The Crescent Moon

by Francis Brett Young

I

For two days the forest below Luguru echoed the German bugle calls and the sound of rifle fire. At night the throbbing of drums never ceased, and the reflection of great fires lit along the edge of the bush reddened the sky. During this time the prisoners at Luguru heard nothing of Godovius. James, who was still keeping to his room, had not been able to notice the absence of the mission boys. Now he was quickly regaining strength and confidence. It was strange how brightly the flame of enthusiasm burned in his poor body. As soon as the cuts on his hands were healed he began to consort once more with his friends the prophets, and Eva was almost thankful for this, for it kept him employed as no other recreation could have done. Indeed, beneath this shadow of which she alone was conscious, their solitary life became extraordinarily tranquil. The atmosphere impressed Eva in its deceptiveness. All the time she was waiting for the next move of Godovius, almost wishing that the period of suspense might end, and something, however desperate, happen. One supposes that Godovius was busy with the training of his levies, instructing them in the science of slaughter, flattering them in their new vocation of askaris with the utmost licence in the way of food and drink and lust, as became good soldiers of Germany. That was the meaning of those constant marchings and counter-marchings by day, and the fires which lit the sky at night above their camps upon the edge of the forest.

The failure of her feeble attempt at an escape had shown Eva that it was impossible for her to help M‘Crae in the way which she had planned. Again and again the idea of bargaining with Godovius returned to her. It came into her head so often, and was so often rejected beneath the imagined censure of the prisoner that, in the end, her sense of bewilderment and hopelessness was too much for her. She could not sleep at night, even when the drums, at last, were quiet. The strain was too acute for any woman to have borne.

In the end even James, who never noticed anything, became aware of her pale face and haggard eyes. Anybody but James would have seen them long before. He said:

“You’re not looking well, Eva. . . . You don’t look at all well. I hope you’re not going to be ill. You’ve taken your quinine? What’s the matter with you?”

Rather wearily she laughed him off; but James was a persistent creature. He wouldn’t let her excuses stand: and since it didn’t seem to her worth while sticking to them, she thought she might as well tell him everything and be done with it. Not quite everything. . . . She didn’t tell him about M‘Crae, for she felt that his clumsiness would be certain to irritate her. She told him, as simply as she could, that they were both prisoners; that England was at war with Germany, and how she had promised Godovius that they wouldn’t try to escape. “I don’t suppose it will make any difference to us out here, so far away from everywhere,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t tell you before. And of course you were too ill to be bothered.”

At first he was only annoyed that she had kept him in the dark. Then his imagination began to play with the idea. He began to walk up and down the room, rather unsteadily, and talk to her as his thoughts formed themselves. Eva was too miserable to listen.

“This is terrible,” he said. “A monstrous thing. Here it may be nothing, but in Europe it will be terrible beyond description. This is the awful result of the world’s sin. Europe is like the cities of the plain. All the evil of her cities will be washed out in blood. It is an awful awakening for those places of pleasure. London and Berlin. Sodom and Gomorrah. This is the vengeance of God. It has been foretold. No war will ever be like this war. If the peoples had hearkened to the word of God. . . . For He is slow to anger.”

Eva had never imagined that he would take it so hardly. She hadn’t for a moment envisaged the awfulness of the catastrophe. All the time she had been thinking not of the agony of Europe nor of the possible consequences to themselves, but only of M‘Crae, whom the accident had thrown into Godovius’s hands. Even when she had listened to James’ very eloquent oration she found herself thinking of the helpless figure which the Waluguru askaris had carried into the bush, of the knotted veins on his arm beneath the bonds.

That evening the fires in the askaris camp shone brighter than ever, the throbbing of the drums more passionate. James, realising now the meaning of all that distant noise and light, became restless and excited. He would not be content to go to bed early, as Eva had intended. He said that he would be happier sitting out on the stoep in a long chair, listening to all that was going on below. After their evening meal they sat out there together, and while Eva nearly fell asleep from sheer tiredness, he talked as much to himself as to her. It was a night of the most exquisite calm. Beneath them the thorn bush lay soft and silvered in the light of the moon. The upper sky was so bright that they could even see beyond the forest the outlines of the hills. In all that vast expanse of quiet land only one spot of violent colour appeared, in a single patch of red sky above the German camps.

“You see it burning there,” said James. “That is War. That is what War means. A harsh and brutal thing in the middle of the quietness of life. A fierce, unholy, unnatural thing.”

She said “Yes,” but that was because she did not want him to ask her any questions.

A strange night. From time to time the lightened circle of sky would glow more brightly, the drums throb as wildly as if all the drummers had gone mad together. Sometimes the unheeding distance muffled their sound, so that only a puff of wind brought it to their ears, waxing and waning like the pulsations of a savage heart. Once, in the nearer bush, they heard the voice of a man crying out like an animal. Eva begged James to go to bed. The nearness of the sound frightened her.

“You can’t stay here all night,” she said. “Soon you will be cold, and that means fever.”

He was almost rough with her. “Leave me alone . . . please leave me alone. I want to think. I couldn’t think indoors.”

Suddenly they were startled by the sound of rifle fire. All over the bush people were firing guns. They couldn’t understand it. At first it came from very near, but gradually the firing died away in the direction of the forest.

“It must sound like that,” said James, “in a moving battle: a running fight that is passing out of hearing.”

At nine o’clock the drums and the firing ceased. Even the fires in the camp must have been allowed to die down, for the silver of the moon washed all the sky. The bush stretched as grey and silent as if no living creature moved in it; and with the silence returned a sense of the definite vastness of that moonlit land, the immemorial impassivity of the great continent. It was a beautiful and melancholy sight.

“In Europe millions of men are slaughtering each other,” James whispered.

“Now you will go to bed?” she pleaded.

He took her arm, as though he were really unconscious of it, and allowed her to help him to his feet. They stood there still for a moment, and while they watched, both of them became suddenly aware of the small figure of a man running towards the bungalow from the edge of the bush. His clothes and his face were of the pale colour of the moonlight, so that he might have been a ghost, and when he caught sight of their two figures on the stoep he waved his hand. It was his right hand that he waved. The other arm was missing. While James stood wondering what had happened, Eva was running down the garden path to meet him. Half-way they met. M‘Crae could see the tears Eva’s eyes shining in the moonlight. He had never seen her face so pale and beautiful.