Chapter XIII: Introduction (12)

“Old Arnauld” (the customs official) “is in a fair pother. There’s a frighful mixture in the trek, blacks and browns from a dozen different basins down below, and you may imagine there’s a lack of passports. So that’s Arnauld’s job; to divine. Or rather it’s Bou Dik’s job, for the orderly has all the work. When I passed the market coming to you Bou Dik was tackling an old chap who claims to be Senegal but looks away east of that, a pot-bellied old swine, black as a chimney-pot, solemn as an archbishop, and blind as a bat. I gather all he wants is to be let pass quietly on his way to Holy Mekka, where he hopes to die. Bou Dik, though, is full of wild and horrid notions. He has crossed the trail lately of a dervish man who has the word that Mouley Saa[21] is now booked to descend in the guise of a blackamoor, and naturally, having a fat berth with the Infidel, Bou Dik isn’t going to let the Deliverer into _his_ department--not if he can help it. So just now Bou Dik is death and leprosy on niggers. I wish you could have heard the row.”

I was to hear it presently. We had arrived at a chain swung across the black street and, ducking under it, we came into the open market square. I had seen the place a hundred times, by sun and moon and stars, and still familiarity had not quite worn off my first sense of it as a haven between the winds, the anchorage of a remote white port of call lost in the ocean of stone. To-night that illusion was deepened a dozenfold. There is no other metaphor in speech so true as “ships of the desert.” They were here. To-night I knew that I had known before only the small fry of that dry sea world, only the shore-huggers, the humble brotherhood of the coastwise trade. Here to-night was the creature of the main, the deep-sea squadron, the tall fleet.

From where we stood, clear to the further shore of dim arcades, the ground was hidden under the mass of kneeling beasts and heaped bales, a tumbled thing, monstrous in sleep. We picked our way through the ruck, lighting matches from time to time when we found ourselves trapped in blind alleys between bales and humps, or felt our way barred by the hairy neck of a camel curving waist-high across the night. Mountains whisked fat tails at us; sleeping legs sprawled from beneath hills of cargo like dead men pinned under wreckage. Borak took hold of my elbow.

“This way,” he said. “I hear the voice of Bou Dik.”

I heard it too, impassive, obstinate. There was a small fire of brush-roots throwing a glow around a ring of specters in the center of the field of ruin. The burnooses, all the same color of desert dust, might indeed have been winding-sheets; the hooded faces, gaunt, bone-built, played upon by the weak and tricky illumination from beneath, might have been skulls. And in the midst of the communing dead Bou Dik, enveloped in his red robe of authority, was the devil himself presiding.

His voice had ceased. As we settled behind him a man got to his feet on the side beyond the fire. With a gesture which had in it something of the trained orator he put back the hood of his burnoose, baring his strong neck and his round, blue-black, kinky-polled negroid head.

“Thou hast demanded, sidi, who is this man who is the father of my father. Thou hast demanded whence he comes, whither he goes, what he desires. Now I will tell thee all these things, I, Belkano, who am not without power in the country which is under Kalgou.”

He spoke a quaint Arabic in which all the throat-sounds were brought forward and softened--such a tongue, Borak told me, as black boys pick up in the Mohammedan _zaouias_ at Sikasso and Timbuktu--quaint, and yet more easily understood in the Mzab than dialects not so far away, in Tunis, say, or the Moroccan uplands.

“The father of my father,” he said, “is a very great and holy man.”

In the pause that followed all the eyes turned upon the object deposited at the speaker’s feet. It was discerned to be human.

“Black as a chimney-pot, solemn as an archbishop, blind as a bat.” Like many of Borak’s observations, that one had everything in it but the essential. The essential thing was the man’s enormous separation. Whether it was the infirmity of his great age or whether it was his “holiness” (which may account for many things), he was removed to a distance which could not be measured. He lived on another planet. He lived within another sky, the sky of his own skin.

There was something majestic in the completeness of his immobility. Save for a faint, slow, rhythmical pulse of his swollen lower lip there was nothing visibly alive in him. Not once did the dead eyeballs, sustained in little cups of rheum, shift from the line of dead ahead. From the first to the last of that audience he remained in the attitude in which I imagine he must have been deposited, a sphinx thing in ebony, content with memories. Memories gorgeous or infernal. His lip fascinated me. I could not get my eyes away from that pendulous and extraordinary tissue, throbbing with faint, ordered convulsions in the orange light. It was as if the creature’s heart, appalled by something under the black sky of skin, had broken prison and escaped so far, only to be caught on the threshold and hang there eternally, beating.

I had to shake myself. In a whisper, to Borak: “What’s that he was saying? The tall one.”

“He says that his grandfather is bound on the pilgrimage to Mekka because he is tremendously holy, and he is tremendously holy because he has a huge sin on his soul. Not bad, eh? It has happened before.”

Bou Dik’s voice was heard. “What then is that sin?”

The dark orator looked around the circle beneath him.

“It is known in Andiorou and Adar. It is known in Damagarin country and even in Manga country in the east.” He looked at Bou Dik. “Now I will recount thee that history, sidi.”

His gaze returned to the fire. I shall not soon forget him as he stood there against the stars of the desert night, tall, glossy, vibrant, speaking out in a strong voice the story of the moribund flesh beside him.

