Driftwood Spars Part 8

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 pa.s.s 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 _Hubs.h.i.+_; a gentleman of Afar and Galla stock, of Arab blood, Moslem tenets, and Caucasian descent, from a common n.i.g.g.e.r, a low black Ethiopian, an eater of men and insects, a wors.h.i.+pper of idols and _ju-ju_.

In Aden, men knew a Somali from a _Hubs.h.i.+_ 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 _Hubs.h.i.+_ 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 const.i.tute 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 n.o.body 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 inst.i.tution....

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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sing.

A few more journeys to the water-tap....

_Now!_ "_Hubs.h.i.+_," 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 pa.s.sed 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 penmans.h.i.+p, which skill he had devoted to forgery.

"Why did you violently commit this dastardish deed, and a.s.sault the harmless peaceful Brahmin?" asked the Superintendent, a worthy and voluble babu, and then translated the question into debased Hindustani.

"He called me _Hubs.h.i.+_, and I will kill him," replied Moussa.

"Oho! and you kill everyone who calls you _Hubs.h.i.+_, 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 _Hubs.h.i.+_."

"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 inst.i.tution 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 a.s.s 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 cla.s.s in India.

Another individual, by reason of his having come to India two boats earlier than the Inspector, drew Rs. 500 a month more than he did, this being the Senior Inspector's Allowance. That he was reported on as lazy, eccentric, and irregular, made no difference to the fact that he was a fortnight senior to, and therefore worth Rs. 500 a month more than, the next man. The recipient regarded the extra trifle (400 a year) as his bare right and merest due. The Inspector regarded it as an infamous piece of injustice and folly that for fifteen years the whole of this sum should go to a lazy fool because he happened to set sail from England on a certain date, and not a fortnight later. So he loathed and detested India where he had had bad luck, bad health and what he considered bad treatment, and sympathized with the desire of Moussa Isa.

"Why do you want to go back to Aden?" he inquired in the _lingua franca_ of the Indian Empire, of Moussa whose heart beat high with hope.

"Because here, where there are no lions, wolves think a lion is a dog; here where there are no men, a.s.ses think a man is a monkey. I am a Somal, and these ignorant camels think I am a negro--a filthy Hubs.h.i.+."

"And you tried to kill another boy because he called you 'Hubs.h.i.+,' 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. Tos.h.i.+walla, 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, ign.o.ble 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 st.u.r.dy bright boy and soon came to like him for his directness, cheery courage, and refres.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.segai (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-sh.o.r.e. There he would steal a canoe and paddle and paddle straight for the sunset, day after day, until he reached a sea-sh.o.r.e again. That would be Africa or Arabia, and Moussa Isa would be where a Somal is known from a _Hubs.h.i.+_.... 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?