STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 (AND A FEW WITH WOMEN) 
 
Other Works by Mr. Donn Byrne. 
 
 THE GOLDEN GOAT 
 
 THE POWER OF THE DOG 
 
 DESTINY BAY 
 
 HANGMAN'S HOUSE 
 
 BROTHER SAUL 
 
 MESSER MARCO POLO 
 
 CRUSADE 
 
 THE WIND BLOWETH 
 
 THE FOOLISH MATRONS 
 
 CHANGELING 
 
 BLIND RAFTERY, AND His WIFE 
 
 HILARIA 
 AN UNTITLED STORY 
 
 IRELAND, THE ROCK WHENCE I WAS 
 HEWN 
 
 First Impression 
 
1 
 
 STORIES 
 WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 (AND A FEW WITH WOMEN) 
 
 BY 
 
 BONN BYRNE 
 
 LONDON 
 SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & CO., LTD. 
 
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY PURNELL AND SONS 
 
 PAULTON (SOMERSET) AND LONDON 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 L BIPLANE No. 2 . . i 
 
 H._SLAVES OF THE GUN . . i? 
 
 III. IN A CELLAR . . 3 6 
 IV. Bow SING Low AND THE Two WHO 
 
 WERE THIEVES . . . 5 6 
 
 V. DONOGHU'S HOUR . 7 8 
 
 VI. AN AFRICAN EPIC 99 
 
 VII. A MAN'S GAME ... 114 
 
 VIII. JUNGLE BULLS . . *39 
 
 IX. THE WAKE . . i?4 
 
 X.~OUT OF EGYPT ... 19 
 
 XL BLACK MEDICINE . . 215 
 
 XIL PANIC ... 241 
 
 XIIL THE STORY OF SULEYMAN BEY. . 262 
 
 795701 
 
BIPLANE NO. 2 
 
 THE BURLY sergeant of sappers gave the propeller 
 a few violent twists, and junpec! qu.ckly to o'ne 
 side. The propeller revolved with a weird flapping 
 that turned to a quick, loud hum and then to a buzz 
 as of a myriad hornets. A little bugler ran along- 
 side for a few yards; then the biplane rose. 
 
 From the firing-line a mile and a half ahead the 
 rifles sounded like the ripping of a gigantic piece 
 of silk. Orderlies' horses drummed the ground on 
 their way to and from the commander-in-chief's 
 headquarters. The report of the nine-inch gun 
 burst like claps of thunder. As the biplane passed, a 
 squad of artillerymen looked up and cheered. From 
 one hundred yards below their cheer resembled 
 the thin shouting of boys. 
 
 Stanton looked at his pilot, huddled over the 
 steering-wheel. In his thick woollen hood he had 
 the appearance of an immense grey rat. The aero- 
 plane went up steadily like a mounting bird. 
 
 They were to reconnoitre the enemy, whose 
 position they were attacking, and report by wireless. 
 They were to make a general reconnaissance of the 
 firing-line and of the reserves, and to find out where 
 the definite intrenched works lay. 
 
 i 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 It was Stanton 's first aeroplane reconnaissance in 
 combat, and he felt confident. He had examined 
 his machine and wireless equipment thoroughly 
 before starting. His pilot was one of the best fliers 
 of the corps. 
 
 They were rising steadily still, going up in 
 spirals. The clamour of fighting had faded into a 
 faint murmur. There was a tang of gunpowder 
 ia ' the air; The, machine quivered like a ship at 
 sea. 
 
 They had now gone up three thousand feet. 
 The pilot swung round in a circle and flew east- 
 ward. The sun was directly overhead. The quiver 
 gave way to a fierce shaking and jolting. The 
 motor chugged with hoarse, vibrant coughings. 
 The framework of the machine rattled like a cart 
 over a stony road. They were flying easily. Little 
 puffs of wind struck them from time to time with 
 playful buffets. There was an undulation from 
 right to left. 
 
 The machine again began to mount steadily, and 
 the pilot swung to the right. He throttled the 
 motor and volplaned in a long gliding swoop. Then 
 Stanton looked downward. 
 
 There was an immensity of green in wide, roll- 
 ing billows and in little hills and hummocks. Here 
 and there it swirled into a clump of trees or a group 
 of houses. A village stood in the distance, like the 
 centre of a whirlpool. 
 
 As they came nearer, Stanton could distinguish 
 the batteries and guns and massed reserves, and 
 2 
 
BIPLANE NO. 2 
 
 then he saw the firing-line, like a piece of loosely 
 laid rope, stretching ten miles. He saw the re- 
 doubts and batteries, breaking it up into a grotesque 
 pattern that a child might have conceived at play. 
 Over it all there hung a faint bluish haze. 
 
 He got out his binoculars and swept the position. 
 Along the flanks he could see dark blotches that 
 were dismounted cavalry, and far in the rear the 
 lines of ammunition and supply and hospital wagons 
 massed like a little city. Between the flanks and 
 the firing-line there were dark splashes that were 
 reserves, and there were the huge nine-inch 
 guns, and little black dots running to and fro in 
 circles. It looked like jumbled pieces in an immense 
 puzzle. 
 
 The biplane was rushing forward. The land- 
 scape flashed by underneath in a hazy blur. They 
 wanted to get a general view of the field before 
 reconnoitring in detail. 
 
 Stanton turned to his wireless and reported he 
 was above the firing-line. He carried half a dozen 
 carrier-pigeons in case of accident to the wireless. 
 He glanced around at their cage. A grey tumbler 
 returned his look with a pert, shining eye. 
 
 He felt somehow laden down with the import- 
 ance of his mission. For one man to report on 
 the position of an army of fifty thousand men, with 
 their horses and material of war, seemed absurd. 
 He wished he could talk to the pilot, but the noise 
 of the motor and the rattle of the framework made 
 it impossible. 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 And somehow he felt, too, that this should not 
 be done, this spying from above. It seemed as 
 though an unfair advantage were being taken. It 
 was as though one kicked an opponent in the 
 shins in a boxing-match. It was not playing the 
 game. 
 
 The pilot throttled the motor and dropped a 
 thousand feet. The air rushed upward in a steady 
 blast. The canvas wings of the biplane shuddered 
 with a creaking rustle. 
 
 Stanton could now see the firing-line plainly. 
 With his binoculars he could distinguish every 
 man. They cuddled into the long trench, and fired 
 like so many automata. They shoved fresh clips 
 of cartridges into their magazines and changed 
 the sights mechanically. Officers dashed back 
 and forward behind the men, shouting and ges- 
 ticulating. 
 
 From time to time something would pass under- 
 neath that flashed as it went towards the redoubts. 
 Shrapnel would shoot over in a long graceful curve, 
 hang for a moment in the air, and burst in a flaming 
 crimson rosette. The shells seemed to radiate 
 sheaves of flame. 
 
 And there would be a long gap in the firing- 
 line. The little black figures were scattered as 
 though they had been thrown carelessly out of a 
 box. Some lay on their faces as if asleep, some 
 sprawled on their backs as if taking the sun, some 
 were curled up like dogs dozing, and some figures 
 were incomplete. 
 
BIPLANE NO. 2 
 
 Then the corps would hurry along with their 
 stretchers, and take the huddled figures and bundle 
 them in and hurry off. And a squad of reserves 
 would come to take their places, and all would be 
 as before. 
 
 The biplane had reached the middle of the line 
 and was flying steadily forward. Occasionally a 
 current of air brought them some of the din that 
 was going on underneath. Once it was a sound 
 as of drums beating, and a second time it was a 
 crash as of a great house falling, and a third time 
 they heard a shell burst with a thunderous roar. 
 
 But these noises came seldom. Most of the 
 time they heard nothing. The figures and action 
 moved as in a cinematograph. 
 
 In the distance Stanton could see the firing-line 
 of the attack. They lay on their stomachs in the 
 short grass and crept forward. The line seemed 
 to bulge and curve like the writhing of a giant 
 worm. 
 
 Occasionally a platoon would dash to its feet 
 and rush forward for fifty yards. Then they would 
 fall flat and begin firing. Stanton could see the 
 officers shouting, and throwing out their arms like 
 semaphores. He could see the platoon leaders 
 raise their whistles to their mouths. He could 
 hear neither order nor blast. From the muzzles 
 of the guns there came pin-points of bright yellow 
 fire. 
 
 The firing-line was losing heavily. Men were 
 dropping all around. Some of them would spring 
 
 5 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 to their feet, straighten themselves out with a jerk 
 and topple backward. Others would struggle to 
 their knees, and collapse in limp, shapeless heaps. 
 Others would lie down across their rifles as if they 
 were tired and could not go on. Stanton knew 
 they were dead. 
 
 The line would close up and move onward. 
 Here and there a platoon of reserves rushed for- 
 ward and scattered into the vacant places. The 
 men were firing calmly and steadily, thrusting 
 the cartridge-clips firmly into the magazines, and 
 changing the sights of the rifles every third or 
 fourth rush. Occasionally a man left the line and 
 crept back to one of the huddled figures ; he would 
 take the dead man's cartridge-belt and dash to his 
 place. 
 
 To Stanton there was something lacking. He 
 missed the crackle of the rifles, the shriek of the 
 shells as they passed, and the crash of their explo- 
 sion. He missed the hoarse shouting of the cap- 
 tains and the yells of agony when the shrapnel 
 burst. He missed the blasts of the whistle and 
 the buglers' call. Below there was no passion of 
 combat. Each man seemed actuated in cold blood 
 to kill some other man. They seemed to calculate 
 silently. There was something horribly sinister 
 about it. His skin contracted at the back of his 
 neck. 
 
 The redoubts were perspiring hells. Men rushed 
 to the ammunition-cases and returned, tottering 
 under loads of shrapnel. The men at the howitzers 
 6 
 
BIPLANE NO. 2 
 
 took them eagerly, slapped the shells into the 
 breech, and fired. Flames licked in and out of the 
 muzzles in little crimson tongues. Occasionally 
 an officer would pick up his field telephone for 
 instructions. They could see him shouting and 
 gesticulating. Then the gunner would change the 
 sights. 
 
 The men rushed faster and faster to the ammu- 
 nition-boxes. The howitzers were like ravenous 
 animals that demanded feeding. Piles of empty 
 yellow cartridge-cases grew beside every gun. 
 
 Until now they had been working calmly and 
 collectively. The attack was pressing relentlessly 
 onward. They scurried about like mice that were 
 stalked into a corner by a cat. 
 
 A battery of four guns dashed forward behind 
 the firing-line. Stanton could see the six horses 
 at each gun straining like dogs. Their legs curved 
 in the air. Their necks were distended. The 
 riders stood in their stirrups and lashed at their 
 flanks. 
 
 The first rider on one of the guns twisted about 
 in his stirrups and dropped his whip. He dived 
 suddenly over his horse's neck. The limber jolted 
 as the wheel passed over him. 
 
 A chaplain passed along the firing-line; sud- 
 denly he crumpled up and fell forward. An officer 
 tripped over him in running. 
 
 The pilot had come to the end of the firing-line 
 and was rising. Stanton turned to his wireless 
 and began rapping out his message. The mechanical 
 
 7 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 tapping of the key soothed him. He was glad he 
 was no longer looking down. He wondered if the 
 grim old chief in his trench would press that 
 terrible attack if he could see the whole panorama 
 of battle. 
 