“Know thou then that it was in the years before the missionaries of God (to whom be the prayer) and of his Prophet (be his bliss eternal by the streams that never cease!) had brought to my tribe the Word and the Flame of Islam. Glory to the One God!”

“Glory to the One God!” the echo rustled around the ring.

“In those days then the men of my people lived in darkness. They performed no ablutions. Their prayers were to images made with their hands. The strongest and bravest of the young men of that tribe was Djeba, who was later called Djim, as I will recount to thee, sidi, and who was to become the father of my father, and who is this man. The young man who was next to Djeba in strength and courage was Moa. These two were brothers of the milk. Of these two, each was the other’s breath. When these two went into the bush to hunt, the animals said to one another, ‘Strike if thou wilt amongst seven men, but avoid the Brothers of the Milk!’ So lived Djeba and Moa in those days. Djeba was the spear of Moa; Moa was Djeba’s shield.

“In those days then came a war-party from the south, from the country of Gando under Sokoto, the country of braggarts and thieves. They came out of the bush in the morning and moved toward the village, casting their spears aloft and beating on drums. The warriors of my people did not fail to answer them. They advanced out of the stockade. Nikato, the Headman, was in the forefront, and at his two shoulders went Djeba and Moa. That sunrise Djeba slew five of the sons of Gandoland. Moa slew five. Neither cut nor bruise was on their bodies. _Sing the Valor of the Brothers of the Milk!_”

The apostrophe rang out, absorbed, deep-throated, across the sleeping caravan. My eyes went to the flesh on the ground. Into that dark house had those words been able to penetrate? Had their ringing set some hidden echo ringing? How could one say? The lip that was like the man’s drawn heart pulsed in the same laggard, imperturbable count; the dead eyeballs did not shift. But perhaps they were dead only that they might see the better the sunlight of that vanished and heroic myth.

“_Sing the Valor and the Victory of the Brothers of the Milk!_

“That war-party was beaten; its dead soiled the ground; its living fled into the bush. That day the drums were beaten in the village and muttons were killed; that night a feast was made. The young men danced and the old men made sacrifice to their images.

“But the images of those days were idolatrous and had no power over good and ill. _La illah il allah!_[22] Accordingly then it was written that the survivors of that war-party, gathering again in the bush and being drunk with the desire of revenge, fell once more upon the village in the hour when the young men were full-fed and their weapons away. So in that night many of my tribe were slain. The stockades were thrown down; the houses were given to the flame. In the light of that flame many virgins were desecrated, many old men disemboweled, many children spun on spears. But those of good growth and being were taken away. Djeba and Moa were taken away.

“How can I recount to thee, sidi, the days of that march? Am I then another Errendi, that the words of my lamentation should fall like burning oil on a new wound? But the history is well known in all the country above the River, for my father’s brother, Ahmed ben Djeba, he who had it out of the mouth of Djeba, has made it a chant at a hundred feasts and sung it under a hundred council-trees. He has sung the days of that going, the weeks, each week after the other through the hotness of that bush-trail. He has told the tale of the moons. In the roof of his mouth he has recalled the song of the lash that fell on those men’s shoulders and made of their flesh the flesh of goats that is hung on the stockade to cure. He has stirred the dung-heaps to bring in memory the meat that was given them at evening before they fell down to sleep. With his tongue he has made the clank of the chain that bound them together, the heavy chain of iron that bound together even those two who were bound by the strong bond of the breast that gave them suck!

“Many among them died. When they died their bodies were cut from the chain with swords. Djeba and Moa grew thin. When Djeba looked at Moa he saw a skeleton that he did not know. When Moa looked at Djeba he saw a thing which filled him with terror. At night each bade the other farewell, saying, ‘In the morning I shall be dead.’ But they were strong and they did not die. Only their minds became empty.

“Then they came at last to the banks of a great lake. This lake was so great that when they had been sold to a white boatman and when they had come out in the boat so far that they could no longer see the bank behind them, then they could yet see no bank before, and the water was all about them to the sky like the sand in the desert of Djouf. To my father’s brother Djeba has recounted that they were more than the length of a moon in that going, but it must be recalled that his mind was empty, since no lake to be compared with that is in our knowledge. A wind arose on that lake and water came into the boat. They were athirst, but when they drank of that water it was sour and their thirst consumed them tenfold after. What man is there master of words sufficiently bitter to recount that going upon the lake of those men who were captive?

“Then they came at last to the other bank of that lake, and they were taken up swiftly into the bush of the country beyond, for there were war-boats of other white men on the water. And on another day they came to a great _ksar_ of a hundred shelters, and in the market-place of that _ksar_ they were exposed for sale. They were nine. Nine men left out of sevenscore strong men! What battle in the memory of the tribes so disastrous as that going! What ambush so bloody as that march of the companions of the Brothers of the Milk!”

For a moment after the outcry the orator’s lips closed over the firelit sheen of his white teeth. I suppose that he (like his paternal uncle) had recited this tropic saga a hundred times in the villages of the black south. I doubt not that at this point he had been accustomed to pause, to receive for a moment the sweet applause of a groan.

“And so,” he resumed, “they were sold that day into labor. And of the Brothers of the Milk, those whose eyes saw a single thing and whose lips spoke the same, Moa was taken one way and Djeba another, and their hearts died. Djeba, the blood-child of chieftains, was driven like a bullock up into the bush by a white driver, and when his weakness grew on him and he stumbled that driver struck him with a thong.

