The Crescent Moon

This eBook was transcribed by Les Bowler
BY FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG AUTHOR OF “MARCHING ON TANGA”
NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH AVENUE
Copyright, 1918, BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
All Rights Reserved
First printing . . . . . January , 1919
Second printing . . . . . March , 1919
Third printing . . . . . March , 1920
Printed in the United States of America
When I stepped on to the platform at Nairobi I hadn’t the very least idea of what I was in for. The train for which we were waiting was due from Kisumu, bringing with it a number of Indian sepoys, captured at Tanga and Jasin, whom the Belgian advance on Taborah had freed. It was my job to see them into the ambulances and send them off to hospital. But when I got to the station I found the platform swarming with clerical hats and women who looked religious, all of whom couldn’t very well have been swept into this degree of congregation for the sake of an odd sepoy’s soul. These mean and ill-dressed people kept up a chatter like starlings under the station roof. It was a hot day in November, and the rains were due. Even six thousand feet of altitude won’t stimulate you then. It had all the atmosphere of a sticky school treat in August at home. . . . Baptists on an August Bank Holiday. That was how it struck me.
And anyway it was a nuisance: I couldn’t get my ambulances on to the platform. “You see, sir, it isn’t a norspital train,” said the military policeman, “only a nordinary passenger train from the lake.”
I asked him what all the crowd was about.