 Stanton doubted if he knew the human end of 
 it at all. To the old marshal war was a thing of 
 blue-prints and telephones, and mechanism that 
 pulsed by well-oiled levers when a trigger was 
 pulled, and struck the cap on a shell with a sharp 
 little hammer. He saw the firing-line only as a 
 long, straight line that advanced relentlessly and 
 that curved around like pincers. 
 
 Stanton could picture him standing in his 
 great-coat, scratching his short grey beard, and 
 waiting while the telegrapher typed the aviator's 
 message. 
 
 They were now turning the flank of the line. 
 Stanton could see his own men creep nearer and 
 nearer the glacis. The edge of the line seemed in 
 a frenzy. 
 
 The pantomime beneath grew faster. The men's 
 arms moved with jerks as they loaded and fired. 
 Stanton could imagine the glistening beads of sweat 
 on their foreheads, and their cursing as they slammed 
 the cartridge-clips into the magazines. 
 
 A machine gun squad dashed over the line. The 
 men pulled at the spokes of the wheel with short, 
 spasmodic jerks. They trained the gun and began 
 firing. A shrapnel hung in the air for a moment 
 and burst. When the flash cleared, there was a 
 8 
 
BIPLANE NO. 2 
 
 jumble of stiff bodies and twisted steel. One man 
 limped away, using his rifle as a crutch. 
 
 The scene grew blurred. The pilot was mount- 
 ing. Cold air swirled about Stanton's legs. The 
 sun struck at the back of his neck in pin-pricks. 
 The frame of the biplane pulsed with the vibration 
 of the motor. A bird flashed by like a bullet. 
 
 Here in the air it was hard to understand the 
 reason for fighting. Stanton could not associate 
 himself with the frenzied troops. Up among the 
 winds it was impossible to conceive the pitting of 
 muscle against muscle. It seemed a petty business. 
 It was like two school-boys punching each other's 
 heads. It was as a battle of ants. 
 
 The air encompassed the steel fabric of the 
 biplane with a firm, steady grasp. At times 
 it was as if they were gliding down a well-oiled 
 plane, and again as if they had been shot from a 
 rifle, and again as if they were bounding on a 
 springboard. 
 
 Stanton was enjoying himself. Life exuded from 
 every pore. All trammels seemed to have been 
 removed from him. Beneath him lives went out 
 like snuffed candles every time a platoon fired or 
 an artillery-man braced himself against the lever of 
 his gun. 
 
 They began dropping in a spiral. The air rushed 
 upward like the blast of a furnace. It whined 
 through the stanchions of the wings. Underneath 
 they saw the masses of cavalry along the flanks of 
 the defence. They stood out in a dark blot. The 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 men were dismounted, ready to jump into the saddle 
 at the bugle. The guns were harnessed to the teams, 
 and the riders were in position, like charioteers 
 waiting the signal to race. 
 
 Stanton mapped out their position and began tap- 
 ping his key. In a few minutes the message would 
 flash from the commander's trench to the batteries, 
 and shells would burst over the massed hussars and 
 dragoons. Stanton could picture the panic that 
 would follow. Horses would rear and scream 
 in agony, and paw the air with their hoofs. 
 Troops were scattered right and left. The wounded 
 chargers would bolt or fall backwards, or sink 
 heavily on their sides. Men would be caught beneath 
 them. 
 
 As they veered towards the centre of the field, 
 there was a flash, and the first shell broke. In the 
 distance Stanton noticed a dismantled windmill. 
 Groups of officers hung about it. Every minute 
 an orderly rushed from it, and took his saddle with 
 a leap. Figures moved in and out like bees in and 
 out of a hive. An officer stood in the balcony 
 and watched a distant heliograph that twinkled like 
 a lighthouse. 
 
 Stanton knew it was the commander-in-chief's 
 headquarters. He wondered what chance there was 
 of dropping a shell over it. 
 
 From a clump of trees near the mill six sharp- 
 shooters scurried out. They dropped on their knees 
 and fired upward. Then they sprang to their feet 
 and ran forward, knelt and fired again. 
 10 
 
BIPLANE NO. 2 
 
 Stanton knew they were aiming at the biplane. 
 
 He couldn't help grinning. They looked so 
 ridiculous. As the machine whizzed out of range 
 they stood and gaped. 
 
 Stanton wondered how they expected to hit a 
 machine moving at fifty miles an hour one thousand 
 feet above them. He noticed an automobile lurch- 
 ing over the grass ahead of them. From above it 
 looked squat like a crab. It swayed from side to 
 side as it advanced. 
 
 The chauffeur stopped his machine with a jerk. 
 A couple of khaki-clad figures sprang to the ground 
 and busied themselves with the body of the car. 
 They moved about deftly and quickly. Stanton 
 wondered what they were doing. 
 
 They stripped off a canvas cover. A long, 
 black gun thrust its snout skyward. The pilot of 
 the biplane swung around and sped back on his 
 course. 
 
 Stanton covered the gun with his binoculars. It 
 crept around on its tripod in a dead line with 
 the biplane. Suddenly the shell shrieked past 
 them. 
 
 If it had struck them, Stanton knew, little pieces 
 of steel would have dropped like snowflakes, strips 
 of grey canvas would have eddied among the air 
 currents, and two crushed bodies would have plunged 
 downward in two black streaks. 
 
 They were out of range now, but Stanton was 
 badly shaken. He wished he were on earth again. 
 
 He would like to have led a company against the 
 
 ii 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 trenches. There was some glamour left in a bayonet- 
 charge. The last fifty yards dash, the figures in 
 front rising and clubbed rifles, the minute's pant- 
 ing, sweating, cursing melee that was a man's 
 work. 
 
 But this was a battle of mechanisms, the squat, 
 sinister machinery below and the flying racer above. 
 He felt that he was no more than a necessary screw 
 or nut in the fabric. 
 
 They had risen well above the field now. The 
 action spread itself out in a definite geometric design. 
 Stanton knew the crisis was at hand. 
 
 The attackers had gained the glacis, and were 
 dashing forward in quicker spurts. Another two 
 hundred yards and they would fix bayonets for the 
 final rush. The line was curving about the de- 
 fence's flank. Cavalry was being massed to support 
 the rush. 
 
 The defence had now no time to remove dead 
 or wounded. The stretcher squad had given way 
 to men racing from the wagons with cartridges. 
 As a man fell, his file thrust him aside, and an 
 ammunition-bearer crawled over him to take his 
 place. 
 
 Stanton could see that the attackers' artillery was 
 smashing up the defence. The field was spangled 
 with shrapnel. Shells threw up clouds of dirt as 
 they crashed into the redoubts. An ammunition- 
 wagon exploded in a red blotch. 
 
 Reserves were hurrying to the firing-line in dense, 
 black swarms. Batteries raced from the centre of 
 
 12 
 
BIPLANE NO. 2 
 
 the field, dismounted, aimed, and fired. Shrapnel 
 burst over a gun as the biplane passed, and Stanton 
 saw a wide, black circle and curling wisps of 
 brownish smoke where the woodwork had taken 
 fire. 
 
 The biplane swept backwards over the field. 
 The pandemonium of fighting had passed. They 
 whizzed over the reserves. Stanton was looking for 
 the road that was marked on his map. 
 
 Squads of sharp-shooters scurried along the 
 ground and fired upward. They were running as 
 fast as they could, but they seemed to crawl. 
 
 To the right, near a clump of trees, a dirigible 
 was anchored. From above it looked like a mon- 
 strous caterpillar. It had moved over the attackers' 
 camp the night before under cover of darkness, 
 dropping tons of nitro-glycerine, and where brigades 
 of men had been, and accoutred horses, and batteries 
 of shining guns, there were now a dozen yawning 
 holes. 
 
 From below came a continual fire upward. They 
 knew that the aeroplane was sending wireless in- 
 formation to headquarters, and that it was directing 
 the terrible fire from the batteries. The sharp- 
 shooters hurried from the reserves. Away in the 
 distance the Krupp gun was racing forward on its 
 automobile. 
 
 Stanton was no longer amused at the frenzied 
 scurrying of the sharp-shooters. They gathered 
 below like midgets. He could see little pin-points 
 of flame from the muzzles of their rifles. The pilot 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 made half a circle, and began racing towards the 
 firing-line. 
 
 A bullet tore by with a zip. It was like the angry 
 humming of a bee. Stanton noticed little round 
 holes in the canvas wings. 
 
 The aeroplane bounded forward like an animal 
 whose feet touched the ground. Once it lurched 
 perilously as it skirted an air-pocket. It righted 
 itself in a moment. 
 
 Stanton began tapping his notes. It would be 
 his last message. In a minute and a half they would 
 be over the batteries; in five they would be past 
 their own firing-line; in ten they would descend. 
 
 He noticed that the rattle of the frame was not so 
 loud now. The motor seemed to chug with less 
 violence. The pilot throttled his engine and began 
 to volplane. He turned around. 
 
 "Bullet through the petrol-tank, sir," he shouted. 
 
 Stanton could hear him. The rattle of the frame 
 had given way to a sharp metallic quiver. The 
 tearing force of the air became a gentle fanning. 
 
 "Can't you reach the lines?" Stanton asked. 
 
 "No, sir! I can only volplane down." 
 
 They were now nearing the batteries. If they 
 volplaned, they would drop well within the firing- 
 line. 
 
 They were moving forward slowly, using up the 
 last few drops of gasoline. The pilot was still 
 turned, waiting orders. 
 
 Behind him Stanton heard the cooing of the 
 pigeons. He leaned back, and opened the bars of 
 
 
BIPLANE NO. 2 
 
 the cage. They fluttered out with a quick whirr of 
 wings. 
 
 They could reach the ground, of course. The 
 pilot was one of the best in the corps. He had 
 raised his goggles, and his keen grey eyes bored 
 through Stanton. 
 
 After all, there was no disgrace in being a prisoner 
 of war. What else was there ? 
 
 The biplane was beginning to settle now. He 
 would have to decide at once. He looked at the 
 pilot's eye again. It was very like the eye of the 
 grim old commander in the trench. 
 
 He wondered how he would act. Then he knew. 
 
 " Shall I volplane, sir?" asked the pilot. 
 
 "No," he said, "no; turn her over." 
 
 There would now be no chance for the enemy's 
 mechanics to patch her up. He was glad he thought 
 of that. 
 
 Anyway, if he were leading a charge, there would 
 be an even chance against his life. He wished the 
 wireless were working, so that he could have wired 
 good-bye. 
 
 The field beneath was floating upward. They 
 sank through the air as into a cushion. 
 
 The old general, he knew, would be sorry. He 
 was one of his favourites. If the old chap knew 
 what Stanton was doing, Stanton thought, he would 
 have nodded his head in grim approbation. 
 
 The pilot nestled himself in his seat and grasped 
 the steering-wheel. Then he threw himself side- 
 wise with a quick lurch. 
 
 15 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 Stanton was looking downward. The field swung 
 around like a pendulum. He felt violently sick. 
 He braced himself and looked down again. Bat- 
 teries, horses, and men flew upward as from a 
 catapult. 
 
 16 
 
II 
 
 SLAVES OF THE GUN 
 
 A SHELL, Litvin knew, would burst over the quick- 
 firer at most within the hour, but before that he 
 wanted to empty his automatic into the lieutenant's 
 neck. 
 
 Or, if he didn't get the chance to do it, Gorkoi, 
 who was oiling up the breech-block, would do it 
 for him. 
 