“That country beyond the great lake is a fat country, full of plantings of maize and cotton in the uplands where the bush is cleared. It is known by the name of Djoja, and in extent it lies from the banks of the lake into the interior many marches away. Djeba was taken to a certain planting and thrown into a _dar_ in a stockade as great as a small _ksar_. There he had the company of other captives from the River, from the Camaroun, and from the River Greater than the River in the south. Some there were who had been there so great a time that they had forgotten their own tongues and knew only the Djoja speech, and some had been born in that stockade.

“Then they were driven into the fields to labor. In his weakness the sun beat upon the head of Djeba and made him forget. Then he was driven back to the stockade, and the rain came through the thatch of the _dar_ and wet his body and fever consumed his heart. But already his heart was dead; only when he slept and saw Moa in a dream did he live.

“And that driver said to him, ‘How art thou called?’ And he said, ‘Djeba.’ And the driver laughed and cried, ‘That is no name for a black boy; I christen thee Djim; and Djim thou art!” And he went away, still laughing as if he had turned a word of wit. So a hate of him came into Djeba, and Djeba would have killed him, only that he was a tall, great-bodied man, and Djeba, who had been worth five warriors in his strength, was like a child in weakness now.

“That fever burned his heart and his bowels. He was given to eat of a cous-cous made of sour maize and swineflesh. Then his stomach turned over. He vomited. He said, ‘Now at last I am to die.’

“But then a woman came into that _dar_. She laid a hand on his head and called him Djim, but the hand was cool, and the anger went from his heart. She gave him milk to drink, and his pain ceased. His sickness passed. In the darkness of that shelter that woman was like the healing benignity of the moon when it has come an hour high in the east. She spoke in tones of compassion, and he was made whole.

“‘Who then is that woman?’ he asked of the men, ‘and how is she called?’

“‘She is Mis’us, and she lives in the _dar kebir_’ (the Big House).

“‘Is she then the woman of that driver?’ he asked.

“His companions laughed. ‘Nay, she is the woman of Maas Djo.’

“‘Who then is Maas Djo?’

“‘Maas Djo is the Maasa, the Headman. It is his silver with which thou wert got.’

“‘Why then have I not seen this Headman?’

“‘For the reason that since thou hast come he has been gone with a war-party to fight the Yankis to the north.’

“‘He has gone then to take other captives?’

“‘Nay he has gone to save those he has got.’ And then they recounted to Djeba: ‘The war-parties of the Yankis who come from behind the rivers of the north choke the trails. The bush never sleeps for the sound of their drums. Their torches are amongst the settlements. The long peace of the white men is broken; new confederations are formed; terror is loosed abroad. The lust of booty and of blood is aflame in the Yankis. It is said that they devour babes; it is known that when they make prayer in their holy places their ablutions are performed in the blood of a lamb. Such are they!’

“Then they recounted to Djeba how Maas Djo and the other Headmen, the holders of plantings, all the young men, how they had gathered to the war-drums in the trails, how they had chosen chiefs and gone away into the bush, and how the sky above them was that day the color of gore.

“And Djeba asked them, ‘Which is then the stronger?’ And they answered, ‘The party of Maas Djo is the stronger. Mayhap even now it has driven the Yankis back across their rivers. Mayhap to-morrow he will return home!’

“But one amongst them who had been born into labor in that stockade in Djoja and who was now an old man said, ‘Mayhap not.’ That same man, who was called by the name of Moz, came into the _dar_ at night and said in a low voice to Djeba, ‘The Yankis are like the leaves of the pepper-tree; they are small, but their number is beyond count. Hark thou well when the bush is sleeping and thou wilt hear their powder-guns in the north.’

“Then Djeba harkened, but he heard no guns. Nevertheless he sharpened his reaping-tool. But he was not yet strong from his sickness.

“From time to time that woman from the _dar kebir_ came to bring him sweet milk and speak in tones of compassion. And it was written that the heart of Djeba, the son of chieftains, should grow soft and meek. But when that driver perceived Mis’us ministering to the captive’s weakness he jeered with mocking laughter, and the woman cowered before it as though she had been afraid and fled away to the Big House. And Djeba’s hatred of that man grew like a pain.

“‘When I am stronger I will kill him,’ he said.

“So he grew stronger.

“On another night that man called Moz came in secret and said to Djeba, ‘Hark thou well in the night, and before another moon has gone thou wilt hear the drums of the tribesmen of the north.’ And when he saw Djeba take up his reaping-tool he said, ‘Rather shouldst thou sing for joy. For these men here who are ignorant _niggahs_ have told thee things apart from the truth. Thou hast spoken to me of they milk-brother who is called Moa, who was sold into the planting of Maas Djoj Blaak. It has come to my knowledge that Moa has fled from that planting, and with others from other plantings has gone to fight in the war-parties of the Yankis, where they are received with honors. Is it probable that such men eat babes? No, Djim, I repeat to thee, these here are child-headed _niggahs_, who know not that the Yankis come to set them free out of labor in the plantings. No, Djim, rather shouldst thou sing for joy, for when thou see’st the Yankis thou wilt see thy milk-brother in their train.’

“Then Djeba’s heart sang for joy.

“‘Again, again I shall see my brother!’ he cried. ‘Again our eyes shall behold one thing and our breaths shall be one!’ And he said to Moz, ‘Now I too will run away from the stockade and I will go to meet Moa.’

