The Sacrifice (Abdullah)

by Achmed Abdullah

 

The
Sacrifice

By ACHMED ABDULLAH

ONCE past the threshold you might have imagined yourself in some old-fashioned American club reminiscent of red brick and snowy woodwork on lower Fifth Avenue or of brownstone front and brass-railed stoop in the Back Bay; the sort where they still put a poached egg on top of the Welsh rarebit, cook beans with New Orleans molasses, and make their strawberry shortcake on a foundation of biscuit dough, and where, by the same token, they show you mahogany-framed portraits of former prominent members in volunteer uniforms and curled side-whiskers and hands inserted Napoleonically between the second and third coat buttons. There was here just that kind of an atmosphere, rather rheumy and perhaps a trifle snobbish, but tremendous either way—called Americanism; the serving, sanely constructive variety, not the verbosely, fatuously academic near-Bolshevism of enthusiastic younger professors under the colors of a false democracy, nor on the other hand a war-clouted Neo-Prussianism which labels its patriotic contents as if they were alcohol and shouts its loyalty in and out of season in a rowdy refrain. There was no need in this club—for club it was—of jingoistic flag-wavers seeking an eager spotlight. It would have been resented by every one of the five members, if not as a downright insult, then at least as something quite unnecessary and just a trifle comic.

The only two notes not in keeping with the rest of the setting were that instead of a proper fireplace with big logs blazing lemon and scarlet, there was stretched across the ceiling a punkah of white velvet swinging rhythmically from side to side to stir and cool the air, and that, instead of soft-footed, soft-spoken waiters in immaculate black and white, the orders were taken by frizzy, odorous, half-naked West African negroes with filed teeth, flat, tattooed noses, and guttural, clicky speech.

A look through the rattan window curtain would have solved the riddle of both punkah and negroes. For outside of the club building—named imply “American Club” on a small brass door-plate and advertised by neither flag nor bunting—Africa's west coast sweated and droaned beneath the merciless, steamy, coppery heat.

There was beauty in the landscape. Under the rays of the tropical sun the sloping roofs of the warehouses and the bee-hive huts of the natives burned like the wings of a gigantic dragonfly in every mysterious blend of purple and green and blue. The sky was like an enameled cup, spotless but for a few clouds which were gnarled, fantastic, like arabesques written in vivid, cerise ink on some page of forgotten Byzantine gold. And in the distance, beyond the river's glitter and glimmer, the jungly forest swept out in a majestic line.

But today the five members of the club, sitting in the main room, talking with hushed, nervous voices, looking occasionally through the windows into the dusty yard where a handful of black porters. Ashantis and Kroos, were squatting and chattering about their cook pots, neither saw nor sensed Africa's potent and sensuous lure.

Illustration: “There you are, my boy. You're not the sort to quit under fire. Not you! Nor ... any of you!”

There was George Carter, originally from Chicago, the president of the club and, too, of the great Afro-American Trading Corporation; Thomas W. Laughton, Virginian, engineer in the employ of the British colonial administration who had harnessed the enormous waterfalls of the Niger river seven hundred miles up the hinterland; Wesley Jones, a down-east Yankee and an independent trader; and Commodore McLaughlin, a Californian, who owned the fleet of paddle-wheel steamers that ran from the coast to the vicinity of the falls.

THERE was, finally, Peter Demarest, social and welfare worker, lately of New York's teeming East Side, who every day, in his tiny “settlement house,” as he called it, ministered to the spiritual and material wants of the little community. His was a labor of joy—joy that he could be helping someone—even though that someone should be a black Ashanti porter; and who, according to Wesley Jones, had built his little hut with contributions cajoled and bullied out of the other club members' pockets.

“Well, my boy,” Peter would reply, unabashed, “you're hardly the one to complain about it since maybe it will yet save your immortal soul. Maybe—you'll notice I said!”

They had all lived a lifetime in Africa; were all rich, with the exception of Peter. Carter was speaking of it now.

“I'm glad I have a few pennies saved up and tucked away safely in an American bank,” he said.

“Why?” asked Peter.

“So that I can beat it home, to Chicago, any time I feel like it.”

“Right,” commented McLaughlin. “Same here.”