 The crew of the quick-firer were lazing in the 
 redoubt, waiting for the jangle of the telephone at 
 the lieutenant's elbow. The sight setter was poring 
 over his chart. Moriarity, the black-haired Irish- 
 man with the flags tattooed on his chest, stood 
 ready to heave at the lanyard at the word of com- 
 mand. The huge disappearing gun seemed to doze 
 with the men. A word from the lieutenant and it 
 would rise with the quick, easy action of a cat, peer 
 over the parapet of the redoubt, cough its shell out 
 with a vicious bark, and slip back into position again 
 in less than half a minute. 
 
 The attacking fleet had passed Point Toro by now 
 and* were well into the bay. At five miles' distance, 
 the squat grey cruisers and dreadnoughts looked 
 like corks bobbing on the water, even through 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 glasses. Before them threads of heavy black smoke 
 poured from the funnels of the torpedo boats. Over 
 it all hung a blue heat haze. 
 
 It was hard to believe that the crawling grey 
 specks in the distance would soon vomit shell and 
 shrapnel at the forts along the canal bank. It 
 seemed impossible that in a few minutes the bloated 
 mortars in their pits, and the long, graceful twelve- 
 inch guns on their pivots, and the short, vicious 
 quick-firers would shell the moving grey spots, 
 There was a lull in the air, a feeling as if life had 
 passed through one period and was resting for a 
 moment before taking up the next. 
 
 Six weeks ago Litvin and Gorkoi had been in the 
 steerage of a liner bound from Petrograd to New 
 York, coming to America to make their fortunes 
 Now they were in a redoubt by the Panama Canal 
 and within a few moments of battle. 
 
 What the war was about they had no idea. The 
 policy of the nation towards contiguous countries 
 had aroused the enmity of an European power, bul 
 what had that to do with them? Their work was 
 to carry shells and heave the lanyard. 
 
 And ten weeks before they had both been privates 
 in the Grodno Artillery Corps, working off theii 
 conscript period by tending the giant Krupp guns 
 Their service had been one long nightmare of drill- 
 ing, oiling the steel monsters, pulling at the heav) 
 breech-blocks, obeying the barked commands oj 
 the brutal, red-faced sergeant from the Dneipei 
 country and the whims of the tall, tanned captain 
 18 
 
SLAVES OF THE GUN 
 
 from Moscow, who would lash his men in the 
 face with his riding crop when the weather was 
 bad. 
 
 They had one week around Second Avenue and 
 the wharves of the North River, fruitlessly looking 
 for work, when they fell into the hands of the trim 
 infantry sergeant in City Hall Park. After all, to 
 enlist was better than to starve. 
 
 A few weeks' vigorous drilling in the new words 
 of command, a rigid disciplining from Lieutenant 
 Monahan, and here they were, crouching behind 
 the shield of the nine-pounder, ready for Moriarity's 
 quick lurch of shoulder and the crashing boom of 
 the gun. 
 
 The fleet was closer now. Their greyish hulks 
 against the blue and green of the water gave them 
 the appearance of sinister sea animals. White smoke 
 trailed in thin wisps from their stacks, broke into 
 elusive puffy clouds and blotches, and then dis- 
 appeared. Microscopic blurs of white showed where 
 the bows cut the water into foam. 
 
 Against all this Litvin felt a fierce dull surge of 
 anger. Gorkoi felt it, too. They had come to the 
 new country to make their fortunes, not to lose 
 their lives. They had left one purgatory to drop 
 into a hell. What had they to do with all this? 
 All they wanted was something to eat and a place 
 to sleep. They were warring against no one. 
 
 The lieutenant shut his binoculars with a snap. 
 They wouldn't have to wait much longer, he knew. 
 The fleet was within effective range. 
 
 19 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 To the right and left men were scurrying to and 
 fro in the sixty-foot-deep concrete pits where the 
 mortars were concealed. Men were busy around 
 the twelve-inch guns, examining lights, placing 
 shells, oiling bearings. To their right on the hill a 
 head bobbed up and disappeared where another 
 quick-firer was hidden. Somewhere in the back- 
 ground the electricians sat before their key-boards, 
 ready to press the buttons that would fire the sub- 
 marine mines. Somewhere in the background the 
 range finders spied from clumps of trees, figuring 
 out to the yard the distance of the grey hulks. Some- 
 where farther back were the commander's head- 
 quarters. No sign of life was anywhere. Down 
 the bay the periscope of a submarine showed for 
 a moment. A fish flashed in the sun as it leaped 
 where the submarine passed. Beyond the shield 
 of the quick-firer a grasshopper broke into a resonant 
 trill. 
 
 The fleet began to take definite shape. They 
 were no longer grey blotches on a blue field; they 
 were behemoths of forged steel. In the distance 
 Litvin could see the short, bulky smoke-stacks and 
 the vague, graceful lines of the solid turrets. They 
 stretched out in a long, sweeping curve. There was 
 no blotch of white at their bows now. They were 
 motionless. 
 
 The small black specks that were torpedo des- 
 troyers began racing in front of the fleet. They 
 slid around and about each other as in some figure 
 of a grotesque dance. Heavy, viscid smoke poured 
 20 
 
SLAVES OF THE GUN 
 
 from their funnels like flying black banners. They 
 were making the smoke screen through which the 
 fleet would fire. 
 
 Around the nine-pounder the crew were passing 
 the time easily enough. The sight setter leaned 
 over and passed a packet of cigarettes to Moriarity. 
 Big, blond Schmidt pottered around the bomb-proof 
 ammunition case. Gorkoi leaned against the shield 
 and looked at the lieutenant with heavy, sullen eyes. 
 His stupid, moonlike face was dilated into a strained 
 scowl. Litvin knew he would do the trick if he got 
 the chance. Litvin would rather do it himself. 
 The lieutenant lounged near the telephone and 
 listened. 
 
 If, argued Litvin and Gorkoi, anyone were to 
 blame for their position, it was the authority of 
 which this lieutenant was the symbol. They had 
 served five years in an artillery regiment in Russia. 
 Good! They had patience to stand that. They 
 had come here to live. They had asked for bread 
 they had been given flaming shrapnel. They were 
 not going to stand that, by God! they said, as they 
 fingered the Colts in their holsters. There were 
 officers' graves in Manchuria for which the Japanese 
 were not responsible. 
 
 The telephone broke into a subdued jangle. 
 
 " Ready there, boys," the lieutenant called. The 
 muscles of his cheek bones began to bulge. 
 
 He talked into the instrument in staccato jerks. 
 
 Over where the fleet was, there was now a cloud 
 of brownish smoke. It stretched in a long sweep 
 
 21 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 on either side, and rose like a wall vertically. It 
 looked as if an immense piece of black cloth had 
 been hung half-way across the bar. At the top it 
 broke into thin wisps and floated upward. From 
 below billows of smoke rose to repair the frayed 
 edges. Here and there a torpedo boat dashed in 
 and out of the screen, like a rabbit scuttling in and 
 out of a hutch. 
 
 Away back in the Mindi Hills, Litvin knew, 
 infantry were crawling forward on their stomachs 
 in the grass, ready to repulse with the edge of the 
 bayonet any attempt at landing. He knew they 
 were swarming along the canal banks that swept in 
 a zigzag behind him. 
 
 The feeling of rage that possessed him was pass- 
 ing off somewhat. Though he still burned with 
 resentment at what he felt was a wrong done him, 
 and though he still fiddled with the revolver at 
 his belt when the lieutenant's back was turned, 
 what was acting on him was the feeling of hope- 
 lessness the artilleryman has in combat. He felt 
 as if he and the rest of the crew and the men in 
 the mortar pits were only helots to the pulsing iron 
 engines that fought each other with flame and steel, 
 and that boomed and thundered and crashed with 
 the rage of battle. 
 
 The smoke screen in the distance had become 
 darker. It hung over the bar like a pall. One felt 
 as if something horribly sinister lurked behind it, 
 ready to spring out in an instant. It was as the 
 mouth of a hole in which there were terrible 
 22 
 
SLAVES OF THE GUN 
 
 writhing reptiles that would strike with venomous 
 fangs. 
 
 The strain of waiting was beginning to tell on 
 the men in the redoubt. The lieutenant walked 
 about the gun with nervous, hesitating steps. Litvin 
 noticed that Moriarity's cigarette had gone out, but 
 that he still held it tightly clenched between his 
 teeth. 
 
 And then the twelve-inch gun on the right went 
 off with a deafening crash. 
 
 There were two more muffled reports from the 
 mortar pit up the hill. And the twelve-inch fired 
 again. 
 
 In the middle of the black smoke screen there 
 were two violet spots that flickered for a moment 
 and went out, like electric bulbs. The shells passed 
 overhead, screaming as they went. 
 
 Litvin turned around and looked; there were 
 two yawning holes up the hill. From the distance 
 the report of the naval guns came like dull thuds 
 on a bass drum. 
 
 The smoke screen was spangled with little crim- 
 son and violet spots. The air overhead was filled 
 with the noise of the shells passing. Sometimes 
 there was a fierce, vicious hum as of a top spinning, 
 and again a shrill whistle such as a boy would 
 make, and again a shell would pass with a heart- 
 breaking scream. Then the sounds would be blotted 
 out by the deafening crash from the forts. 
 
 Around the quick-firer there was nothing to do 
 yet. They would have to wait until one of the 
 
 23 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 slim, grey torpedo boats tried to slip past, or until 
 the cruisers edged along with the tanned, hawk- 
 faced sharpshooters fondling their heavy-bore rifles 
 in the turrets, or until the fleet had landed a battalion 
 of devil-may-care infantry that would storm the hill 
 with cold steel. Then the crew of the gun would 
 become perspiring, righting devils, and Litvin and 
 Gorkoi would get their chance. 
 
 Along the hill heavy smoke rings rose in the air 
 gracefully from the mouths of the twelve-inchers. 
 They ascended in perfect white* circles, widened 
 and broke into fantastic whorls and graceful ara- 
 besques. Occasionally a puffy cloud of smoke sped 
 upward like a gigantic baseball. Little wisps of 
 white vapour sailed by like detached pieces of cloud. 
 
 All forts and ships were in action now. The 
 twelve-inch guns and the mortars fired with ear- 
 splitting crashes and in resonant booms. Shells 
 would flash overhead like monster birds. From 
 the distance the firing of the fleet resembled the 
 popping of corks. 
 
 The fleet was drawing closer. Their spars and 
 turrets showed through the smoke like trees in a 
 mist. Crimson flashes flicked in and out of their 
 sides. 
 
 Back along the canal bank an armoured train 
 puffed slowly. It seemed to advance with nervous, 
 spasmodic jerks. Its square, squat carriage and 
 dwarfed engine gave it the appearance of a child's 
 toy in the distance. As it stopped, men emerged 
 in hordes like swarming bees. They lined up 
 24 
 
SLAVES OF THE GUN 
 
 rapidly and disappeared into the undergrowth. 
 Litvin wondered where they were going. The 
 train backed off with queer spats of smoke from 
 the funnel of the engine. 
 
 No one spoke in the redoubt now. The sight 
 setter had clamped his telephone receiver to his 
 head and had sunk into his seat. Litvin thought 
 somehow of a picture he had seen of a man in the 
 electric chair. Moriarity had taken off his tunic 
 and slouch hat and crouched by the lanyard, a 
 curly-headed, muscular figure in his singlet. 
 Schmidt stood by the bomb-proof ammunition 
 wagon. The lieutenant poked about the mechanism 
 of the gun with an electric torch. Gorkoi still 
 looked at him stupidly. 
 