“And Moz said, ‘But the driver will prevent thee.’

“And Djeba said, ‘No, for I will kill the driver before I go.’

“And Djeba waited, feeding his heart on the thought of Moa and on the promise of the death of that white man who had laughed.

“There came an evening when he watched and saw the driver going out of the stockade into the edge of the bush. So Djeba took up his sharp reaping-tool and followed, creeping near the ground. He came near to the driver. He saw him very clearly. The driver was dressed in finery, with a hat like a deep drum fashioned of fur, and a tunic of blue cloth with buttons of silver. Djeba saw him against the light of dusk in the sky. But the driver was not alone. Mis’us was there, where she had stolen for solitude. It was she that the driver had followed, as the desert hyena slinks slavering after the lone gazelle. The fear was in Djeba that if he struck the man, then the woman would give the alarm and he would be taken again. He might have struck both. But his heart was softened by the compassion of the woman, and what was written in the book of the future he was not given yet to read. Had he known! Had he but known to strike--the driver afterward, perhaps--but the woman first.

“But while he hesitated, already it was too late. He saw the driver step forward and grasp the woman’s arm, uttering words he could not understand. He saw the woman, standing quietly, turn her head and spit once and spit twice in the driver’s face.

“She continued to stand quietly, like stone. But the driver flung off toward the stockade, laughing terribly in his deep chest.

“Then Djeba would have returned and waited another chance at the man. But the thought of Moa was strong on him, and the bush was at his back. So he said to himself, ‘I will return with Moa,’ and he crept away.

“All that night he walked swiftly. He hid himself and slept in the day and advanced by night again. He did not know where he went, but the image and affection of his milk-brother were so powerful in Djeba that it seemed he would come truly to Moa. Because of that he remained strong. His stomach was empty but his heart was fed, and he penetrated the bush with the swiftness of a panther. He would have wished to speak with others and know his way, but if he saw slaves in the fields then he saw with them a white driver, and he was afraid.

“There came a time when he saw a Senegal man working at the edge of a maize-planting, and no driver was in sight. So he showed himself, and he asked, ‘Where then are the Yankis?’ And the man answered him, ‘Go thou to Tlaanta. I know nothing, but at Tlaanta all things are known.’

“‘Where then is Tlaanta?’ Djeba demanded. And the man said, ‘If thou knowest not Tlaanta then indeed thou art an ignorant _niggah_. Turn thy face to the north, and at nightfall thou wilt behold a great _ksar_ which is Tlaanta, which is the chief place of Djoja, where all things are known--”

(“Tlaanta.” Something queer was happening down in the subconscious regions of my brain. “Tlaanta, the chief place of Djoja.” The reader may laugh, but so firmly was my attention fixed in the picture of some fabulous tropical mid-African scene that the familiar syllables, blurred in the Arab utterance, touched still too lightly to make a breach. “Tlaanta Djoja--” I glanced uneasily at Borak, as though he could help. He returned my stare with a supercilious grin, as much as to say, “My word! you’re not letting yourself be taken in by this fantastic claptrap!” “_Tlaanta_, the chief place of _Djoja_”--“_Maas Djo_”--“_Yankis_”--“_Moz_”--“_Djim_”--The equatorial forest-walls were trying their hardest to topple over in my dull brain. But there was no time. I had to get back to the saga unfolding in the strong voice of the orator in that ember-lit Sahara night.)

“--And when the night fell Djeba saw before him in the sky a pillar of light. And he came on a hill and saw a great settlement in flames. And then all about him came people fleeing in confusion through the dark bush, carrying on their heads their mills and cooking-pots and crying, ‘The Yankis! The Yankis are come!’

“Then Djeba was glad. He went down toward burning Tlaanta. The flame was in his face and his heart was hot, and he stood and called aloud the name of his brother of the milk. But he saw no man. A lad ran out of a shelter that took fire. Djeba caught that lad by the arm and cried, ‘Where are the Yankis?’ And the lad screamed, ‘Gone! Gone!’ and he fell down with his eyes wide open, and Djeba saw that he was dead.

“And Djeba said to himself, ‘If the Yankis are gone and Moa with them, then it will be his thought to lead them to that planting where I was a slave, to kill that driver and set me free.’ So he turned his back on the burning _ksar_. He ran all through that night. Others ran with him; other slaves freed by the war-party’s passage. They turned this way and that in the darkness, chanting the war-chants of the Yankis, and their paths through the bush were ruin. In the night they pillaged and burned stockades, in the morning they marched in bands, in the afternoon they slept along the trails. But by day and by night their minds were turned with freedom, and when Djeba ran amongst them demanding word of Moa their answers were without sense.

“There was a night when Djeba came upon a clearing. He saw a stockade in flames. The light of those flames showed him the fields, and then he recognized that planting and his spirit leaped with joy. He said, ‘Now Moa has come here seeking me, and his revenge is before my eyes!’

“And Djeba ran bounding across the fields and came into the flame of the stockade, and he called Moa’s name. He shouted the war-call of their tribe. He shouted the hunting-call that had been fixed between the milk-brothers in the old days in the bush.

“Then it seemed to Djeba that he heard the answer to the hunting-call, but in the crackling of the flames he could not say whence it came. Then he bounded on in the stockade. In that circle of fire he saw a man standing. It was a white man he had never seen. His breast was black with blood, his head hung down, and he wept. Djeba went toward him boldly.

