The Crescent Moon

by Francis Brett Young

At the corner of the banda he halted. “Wait here till I come back,” he whispered. “Stand in the shadow and wait.”

He disappeared. He seemed to her to be making a great deal of noise. She couldn’t understand it, for it seemed to her that he ought really to be making no noise at all. She wanted to tell him to go more quietly. She felt inclined to follow him and explain this to him. For quite a long time she heard his movements, and then, in a little interval of silence, the sound of another body which had lain concealed behind the banda, following him. Then she wanted to cry out and warn him, or even to run after him. She wished that wherever he was going he would have taken her with him. She remembered his last whisper, “Wait here till I come back,” and waited . . . endlessly waited. It was not easy. It would have been easier, she thought, if she had not been left so near home. There, in the shadow of the acacias, she had not yet taken the final, irrevocable step. There still remained for her an avenue of retreat.

Here, only a few feet away from her, was the opening of Mr. Bullace’s banda. The moonlight showed her, through the doorway, the table on which her work-basket lay and beside it an open book, which she had been reading only a few hours . . . or was it centuries? . . . before. At the other end of her dark tunnel she could see the angle of the house, with its festoons of bougainvillea; and all this looked so homely and safe, so utterly removed from the nightmare atmosphere of danger and flight. These things, it seemed to her, were solid and permanent, the others no more than a mad, confusing dream. And there, in his little room, was James. The whole business could be nothing but a dream which had ridiculously invaded her consciousness. She felt that if she were to go back to the silent house and find James, and slip once more into the pleasant order which she had created, she might wake and find herself happy again. And yet, all the while, she was remembering the whisper of M‘Crae, “Stand here in the shadow. . . . Wait till I come back again,” and found herself obeying. Not without revolt. It was too bad of him, she thought, to try her in this way, to leave her there in the threatening shadow. Too bad of him. . .

In the darkness she heard a shot fired. Again silence. Perhaps that was the end of it. But though the idea tortured her, the sound of that report did actually bring her to herself again. It showed her that the danger was real after all. She pulled herself together. “I must wait here until he comes,” she thought. “Even if it’s for hours and hours I must wait here . . .”

It was not for very long. Suddenly she became conscious of a shadow behind her, and before she had time to cry out she saw that it was M‘Crae, who beckoned her from the end of the avenue nearest to the house. . . . He stood waiting for her, and though no word passed between them, she followed.

Their way led at right angles to the one which he had taken at first, close under the shadow of the house. On the edge of the compound he dropped down and wriggled between two clusters of spiked sisal leaves. She bent down and did the same. In a little while they were threading their way between the twisted thorns of the bush. A branch, back-springing, tore Eva’s cheek. They must have moved more quickly than she had imagined, for her heart was fluttering violently, but M‘Crae never hesitated, and still she followed after.

She wondered often how in the world he knew which way he was taking her, for all the trees in this wilderness seemed to her alike, and she had no knowledge of the stars. Somewhere on the right of them she heard shots, and when the firing started he stopped to listen. A ridiculous thing, that any man who was running for his life should waste time in that way. The first shots sounded a long way from them, in the direction which he had taken when he first left her; but while they stood listening a group of four followed, and these were of a terrifying loudness, beating on their ears as if, indeed, the rifles were levelled at their heads. Eva had often heard the echoes of Godovius’s rifle in the bush; but it was quite a different thing to feel that she was being fired at. She shivered and touched M‘Crae’s arm.

“Where are they?” she whispered. “Can you see them?”

“No. . . . You mustn’t be frightened,” he said. “The bush magnifies the sound. They are quite a long way away.”

But with the next shot something droned with the flight of a beetle above them, and a severed twig dropped on Eva’s hair.