 Once the nine-pounder began firing, Litvin knew, 
 it would not be long until the fleet spotted it. One 
 piece of shrapnel would finish both gun and crew. 
 If he and Gorkoi could only act immediately, they 
 might have a chance of escape. 
 
 The fleet was nearer. A shell passed close over- 
 head and buried itself a hundred yards farther on. 
 The ground shook as if someone were beating it 
 with a gigantic club. A fierce hissing sound was 
 heard. Litvin shivered spasmodically. 
 
 The lieutenant turned around, and looked at him. 
 
 "Steady now, steady there, boy," he laughed. 
 
 Litvin didn't understand, but the tone surprised 
 him. If a man had shivered in Cronstadt, he 
 would have been struck in the face with a heavy 
 metal scabbard. 
 
 25 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 The fleet was within two miles. They steamed 
 forward in a crescent, the small, vicious torpedo 
 boats running in front, as a terrier trots in front 
 of a mastiff. The bay was covered with fleeting 
 blotches of black and drab smoke. Around the 
 bows of the cruisers was a dense grey covering 
 from the fire of the heavy turret guns. 
 
 The telephone jangled again. The lieutenant 
 picked up the receiver, and a few minutes later 
 hung it up with a click. He spoke to the sight 
 setter a moment. The sight setter leaned forward 
 and fiddled at his wheel. 
 
 " Ready there?" he shouted. 
 
 "All ready," Moriarity answered. His voice rose 
 in a sort of chant. 
 
 "Let her go then." 
 
 Moriarity spat on his hands and heaved at the 
 lanyard. 
 
 Litvin never knew what happened afterwards. 
 He found himself passing cordite shells from Gorkoi 
 to Schmidt, who opened the breech-block, slammed 
 them in and locked it again. The roar of the gun 
 seemed continuous. 
 
 The bay was one mass of mist. Overhead a 
 shell burst with a shriek. Chunks of metal flew 
 around, carrying tiny smoke trails. A heavy smell of 
 burnt gunpowder was in the air. The figures in the 
 redoubt took on the appearance of hazy phantoms. 
 
 In the bay Litvin could see the turrets of the 
 fleet. They seemed to oscillate in the mist. The 
 heavy naval guns fired in sheets of flame. 
 26 
 
SLAVES OF THE GUN 
 
 The big twelve-inch gun on the left was silent. 
 Its long barrel and heavy carriage were now a mass 
 of charred and twisted steel. Its delicate mecha- 
 nism was a heap of scrap iron. Its crew were 
 lying in distorted, grotesque attitudes about the 
 ramparts of sand bags that had protected them. 
 
 Around the quick-firer the men were working in 
 a frenzy. Moriarity had thrown off his singlet, 
 and stood by the lanyard naked to the waist. The 
 sight setter steered frantically as he studied his 
 chart. The lieutenant glared through his binocular 
 at the mist on the bar. 
 
 Now, thought Litvin, would be a good time to 
 act. But he was too busy passing the shells. 
 
 Something grey glided through the mist on the 
 water. It scurried around the columns of blue 
 smoke. The lieutenant began shouting wildly. 
 Litvin saw it was a torpedo destroyer. 
 
 The sight setter swung the nose of the gun to 
 the left, and then downward. Litvin saw the boat 
 creep for a moment in the space between the clouds. 
 Then they fired. 
 
 "At the funnels! At the funnels! At the fun- 
 nels!" the lieutenant yelled. 
 
 They fired again. 
 
 Through the mist Litvin saw a burst of flame 
 from the deck of the destroyer. It licked upward 
 in a broad red flare. Then the smoke swallowed 
 it. 
 
 Litvin was becoming accustomed to the sounds. 
 There was the terrible crash of the twelve-inch 
 
 27 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 guns and the deep bass boom of the mortars. 
 Somewhere up the hill something exploded every 
 minute with claps of thunder. The quick-firer had 
 a sharp, vicious crackle. The guns of the fleet 
 thundered with the boom of great waves lashing 
 rocks. 
 
 They stopped firing to clean out the gun. The 
 wet mop struck the barrel with a series of violent 
 hisses. Steam rushed out in clouds. 
 
 Litvin had no longer the nerve to carry out his 
 plan. The lieutenant was safe from him, at any 
 rate. He felt only an immense pity for himself. 
 
 Gorkoi was still resolute. As the lieutenant 
 flitted by in the steam, he lugged out his automatic. 
 He swung it up to his hip. 
 
 The redoubt seemed to jump clean up in the 
 air. It rocked backward and forward. There was 
 a gigantic bulge inward on the earthworks a heavy, 
 sulphurous smell. 
 
 Litvin's knees gave way. The nine-pounder 
 seemed to tilt vertically. The redoubt, too, was 
 swinging like the weight of a clock. Battle was a 
 half- for gotten dream. 
 
 The lieutenant was shaking him by the shoulder. 
 
 "You're all right," he was saying. "You're all 
 right, do you understand? All right!" 
 
 His voice seemed to come across illimitable dis- 
 tances. 
 
 Litvin pulled himself together. 
 
 "You're not hit," the lieutenant repeated. "Do 
 you understand, you're all right!" 
 28 
 
SLAVES OF THE GUN 
 
 Litvin wished he had died. 
 
 He looked around. Gorkoi was huddled up by 
 the broken earthwork. There was a red stain where 
 his face had been. 
 
 The lieutenant stopped as he passed and put his 
 handkerchief over it. 
 
 A little farther on Moriarity lay at full length 
 across his mop. There was a heavy, irregular scarlet 
 splotch across his bared back. 
 
 Schmidt staggered from the bomb-proof ammu- 
 nition case to the gun, with a cordite shell. The 
 gun setter was leaning back in his seat. 
 
 Litvin was shaking terribly. He knew Gorkoi 
 was dead. He felt as if he had lost all anchorage. 
 He wished he were up in the clouds of smoke, 
 where the shells and shrapnel lashed past. 
 
 The lieutenant turned around and smiled at him. 
 
 "You're all right, boy," he said; "you're all 
 right." 
 
 Litvin felt a warm splash on his hand. He looked 
 down. There was no stain where he expected blood. 
 
 He put his hand up to his face. He found he 
 was crying. 
 
 Two figures crept through the grass. They 
 jumped into the redoubt. Litvin saw the lieutenant 
 giving orders. 
 
 He staggered forward and picked up the lan- 
 yard. Schmidt rammed in the shell and locked 
 the breech. 
 
 The lieutenant rapped a crisp command, and 
 Litvin heaved as he had seen Moriarity do. 
 
 29 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 He went on heaving, time after time. The 
 figures passing the shells worked with the speed 
 and accuracy of mechanisms. As Schmidt opened 
 the breech, Litvin caught for the moment a 
 glimpse of tousled yellow hair and bloodshot 
 eyes. 
 
 To Litvin the battle had taken on a vague, un- 
 real aspect. He felt that the lanyard he was pulling 
 was his only protection against the flashing, scream- 
 ing, reeling monsters into whose quarrel he had 
 intruded. 
 
 Down the hill smoke rolled in billows like a 
 fluid. At other times it rose like an evaporation 
 from the ground. Sometimes there was an open 
 space. Across the smoke, three miles to the front, 
 the waters of the bay splashed under the sun in 
 tiny, flashing pin-points. Back of him, the canal, 
 with its clearing and fringe of forest, stood out 
 like a picture in a book. 
 
 Out in the bay boats were reeling in a drunken 
 frenzy. They swayed from side to side and seemed 
 to plunge in and out of the smoke chasms. Once 
 Litvin saw a cruiser drift by in a splash of flame. 
 Half a mile out a dreadnought sank placidly into 
 the water, and as Litvin looked she was gone. 
 Boatloads of sailors and marines drifted about like 
 pieces of wreckage. 
 
 From the heaving on the lanyard, Litvin 's arms 
 had become heavy as bars of lead. There was a 
 dull ache to his back when he bent to the pull. 
 His eyes were blinded with sweat. 
 
 30 
 
SLAVES OF THE GUN 
 
 Occasionally the lieutenant would look towards 
 him. 
 
 "Good boy," he would shout; "good boy!" 
 
 Then Litvin felt as though his heart would burst. 
 
 The lieutenant's smile and words were all he 
 had to cling to now. He once touched the auto- 
 matic in its holster, and recoiled as from a shock. 
 
 He braced his shoulders and heaved time after 
 time. 
 
 All the action appeared to him as a wild night- 
 mare from which he would soon wake up. The 
 incidents of battle were as strange and disjointed 
 to him as the action of the Apocalypse. They were 
 as things he might have read in school, distorted 
 and set awry by years of forgetfulness. 
 
 Once a dirigible passed overhead from its shelter 
 on the hill. From below it looked like a monstrous 
 caterpillar. The whir of its propellers struck him 
 as the humming of a thousand fans. It seemed 
 to glide through the air as on rollers. 
 
 It passed over the bay and veered around. A 
 pair of torpedo destroyers raced after it like grey- 
 hounds. Litvin could see small figures scrambling 
 over the whaleback decks. 
 
 The dirigible hung over a cruiser for a minute, 
 motionless. Clouds of smoke poured from the 
 cruiser's smokestacks. The bow cut through the 
 water like a giant knife. The cruiser made straight 
 for the shore. 
 
 "Look! Look!" the lieutenant yelled. "Oh, 
 my God!" 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 The dirigible followed lazily. 
 
 The torpedo boats cut through the water. Smoke 
 came from their funnels horizontally. 
 
 Something like a black speck dropped from the 
 dirigible. It was like a drop of ink against an 
 immense background of sky. 
 
 "Hi, hi, hi!" The lieutenant raised himself on 
 his toes and flapped his arms. 
 
 The cruiser crumpled in a blinding crimson blur. 
 Wisps of black smoke curled upward. There was 
 a forest of specks where it had been. 
 
 The dirigible turned around and made for the 
 centre of the bay. The torpedo boats seemed to 
 heel over as they turned to follow. They pivoted 
 around in a swirl of white foam. 
 
 The dirigible floated slowly towards the flagship 
 of the fleet. 
 
 A puff of white smoke came from the forward 
 deck of the first torpedo boat. Something seemed 
 to flash upward. A moment later the second tor- 
 pedo boat fired. 
 
 There was a speck of flame like the flash of a 
 lighting match along the dirigible's flank. The 
 speck widened with a report like a gigantic fire- 
 cracker. There was something like a huge flaming 
 comet in the sky. 
 
 The dirigible plunged downward in a crimson 
 blaze. A pillar of steam went up where it struck 
 the water. 
 
 Litvin could hardly keep on his feet now. Only 
 the lieutenant's smile and cheery yell kept 
 
 32 
 
 
SLAVES OF THE GUN 
 
 him from dropping. His knees were giving way. 
 Huge weights seemed to pull his shoulders down. 
 There was a dull, insistent ache between his 
 eyes. 
 
 He was no longer afraid. He was just dead 
 tired. He could not believe that he had started 
 out to shoot the lieutenant that morning. Why, 
 it was only the sight of the lieutenant kept him 
 standing by his post. 
 
 He had forgotten Gorkoi, lying crumpled up at 
 the rampart, with his smashed face showing red 
 through the handkerchief. 
 