“‘Tell me, then, where is Moa?’

“The man looked at him with dull, heavy eyes from which the tears ran down, and for answer he said, ‘Where is my wife, boy? Where are my servants? I am Maas Djo. I have come home.’

“Then Djeba perceived that the man was possessed, so he did not harm him, but ran on. He leaped like a panther through all the stockade. He bounded through the wall and stood in the lighted field, and there was nothing there but his shadow. Then he ran toward the bush, and there he saw a figure. He pursued, and the figure ran into the bush, but Djeba was too swift, and overtook it, and he saw it was that woman, who crouched like a terrified gazelle and watched his coming with large eyes.

“And he said, ‘It is I.’

“When the woman heard that she trembled with relief and took hold of his arm and whispered, ‘It is thou, Djim! I thought it was _he_. I thought thou wert that drunken monster pursuing me still!’

“When he heard that, there came into Djeba’s mind the memory and the hate of that driver. And he said, ‘Where is he now?’ And the woman, grasping his arm more tightly at that instant, whispered, ‘Hush, thou, and hark! He comes!’

“Then near them Djeba heard the fall of feet and he saw the man advancing through the bush. He saw his shape plain and black against the glow beyond the leaves; the shape of that fur hat he remembered, in the form of a deep drum, tilted wildly; the shoulders thrust out with that tunic of silver buttons, the elbows swaggering. And he saw that the figure was drunk and lustful and that he came in cunning silence amongst the leaves, and he knew that the time of his revenge was at hand.

“So Djeba sprang through the leaves and caught the man’s neck in his fingers. They fell down in the dark on the ground, and there they fought. But Djeba’s powerful hands were about the man’s throat, and the man lay quiet and breathed no more. Then Djeba went back, but the terrified woman was gone.

“Then Djeba returned across the field toward the stockade, calling Moa’s name again, and in the field near the stockade he saw lying the body of a man. The man was despoiled of his clothes and naked, and his head cut three-quarters from his trunk. And Djeba looked and saw that it was that driver.

“Then Djeba said to himself, ‘The night is full of infernal creatures, witches and _djinoun_. I have slain the driver in his finery in the bush, and here he lies an hour dead and naked in the field. The night is red with devil-work.’ A fear came on him and his teeth knocked together. Nevertheless he went back to the bush, laid hold of that other man’s feet, and pulled him through the bush to the field, and there he looked at the face of the man he had slain.

“_He looked at the face of the man he had slain!_”

The syllables of the loud repetition went away across the sleeping floor of the square and played among the invisible arcades, echoes deep-toned, momentous, tragic. And in the glow of the embers I saw the lip of that oblivious clay pulsing, pulsing, with the same laggard and monotonous beat. I continued to stare at it. You may be certain now that I stared. The short hairs at the back of my skull stood up and pricked the skin. For the wonder of it. Even to that Senegal orator himself the saga he repeated remained fabulous, an epic of equatorial rivers. Chanted first by son and then by grandson at a hundred feasts and under a hundred village council-trees and grown into the body of mid-African legendry, not till this night had it come to ears that heard; to eyes that saw with the eyes of that ancient, moribund, blind, black wanderer. For now I knew that I had heard the tale of that incendiary night on a “Djoja planting” before, not once, but many, many times; not in the glow of a Sahara camp-fire, but in the ember light of a Hancock County chimney-nook, where my own grandmother Peyton used to sit before bedtime thirty years agone, reciting a saga of her own.

The narrator’s voice was heard again, rushing, staccato.

“Then Djeba ran through the bush to find that woman, his one thought that he might now slay her too. For he perceived now that she must be a witch-doctress, thus by compassion to have blinded his eyes. He ran with all his power. How long he ran, what man can say? Sometimes he seemed to see that woman as a shadow in the bush before him and sometimes as a bird flying before him through the trees. In him there was no hunger save the hunger for her killing, no thirst save the thirst for her blood, no weariness save the weariness of the damned soul.

“And then there was a time when it seemed to Djeba that he was in the midst of many men. He saw that they were white men and that they moved in a thousand ranks. Ruin lay behind them and thunder ran around. And he remembered the words of Moz: ‘The Yankis are like the leaves of the pepper-tree; they are small, but their number is beyond count.’ And when the nights came Djeba saw their camp-fires, and even their fires were beyond count.

“A forgetfulness came on Djeba. He ran from fire to fire, crying, ‘Where is Moa?’ And those men mocked him, saying, ‘Moa what?’ But Djeba screamed at them and ran on. Or sometimes they named him _Samboh_, saying, ‘Hold, _Samboh_. Sit down with us now and sing!’ Then Djeba thanked them, and sat down with them and sang, and the war-chant of the Yankis filled the sky.

“And after many days Djeba came with the war-party to the banks of that lake, and there he beheld a bearded chieftain sitting on a horse, and he fell down on his face and wept. And he implored, ‘That I come again to my own country beyond this water, where Moa, my brother, has returned, and where he awaits me in the village of my tribe!’ And that chieftain heard.

“In after-days then was Djeba placed in a boat, together with many of the River and the Cameroun, and he returned across that lake where the waters lay to the sky like the sands in the desert of Djouf. Then they made a village on the shore. But Djeba left them. He penetrated the bush through which he had marched many years before, bound to that chain. He penetrated the country of enemies and he passed through. Then Djeba came to his own village again. There were old men there who knew him when he spoke his name. They rejoiced and made a feast. All night they feasted. And one of the old men said to Djeba, ‘Moa, thy brother of the milk was taken with thee. Where then is Moa?’

