"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 (L400 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 role of Mr. John Robin Ross-Ellison. "Rum little devil. Fancy your turning up here." And in the role 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.)



CHAPTER III.

THE WOMAN.

(And Augustus Grabble; General Murger; Sergeant-Major Lawrence-Smith; Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Gosling-Green; Mr. Horace Faggit; as well as a reformed JOHN ROBIN ROSS-ELLISON.)



Sec. 1. MR. GROBBLE.

There was something very maidenly about the appearance of Augustus Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble. One could not imagine him doing anything unfashionable, perspiry, rough or rude; nor could one possibly imagine him doing anything ruthless, fine, terrible, strong or difficult.

One expected his hose to be of the same tint as his shirt and handkerchief, his dress-trousers to be braided, his tie to be delicate and beautiful, his dainty shoes to be laced with black silk ribbon,—but one would never expect him to go tiger-shooting, to ride a gay and giddy young horse, to box, or to do his own cooking and washing in the desert or jungle.

Augustus had been at College during that bright brief period of the attempted apotheosis of the dirty-minded little Decadent whose stock in trade was a few Aubrey Beardsley drawings, a widow's-cruse-like bottle of Green Chartreuse, an Oscar Wilde book, some dubious blue china, some floppy ties, an assortment of second-hand epigrams, scent and scented tobacco, a nil admirari attitude and long weird hair.

Augustus had become a Decadent—a silly harmless conventionally-unconventional Decadent. But, as Carey, a contemporary Rugger blood, coarsely remarked, he hadn't the innards to go far wrong.

It was part of his cheap and childish ritual as a Decadent to draw the curtains after breakfast, light candles, place the flask of Green Chartreuse and a liqueur-glass on the table, drop one drip of the liquid into the glass, burn a stinking pastille of incense, place a Birmingham "god" or an opening lily before him, ruffle his hair, and sprawl on the sofa with a wicked French novel he could not read—hoping for visitors and an audience.

If any fellow dropped in and, very naturally, exclaimed, "What the devil are you doing?" he would reply:—

"Wha'? Oh, sunligh'? Very vulgar thing sunligh'. Art is always superior to Nature. You love the garish day being a gross Philistine, wha'? Now I only live at night. Glorious wicked nigh'. So I make my own nigh'. Wha'? Have some Green Chartreuse—only drink fit for a Hedonist. I drink its colour and I taste its glorious greenness. Ichor and Nectar of Helicon and the Pierian Spring. I loved a Wooman once, with eyes of just that glowing glorious green and a soul of ruby red. I called her my Emerald-eyed, Ruby-souled Devil, and we drank together deep draughts of the red red Wine of Life——"

Sometimes the visitor would say: "Look here, Grobb, you ought to be in the Zoo, you know. There's a lot there like you, all in one big cage," or similar words of disapproval.

Sometimes a young fresher would be impressed, especially if he had been brought up by Aunts in a Vicarage, and would also become a Decadent.

During vac. the Decadents would sometimes meet in Town, and See Life—a singularly uninteresting and unattractive side of Life (much more like Death), and the better men among them—better because of a little sincerity and pluck—would achieve a petty and rather sordid "adventure" perhaps.

Augustus had no head for Mathematics and no gift for Languages, while his Classics had always been a trifle more than shaky. History bored him—so he read Moral Philosophy.

There is a somewhat dull market for second-hand and third-class Moral Philosophy in England, so Augustus took his to India. In the first college that he adorned his classes rapidly dwindled to nothing, and the College Board dispensed with the services of Augustus, who passed on to another College in another Province, leaving behind him an odour of moral dirtiness, debt, and decadence. Quite genuine decadence this time, with nothing picturesque about it, involving doctors' bills, alimony, and other the fine crops of wild-oat sowing.

At Gungapur he determined to "settle down," to "turn over a new leaf," and laid a good space of paving-stone upon his road to reward.

He gave up the morning nip, docked the number of cocktails, went to bed before two, took a little gentle exercise, met Mrs. Pat Dearman—and (like Mr. Robin Ross-Ellison, General Miltiades Murger and many another) succumbed at once.