“But—do you feel like it?” asked Peter.

“You bet!” Carter's voice peaked out suddenly, dramatically. He had a trick, when he was excited, of speaking in a curiously stilted, rather poetic language; a souvenir, said Laughton, who had gone to Harvard with him, of the days when he had edited the college magazine; and he went on that he hated this Africa—“a black, fetid fist,” he called it, “giving riotously of gold and treasure, and squeezing and maiming even while it gives. I loathe it, fear it......”

“Sure!” smiled Peter. “And you love it with that love which is stronger than the love of woman, and more grimly compelling even to one than the love of gold.”'

“I'm going home just the same.”

“Maybe ten years from now—or next year, on a visit,” said Peter. “But not today—”

“Why not today?”

“There's a steamer leaving tomorrow for Liverpool. Have you taken passage?”

“Well—no—”

“There you are, my son. You're not the sort to quit under fire. Not you! Nor—” with a sweeping gesture—“any of you!”

“All the same I...... ”

A negro entered with a round of drinks, and again the voices dropped to a hush.

“Do the natives know?” inquired McLaughlin, when the servant had left.

“Of course. How can they help it?” Wesley Jones shrugged his shoulders. “You know how news travels in Africa by the drums booming the gossip from kraal to kraal......”

“Looks mighty dangerous to me. That fellow doesn't bluff—ever.....”

“Dangerous is right.”

“You bet!”

“And the British—?”

“Seem helpless,” commented Laughton. “I had a talk last night with the governor. He admits it.”

“But they sent soldiers—”

“Sure enough. What good though? The man is like a phantom.”

“They say he's a white man.”

“He is.” Peter inclined his head. “I know.”

“Sure of it?”

“Positive. I saw him last month when I was in the hinterland.”

“What?” demanded Carter incredulously. “You mean that you actually——”

“Saw him yes—talked to him.”

“Heavens! And did he.....”

“Speak about himself? Yes.”

“But—what—what.....?”

“I can't tell you, my boy; not now anyhow,” Peter replied simply.

“What's his name?”

“M'ganu—the lion—the natives call him.”

“I know, know——” interrupted Carter impatiently. “But his real name—”

“I can't tell you.”

They regarded Peter querously “Sort of promise-you-won't-tell stuff?” asked Carter with a faint sneer.

“No,” replied Peter. “Purely a personal reason.”

About a year earlier tales had begun to reach the coast from the interior of a white man who was evidently trying to emulate the deeds of the Arabs who had ruled and raided the upper Kongo before Stanley and the Belgians drove them out. At first came meagre reports of ivory caches plundered, of European factory inspectors being forced to hand over gold-dust and ammunition, of rubber and rifles and British and French native villages being made to pay tribute.

Illustration: M'ganu was here today and there tomorrow, in and out of the brush with his wild followers ... always at the place where he was-not supposed to be.

Then came other tales, of droves of cattle being lifted by the raiders and driven north. Punitive expeditions were sent both by the British and the French. But they had no results except foot-sore Haussa soldiers and white officers down with black-water fever and cursing their luck. For M'ganu was as elusive as smoke. Even the harassed European colonial officials admitted that he was a genius at jungle warfare. The punitive expeditions grew in size, horse, foot, the guns, and aircraft; but they failed over and over again. M'ganu was here today and there tomorrow, dancing in and out of the bush with his wild followers, striking swiftly and mercilessly, and always at the place where he was not supposed to be.

AND then, almost overnight it seemed, the threat though at first annoying and costly and unimportant from a larger angle of vision, changed in character and in significance. It became of the utmost importance, the utmost, gravest danger. For it took on a political aspect; it boasted to write a new page on Africa's motley, blood-stained annals as news filtered through that M'ganu, the raider, the robber, had turned into M'ganu, the conqueror, the ruler; that all through the hinterland the warrior tribes were flocking to his standard, that from kraal to kraal his emissaries were preaching an African Monroe Doctrine, a Holy War, declaring that Africa was for to Africans and that M'ganu was going to free the land and to drive the European invaders into the sea.

