In the small, self-contained, self-supporting world of the Reformatory, it was Moussa Isa against the World. And against the World he stood up.
It had to learn the difference between a Somali and a Hubshi at any cost—the cost of Moussa's life included.
What added to the sorrow of the situation was the realization of how charming and desirable a retreat the place was in itself,—apart from its ignorant and stupid inhabitants.
Expecting a kind of torture-house wherein he would be starved, sweated, thrashed by brutal kourbash-wielding overseers, he found the most palatial and comfortable of clubs, a place of perfect peace, safety, and ease, where one was kindly treated by those in authority, sumptuously fed, luxuriously lodged, and provided with pleasant occupation, attractive amusements and reasonable leisure.
He had always heard and believed that the English were mad, and now he knew it.
As a punishment for murder he had got a birching that merely tickled him, and a free ticket to seven years' board, lodging, clothing, lighting, medical care, instruction and diversion!
Wow!
Were it not for the presence of the insolent, ignorant, untravelled, inexperienced, soft-living, lily-livered dogs of inhabitants, the place was the Earthly Paradise. They were the crocodile in the ointment.
A young Brahmin, son of a well-paid Government servant, and incarcerated for forgery and theft, was his most annoying persecutor. He was at great pains to expectorate and murmur "Hubshi" in accents of abhorrent contempt, whenever Moussa Isa chanced between the wind and his nobility.
The first time, Moussa replied with pitying magnanimity and all reasonableness:—