Mrs. Pat Dearman had come to India (as Miss Cleopatra Diamond Brighte) to see her brother, Dickie Honor Brighte, at Gungapur, and much interested to see, also, a Mr. Dearman whom, in his letters to her, Dickie had described as "a jolly old buster, simply full of money, and fairly spoiling for a wife to help him blew it in." She had not only seen him but had, as she wrote to acidulous Auntie Priscilla at the Vicarage, "actually married him after a week's acquaintance—fancy!—the last thing in the world she had ever supposed ... etc." (Auntie Priscilla had smiled in her peculiarly unpleasant way as the artless letter enlarged upon the strangeness of her ingenuous niece's marrying the rich man about whom her innocent-minded brother had written so much.)

Having thoroughly enjoyed a most expensive and lavish honeymoon, Mrs. Pat Dearman had settled down to make her good husband happy, to have a good time and to do any amount of Good to other people—especially to young men—who have so many temptations, are so thoughtless, and who easily become the prey of such dreadful people and such dreadful habits.

Now it is to be borne in mind that Mrs. Dearman's Good Time was marred to some extent by her unreasoning dislike of all Indians, a dislike which grew into a loathing hatred, born and bred of her ignorance of the language, customs, beliefs and ideals of the people among whom she lived, and from whom her husband's great wealth sprang.

To Augustus—fresh from very gilded gold, painted lilies and highly perfumed violets—she seemed a vision of delight, a blessed damozel, a living Salvation.

"Incedit dea aperta," he murmured to himself, and wondered whether he had got the quotation right. Being a weak young gentleman, he straightway yearned to lead a Beautiful Life so as to be worthy to live in the same world with her, and did it—for a little while. He became a teetotaller, he went to bed at ten and rose at five—going forth into the innocent pure morning and hugging his new Goodness to his soul as he composed odes and sonnets to Mrs. Pat Dearman. So far so excellent—but in Augustus was no depth of earth, and speedily he withered away. And his reformation was a house built upon sand, for, even at its pinnacle, it was compatible with the practising of sweet and pure expressions before the glass, the giving of much time to the discovery of the really most successful location of the parting in his long hair, the intentional entangling of his fingers with those of the plump and pretty young lady (very brunette) in Rightaway & Mademore's, what time she handed him "ties to match his eyes," as he requested.

It was really only a change of pose. The attitude now was: "I, young as you behold me, am old and weary of sin. I have Passed through the Fires. Give me beauty and give me peace. I have done with the World and its Dead Sea Fruit. There is no God but Beauty, and Woman is its Prophet." And he improved in appearance, grew thinner, shook off a veritable Old Man of the Sea in the shape of a persistent pimple which went ill with the Higher Aestheticism, and achieved great things in delicate socks, sweet shirts, dream ties, a thumb ring and really pretty shoes.

In the presence of Mrs. Pat Dearman he looked sad, smouldering, despairing and Fighting-against-his-Lower-Self, when not looking Young-but-Hopelessly-Depraved-though-Yearning-for-Better-Things. And he flung out quick epigrams, sighed heavily, talked brilliantly and wildly, and then suppressed a groan. Sometimes the pose of, "Dear Lady, I could kiss the hem of your garment for taking an interest in me and my past—but it is too lurid for me to speak of it, or for you to understand it if I did," would appear for a moment, and sometimes that of, "Oh, help me—or my soul must drown. Ah, leave me not. If I have sinned I have suffered, and in your hands lie my Heaven and my Hell." Such shocking words were never uttered of course—but there are few things more real than an atmosphere, and Augustus Clarence could always get his atmosphere all right.

And Mrs. Pat Dearman (who had come almost straight from a vicarage, a vicar papa and a vicarish aunt, to an elderly, uxorious husband and untrammelled freedom, and knew as much of the World as a little bunny rabbit whom its mother has not brought yet out into the warren for its first season), was mightily intrigued.

She felt motherly to the poor boy at first, being only two years his junior; then sisterly; and, later, very friendly indeed.

