The Crescent Moon

by Francis Brett Young

“I know it,” says my friend, “but there is also a mission at Luguru, and the missionary there, even if he is an Englishman, is my brother. It was my duty to go.”

They shook their heads, he said; they tried to dissuade him; but in the end he had his way. Had he not held the Englishman Bullace drunk in his arms? Had he not, very nearly, succeeded in reforming him?

He wept for Bullace.

They left Morogoro the next day at dawn. Twenty whites, a hundred askaris, Wanyamweze, trained men. Stein in command: a man who had been long in the colony, who had known Africa in the Herero campaign, one of Karl Peters’ men. “He knew how to deal with these black devils.”

They moved quickly; and indeed the story went too quickly for me. I asked him about Godovius. “A Jew,” said he, shaking his own undeniably Semitic nose, implying that no more need be said. “A Jew . . . and a very strange man. You know the story of the mamba? A fine organiser, and greatly respected by the Waluguru. Rather too catholic in his taste for women . . . there were other funny stories about him . . . but then, we are not in Europe; we must not be too hard on the sins of the flesh. The tropics, you know . . .”

On the third day they came to Luguru. The people were very quiet, cowering in their villages. Perhaps they knew what was coming. The column marched in pomp through the forest to Njumba ja Mweze. A pitiful sight. It had been a fine house for the colonies, well built of stone, almost like a one-storeyed house at home in Germany—in Poland. Burnt. Absolutely gutted with fire. He remembered the pathetic appearance of a grand piano, crushed beneath a fallen beam, worth, he supposed, as much as three thousand rupees, worth half that second-hand, now only a twisted tangle of strings and a warped iron frame. No trace of Godovius or of his servants. No trace of anything in the world but ashes. Stein said nothing. It was a dangerous thing when a man like Stein, a man of deep feeling, remained silent.

Next they went to the mission. They had expected to find the same sort of havoc, but, strangely enough, the house was standing. “I went into the house myself and there everything was quiet. I thought: ‘God is great. This is a miracle. They have spared the holy place!’ I offered up a prayer. It was most touching. There, in the kitchen, was a table and on it a piece of woman’s sewing and a work-basket. In the bedroom, the very room where I had saved the life of Bullace, another table on which there was an open Bible. But I saw that the spinners had hung their webs across the room. I saw a great big spinner [gesture] fat as a black chief, sitting in the middle of the web. Ugh! . . . No man had lived there for days. I thought of the woman whose work was in the kitchen. I went to Stein. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘there has been black work, black work. . . . These devils have killed them.’ Stein said nothing:

“I thought, ‘These people, the missionary and his wife, had gone to Godovius for protection. Alas! they have shared his fate. Now there are three white people to be avenged.’ Stein told the askaris to load their rifles. He himself walked behind the machine-gun porters. ‘Now we will see to these Waluguru swine,’ he said. Stein was a man of few words but a colossal courage. Later he was killed, up on the Usambara line. ‘Come, you,’ he said . . .”

They went down through the bush to the forest. There was an askari who knew the Waluguru villages, and he showed the way. “We marched past the church, and I thought to myself: ‘It is right that I should go in there, to the place where my friend Bullace worked and prayed. I will go in and offer a prayer myself.’ I opened the door. . . . Pff! . . . But the stench was too much. ‘My God!’ I said. ‘What is this?’ . . .

“You are a Protestant. You do not know . . . If you had been in the Roman Catholic churches in Poland [he got it right that time] you would have seen the human-size crucifixes which frighten the children with a big dead Christ. It was on the pulpit. They had hung him there on the pulpit with big nails. Through his neck was a carpenter’s chisel. The nails and the hammer were lying on the floor. In his black coat he hung with his feet tied together. He was far gone, as you say. Pff! . . . Oh, it was very bad. And the black swine had mutilated him in the way that Africans, even our own askaris, use with their enemies. You know . . . Pff! . . . It was too awful. I tell you I could not stay there to offer up the prayer that I had intended in that place. I went out. I could not bear the sight of that crucified man. I ran after them. I was afraid to be alone. You will understand; I was not allowed to carry arms . . .