The Crescent Moon

by Francis Brett Young

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.