Let it be clearly understood that Mrs. Pat Dearman was a thoroughly good, pure-minded woman, incapable of deceiving her husband, and both innocent and ignorant to a remarkable degree. She was the product of an unnatural, specialized atmosphere of moral supermanity, the secluded life, and the careful suppression of healthy, natural instincts. In justice to Augustus Clarence also it must be stated that the impulse to decency, though transient, was genuine as far as it went, and that he would as soon have thought of cutting his long beautiful hair as of thinking evil in connection with Mrs. Pat Dearman.

Yes, Mrs. Pat Dearman was mightily intrigued—and quickly came to the conclusion that it was her plain and bounden duty to "save" the poor, dear boy—though from what she was not quite clear. He was evidently unhappy and obviously striving-to-be-Good—and he had such beautiful eyes, dressed so tastefully, and looked at one with such a respectful devotion and regard, that, really—well, it added a tremendous savour to life. Also he should be protected from the horrid flirting Mrs. Bickker who simply lived to collect scalps.

And so the friendship grew and ripened—quickly as is possible only in India. The evil-minded talked evil and saw harm where none existed, proclaiming themselves for what they were, and injuring none but themselves. (Sad to say, these were women, with one or two exceptions in favour of men—like the Hatter—who perhaps might be called "old women of the male sex," save that the expression is a vile libel upon the sex that still contains the best of us.) Decent people expressed the belief that it would do Augustus a lot of good—much-needed good; and the crystallized male opinion was that the poisonous little beast was uncommon lucky, but Mrs. Pat Dearman would find him out sooner or later.

As for Mr. (or Colonel) Dearman, that lovable simple soul was grateful to Augustus for existing—as long as his existence gave Mrs. Dearman any pleasure. If the redemption of Augustus interested her, let Augustus be redeemed. He believed that the world neither held, nor had held, his wife's equal in character and nobility of mind. He worshipped an image of his own creation in the shape of Cleopatra Dearman, and the image he had conceived was a credit to the single-minded, simple-hearted gentleman.

Naturally he did not admire Augustus Clarence Percy Marmaduke Grobble (learned in millinery; competent, as modes varied, to discuss harem, hobble, pannier, directoire, slit, or lamp-shade skirts, berthes, butterfly-motif embroideries, rucked ninon sleeves, chiffon tunics, and similar mysteries of the latest fashion-plates, with a lady undecided).

Long-haired men put Dearman off, and he could not connect the virile virtues with large bows, velvet coats, scent, manicure, mannerisms and meandering.

But if Augustus gave his wife any pleasure—why Augustus had not lived wholly in vain. His attitude to Augustus was much that of his attitude to his wife's chocolates, fondants, and crystallized violets—"Not absolutely nourishing and beneficial for you, Dearest;—but harmless, and I'll bring you a ton with pleasure".

Personally he'd as soon go about with his wife's fat French poodle as with Augustus, but so long as either amused her—let the queer things flourish.

Among the nasty-minded old women who "talked" was the Mad Hatter.

"Shameful thing the way that Dearman woman throws dust in her husband's eyes!" said he, while sipping his third Elsie May at the club bar. "He should divorce her. I would, to-morrow, if I were burdened with her."

A knee took him in the small of the back with unnecessary violence and he spun round to demand instant apology from the clumsy....

He found himself face to face with one John Robin Ross-Ellison newly come to Gungapur, a gentleman of independent means but supposed to be connected with the Political Department or the Secret Service or something, who stared him in the eyes without speaking while he poised a long drink as though wondering whether it were worth while wasting good liquor on the face of such a thing as the Hatter.

"You'll come with me and clear the dust from Dearman's eyes at once," said he at last. "Made your will all right?"

The Hatter publicly apologised, then and there, and explained that he had, for once in his life, taken a third drink and didn't know what he was saying.

"If your third drink brings out the real man, I should recommend you to stick to two, Bonnett," said the young man, and went away to cogitate.