 He felt as though he were at a theatre, and as if 
 he were sleepy. What was happening took place 
 vaguely. It had no interest for him. An aeroplane 
 crept above them, whirring like the wheel of a 
 lathe. It had come out of its small hangar on 
 board the flagship's deck. As it passed over a 
 mortar pit, a shell caught it flush in the chassis. 
 Pieces of metal and strips of canvas swirled down 
 like monster snowflakes. 
 
 Another time, out of the mist at the foot of the 
 hill, a battalion of infantry dashed forward rapidly. 
 Their bayonets were fixed. 
 
 " Shove her down," the lieutenant ordered. 
 
 The gun setter dropped the muzzle into range. 
 
 Schmidt hurried to the ammunition case. 
 
 "Shrapnel, you fool!" the lieutenant snapped. 
 
 The battalion was a thousand yards away. 
 
 Litvin heard this order. He set his feet apart 
 and fired. 
 
 33 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 Shrapnel burst over the platoon like a Bengal 
 light. There was a twenty-yard gap in it when 
 the flash cleared. 
 
 They fired again and again. The line closed up 
 and rushed. There was hardly a company now. 
 
 Then grey, silent figures sprang up in front of 
 the redoubt. They fixed up the tripods of machine 
 guns, and squinted at the advancing line. In the 
 haze the guns had the appearance of top-heavy 
 insects. 
 
 The guns began to splutter and hiss. 
 
 "Good work, good work," the lieutenant was 
 cheering. 
 
 There were not more than twenty men charging 
 now, and now not more than a dozen, and again 
 only six, and then none at all. The machine guns 
 stopped their vicious barking. The squad took 
 them down and disappeared again. 
 
 There was another vague period. A mine went 
 up in the bay in a black column of water, mud and 
 metal. Spars shot into the air. Then it seemed to 
 Litvin that they weren't firing so often now. 
 
 Then somewhere there was a bugle calling. 
 
 He stood still by the lanyards until the lieutenant 
 walked over to him and thumped him on the shoulder. 
 
 "It's over now," he said. "That's ' cease firing'." 
 
 Litvin looked around. There was still the hazy 
 mist of smoke. In the bay two ships drifted help- 
 lessly, with their flags down. Along the shore there 
 were others beached. In the distance a hulk burned 
 dully. 
 
 34 
 
SLAVES OF THE GUN 
 
 In front of him he could see the water sparkling 
 under the sun. Then there was the hazy fire zone. 
 Then behind was the riotous green of the jungle 
 and the silvery white line of the canal. 
 
 He remembered them little by little. 
 
 The lieutenant was grinning at him. 
 
 "You pulled that lanyard finely, young fellow." 
 
 Litvin tried to speak, but his throat seemed like 
 a piece of hard leather. He raised his hand in 
 salute. 
 
 The lieutenant began kicking the empty brass 
 cartridge cases away from the gun. 
 
 " Bully little fellow, that Russian," he thought. 
 "Fine little chap. Wonder why the deuce he is 
 looking at me so queerly?" 
 
 35 
 
Ill 
 
 IN A CELLAR 
 
 THEY remained in the room behind the shop 
 until the third volley of riflery crackled on the other 
 side of the bridge. Even then they might have 
 stayed, but they heard several half-choked shrieks, 
 and suddenly the shop door burst open and a woman 
 rushed in. She took three little steps forward and 
 tumbled headlong. 
 
 Then they knew they had better go downstairs 
 at once. 
 
 The little woman on the floor made no move- 
 ment. She was lying on her face. Her short, bushy 
 black hair had become loosed from its net. The 
 heavy red stain on her blouse, just beneath the 
 shoulder blade, was widening rapidly. They knew 
 she was dead. 
 
 Then suddenly the rifles began, and a dog out in 
 the street howled in panic. 
 
 Sonia laid down her baby. She crossed to the 
 sofa near the door and attempted to pick up the 
 little withered body of the old shopkeeper. None 
 of them made a move to help her. She found she 
 couldn't lift him. She dragged him to the door and 
 towards the cellar steps. 
 
 36 
 
IN A CELLAR 
 
 The red-bearded ragpicker was past her in an 
 instant. His iron-shod heels clattered on the stones. 
 The fat woman who had the old clothes shop up 
 the street hesitated a moment and came after her. 
 The big, black-bearded cantor picked up the child 
 and followed. 
 
 She got him down at last and dragged him to 
 the darkest corner. A sombre yellow light trickled 
 through the grating. The ragpicker crushed past 
 her and squeezed himself between the walls. 
 
 The old man was very weak. Beyond a stifled 
 groan and the wheezing in his throat, he had uttered 
 no sound for hours. He kept his eyes closed. 
 
 The second-hand clothes dealer came down the 
 stairs with the caution of a cat. She held her skirts 
 up with her right hand. Her left clutched a little 
 parcel of clothes. The cantor was stumbling down 
 behind her. Sonia could see the child's white face 
 against his big black beard. 
 
 Outside, the streets were deserted. Only those 
 who were old and helpless were left in the houses. 
 Some were flying along the country roads. Others 
 were hiding in the hedgerows. The rest were being 
 shot and stabbed and clubbed and trampled to death 
 in the alleyways. 
 
 It had all started trivially. An officer of Cossacks 
 had been riding through the Ghetto. His horse had 
 stumbled on the cobbles and a group of schoolboys 
 laughed. The officer lashed at them with his riding 
 switch. A crowd gathered and he had to sabre his 
 way out. In an hour the Black Hundred had struck. 
 
 37 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 Sonia's district was far from the spot where the 
 pogrom started, but the Hundred and the peasants 
 were swarming in every street. Sonia's husband 
 had gone over the bridge. She knew he would 
 never come back. She never expected him. She 
 hoped he had been shot clean through the forehead 
 and had been thrown in the canal. Most of the 
 victims would have their heads crushed like eggs 
 and fall under the heavy iron-shod shoes of the 
 peasants, or under the hoofs of the dragoons' 
 chargers. 
 
 There were now only Maxim Litvin, the old 
 storekeeper, her father and the six-months-old child. 
 The cantor and the ragpicker and the woman from 
 the second-hand clothes shop had rushed in when 
 the dragoons had thundered by the bank of the 
 canal. 
 
 They had been together a half-hour in the back 
 room before they moved downstairs, and no one 
 had spoken. The ragpicker was the first to enter, 
 and he snarled when the cantor came fussing in, 
 and tried to bar the door against the old clothes 
 dealer. He believed that the fewer there hid to- 
 gether, the more chance there would be for escape. 
 None of them had been in a pogrom before. All 
 had suffered the extortion of the Black Hundred, 
 the unscrupulous grafting of the police and the 
 hatred of the moujiks. They had read and heard 
 of the massacres in Nijni Novgorod and in Odessa, 
 and they knew what to expect. 
 
 The ragpicker had scurried around and aroun< 
 
 38 
 
IN A CELLAR 
 
 the room, listening at the door, peeking through the 
 windows, looking even up the chimney; the cantor 
 stood in a corner, motionless and eagle-eyed. The 
 clothes dealer had plumped into a chair and rocked 
 silently to and fro. 
 
 Sonia spent the time walking the floor with the 
 child and watching the old man. She couldn't tell 
 him what was happening, but she wondered if he 
 knew. 
 
 They could hear sounds from the bridge faintly 
 when the door was closed. The rumble was like 
 very distant thunder. When the door was open, 
 the gunshots and screams were quite distinct. The 
 ragpicker had opened it once and shut it quickly. 
 He would go over every few minutes and press his 
 ear against a crack. Then he would run around the 
 windows. 
 
 Back of the houses were the country roads. In 
 front the canal crept in a half-moon. Along the 
 canal bank a band of students lined up with rifles, 
 to pick out heads in the water. The rioters were 
 shutting off any escape by the bridge. Companies 
 of armed peasantry closed up the roads, urging their 
 shaggy ponies along with long, whining whips. 
 Members of the Hundred flashed in and out of the 
 surge, knifing, shooting and vanishing. 
 
 The six in the room knew little of what was going 
 on at the bridge. They knew that there was killing, 
 and that the Moldavian and Albanian peasants were 
 at work in the alleyways. The door was closed 
 when the rifle fire began. 
 
 39 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 The ragpicker opened the door, and they could 
 hear shrieks and groans in the distance. Above the 
 babble arose the angry chatter of a machine gun 
 that had been captured from the infantry. The 
 mob had cornered a crowd of Jews in a cul-de-sac. 
 Then a few flying figures had dashed down the 
 street, and the little woman had tottered in. And 
 they had gone downstairs. 
 
 In the cellar it was worse than upstairs. Through 
 the grating to the street they could hear everything. 
 One long shriek predominated. It began with a 
 short sob and ended in a wild crescendo and paused, 
 and then it began and ended, and began and ended 
 again. 
 
 The child woke up and commenced whimpering. 
 Sonia took it from the cantor and nestled it close. 
 It fell asleep again. The cantor squeezed himself 
 back to the damp wall. 
 
 They heard steps flying down the pavement, 
 followed by the drum of a horse's hoofs on the 
 hardened clay. Two staccato cracks from a rifle, 
 and the rider returned leisurely up the street. 
 
 Sonia stole up the cellar steps and into the shop. 
 She opened the door cautiously and looked out. 
 The butcher from two doors down lay on his back 
 in the sunlight, with his big carving knife in his 
 hand. His head was twisted curiously to one side, 
 and his black beard was grey with dust. His sheep- 
 skin cap lay a few feet farther on. Up the street a 
 woman was crawling slowly on her hands and knees 
 towards an open door, and as Sonia looked the 
 40 
 
IN A CELLAR 
 
 woman lay down and curled herself up like a child 
 going to sleep. From the bridge there came a 
 sound like the beating of waves on a strand. 
 
 She went back to the cellar. The cantor had 
 taken the child up from where she had laid it, and 
 was rocking it in his arms. The clothes dealer was 
 muttering to herself. She went over and felt the 
 old man's heart. It was beating very faintly. She 
 took off her knitted jacket and laid it under his head. 
 His eyes flickered for a moment. 
 
 The ragpicker roamed about the cellar as he had 
 about the room above. He stood under the grating 
 and looked up. In the light, his short red beard 
 and skinny neck above his filthy grey muffler showed 
 in a saturnine silhouette. 
 
 Sonia felt a rising anger against her husband. 
 Why had he gone out when he could have stayed 
 in and perhaps saved them? He might have hit 
 upon some plan to foil the rioters. Even if they did 
 escape, what could she do, with the child and the 
 old man? 
 
 She stole upstairs again and looked out. The 
 sounds seemed somewhat fainter. She thought of 
 venturing the two streets to the canal bank, but she 
 remembered the child. 
 
 The cantor had again taken it up. He seemed to 
 get comfort from the little body. 
 
 He gave it back to her reluctantly. The rag- 
 picker looked up the grating again. 
 
 "Is it over yet?" asked the cantor. 
 
 " Don't talk to me, you! Do you hear?" 
 
 4 1 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 The cantor sank back in his corner. He gave a 
 sudden sob. 
 
 Nobody paid any attention to the clothes dealer. 
 She lay huddled up against the wall. The child 
 slept peacefully. Sonia put her hand over its mouth 
 to feel if it breathed. 
 
 They heard staggering footsteps somewhere. 
 Sounds appeared to magnify in the house. Sonia 
 could hear the ticking of the clock two flights above. 
 She put down the child again and ran upstairs. 
 
