Achmed Abdullah

“ Thus when, one night, the Bakoto warriors had come from nowhere, out of the jungle, hundreds of them, silent, as if the wilderness had spewed them forth, it had seemed quite prosy.
Prosy, too, had been the expectation of death. It had even seemed a welcome relief from the straining fatigues of the jungle pull, the recurrent fits of fever, the flying and crawling pests, the gnawing moroseness which is so typically African.
"An explosion of life and hatred," Stuart McGregor used to say, "that's what I had expected, don't you see? Quick and merciless. ”

“ Diana could feel the tiny wings flutter and beat. She could hear its terrible, straining effort to bloat into a huge soap-bubble and, not succeeding, to shrink into a pinpoint.
But something was making it impossible, and Diana knew what it was.
It was the fact that, in one of the hidden back cells of her brain, the thought of Bunny Whipple's silly little fool of a golden-haired wife had taken firm root, refused to budge.
So Diana kept the thought. She nursed it. It seemed like a bait, and she thrust it forward. ”

“ But when, dagger in hand, Diana took up the chase again, she was disappointed. For the Thing seemed as familiar with the room as she herself. It avoided sliding rugs, sharp-cornered buhl tables, tabourets and chairs placed at odd angles. It never as much as grazed a single one of the many brittle bits of bric-à-brac.
Once it chuckled as if faintly amused at something.
But Diana did not give up heart. She had made up her mind, and she was a hard woman—her soul a blending of diamond and fire-kissed steel. ”

“ Even as Stuart McGregor dropped to the floor, dying, he knew what had happened.
A little, venomous snake, an African fer-delance, that had been curled up in the inside of the drum, been numbed by the cold, and had been revived by the splintering heat of New York.
Yes—even as he died he knew what had happened. Even as he died, he saw that malign, obscene squint in the eagle's eye. Even as he died, he knew that Farragut Hutchison had killed him—from beyond the grave! ”

“ After their marriage, when her husband wanted to take her away from the little Corsican village, to Paris, to the palace in the Rue de Crenelle, so that she should take the place in society due her by his name and escutcheon, she laughed with a flash of small, white, even teeth.
She replied that Corsica was her own land, the land which she loved and understood—the land which loved and understood her.
"Paris?" she added, in that dramatic southern manner of hers, "society?—no, no, my friend, I want nothing of it! ”

“ Again, at night, when she and the marquis strolled through the tortuous, hilly streets of the village, she asked him to feel Corsica—the heart of it—and she pointed at the bold-eyed young girls, brown like Florentine bronzes, who were walking arm in arm, by threes and fours, with rhythmic, feline movements of their supple hips; at the keen-faced men with their staring eyes and the pose of head and body which spoke of love and hatred and pride—which spoke, too, of the racial instinct which was theirs. ”

“ Seeing that the weakest spot in his enemy s armor was a dormant northern love for the mysteries of Asia, he knew where to introduce the thin end of the wedge.
Couzens was charmed with the gentle, cultured, clever Brahman. He had never before met a man who could argue in such a strangely convincing manner.
And indeed, Krishnavana gave of his best. His speech was a butterfly which rests for a second on a trembling leaf; his sarcasm was a thousand splintering lance-points, and his knowledge of the mysterious roots which are the creeds and the hearts of men, was profound and astounding. ”

“ She must be among the ruins!
With the cry of a wounded animal the marquis stumbled through the battered, crumpled streets. As he passed the mairie the whole side of it gave way and came tumbling down in a mad, twisting, smoking heap. A flaming beam grazed his face. He brushed it aside as he would an insect, and kept on.
This land, he thought incoherently as he ran, this land of Corsica—it had killed his wife; and he shook his fists at the trees and the rocks while great tears blurred his eyes. ”

“ The whirring of wings!
And there was some accent In it of secret dread, of terrible, secret melancholy, deeper than his soul could perceive, his brain could classify. The terror of a mighty struggle was behind it: a mighty struggle awfully remote from individual existence and individual ambition and life, individual death even. It partook of India itself; the land, the ancient races, the very gods.
The farther north he traveled the more strongly grew the shapeless, voiceless impression. ”

“ Even in that moment of stark, enormous horror, horror too great to be grasped, horror that swept over and beyond the barriers of fear—even in that moment Stuart McGregor had realized that, by leaving the choice to them, the Bakoto had committed a refined cruelty worthy of a more civilized race, and had added a psychic torture fully as dreadful as the physical torture of the little knives. ”

“ Thorneycroft interjected.
"You have said it, Brother Brahman. And now"—he raised his hands in a gesture of supplication—"though I have prayed to Vishnu, who is my cousin, to Shiva, to Doorgha, to Brahm himself, though I have offered the slaughter of my own soul for the homeless soul of him whom I loved, the evil is done. He is neither dead, nor is he alive. His soul is a fluttering, harrowed thing, whirling about on the outer rim of creation, cursed by the gods, his kinsmen. ”

“ WINGS I That Saturday night at the height of the London season when Martab Singh, Maharaja of Oneypore, made his initial bow to Belgravia in the salon of the Dowager Duchess of Shropshire, properly introduced and vouched for by Sir James Spottiswoode of the India Office, there wasn't a man in the great scarlet and purple room, nor woman either, who did not look up quite automatically when the big, bearded, turbaned figure crossed the threshold and bent over the wrinkled, perfumed hand of Her Grace. ”