Should he speak to Dearman? No. He didn't want to see so good a chap hanged for a thing like the Bonnett. Should he go and slap Augustus Grobble hard and make him leave the station somehow? No. Sure to be a scandal. You can no more stop a scandal than a locust-cloud or a fog. The best way to increase it is to notice it. What a horrid thing is a scandal-monger—exhaling poison. It publishes the fact that it is poisonous, of course—but the gas is not enjoyable.

Well, God help anybody Dearman might happen to hear on the subject! Happily Mr. (or Colonel) Dearman heard nothing, for he was a quiet, slow, jolly, red-haired man, and the wrath of a slow, quiet, red-haired man, once roused, is apt to be a rather dangerous thing. Also Mr. Dearman was singularly elephantine in the blundering crushing directness of his methods, and his idea of enough might well seem more than a feast to some.

And Mr. Dearman suffered Augustus gladly, usually finding him present at tea, frequently at dinner, and invariably in attendance at dances and functions.

Augustus was happy and Good—for Augustus. He dallied, he adored, he basked. For a time he felt how much better, finer, more enjoyable, more beautiful, was this life of innocent communion with a pure soul—pure, if just a little insipid, after the real spankers he had hitherto affected.

He was being saved from himself, reformed, helped, and all the rest of it. And when privileged to bring her pen, her fan, her book, her cushion, he always kissed the object with an appearance of wishing to be unseen in the act. It was a splendid change from the Lurid Life and the mean adventure. Piquant.

Unstable as water he could not excel nor endure, however, even in dalliance; nor persevere even when adopted as the fidus Achates of a good and beautiful woman—the poor little weather-cock. He was essentially weak, and weakness is worse than wickedness. There is hope for the strong bad man. He may become a strong good one. Your weak man can never be that.

There came a lady to the Great Eastern Hotel where Augustus lived. Her husband's name, curiously enough, was Harris, and wags referred to him as the Mr. Harris, because he had never been seen—and like Betsey Prig, they "didn't believe there was no sich person". And beyond doubt she was a spanker.

Augustus would sit and eye her at meals—and his face would grow a little less attractive. He would think of her while he took tea with Mrs. and Mr. Dearman, assuring himself that she was certainly a stepper, a stunner, and, very probably,—thrilling thought—a wrong 'un.

Without the very slightest difficulty he obtained an introduction and, shortly afterwards, decided that he was a man of the world, a Decadent, a wise Hedonist who took the sweets of every day and hoped for more to-morrow.

Who but a fool or a silly greenhorn lets slip the chances of enjoyment, and loses opportunities of experiences? There was nothing in the world, they said, to compare with War and Love. Those who wanted it were welcome to the fighting part, he would be content with the loving role. He would be a Dog and go on breaking hearts and collecting trophies. What a milk-and-water young ass he had been, hanging about round good, silly, little Mrs. Dearman, denying himself champagne at dinner-parties, earning opprobrium as a teetotaller, going to bed early like a bread-and-butter flapper, and generally losing all the joys of Life! Been behaving like a backfisch. He read his Swinburne again, and unearthed from the bottom of a trunk some books that dealt with the decadent's joys,—poets of the Flesh, and prosers of the Devil, in his many weary forms.

Also he redoubled his protestations (of undying, hopeless, respectful devotion and regard) to Mrs. Dearman, until she, being a woman, therefore suspected something and became uneasy.

One afternoon he failed to put in an appearance at tea-time, though expected. He wrote that he had had a headache. Perhaps it was true, but, if so, it had been borne in the boudoir of the fair spanker whose husband may or may not have been named Harris.

As his absences from the society of Mrs. Dearman increased in frequency, his protestations of undying gratitude and regard for her increased in fervour.

Mrs. Dearman grew more uneasy and a little unhappy.

Could she be losing her influence for Good over the poor weak boy? Could it be—horrible thought—that he was falling into the hands of some nasty woman who would flirt with him, let him smoke too many cigarettes, drink cocktails, and sit up late? Was he going to relapse and slip back into that state of wickedness of some kind, that she vaguely understood him to have been guilty of in the unhappy past when he had possessed no guardian angel to keep his life pure, happy and sweet, as he now declared it to be?