At first they laughed at the boast in the chancelleries of Paris and London; they ridiculed it in clubs and ministries. and editorials. Then the laughter gave way to consternation, to something closely akin to panic, as newsboys ran through Piccadilly and Oxford Circus one evening shouting their extras that M'ganu had defeated a strong British column in a pitched battle, that he had cut the railway, destroyed the telegraph wires, and sent the flames licking over numerous Kuropean settlements, stations, and factories.

Came more news, by bush runners and friendly natives, all telling the tale: M'ganu was steadily increasing his fighting forces, was crystallizing and centralizing his administrative organization.

It would be weeks and weeks before a thorough expedition could be organized The fleet was unable to manœuvre effectually off the swampy, river-cleft, tortuous coast. And in the meantime M'ganu had sent word to the British governor that presently he was coming down to the coast when he would hang the governor in front of his own residence and occupy it himself,

“And—” commented Carter—“he's liable to do it.” He sighed. “I wish I were back home in Chicago—safe and whole and snug.....”

The others agreed, all but Peter, who staring straight ahead with puckered, rather melancholy eyes.

After all it was Wesley Jones speaking and expressing the thoughts of the other three—what had they to do with it? This was Africa: British and French territories: British and and French concern. What danger was there of tattooed Ashanti savages invading State Street and Brookline? What danger of pointed warriors, led by a mysterious white renegade, looting the stores of Boston Street and putting up a blood-smeared, wooden idol in front of the Copley-Plaza Hotel? Why—by George! “it's no fight of ours. no business of ours.”

“NO business of yours at all,” said Peter, “except that you are Americans—”

“And—therefore—fools. carrying the other fellow's burden?” came Carter's bitter comment,

“And why not be fools?” smiled Peter. “It is such a glorious, such a divine thing, to be a fool—don't you think?”

“Do you?”

“Yes, My boy.”

“Funny thing about Africa—” said McLaughlin after a short pause.

“What—?”

“That in Africa it is never a nation in turmoil, never a race in ferment which makes trouble and revolution—but always one man—one single man—like this confounded renegade—this M'ganu—”

“Yes—” agreed Laughton—“if we could get this one man, the trouble would blow over by itself—those blacks would be like a flock of sheep without the wether......”

“And, of course,” said Peter slowly, “that one man should be killed—”

“Sure enough!” agreed Wesley Jones. “But he knows himself that he is the leader, that everything depends upon him alone. He never exposes himself in battle, they say......”

“[ was not speaking about killing him in battle,” rejoined Peter, calmly. “I mean—oh—just—killing—”

“You—you mean—murdering?”” came Carter's sharp, shocked query.

“Exactly!”

“Heavens!”

“Why not?” went on Peter, gravely. “Death is more decent than life—at times. Death is the best argument in the world—at times. There is no contradicting it, no challenging its judgment. It is final. It is not a mere, weak-spined theorem which demands a yawning, bore some volume of proof, but it contains this proof in itself—at times.”

“Peter!” cried Carter Please consider your—”

“Calling, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I am considering it replied Peter. “That's what makes it so hard—” he added, speaking as if to himself. “And that's why I say,” he continued in clear, loud voice, “that death and even murder—at times—is a practical constructive, utterly sane and clean step in the direction of civilization, peace, and the average, blessed decencies.....”

“Well—” commented Wesley Jones—“whatever your personal opinion, you have no chance of murdering M'ganu. From all accounts he's as wary as a fox. They say that he is always surrounded by a bodyguard of picked warriors, who let nobody approach him.....”

“I suppose so,” said Peter again half to himself. “He would——its just like him.”

And, after short silence casually:

“By the way, young Allen has back to town.”

“Mortimer Allen—?”

“Yes. He came last night. I gave him food and shelter.”

“I suppose—” asked Carter, “he's the same as ever?”

“WORSE then ever,” replied Peter. “Out of the jungle he came, naked but for a crimson, fringed Galla blanket, his face and body burnt the color of mahogany, his cheeks covered with a matted beard, and a grisly collection of witch and voodoo charms about his ankles. Dear, dear!” he sighed. “It's a sorry sight he was. I gave him food, helped him straighten up, and finally Was able to talk coherently.”

“Why bother with him?” demanded Carter. “He is the sort who brings disgrace on our country—on every white man in Africa. He—a fellow of a first class New York family—money he had once and bully promises—and now—? Gone to perdition and drugs! Gone fantee—native.....”