 Little Mendel Husik, the tailor, was reeling down 
 the street. His cap was awry and his caftan open. 
 He was drunk. Suddenly he saw her and began 
 singing: "There once was a widow in Little Russia. 
 She had eighteen children." He took off his cap 
 and bowed grotesquely to her. 
 
 Sonia slammed the door and ran downstairs. She 
 could hear him reeling along and singing. He 
 would go along like that, she knew, until he walked 
 into the waiting Hundred. 
 
 "Is it over yet?" asked the cantor. 
 
 "I don't know, little father," she answered. He 
 looked so white that she left the child with him. 
 
 People came running down the street. There 
 were a few shots. Some passed the house. They 
 heard a scramble in the next house, followed by 
 crashing blows. Steps went out again. Something 
 groaned next door, with a rattle in the throat. Then 
 more fugitives and cracks like the lashing of whips. 
 A body fell over the grating and obscured the light. 
 There was a drip, drip, drip, to the cellar floor. 
 
 42 
 
IN A CELLAR 
 
 A pause, and the dog outside began a long, heart- 
 broken howling. Sonia felt a shiver in her breast 
 and cold on her cheekbones. Her breath seemed 
 to stop. 
 
 Sonia knew the Christian better than the others, 
 and she couldn't conceive how they could take part 
 in the butchery they seemed so gentle and good- 
 natured. She had once met a sergeant of Grodno 
 Hussars while on a visit to her grandmother. He 
 would come around to the kitchen and sit and look 
 at her. He seldom said a word except " Good after- 
 noon" and " Good-bye." He drank huge quantities 
 of tea from the samovar, and sat stroking the hilt 
 of his sabre. When her grandmother's cow found- 
 ered, he tramped seven miles for a veterinary surgeon. 
 When she went to the well for water, he would 
 take the pail from her and walk beside her, never 
 saying a word. When she was returning to the 
 city he caught her hand and said: " Become a 
 Christian and I will marry you," but she laughed. 
 He seemed a nice, heavy kind of fellow, who wouldn't 
 hurt a fly. She had also known two Cossacks who 
 always laughed to her when they passed the door, 
 and they seemed much too good-natured to be real 
 soldiers. 
 
 And now they were massacring her kinsfolk in the 
 alleys. She couldn't understand it. 
 
 The little old clothes dealer stirred against the 
 wall and began whining. 
 
 "Fifteen years ago we came here, Yetta Gersten 
 and myself, and fifteen years we worked by daylight 
 
 43 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 and candlelight. Every Friday, when we closed up, 
 I put a rouble into a bowl, and it's all gone now. 
 Who will marry me now with my bowl gone?" 
 
 The ragpicker spat at her in disgust. The noises 
 seemed farther off. In the distance a bell began 
 tolling with deep, sonorous notes. 
 
 "What is that for? " asked the cantor. 
 
 Nobody answered. 
 
 The old man began to stir. Sonia turned him on 
 his side. The movement wakened the child, and it 
 cried fitfully. In the distance the bell gave another 
 rich, reverberant note. Someone ran down the 
 street. 
 
 The darkness and noise were frightening the 
 child. It cried louder than ever. The old man's 
 heel scraped along the floor. The child began to 
 scream. 
 
 "Damn you ! Can't you keep her quiet ? " snapped 
 the ragpicker. 
 
 Sonia said nothing, but held the child close and 
 rocked it. The screaming gave way to explosive 
 sobs. Every time the bell clanged they shuddered 
 and waited, and held their breath for the next stroke. 
 The clang affected them like a heavy blow. 
 
 The cantor moved in his corner. A piece of 
 mortar became detached and fell on the floor. They 
 all jumped. 
 
 "It's over, perhaps," said he. 
 
 The bell gave another stroke. Sonia wished she 
 knew what it was about. She thought there was a 
 faint smell of smoke somewhere. 
 
 44 
 
IN A CELLAR 
 
 She was very tired now. The child was heavy, 
 but she felt she oughtn't to sit down. The thought 
 of her helplessness sent tears rolling down her 
 cheeks. They splashed on the child's face. She 
 wiped them off and turned her head to one side so 
 that the tears could fall to the ground. 
 
 She felt a tug at her dress. The old man had 
 turned over on his face. She turned him back on 
 his side. She knew that he wanted to tell her some- 
 thing, but she couldn't understand. His eyes 
 opened and shut spasmodically. Only husky sounds 
 came from his throat. She arranged the jacket 
 under his head again and felt his lips. They were 
 moving rapidly. She put her ear to his mouth, but 
 could not distinguish what he was whispering. 
 
 The clothes dealer was still whimpering in her 
 corner. The ragpicker flitted in and out of the 
 murky light that came from the grating. He found 
 a stick and began pushing through the bars at the 
 body lying there. He managed to move it on its 
 side several times, but it fell back with a dull thud. 
 Something splashed and squelched under his boots. 
 
 The cantor crouched in his corner. Every few 
 minutes he gave a gasping sob. Sonia remembered 
 the last time she had heard him in the synagogue. 
 His long black beard had stood out in sharp relief 
 against his white surplice, and the worshippers 
 found themselves in tears as he chanted the Kaddash 
 in his sonorous baritone. 
 
 Sonia felt they had been there for years. She 
 had seen the ragpicker only once before, but it 
 
 45 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 seemed as if they had been intimate from birth. 
 The husband who had gone out that morning and 
 never come back was like a figure in an old history. 
 She wondered why the child slept so long. They 
 had been only twenty minutes there, but a cycle of 
 days and nights appeared to have passed. What 
 life remained to them, she felt, would be spent in 
 the cellar. 
 
 Outside the clamour grew worse. The bell's 
 ringing was faster. Shrieks were louder. She could 
 hear sharp, crackling reports, which were of rifles, 
 and more muffled ones, which were of automatics 
 and revolvers. There was an angry murmuring and 
 a faint, thin cheering, and some were singing a song 
 she didn't recognise. The machine gun's chatter 
 had ceased. 
 
 She couldn't picture to herself what was happen- 
 ing. She thought of an illustration in a school book 
 of men in armour, cutting down men in white gar- 
 ments, with short, heavy swords. 
 
 Someone had opened the door upstairs and was 
 moving around with cautious steps. The fugitives 
 in the cellar crept close to the wall and cowered 
 against it. Sonia could hear the beating of the 
 hearts in the stillness. The old man did not stir. 
 The steps moved from the shop to the back room, 
 and stayed there a minute; then they ascended the 
 stairs. They came down again and they passed the 
 door to the cellar. They heard them going to and 
 fro in the shop. The front door swung open; there 
 was a sound as of a match struck against the lintel 
 
 
IN A CELLAR 
 
 of the door. Then the steps moved up the street. 
 Everyone breathed with a sobbing catch in the 
 throat. 
 
 The ragpicker darted up the cellar steps and 
 barred the door. Sonia felt as if that ended things. 
 The outer world was cast off. They were doomed 
 irrevocably to the darkness and the dank smell. 
 She wanted to dash upstairs and out in the streets, 
 and give herself up to the mob around the corner. 
 She smothered a wild desire to scream. As th bar 
 slammed to, the cantor dropped on the floor and 
 buried his face in his arms. 
 
 The mob was coming closer. They could hear 
 the cries of, " Kill the Jews ! " in the distance. Yells 
 of rage rose like the bellow of angry cattle. Occasion- 
 ally there was a tinkle of broken window glass. 
 Dust began to filter through the grating. They saw 
 each separate particle flicker in the sunlight. 
 
 Their terror was more acute now. Sonia re- 
 membered tales of the pogrom at KishinerT. A 
 cantor's head had been carried around on a pole, 
 and they had struck the face, asking it to sing. The 
 ragpicker would be torn to pieces before their eyes. 
 The child would be thrown about from one to the 
 other. The old man would get the easiest death of 
 all one blow would kill him. But what would 
 happen to herself and the old clothes woman ? 
 
 The Russian artisans were bad enough, but the 
 rioters were in the main Moldavian and Albanian 
 peasants, with wild, rolling eyes, and crowbars in 
 their hands. 
 
 47 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 They were turning the corner to the street. 
 Shrieks of agony split the air. A child was scream- 
 ing. The trample of the feet overhead was like 
 hammers pounding on a hundred anvils. 
 
 The crowd swept into the street. Noise seemed 
 to cover noise. Sonia was deafened. The clothes 
 dealer shrieked at the top of her voice. The cantor 
 cried with loud, insistent chokes. The ragpicker 
 clawed nervously at the wall. The old man lay on 
 his back with his eyeballs fixed. The child was 
 sticking her nails into Sonia's neck. Sonia pressed 
 it closer. She wanted to shriek, too, but was afraid 
 of terrifying the child more. 
 
 How long the uproar lasted she did not know. 
 She could hear people rushing into the house. 
 Other people followed them. Someone banged at 
 the cellar door. Then there was the sound of some- 
 thing falling loosely and heavily, and the banging 
 stopped. There was a long-drawn, shuddering 
 groan. 
 
 The grating was darkened by running feet. They 
 paid no attention to the figure on the bars. The 
 window of the shop broke with an ear-splitting 
 crash. 
 
 Above the turmoil, one insistent shriek rose in a 
 sharp soprano : " Kill them ! Kill them ! Kill them ! " 
 
 Down the street farther a woman cried: "Oh, 
 God! Oh, God! Oh, God!" Her voice was hoarse 
 from shouting. 
 
 Several feet dashed up the staircase and into 
 Sonia's bedroom. They were moving something 
 
IN A CELLAR 
 
 heavy. Sonia thought it was her big iron chest. 
 They staggered with it to the window and hoisted 
 it over. The window panes tinkled and the box 
 fell with a dull thud. Bellows of rage filled the 
 street. Someone cheered faintly. 
 
 There was no light in the cellar now. Sonia 
 heard a scuffle and dull blows like kicks somewhere 
 near the wall. The ragpicker was attempting to 
 stop the crying of the clothes dealer. God, she felt, 
 if that ragpicker should lay a finger on her, or on 
 the child, or on the old man! She would tear him 
 limb from limb. 
 
 The trampling became faster. The feet on the 
 grating moved with the tapping of step dancers. 
 The mob seemed to heave and surge overhead. 
 Then light flashed through the mass of legs and 
 into the cellar. Sonia could see the white face of 
 the ragpicker moving convulsively. A deafening 
 explosion followed. Someone had thrown a bomb. 
 
 The noises that had filled the street before were 
 nothing to the babble now. It seemed as if every- 
 thing had crystallised into one malignant sound. 
 She wished she could close her ears with her fingers, 
 but she couldn't lay down the child. 
 
 She thought she was fainting. She wanted them 
 to come into the cellar and finish it at once. 
 
 Her knees were growing weaker and weaker. 
 The sound of the explosion seemed to have cut her 
 heart adrift, and it was floating around on air. Cold 
 sweat was pouring from her forehead into her eyes. 
 She felt perspiration from her whole body saturate 
 
 49 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 her clothes and dampen the child's clothes. Her 
 teeth clicked together with a rapid clatter. 
 
 The feet moved off little by little from the grating, 
 and light began to trickle through. She could 
 distinguish the other forms in the cellar. The old 
 man was still rigid. Only for a slight wheeze she 
 heard when she bent down, she might have thought 
 him dead. The cantor was taut against the wall. 
 The clothes dealer's eyes protruded like those of a 
 fish. The ragpicker's face dilated in a horrible grin. 
 Every time a noise was made their bodies quivered. 
 