“And Djeba said, ‘I do not know.’ And he took none of the feast.

“And in the years afterward, when Djeba had taken wives and got sons, there came into our country the missionaries of God (to whom be the prayer) and of his Prophet (may his bliss never decrease)----

“_La illah il allah!_

“And they spoke the word of the Koran to Djeba, and Djeba’s heart turned in his breast. And he said then, ‘My heart can no longer contain a lie. Hark all to the truth. Moa, my brother of the milk--which bond is sacred--Moa, my brother, him I slew with my own hands in that land which is beyond the great water. I slew him, being tricked by a witch-woman. And that witch-woman I was not able to slay! That then is my sin!’

“That then is the sin of Djeba. I have spoken, I, Belkano, who am the son of his son!”

In the hush that followed that deep-toned verbal signature my breath whistled small in my throat.

“Lord! Lord! Oh, my Lord!”

Borak eyed me with a smirk and a grunt. The black fellow showed his shining teeth again. He took another breath into his lungs.

“For the length of thirty Ramadans the father of my father has not opened his mouth to any man in speech. Because of that sin, because he would not look at any man, his eyes have become blind. He would not hear, and his ears are deaf. Thus men know that he is holy. So they come for many marches to touch his hand. Sometimes then his lips are opened, and for their ears he will sing again that war-chant of the Yankis. And then those men will give him offerings against his pilgrimage, that he may see Holy Mekka and ease him of that sin and die----”

The voice was rising.

“They give him offerings of broad copper! They throw down pieces of silver before him! _They throw down gold!_”

I heard the wind going out of Borak’s chest at that; an obscure thoracic collapse. A snort.

“At last! At last the plot unfolds. Now the old bird will render that popular ditty entitled, ‘The Unwritten War-song of the Wild Yankis of Yankisland,’ and the company will contribute. And strangely enough the ringmaster’s eye is fastened unerringly on _you_.”

“For God’s sake, man----”

“Yes, but you’ll see,” he persisted. “You’ll note that his toe even now is prodding the old one in the ribs.”

It was true. I saw the nudging and peremptory toe. I stared at that lip hanging in the ember-light. I beheld a disorder and quickening of that fleshy pulse. I heard an obedient sound issuing forth. It was a very small, shallow, creaking sound. It emerged from that emotionless mask of senility; it rose and fell in mechanical lengths of tone like a bent wire and went away and was lost in the night of the packed Sahara square. It was a queer chant.

“Cock and bull!” grunted Borak.

“For God’s sake, man, hush!”

I stared and I listened. Yes, it was a very queer chant indeed. The short hairs were beginning to stand up again at the back of my skull.

On the ground, red with the firelight, a copper sou was tossed. I saw another fall, and another. I took out my wallet and found a hundred-franc note, and I let it flutter into the circle over the shoulder of Bou Dik.

Borak got hold of me.

“_Lord!_ I say, now! What’s _that_ for?”

“To help and ease him of that ‘sin.’”

“But my dear simple chap--all that rigmarole----”

“Of the greatest of all African wars----”

He tilted his head at me with the absurdest suspicion about my wits.

“Come away!” he said.

I got up and went with him out into the black ruck of the camels. He was groaning audibly over that squandered bank-note. “Man, man, and you were really taken in by that beggar’s claptrap. Why--look you--in that old chap’s day there weren’t enough white men in Central Africa all put together----”

“Borak!” I said. “_Will_ you listen to that song!”

In the hollow of the market, above the grunt and snore of the caravan, the thin war-chant of the “Yankis” wound on, repeating, repeating,

John B’own’s body lahs amoldin’ in the g’ave,
John B’own’s body lahs amoldin’ in the g’ave,
John B’own’s body lahs amoldin’ in the g’ave,
But his soul goes mahchin’ on----

In that Sahara darkness where the pale courses come from beyond the South I saw Atlanta burning. Sherman was on the march.

[20] Copyright, 1922, by The Pictorial Review Company.
Copyright, 1923, by Wilbur Daniel Steele.

[21] The Napoleonic Messiah of Mohammedan prophecy.

[22] There is no god but God.

THE COFFIN[23]

By CLEMENT WOOD

(From _The Pagan_)

It stood in the middle of the sitting-room. It was all black, except for the silver shine of the handles. There were flowers on the floor beside it, vague blotches of dulled white and yellow. The burdened odor of honeysuckle, a ground-clinging, unhealthy sweetness, came to the man’s nostrils; there was a stiff, pungent scent, too, that he could not place. On the mantel, more flowers; the glimmer of the bracket lamp washed these feebly--its wick was so low that the flame seemed next door to dying at any moment. Flowers filled the stiff-backed chair beneath the lamp. There were two other chairs in the room, both empty.

Thomas Rice loitered at the open doorway, taking in the sparse furnishings. He had stood for ten minutes within the dining room, while Aunt Teby Riggs, Charley’s own aunt on his mother’s side, whispered harshly all he needed to know, and much that he did not.

“Won’t yer have just a bite, Mr. Rice?” she insisted stridently, unable to keep her eyes off the twisted half of his face.

