa Isa slept,

naked, hungry and very sad--for he somehow seemed to have missed the

sea. Surely if one kept on due westward always to the setting sun, one

reached the sea in time? The time was growing long, however, and he was

among a strange people, few of whom understood the Hindustani he had

learnt at Duri. Luckily they were largely Mussulmans. Should he abandon

the setting sun and take to the river, following it until it reached the

sea? He could take ship then for Africa by creeping aboard in the

darkness, and hiding himself until the ship had started.... There might

be no city at the mouth of the river when he got there. It might never

reach the sea. It might just vanish into some desert like the

Webi-Shebeyli in Somaliland. No, he would keep on toward the West,

crossing the great bridge in the morning. He did so, and turned aside

to admire the railway-station of the Cantonment on the other side of the

river, to get a drink, and to see a train come in, if happily such might

occur.

[46] Poor travellers' rest-house.

Ere he had finished rinsing his mouth and bathing his feet at the public

water-standard on the platform, the whistle of a distant train charmed

his ears and he sat him down, delighted, to enjoy the sights and sounds,

the stir and bustle, of its arrival and departure. And so it came about

that certain passengers by this North West Frontier train were not a

little intrigued to notice a small and very black boy suddenly arise

from beside the drinking-fountain and, with a strange hoarse scream,

fling himself at the feet of a young Englishman (who in Norfolk jacket

and white flannel trousers strolled up and down outside the first-class

carriage in which he was travelling to Kot Ghazi from Karachi), and with

every sign of the wildest excitement and joy embrace and kiss his

boots....

Moussa Isa was convinced that he had gone mad and that his eyes and

brain were playing him tricks.

Mr. John Robin Ross-Ellison (also Mir Ilderim Dost Mahommed Mir Hafiz

Ullah Khan when in other dress and other places) was likewise more than

a little surprised--and certainly a little moved, at the sight of Moussa

Isa and his wild demonstrations of uncontrollable joy.

"Well, I'm damned!" said he in the _rôle_ of Mr. John Robin

Ross-Ellison. "Rum little devil. Fancy your turning up here." And in the

_rôle_ of Mir Ilderim Dost Mahommed Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan added in

debased Arabic: "Take this money, little dog, and buy thee a _tikkut_

to Kot Ghazi. Get into this train, and at Kot Ghazi follow me to a

house."

To the house Moussa Isa followed him and to the end of his life

likewise, visiting _en route_ Mekran Kot, among other places, and

encountering one, Ilderim the Weeper, among other people (as was told to

Major Michael Malet-Marsac by Ross-Ellison's half-brother, the

Subedar-Major.)