“Yes,” agreed Pete I'm afraid he he's past saving. And—by the way—” he looked up with a smile—“I am hard up myself. I always am, you know.....”

“Taking up a collection for Allen?” asked Carter.

“Yes.”

“I won't contribute a cent. Nothing doing—ever again! I've done so time and time again. We all have. It's like pouring money down a sewer! He's no good—absolutely no good.”

‘Well—” replied Peter—“if you don't want to give the money to Allen, you can lend it to me personally. I'll give you a note for the amount—shall we say fifty dollars?” And to the others: “Fifty dollars apiece, boys.

“When will you” pay the notes?” laughed Mclaughlin.

“On Judgment Day—with interest,” came the answer; and he held out his hand, and they paid grumblingly, protestingly.

“It's no use, though,” insisted Carter. “The man is no good. And I give you my word I'll never contribute another cent to this particular pet charity of yours. Why don't you ship him home?”

“I am going to it I can,” said Peter. “Although,” he added cryptically, “it's a question of what you consider home. Home to me has always meant something—oh—spiritual, not a house with four walls and proper furniture and an Axminister rug.”

And he left the club and returned to his hut.

CAME long days fraught with rumors and anxiety. Allen, the man who had gone fantee, had gone native, had come and left. Only Peter had seen him and spoken to him. But there were other alarms and excitements enough, and nature herself—“rather unwarrantly,” commented Peter—did her best to chime in with the emotional pattern of things. or during entire days a thick white mist oozed from sea and river and skies, like a shroud, punctured orange and vermilion here and there in the distance by the flicker of some far campfire where a lonely Ashanti was shivering for the return of the sun. There were great storms booming in from the ocean, and the little coast settlement seemed cut off from the rest of the world. London cabled reassuring messages. But there seemed little hope. For—as always, grumbled the local Englishmen—government had to unwind many yards of red-tape before setting its armed forces into motion; and there was a dull sort of despair as news came of M'ganu's steady advance.

The whites went about their work, melancholy, dejected, homesick, They had sent their wives and children home by the only ship that had braved the storm, standing out, wave-tossed, in the open roadstead. Other ships were on the way; had not yet arrived. And time was pressing. The catastrophe was imminent. There was only a handful of troops.

The blacks moved in uneasy groups, clicking and chattering, listening to the boom of the far signal drums, with oblique glances over their shoulders as if afraid of some especially vindictive voodoo. The governor, helpless, sat brooding in his mansion.

In the American club the members had given up talking and speculating. They had looked to their weapons, and now every night, they played stud poker; a stiff game, table stakes, played earnestly, almost remorselessly.

Ten days passed; and then one evening, with the others already gathered around the green-baized table, Carter came in, excited, and confronted Peter with blazing eyes.

“You know what you've gone and done?” he demanded.

“Well, my boy?”

“That pet of yours—Allen—you gave him the money, didn't you?”

“And why shouldn't I have given it to him?” countered Peter. “Wasn't it meant for him?”

“Do you know what he did with the money?” exclaimed Carter, his voice rising a hectic octave. “I'll tell you. He beat it for the interior, up the river—and he joined M'ganu!”

“Good heavens!” Wesley Jones, who had commenced dealing, looked up.

The others, too, were startled.

“Yes!” continued Carter. “Now we have two white renegades instead of one. And Allen is the more dangerous of the two—with his drug-soaked brain! And he did it with our cash—and......”

“My boy,” interrupted Peter, “don't lose your temper......”

“Why—damn it all......”

“And don't swear!”

“I've good reason to swear. You're responsible for this fresh mess!”

“I meant to say—” Peter went on—“don't swear when you are excited. If you do, your vocabulary will not do justice to your emotions. You will swear much better after you have cooled down and can think a bit more dispassionately of all the bad names you want to call me!”

“Oh—” Carter shook his head—“you're hopeless!”

“My boy,” Peter replied, “Jones has dealt you two cards, and if you do not shut up I'll tell the others that you've an ace in the hole!”

He refused to comment any further on the subject. He only smiled, a fleeting rather melancholy smile.