“I et my supper already, thank yer.”

“Just a mite of this chicken? Or a cup of somethin’ warm, to stay by yer?”

“No ’m, Miss Riggs.” He fumbled uneasily with his sweaty felt hat, drooping from his right hand; his coat hung limp over his arm. It was a hot, stirless night; serving writs up the county tired feet and spirit; and the final walk from Belle Ellen to Dolomite was a good eight miles.

She indicated the crowded hat-rack. “Yer can find room.... Louella’s eatin’ her supper now.” The shrill syllables rasped his ear.

Her disquieting footfall followed him to the sitting-room. Her arm gestured past him. “They got it from undertaker Norton, in Bessemer,” she volunteered chattily under her breath.

“Yes.”

The dining-room door creaked to at last. He stood, rubbing the ball of his right thumb with his forefinger, as if to cleanse each of invisible irritating dust from the felt hat. The hat was gone; its absence was a momentary annoyance, a perceptible gap in things.

There were two chairs. Both were against the same wall, toward the front of the house. The mantel, the chair with flowers, the two empty chairs, and ... it.... His restless mind took an unconscious inventory. Instinctively he put off thinking about what lay within it.

He took the farther chair. They were almost a room’s length apart, and this one was slightly nearer what had been the man he had loved. She--the woman that he despised--could hardly think that his mere sitting there could poison the air for her.

His mind wandered on. Honeysuckles were great flowers for funerals. That sharp, stiff odor--it was like the look of dahlias, stiff, waxy. There were some in old man Lunsford’s side yard. Maybe these came from there. He could afford to give away, especially if it cost him nothing: flowers ... advice.... Butting into people’s business, with his skinny little face and weedy little beard, like his own weedy front yard.

The dining-room door creaked open. A firmer step thudded on the carpet. She came into the room, a thin hand shading her eyes, to make him out. Then she sat in the empty chair.

“Evenin’, Louella.” It was her house, now; decency demanded that much.

“Evenin’.” The word was spat out.

She sat stiff on the chair-edge, white hands folded upon black skirt. Her eyes pointed straight down the room. She said no more; he kept still. The odor of the kerosene-lamp swayed with that of the honey-suckles, mingled with a soiled scent he at last imagined must come from the middle of the room.

She had not meant to speak beyond this. But she should have made it civil. Maybe she had been a bit short. “Aunt Teby tol’ me yer were here.”

His answer was framed after a pause. “Yes. I saw her.”

There was nothing more to be said about it. Each nursed sullen dislike.

The stolid minutes passed. Occasional remote noises entered, looked about, left swiftly. A pan banged from the rear of the house; a horse neighed listlessly; doors creaked open and shut with exaggerated quietness. These subsided. The stillness of death spread from the middle of the room to the house and the farm without.

He could watch her profile, in the lamp’s withdrawn glimmer. She stared stonily down the room, away from him; there was no harm in observing her unbeknown. Her hair was knotted in the back, a skimpy knot; it lay flat and black above her forehead ... black, like her dress. Her cheeks were thinner than he remembered seeing her have. Her teeth stuck out, as always. They seemed the whitest thing in the room; their stony inactivity held his imagination. He licked his lips unconsciously.

There had not been a sound from the house for half an hour. He stirred uncomfortably; the chair squeaked. “It doesn’t set comfortable, to some,” she said, shortly.

“Not very.”

“Some folks think they’ve a right to be partic’lar.” Her tone was sour, complaining.

He did not answer. Time drawled along; the tired minutes plodded unendingly. Funny of Charley to want him and--her, who’d never teamed a bit. Think of being married to such as her! Who wouldn’t die?... Well, talk would make the night pass quicker.

He broke the icy silence. “Crowded tonight?” His right hand gestured a vague circle.

“Yes. Two to a bed upstairs. Aunt Teby and Mary--cot in the kitchen. Two of the boys in the dining room. Lucky yer don’t have to be fixed for. Nowhere left.” She laughed without mirth.

His curious eyes travelled around. “Nothing to sleep on here.” They returned to the middle of the room in fascination, as if he had waited this excuse to revisit what was there. Afraid that she had caught the morbid fancy, that there was a gruesome, yet possible, couch, he hastened on. “Not that I can’t sleep in a chair, though. But I reckon we won’t do much sleeping tonight.”

“No.” The spiteful warning that she would not trust herself asleep, with him around, spoke in the sneering monosyllable.

In the hush that followed, his mind returned to the cold body lying near. He fought against thinking of Charley Hawkins as a corpse; it was of the young Charley, the chum of the years before the marriage, that thoughts came. Memory after memory woke to life out of him, with dizzying rapidity: memories remote from this musty, close room; memories stained with vivid sunlight on fields of black-eyed Susans, with shadow-dapple on the creek’s windings, with starry stretches of windy night. A lively, vigorous Charley Hawkins had featured these ... a good looker, not like himself, his face spoiled from birth....

Yes, Charley had been a lively kid.... Baseball, a scrap, a hay-ride to the river, especially whenever a girl was mixed up in it--Charley was chain-lightning. There was that kid widow, Mamie Fagin. Just one trick she had: when you kissed her--God! Her teeth against your neck! The teeth were like Louella’s, he reflected, looking over at Charley’s widow. Maybe Charley liked ’em with teeth that way; they were always livelier to love.