 Each of them would have preferred certain death 
 in the street to uncertain safety in the cellar. Their 
 eardrums were tingling. Their hearts were thump- 
 ing with the boom of bass drums. They conjured 
 up grotesque visions of the fight in the street. Red 
 spots flickered to and fro and around and up and 
 down before their eyes. 
 
 God! how long would it last? Was there no 
 chance of the troops coming? And Sonia brought 
 up for herself a vision of blue-coated Cossacks 
 advancing down the street, three abreast at a gallop, 
 with their knouts swinging and whistling, their 
 shaggy mounts dashing against the rioters. The 
 mob would give way like a flock of sheep. But the 
 troops were in their barracks. They had no orders 
 to act. They would stay there. 
 
 The mob had nearly passed now. Sonia felt they 
 were dragging bodies along with them. Thick, 
 drunken voices yelled: "Crucify them! Crucify 
 them!" 
 
 50 
 
IN A CELLAR 
 
 Then a sort of rearguard swept by, howling like 
 wolves. 
 
 The street was deserted again. Sonia found her- 
 self half sitting, half lying, on the floor. The child 
 was wide awake. Nervous shivers ran up and down 
 its body. Its heart was fluttering. Sonia scrambled 
 to her feet and ran over to the light under the grating. 
 Its face was white and its eyes closed. Its teeth 
 chattered convulsively. A slight froth was on its 
 lips. 
 
 If she could only get it warm somehow, she 
 thought. If she could get upstairs and light the 
 stove ! 
 
 Up the street doors were banging. A shiver of 
 broken glass, and something struck the street with 
 a thud. Somebody laughed. 
 
 Sonia felt her skin prickle suddenly. Some- 
 thing mysterious and terrifying was happening up 
 there. 
 
 She pressed the child as close to her as she could, 
 and hurried back to the wall. As she ran a rifle 
 shot cracked, followed by two others. The mob 
 was still murmuring angrily in the distance. They 
 were several streets away. 
 
 The cantor staggered to his feet. "I think it's 
 over now," he said. His voice sounded thin and 
 weak. It was like the voice of the child. It cracked 
 on the last word. He fell forward on his knees and 
 crumpled up. Neither the ragpicker nor the clothes 
 dealer moved. 
 
 Sonia blew softly in the child's face. She thought 
 
 5 1 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 that might warm it. She opened the front of her 
 bodice and nestled it. 
 
 There was a curious smell of smoke in the air. 
 She had noticed it before, but it was stronger now. 
 She wondered if the others had smelt it. 
 
 The doors were banging again. A scream rang 
 out, and broke off with a catch. 
 
 Cold, deadly fear seized her. She was in a panic 
 when the mob had rushed down the street, but this 
 was something sinister. She felt the fear she had 
 often felt in the dark, of having a dead hand touch 
 her in the night. 
 
 The smell of smoke was becoming more notice- 
 able. Little rasping wheezes came from the old 
 man's throat. The others seemed not to have 
 noticed it. She suddenly saw the ragpicker cross the 
 floor. He looked around. 
 
 "Over now, I think," he cackled. "Well, I think 
 I'll be going." 
 
 Sonia rushed forward and clutched his arm. A 
 door slammed to. Footsteps came along the street. 
 There was the rasping sound of rifle butts being 
 dragged along the pavement. The ragpicker scurried 
 back to the corner. 
 
 Little wisps of smoke crept through the grating. 
 There was an acrid taste in the air. Faint, far-off 
 mumbles sounded in the old man's throat. 
 
 The steps stopped in front of the house. They 
 turned into the shop. They were in the back room. 
 The floor creaked under heavy boots. There were 
 four or five men there, Sonia thought. They worked 
 
 52 
 
IN A CELLAR 
 
 around silently, except for the falling of their feet. 
 One knelt down and poked under the sofa. Then 
 they went upstairs. 
 
 The smoke was thicker now. It seemed to fall 
 into the cellar. It hung half-way between the 
 grating and the floor, in grey whorls. It spun in 
 and out in figures of eight, and took the shape of 
 faces Sonia knew. The old man moved from side 
 to side. His breathing was very heavy, with little 
 snorts he attempted to control. 
 
 The men upstairs were moving from room to 
 room. They could hear them distinctly in the cellar. 
 They were arguing. Objects were being kicked 
 about, and tables and chairs overturned. Curtains 
 were torn down with whining zips. When they 
 went, Sonia thought, she could get the child where 
 it was warm. 
 
 The old man's chest moved up and down in 
 spasms. Smoke was getting into his throat. He 
 began short, feeble, staccato coughs. Sonia's heart 
 stopped beating. She knew his coughing attacks. 
 They began like that. If the men above should 
 hear! 
 
 She knew who they were. They were the jackals 
 of the Black Hundred who cleared up what the mob 
 had left. They spied out the fugitives. She knew 
 the meaning of the slammed doors, and of the choked 
 screams and of the rifle shots. The mob were 
 peasants in fanatical exaltation; these were the 
 demons, the executioners, the plotters of pogroms 
 in the night time. The mob were the artisans; 
 
 53 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 these were the masters of the craft. There was 
 something horribly workmanlike in their brusque 
 steps and in the silence in which they went about. 
 
 The old man began to cough violently. Sonia 
 felt her hair quiver. God, if there were only some 
 way to make him stop ! For herself she didn't care ; 
 they could do what they liked with her. The others 
 could take care of themselves; two of them were 
 strong men, and the other woman was better off 
 than she. But if she didn't get the child upstairs 
 and warm it, it would die. 
 
 The steps shuffled about upstairs. They were 
 preparing to come down. 
 
 She put the child down on the floor, and knelt 
 by the old man. His coughing was more frequent 
 now. It came in short, rattling gasps. She put her 
 hand over his mouth. 
 
 Something was delaying them. They were per- 
 haps looking in one last hiding place. She pressed 
 her hand closer. 
 
 The old man was squirming from side to side. 
 He tried to shake the hand off. His eyeballs dilated. 
 His body grew rigid. He beat at her with his 
 hands. His knees moved up and down with 
 spasmodic jerks. 
 
 They were coming down the stairs. They were 
 talking in grumbling whispers. They would have 
 passed in a moment. 
 
 The old man arched his body. Then he suddenly 
 went limp. Sonia felt numb and dazed. She took the 
 jacket from under his head and put it over his face. 
 
 54 
 
IN A CELLAR 
 
 She went over and picked up the child. The 
 smoke had darkened the cellar more, and she had 
 to grope for it. It seemed warmer. 
 
 The steps were passing the cellar door. She 
 knew they would overlook that. In a few moments 
 she could bring the child upstairs. She wondered if 
 the stove had been injured, and if anybody had 
 taken the matches. 
 
 The child suddenly broke into loud sobs. 
 
 The footsteps upstairs paused for a moment. 
 
 The sobbing grew louder. 
 
 Then the rifle butts began to smash the panels 
 of the door. 
 
 55 
 
IV 
 
 BOW SING LOW AND THE TWO WHO 
 WERE THIEVES 
 
 ALONG Seventh Avenue it was known as "Bow's 
 Joint," and in the daytime in white letters and at 
 night in gilded electric ones it proclaimed its purpose 
 to all the world in the two words, "Chop Suey." 
 If you mounted the rickety and dirty stairs and 
 paused for a moment before entering the super- 
 latively clean and very gorgeous black, gold and red 
 dining-room, you might have noticed above the 
 lintel of the door six inches of peculiar, angular 
 Cantonese writing. And if you knew Cantonese, 
 you would translate it as "the garden of nine thou- 
 sand jasmine-buds and nine purling brooks, which 
 is Bow Sing Low's." 
 
 You would not have cared for Bow Sing Low. 
 No one on Sixth, Seventh, or Eighth avenues did. 
 He was not one of those very fat, scrupulously clean- 
 shaven, bronze-faced Chinamen, with the look of 
 unutterable wisdom in their eyes, whose very appear- 
 ance warns you against them. Neither was he one 
 of those lean, slant-eyed, infantile-looking Chinamen 
 with the rumpled hair and the worried expression, 
 whom you always imagine in a difficulty and want 
 
 56 
 
BOW SING LOW AND THE TWO THIEVES 
 
 to help. Bow Sing Low was thin, compact, of 
 medium height, with the slim strength of a heron 
 or a greyhound. His bronzed face had all the 
 peculiar characteristics of the Chinaman slanting 
 eyes, high cheek-bones, wide forehead, black eye- 
 brows. He wore a short-cropped moustache, 
 tortoise-shell spectacles, and a black silk biretta-like 
 hat, from under which four feet of glossy queue 
 hung like a slim reptile. 
 
 But the most remarkable thing about Bow Sing 
 Low was the look of asceticism on his face, the look 
 of high and devout purpose, of aloofness from 
 earthly things that a young priest might have worn. 
 You never saw Bow Sing Low in anything but his 
 black coat of quilted silk, his black skirt richly 
 embroidered with gold, and his biretta-like cap. 
 Nothing more Chinese could be imagined. Bow 
 Sing Low, if we are to judge the age of a Chinaman 
 by the same characteristics as we judge the age of 
 Caucasians, might have been thirty-five years old. 
 
 A motley collection of customers came to Bow 
 Sing Low's Jasmine Garden on Seventh Avenue; 
 gunmen, members of the Gophers and of the Happy 
 Gang; smooth confidence men from Broadway; 
 slim, incredibly light-fingered pickpockets from the 
 department stores of Herald Square; actresses and 
 chorus men; occasionally a party of shimmers 
 dipping fearfully and delightedly into the under- 
 world of New York, and now and then a suburbanite 
 from the Pennsylvania Station with a couple of hours' 
 wait on his hands. 
 
 57 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 Bow Sing Low appeared rarely in his restaurant. 
 He kept close quarters in the back of the house, 
 and when he did show himself it was to flit for a 
 moment only through the corridor between the 
 tables. The care of the restaurant, with its ninety- 
 and-nine varieties of strange-looking and aromatic 
 foods, its queer, lugless cups of golden tea, its 
 Oriental confections, its marble-topped tables and 
 hidden nooks, its black and red cloth screens and 
 hangings with cleverly wrought figures and Chinese 
 mottoes in gold, was left entirely to Wung Hu, a 
 fat, laughing Cantonese with the stocky build of a 
 Nipponese wrestler, and to Mon Wah Lee, a thin, 
 skeleton-like waiter from Shanghai, of wonderful 
 deftness of hand and woebegone quality of face. 
 Bow Sing Low found it more to his advantage to 
 keep out of the dining-room, for with his passing 
 through it a current of cold wind seemed to swirl 
 about the place, and the diners stopped their quick 
 chattering and the laughter broke. 
 
 "Begor," said Hennessy, the big Mayo police- 
 man on peg post outside the restaurant, as the 
 ascetic Chinaman went by, "there's a chink I wouldn't 
 like to be alone in a dark room with." 
 
 At six o'clock every morning Hoy Mon, the 
 cashier, brought him the night's takings, in smooth 
 and crumpled green and yellow bills, in shining 
 quarters and half-dollars and dimes, and in dull 
 nickels and brown pennies. And every Saturday 
 morning, after the weekly advance to the men on 
 peg post and the men on the beat had been made, 
 
 58 
 
BOW SING LOW AND THE TWO THIEVES 
 
 and twenty dollars tribute had been handed over 
 to " Chick" Donnelly, Bow Sing Low counted three 
 hundred dollars, more or less, and, putting the 
 money into a black satchel and hitching a heavy 
 automatic up his sleeve, he brought it down to 
 Wall Street and deposited it with the teller of the 
 International, who entered it calmly into a pass book, 
 and looked enviously at the lean Chinaman with 
 his tell-tale occidental eyes. 
 