“I have great faith,” he said as he left, “great faith in God—and faith, too in most men—”

“Even in Allen?” came Carter's chilly question.

“Oh, perhaps——”

The next day brought the cabled news that troopships were coaling and loading and that a fleet of cruisers and destroyers was on the way. But there was other news, from the hinterland, that M'ganu and his warriors were on the march. And who would be first to reach the goal; and suppose M'ganu got there first and conquered; even suppose that he did not massacre the white inhabitants, how could the British ships regain the town without exposing their own countrymen to a bombardment?

The governor did not know what to do, he explained one night to the members of the American club who had invited him to dinner.

“Sit tight and wait—that's all I can do,” he said stoically.

“Not very cheerful,” commented McLaughlin.

“No, sir. Not very.”

The blacks in the little coast. settlement were leaving by twos and threes giving, typically, wrong reasons for their flight. Every morning when the governor stepped out on the veranda of his residence he would find there a dozen or so, squatting on their haunches, with thin, sinewy arms embracing their knees rocking to and fro like chained jungle beasts. They would rise on his approach, assure him that he was their father and mother, the light of their countenances, and an exceedingly powerful and kindly ju-ju. But would he please permit them to return to their kraals?

“Why do you want to go?” the governor or his aide-de-camp would ask. “Don't you get good pay? Don't you receive decent treatment?”

AND then always the same reply, in pidgin; always the same lie, with oblique glances across naked, plum-colored shoulders:

“We lib for go we-country. We lib for work long nuff, one time yam come up, twel' moon,” meaning that they wanted to go home because they had worked long enough, a whole year.

Nor was there arguing with them, and if permits were refused they would sneak out at night between the scanty sentries.

“They are like rats leaving a doomed ship,” commented the governor.

He turned to his aide-de-camp:

“Well—carry on, Johnnie!”

“Right-oh! But how?”

“I wonder.”

Thursday saw an early morning rain and, later, the sun breaking through, dipping low, and sending down a volume of thick, palpable steam. The members of the American club had gathered early to their game of stud poker.

“Africa!” said Carter, dealing. “And the sun of Africa—torturing and killing—the same sun which gives life and hope to sweeter, cleaner lands......”

“Go head and deal,” grumbled Laughton. “You are only wasting time.”

“Yes; don't gab so much!” said McLaughlin.

“I'll deal as fast as I feel like!” replied Carter.

FOR they were nervous, short-tempered, all of them. Bush runners, loyal natives as well as half-breeds, were bringing ever more disquieting news. M'ganu and his legions were coming closer and closer. They were within a day's march of the coast. The campfires of the vanguard could be seen at night, like ruddy balls of fire on the sky line; and despair dropped over the settlement like a sodden blanket.

Came another day; and shivering expectation, a looking after weapons and ammunitions. and inadequate defences; and then, that night, suddenly, dramatically, a half-breed Portuguese runner came out of the jungle with incredible news.

“M'ganu is dead!” And, in answer to a dozen excited, stammering, overlapping questions: “The other white man killed him!”

“Who—? Allen—?”

“Yes!”

“How—? When—? Why—?”

“He was M'ganu's guest at dinner. He shot him!”

“And—? Go on, go on!”

“M'ganu's bodyguard killed Allen. They speared him before he had a chance to take to the jungle......”

A tremendous reaction swept over the little town; a reaction of lassitude, slightly ludicrous, slightly embarrassing, as they thought of their former fears and despair. They had been keyed up too tensely, too keenly, and now they were rather disillusioned. M'ganu was dead. The sheep were without a wether to bell and lead the way. Assurance of it came within a few days. The rebellion was spluttering out, hopelessly, rather pitifully as such things happen in Africa. The colony saved; the white men were saved: and the cable buzzed the good news to London where the newspapers began their hoary paean: “Typically British! We always muddle through—somehow!”

There was a reaction of lassitude, too, at the American club.

“Well—” said Wesley Jones—“it was Allen who saved us after all; Allen—the drunkard—the drug fiend—the white who had gone fantee....”

“Yes, admitted Carter, “he saved us—and yet......”

“Yet—what?” asked Peter.

“I do not respect his memory for saving us, for what he did. I hate and despise him the more.”