His mind fondled Louella and the live Charley together for a moment, then returned to earlier time. After Mamie, there had been her unmarried sister, Gussie; Charley switched quick.... That scare, when he confided that they were afraid he’d gotten the girl into trouble! False alarm, of course.... And the three Bennet girls--not that they were anything.... His mind lengthened the roll.

Muscles cramped with sitting in the one position, he rose awkwardly. To cover the act, he walked over to the mantel, and smelled the flowers. “Pretty,” he grudged.

The woman followed slowly, doing over her duty as guide of the occasion. “Those were from Judge O’Rear’s; these, Miss Lunsford.” She named the others, eager to talk, yet letting tone and look lash her forced listener. Her manner was agitated; the hushed watching must be getting on her nerves, he judged.

Silently she stood beside him, before that black thing in the middle of the room. She must say something. Her hand reached out and touched it. “Plush,” she said.

He nodded.

“The best undertaker Norton had.”

“It came from him?”

“Yes. He won’t have any shiftless funeral,” she concluded with bitterness.

They went back to the chairs. The impulse to talk dominated her, and Rice hitched his chair a few steps closer, so that their remarks might be sufficiently low-voiced not to disturb--well, not to disturb what lay in the plush-covered thing. Shivering slightly, she drew hers a bit nearer.

“Shiftless,” she had said. He recalled that this was her favorite adjective for him--and he Charley’s side-partner, even best man at the wedding! Never a jaunt or a spree that they had not gone on together, until Charley took a fancy to Louella. That was Charley’s luck again; Tom had known Louella longer, fancied her first ... been mad for her, finally. She was too quiet for Charley then; and sometimes ... sometimes she hadn’t frowned at Tom, when he sat near her, itching and miserable. Of course, if he had spoken, she would have laughed ... with that twisted face of his!

So she and Charley had hitched up. At first, Charley had made him come around ... insisted. She let him know soon enough and plain enough, that this was no place for him. “Shiftless,” she’d called him; she said he was too shiftless to marry.... No, she never could have meant that, that he should have spoken. She would have laughed.... Not that!

It got worse. She’d scold Charley sharply when he was around. Her hints got too pointed; he’d had the good sense to stay away. Everybody said she had a mean tongue--mean as garbroth.

The woman half faced him now; and her thoughts dwelt on the same period as his. He had done his best to spoil Charley for her, this dirty Tom “Grits.” He’d egged him on to drink, and fight, and gamble ... and chase women. Used to come up to their house and sit around in the way; then tease Charley off into some devilment, when he wanted to stay home. Too lazy, too backward, to open his lips to a girl; he’d kept her fooling around, until she had really wanted--well, not him ... something.... She’d shown him his place at last; out of the door. A squint-faced loafer, a hanger-on around the sheriff’s office.... Fine friend for her husband! Charley at least would work regular. And now “Grits” sat there like a whipped dog, as he always did when he saw her. Slinking cur of a man!

Something urged him to pretend sympathy for her; she had lost her husband. “He didn’t suffer?”

“No. He was well and up Sunday; and now--and now--” She pressed her forehead and cheeks fiercely against her cupped hands; her shoulders trembled rhythmically.

“There, there.” He tried awkwardly to feign tenderness. Like as not her tongue had whipped the man to death.

To death.... His thoughts opened unwillingly to Charley now--to Charley dead. Queer thing, lying so close--couldn’t say a thing, do a thing!... It wasn’t the Charley he had known; not the same at all. Preachers must be right; the man he had known had gone--somewhere. That thing--cold, uncanny, staring through closed eyelids, with hair and finger-nails still alive, growing horribly--this foul thing was all that was left. Served Louella right! This was what she had made of Charley.

His fancy began to weave thoughts of the dead thing and the woman. She was wrapped in introspection now; his eye measured her from hair to barked black oxfords. One by one his mind stripped off the garments of mourning, and what lay beneath the black shell: a restless fancy cast her in intimate scenes with the man who was gone. Morbidly the thoughts persisted, were embroidered. What if the chill, dead, bristle-faced thing should hold her as husband holds wife! A fit punishment.... Something deep within him lingered on the details.

The after-midnight coolness slunk between them. She shivered, wondering if he had felt it. He was her guest, after all. “I’ll get your coat,” she whispered, leaning close. She got it, and a wrap to throw around her own shoulders.

It seemed somehow warmer when their chairs were close, she thought. Of course, Tom Rice couldn’t help being what he was born to be. And she had thought a lot of him before she knew Charley. If he’d only spoken!... And--to come here tonight, when he hadn’t been around for five years ... of course, just because her dead man had wished it....

The friend watched her bent body, as sobs overcame her. The sneer dissolved from his face. Poor thing! She wasn’t such a plain-looking woman, even now; she had been decent-looking, as a girl. Even those teeth; they might--they might at least thrill a man.

Rising silently, she flung herself on her knees beside what had been her husband. Her weight ground the flowers into the carpet; the smell of bruised honey-suckle eddied dizzyingly. With terrible quietness she sobbed and sobbed. The unearthly vigil, on top of the shut-mouthed hours when she had to preserve some calmness, and arrange for the funeral, had been too much; the bars were down, the hysteric flood burst through.

At last her agony shook Tom Rice. The woman would cry herself sick. He walked to her side in the dimness; the lamp seemed weaker than before. He stood, uncertain what to do or say. The sobbing pulsed on.