Percival Christopher Wren

“ 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 rôle. 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! ”

“ He called me "Hubshi".'
"'He hath many hours' start, Moussa,' said my brother, 'and his camel is a good one. He will not halt and sleep for many hours even though he suppose me dead!'
"'I can run for a day; for a day and a night I can run,' replied the Somali, 'and I can run until the hour of thy vengeance cometh. He called me "Hubshi"' ... and he ran on.
"Sahib, for the whole of that day he ran beside the fast camel, my brother drawing rein for no single minute, and when, at dawn, I awoke from broken slumber in the saddle, Moussa Isa was running yet! ”

“ 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? ”

“ How could such a wild free nature exist in a cell, submit to pinioning, be quietly led like a sheep to the slaughter? He who so loved the mountain, the wild desert, the ocean, the free wandering life of adventure and exploration.
Would Wellson never come? It must be terribly late. Could they have hanged Ross-Ellison already? Could he have gone to his death thinking his friend had failed him; had passed by, like the Levite, on the other side; had turned up a sanctimonious nose at the letter of the Murderer; had behaved as some "friends" do behave in time of trouble? ”

“ He, a dour and practical person, thought the voyage with the Lamp wholly unnecessary and likely to awaken sleepers to whom sleep was life; that lint-scraping would have been a more useful employment than graciousness to the poor wounded; that a woman, as zealous as Mrs. Dearman looked, would have torn up dainty cotton and linen confections for bandages instead of wearing them; that the Commandant didn't need all the personal encouragement and enheartenment that she wished to give him—and many other uncomfortable, cynical, and crabby thoughts. Captain Malet-Marsac loved her without criticism. ”

“ As he fainted the shoulder gaped horribly.
"Get a cannon," mocked Ross-Ellison. "Get a cannon, dogs, against one man," and again, whirling the great jade-handled knife, long as a short sword, he rushed forward and the little mob gave ground before the irresistible claymore-whirl, the unbreakable Maltese cross described by the razor-edge and needle-point.
"It is a devil," groaned a man, as his knife and his hand fell together to the ground, and he clapped his turban on the stump as a boy claps his hat upon some small creature that he would capture. ”

“ He would school himself until he was a quiet, domesticated English country-gentleman—respectable and respected, fit husband for a delicately-bred English gentlewoman. And if ever his hand itched for the knife-hilt, his finger for the trigger, his cheek for the rifle-butt, his nostrils for the smell of the cooking-fires, his soul for the wild mountain passes, the mad gallop, the stealthy stalk—he would live on cold water until the Old Adam were drowned. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I killed Burker intentionally. Were he alive again I would kill him again. I punished him myself because the law could not punish him as he deserved, and I in no way regret or deplore my just and judicial action. There are deeds a gentleman must resent and punish—with the extreme penalty. No, it is in no sense a case of the self-tormented wretch driven mad by the awful hallucinations of his guilty, unhinged mind. I am no haunted murderer pursued by phantoms and illusions, believing himself always in the presence of his victim's ghost. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At length agree to put him on my fast camel this night at moon-rise, if thou art left as his guard and we are wrapt in slumber. Play thy part well, and show thy remorse at cheating thy master—even for a lakh [35] of rupees—yea, and show fear of what will happen to thee, and pretend distrust of him. At length succumb again, and as the moon just shows above the mountains untie his bonds and do thus and thus—' and he whispered instructions while a light shone in the eyes of Moussa Isa, the Somali, and a smile played about his mouth. ”

“ Trusting in Allah and Mohammed his Prophet is a lot easier than rowing a lineless, blunt-nosed, unseaworthy boat beneath a tropical sun. So they trusted in God, and permitted Moussa Isa, slave-boy, to do all that it was humanly possible for him to do.
Moussa did all that was expected of him, but not so Allah and Mohammed his Prophet.
The gentle breeze that (sometimes) carries you steadily over a glassy sea straight up the forty-fifth meridian of east longitude from Berbera to Aden in the month of October, failed these worthy trustful Argonauts, and they were becalmed. ”

