The Crescent Moon

by Francis Brett Young

Above all other things James wanted to be alone, not in his church nor in the horror of the forest, but in his own room at the mission. He passed swiftly over the path which he had followed that morning so happily; he entered the empty mission-house and locked himself in his bedroom. The sudden disillusionment which had come to him in the empty church had overwhelmed him; but when the first shock of the incident had passed and he lay upon his bed, with his hands pressed to his eyes, conscious only of the extreme heat and of his throbbing pulse, he suddenly found himself able to think more clearly. In spite of his passion he was almost calm. He realised, in the hardest terms, that he was facing a power which might be the ruin of his mission; that he wasn’t merely opposed by the vast apathy of Africa, but by something definite and appallingly strong. He saw that his real troubles were beginning; that, even if he failed, he had got to fight. It was the first time in his life that he had been forced to stand with his back to the wall.

Already he had a suspicion of the cause of the trouble. The problem towards which M‘Crae had been attracted in his amateur studies of ethnology by the stories of the Masai was presented to James for solution, with no evidence beyond the few dark hints which he had gathered in his work among the Waluguru and the collateral testimony, the significance of which he had hardly realised before, present in the only book with which he was intimately acquainted: his Bible. But already he had picked up the scent. A lucky mischance, the purest accident in the world, had arranged that the psalm which he had chosen for the day’s service had been the hundred and sixth. In the idolatry of the children of Israel, which the Psalmist so passionately lamented, he found a significant parallel. In a little while his imagination was at work. He sat at the table, turning over the worn pages of his Bible, finding everywhere in the songs of the prophets words which strengthened his incredible surmise.

The new moon. . . . That was the key to his suspicions. A number of sinister remembrances came to reinforce the idea. He remembered the young girl in the Waluguru village who had disappeared about the time of the new moon. He remembered the story of the boy Onyango, who had said that on the night of the new moon the Waluguru would kill him if he were found in the forest. He remembered, astonished that he should not have noticed it before, the name of that smooth mountain and of the house of Godovius itself. The moon. . . . He wondered how he could have been so blind. And the heathen inhabitants of Canaan worshipped the moon in abominable rites. Ashtoreth, the Goddess of Groves, was a moon deity. And Moloch. . . . Who was Moloch? The Bible would tell him; and most of all his own passionate prophets. He opened Isaiah.

“Bring no more vain oblations: incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.

“Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them . . .”

Someone was knocking at the door. He supposed it was Eva. Well, Eva must wait. He was sorry for her; he would explain later. He came to the door and spoke. He was astonished at the steadiness of his own voice. He said: “Don’t be frightened and please don’t disturb me. I must be alone to-day.”

“But your door was locked. I wanted to see you if I could. I want to speak to you,” she said.

“Later, later. . . . Not now.”

She told him that his dinner was nearly ready.

“I don’t want food,” he said. “Don’t think I’m doing anything desperate. I’m not. I only want to think. Now be a good girl . . .”

Baal and Ashtoreth and Moloch. . . . He wished that he could go into the library at college and look the business up. In those days he had never taken that sort of thing seriously. It had seemed to him so utterly divorced from the spiritual needs of the present day.