“ And there she stood—now—on the threshold of his room in the discreet little hotel where he had put up, with a grinning, plump boy in buttons, his hand well weighted with money, winking as if to say:
"It's O. K., boss. I'm goin' to keep mum, all right, all right!"
Then the boy closed the door, and the bolt snapped into the lock with a little steely, jeering click.
She was dressed in white from head to foot; only her lips were red, and the long-stemmed Gloire de Dijon rose that she held in her hand. ”

“ Again the swami smiled with sudden kindliness. "There is hope—the shadow of hope. Perhaps some day the great wrong shall be forgiven by the gods. Perhaps some day they will cause the two parts of his body, his physical and his astral, to blend into one. Perhaps some day they will permit him to regain caste—and to die! Daily I pray for it"—and, with utter simplicity, as he opened the door—"will you pray, too, brother priest?"
Thorneycroft inclined his head. ”

“ In former years, pursuing his vague, mysterious diplomatic career in different parts of that immense block of real estate called the British Empire, but a good half of the time in India, he had heard about this priest, the Swami Pel Krishna Srina. He knew that the man was the prime minister, that before him his father had held the same position, before his father his grandfather, and thus back for many generations. For the Brahmans of the house of Pel Srina were cousins in blood and caste to the reigning house of Oneypore, and like them descendants of the gods. ”

“ There was again the giant whirring of wings. Then he went on:
"Perhaps again life! Who knows?"
"Allah knows!" piously mumbled Youssef. "He is the One, the All-Knowing. Come with me, child," he went on, lifting a brown-striped curtain that shut off the zenana. "Sitt Kumar will help you—a little dancing-girl whom"—he coughed apologetically—"I recently encountered, and whose feet are just now very busy crushing my fat, foolish old heart. Wait here, O babu-jee!" he said to the babu, while he and the Englishman disappeared be hind the zenana curtain. ”

“ But in the depths of his soul he resented the fact that with the unconscious selfishness of the good woman she had folded him in completely, that day after day she tried to reach more deeply into the core of himself, without ever guessing or feeling that her mate had an imaginative quality and an imaginative double life which was as literally real to him as a house, a tree, or a flower. ”

“ He lifted his hand, and Thorneycroft noticed that it was trembling violently.
"Brother Brahman," he said, "Martab Singh was my kinsman, my friend, my king. He was cousin to me, and cousin to the gods. I loved him greatly, and for years, with me by his side, he stepped in the footsteps of his ancestors, in the way of salvation, the way of the many gods. Then one day—shall I ever forget it?—madness came to him. He, the Maharaja of Oneypore, he, the incarnation of Rama and Vishnu and Brahm himself, declared that the desire was in his nostrils to leave India. To leave the sacred soil! ”

“ You lie—and you know you do! You love—me! I can feel it in my heart, my soul, in every last fiber and cell of my being. I can feel it waking and sleeping. Your love is mine, quite mine—a thing both definite and infinite. You don't love Dan! ”

“ But Khassoum laughed the laugh of the free in mind and strong in body; he left the house of his father, and with his last purse he bought himself a fine white racing dromedary, a pedigreed animal, sure-footed and fleet. With a song and a prayer on his lips, he left the town of his birth and went into the desert. ”

“ It did not even allow of jealousy; for jealousy is bred by doubt—and not by knowledge
But, somehow, it seemed vital to him that he should know the name of this dead man.
So he stooped down and looked; and then he gave a cry; one of those long-drawn, quivering cries in which the soul tries to burst the bonds of the tortured mind and to find refuge in the madness of forgetting.
His wife had been right. She had said that Corsica would lie for her and kill for her and be silent for her. ”

“ His fame was great throughout the lands of the Moslim; and from the dazzling palace of the Sheriff at Mecca to the somber tents of the murderous Tauregs, all knew the name of Nassim, the rich.
And ever greater became his greed tor the hard yellow gold; forgetting the commandments of the Messenger Mohammed—on whom be peace—he formed partnerships with the Jew and the Giaour merchants who lived in the coast towns and lent out money at usuring rates of interest. His wealth increased, and the more it increased, the more he tightened the strings of his purse ”

“ They seemed a direct throwback to the earliest germs of his racial development and consciousness, dealing as they did with clanking, half-forgotten centuries of savage memory : the days of stone pillars bearing the rudimentary likeness of an idol; the days when man killed man glorying in the deed of it, and drank fermented mare's-milk from the blanched skull of his enemy; the days when Rome, jeering and rude, stole an alien civilization without understanding it, and when Gaul was the home of inarticulate barbarians.
Professor Barker Harrison was sane, academic and Anglo-Saxon. ”

“ They walked and walked and walked until their feet were tired and sore, when a merchant overtook them. Rubies and diamonds flashed in his green turban, his cloak was of the finest Bokhara silk, and he rode a great white horse which was like Borak, the lion-headed horse of the Prophet, on whom be peace. ”

“ I am living the days when my race was young and was about to conquer the world. I am living the days when my forefathers ate and slept and fought and loved on horseback, when they worshiped the god who was a naked sword, when they slaughtered a thousand white stallions on the graves of their dead war-chiefs. ”

“ She was always petting her own hard thoughts, puncturing the lives of strangers—who never remained strangers for long—with the dagger point of her personality, her greed, her evil; and men kept on fluttering around the red, burning candle which was her life, like silly willow flies. ”