“ All people who have read anything, have read of the irresistible fascination that the scene of the murder has for the murderer, of the way in which the victim "haunts" the slayer, and of how the truth that "murder will out" is really based on the fact that the murderer is his own most dangerous accuser by reason of his life of terror, remorse, and terrible hallucination.
My case is in no wise parallel.
I am absolutely without fear, regret, remorse, repentance, dread or terror in the matter of my killing Sergeant Burker. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the hill-top, at dawn, Colonel Ross-Ellison and Captain Malet-Marsac found all that was left of the picket and sentry-group,—of the latter, three mangled corpses, the headless deserter, and a just-living man, horribly slashed. It was Moussa Isa Somali who improvised a stretcher and lifted this poor fellow on to it and tended him with the greatest solicitude and faithful care. Was he not Jones Sahib who at Duri gave him the knife wherewith he cleansed his honour and avenged his insulted People?
Of the picket, nine lay dead and one dying. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then, feared Captain John Robin Ross-Ellison of the Gungapur Fusiliers, the British Flag would, for a terrible breathless period of stress and horror, fly, assailed but triumphant, wherever existed a staunch well-handled Volunteer Corps, and would flutter down into smoke, flames, ruin and blood, where there did not. He was convinced that, for a period, the lives of English women, children and men; English prosperity, prestige, law and order; English rule and supremacy, would in some parts of India depend for a time upon the Volunteers of India. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ At any time that he fingered the horrible ridged cicatrice, he could see the boundless ocean and the boundless blue sky from a wretched cranky canoe-shaped boat, in which certain Arab, Somali, Negro, and other gentlemen were proceeding all the way from near Berbera to near Aden with large trustfulness in Allah and with certain less creditable goods. It was a long, unwieldy vessel which ten men could row, one could steer with a broad oar, and a small three-cornered sail could keep before the wind. ”

“ Sitting staring out into the moon-lit hazy dusk in the direction in which his chief had disappeared, Captain John Bruce wondered if he were really one of a band of armed men who hoped shortly to pour some two and a half thousand bullets into other men, really a soldier fighting and working and starving that the Flag might fly, really a primitive fighting-man with much blood upon his hands and an earnest desire for more—or whether he were not a respectable Professor who would shortly wake, beneath mosquito-curtains, from a very dreadful dream. ”

“ He was black, he was filthy, he was savage, ignorant and ugly—but he had his Pride, both personal and racial, for he was a Somali. A Somali, mark you, not a mere Hubshi or Woolly One, not a common Nigger, not a low and despicable person—worshipping idols, eating human flesh, grubs, roots and bark—the "black ivory" of Arabs.
If you called Moussa Isa a Hubshi, he either killed you or marked you down for death, according to circumstances. ”

“ Another Pathan rushing forward, with uplifted knife held as a sword, was met by a sudden low fencing-lunge and fell with a hideous wound, and then, whirling his weapon like a claymore in an invisibly rapid Maltese cross of flashing steel, the man who had been Ross-Ellison drove his enemies before him, whirled about, and established himself in the opposite corner, and spat pungent Border taunts at the infuriated crowd. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His old friend and commandant—
Would Wellson never come? What kept the fellow? It was disgraceful conduct on the part of a public servant in such circumstances. Think what an eternity of mental suffering each minute must now be to Ross-Ellison! What was he doing? What were they doing to him? Could the agony of Ross-Ellison be greater than that of Malet-Marsac? It must be a thousand times greater. How could that tireless activity, that restless initiative, that cool courage, that unfathomable ingenuity be quenched in a second? ”

“ Indeed it was actually a case of "passing the love of women" for although he killed Cleopatra Dearman, the only woman for whom I ever cared, I fear I have forgiven him and almost forgotten her.
But to return to the Subedar-Major. "Peace, fool! Art blind as Ibrahim Mahmud the Weeper," growled that burly Native Officer as the zealous and over-anxious young sentry cried out and pointed to where, in the moonlight, the returning reconnoitring-patrol was to be seen as it emerged from the lye-bushes of the dry river-bed. ”