 And yet Bow Sing Low was not happy. An ugly 
 black blotch hung over the serenity of his existence, 
 as a dirty yellow cloud will mar the blue stretch of 
 the sky. 
 
 He could understand why the blue-coated giants 
 on beat and on peg post should get their tribute every 
 week, for policemen are temperamental creatures, 
 and if they are not kept in good humour they may 
 make trouble when a joyous customer feels com- 
 pelled to shout ragtime, or an elevated chorus lady 
 decides to try a new fox trot step. This little drain 
 on his resources Bow Sing Low did not mind at 
 all, but what did irk him sadly was the payment of 
 twenty dollars a week, representing many gold and 
 silver coins in the currency of Canton, to Jim Chick 
 Donnelly. 
 
 At the age of eighteen James Chick Donnelly 
 had driven an auto-truck with distinction and daring 
 for the United States mails, for Donnelly was strong 
 of arm, keen of eye, and quick of head. Being a 
 thinking man and not at all afraid of a few taps on 
 the head and body, he forsook the driver's wheel 
 
 c 59 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 for the boxer's gloves, earning as much in thirty 
 short minutes as he had done formerly in six days 
 of eight hours each. In another session of silent 
 thought he had decided that he could gain quite as 
 much money by merely threatening to fight and 
 not fighting as by enduring the thundering rushes 
 of an opponent in a roped ring. He became a 
 member of the Gopher Gang and rose to be a shining 
 light among them. 
 
 The Gophers are not pleasant folk to be at odds 
 with. There came a day when Chick Donnelly 
 climbed up the rickety stairs of the Chop Suey, went 
 to the rear where Hoy Mon sat like a Buddha behind 
 his cash-desk, and disclosed to his inscrutable eyes 
 an automatic pistol that resembled a miniature 
 field-piece. 
 
 "Kick in with twenty bones," demanded Jim 
 Chick Donnelly. 
 
 "I see the boss. Wait," Hoy Mon parleyed, and 
 he did. 
 
 He returned with the comforting news that 
 Chick might have his twenty. Accordingly on 
 every Saturday morning at eleven o'clock the Chick 
 got his. 
 
 Bow Sing Low may not have known of Solomon, 
 but he heard wisdom cry to him, and understanding 
 put forth her voice. For the Gophers are a tur- 
 bulent people, to whom life and property are trifles 
 thin as air, and the police do not prevail against 
 them. But Bow Sing Low began to hate with a 
 deadly hatred this bull-necked, stocky, bullet- 
 60 
 
BOW SING LOW AND THE TWO THIEVES 
 
 headed, sharp-eyed vampire, who demanded and 
 got yellow blood from his commercial body. He 
 hated every item of his appearance: the wiry, 
 colourless hair, the low forehead, the flattened ears, 
 the thin-lipped, hard mouth, the truculent jaw like 
 the prow of a battle-ship. He hated his natty 
 blue serge suit, his modish, buttoned boots, his 
 fine grey flannel, soft- collared shirt, and the rich 
 knitted tie that went with it. He treasured up 
 silently every payment made to Chick, every meal 
 which Chick ate, without a thought of paying for 
 it, every service done for him by the fat and lean 
 waiters in the dining-room. These things would 
 have been nothing to Bow if he had not wanted 
 the money which the gunman had demanded and 
 got with the regularity of a fine chronometer every 
 Saturday morning. 
 
 For Bow Sing Low had dreamed a dream. And 
 for the sake of the dream he was sacrificing the 
 honour of a Manchu gentleman by the keeping of 
 an eating-house for the riff-rafF of Seventh Avenue. 
 For Chinamen dream dreams not induced by the 
 soothing odour of the poppy pipe. They have great 
 vistas, great ambitions. The laconic Celestial who 
 helps you wrestle with a dress tie may see himself 
 leading the Yellow Hordes into the plains of Europe, 
 as Genghis Khan dreamed; and Tamerlane. The 
 bronze cook slaughtering a chicken may have a 
 vision of himself preaching the word of the Lord 
 Buddha from Vladivostok to Samarkand, and from 
 Irkutsk to Cambodia. You can never tell what 
 
 61 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 mighty canvas is being painted behind the cubic 
 foot of yellow skin that veils a Celestial's brain. 
 
 For Bow Sing Low had seen in himself a poet, 
 and a patron and entertainer of poets. In his 
 mind's eye he saw himself owning a palace and 
 gardens outside Canton, and being visited there 
 and lauded by the literati of the three great Chinese 
 universities. And for the sake of realising the 
 dream he had consented to tickle the palates of 
 the prize-fighter and the actress, and the gangster 
 and the chorus girl, "May whose souls," he remarked 
 piously, "abide for ever in the ninety-ninth place 
 of torment, reserved for unruly children and degen- 
 
 erate men." 
 
 Now, Bow Sing Low's verse was poetry, if the 
 opinion of Chinese critics is to be taken. Already 
 two books had been published, The Book of Blos- 
 soms and the Repository of Choice Aromas, and had 
 been commented on with favour in the seats of 
 learning. A third book was nearly finished, as yet 
 unnamed, and the last poem was half done the 
 return of the exile to his house in Wang He-i. 
 
 The pool is there ; the hibiscus plant is there, and 
 eighteen willow trees. 
 
 In the hibiscus I see her face ; in the willow trees 
 I see her eyebrows ; 
 
 Ee-yah! my soul clouds; my eyes grow humid! 
 
 And after this Bow Sing Low would go home 
 to Canton, for in ten years Bow Sing Low had 
 62 
 
BOW SING LOW AND THE TWO THIEVES 
 
 amassed over one hundred thousand dollars if you 
 take in three hundred every week it is a perfectly 
 simple matter and while it would fall short of the 
 tremendously high state which was the pinnacle of 
 Bow's dreams, still one could live very well on it 
 as a country gentleman and a patron of letters 
 and as a poet. So, day after day, and night 
 after night, Bow Sing Low laboured on his last 
 poem in his sitting-room behind the restaurant, a 
 place furnished with an immense copper brazier 
 for the burning of sandal wood perfume, a few 
 Chinese water-colours on the wall, a little rack 
 of books, a chair and a table with the implements 
 of his craft, ink, small camel-hair brushes, and 
 paper. 
 
 Occasionally, when he was weary of composition, 
 he would slip to the wall, slide a small wicket and 
 watch the faces of the customers drinking golden 
 tea or eating the luscious dishes his cook com- 
 pounded. They interested him, as the sight of 
 wild animals in a cage interests us. He looked at 
 their debauched, at their evil or foolish faces, as 
 a surgeon might regard pathological specimens. 
 He saw Gophers there, and members of the Happy 
 Gang of Ninth Avenue. He had little to do with 
 the Happies, for he was outside their territory, 
 but he amused himself by speculating whether 
 individual Happies measured up in physical bulk 
 and evil qualities to the level of the Gophers. He 
 decided that they did not, unless, perhaps, the 
 "Dutch Kid." 
 
 63 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 As a fighter the Dutch Kid could out-point and 
 knock out Chick Donnelly; as a shot he could hit 
 his bull's-eye ten times where Donnelly could only 
 make six, but he lacked the cool daring, the unruffled 
 nerve of the Chick. He would blackjack a man 
 in a side street, but he could never shoot him on 
 the avenue in broad midday. The Kid was of the 
 same build as Donnelly; his forehead was lower, 
 but his chin was not so truculent; a mop of black 
 hair and a blue-shaven cheek and jowl showed 
 up darkly against the colourless locks and fair 
 cheeks of the Kid, and the Kid's eyes shuffled when 
 you looked straight at him, where Chick's looked 
 back at you, threatening evil. 
 
 By himself the Kid could not measure up to 
 Donnelly, but Bow Sing Low kept his eyes on the 
 Happy Gangster, reckoning that in good time a 
 situation would arise when Donnelly would be 
 taken at a disadvantage, and the Kid would be 
 a weapon ready to the Chinaman's hand, directed 
 by all the wisdom and cunning and nerve of the 
 Chinaman's brain. 
 
 There came a fine spring morning when Giovanni 
 Todisco, ward-heeler of Ninth Avenue, went out 
 to breathe the April air, and the Dutch Kid, who 
 had accepted a retainer of fifty dollars from a pro- 
 gressive supporter of reform government, followed 
 him with a .45 automatic in the right-hand pocket 
 of his coat. The ward-heeler entered the hall of 
 a tenement. The Kid entered also. There were 
 four dull, resounding explosions, and the slushy 
 
BOW SING LOW AND THE TWO THIEVES 
 
 thump of a heavy Italian body on the granite par- 
 quetry of the hall. There was a blur of grey as 
 the Kid flashed like a squirrel across Ninth Avenue, 
 then to Eighth; the crack of Patrolman Mortality's 
 service pistol; a swing to the right; a couple of 
 hundred yards' dash into Seventh. In the distance 
 police whistles cut into the air like sirens. The 
 Kid decided suddenly that the best place to look 
 for sanctuary was at Bow Sing Low's, for he knew 
 that a Chinaman would never turn over a fugitive 
 to the police. He strolled nonchalantly for a 
 quarter of a block, and dashed up the stairs of the 
 Chop Suey like a cat up a tree. 
 
 " Where's the boss? Quick!" he demanded of 
 Mon Wah Lee. 
 
 From behind his study door Bow Sing Low 
 came like an apparition. 
 
 "I've croaked a guinea on Ninth," the Kid 
 announced, "and there's three bulls on the job. 
 Got any cover?" 
 
 He was conducted by Mon Wah Lee through a 
 maze of back stairs; through an invisible door in 
 the wall into a little room where the acrid tang of 
 rice-gin and the soft, flower-like odour of fresh 
 opium struck his nostrils like a south wind; through 
 a trap-door and a length of rickety stairs into the 
 dull coolness of a cellar. 
 
 "You stay," Mon Wah Lee directed, "me tellee 
 come out." 
 
 Overhead he could hear the heavy tramp of 
 feet, the hoarse, rasping voices of policemen, the 
 
 6s 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 guttural croaking of the Chinese. In three hours 
 Mon Wah Lee returned and conducted him to the 
 restaurant. 
 
 "Italian dead," Bow Sing Low explained, with 
 the least sing-song intonation. "Police no savee 
 who kill. Safe go away. Thinkum so?" 
 
 "You certainly did me a good turn then, 
 Charlie," the gunman remarked effusively. "You're 
 certainly one game little sport when it comes to 
 helping a guy." 
 
 Bow Sing Low smiled a little deprecatory smile. 
 He uttered a sentence or two in Chinese, which 
 the Kid took to be a polite depreciation of the 
 kindness done, but in reality was a philosophic 
 reflection on Bow's part to the effect that when 
 there are many lice in woodwork, what matters one 
 more or less? 
 
 After that the Jasmine Garden, which was Bow 
 Sing Low's, found a kindly critic and a pleasant 
 friend in the person of the Dutch Kid. He took 
 to frequenting the place with regularity, and to 
 bringing friends there. He always had a cheery 
 word for the waiters, calling them Charlie or Louie, 
 and praising the cook whenever an especially 
 appetising dish of chop suey was sent up. With 
 warmth and with a genial friendliness that might 
 have been the outcome of five years of intimacy, 
 he asked every day after the health of Bow Sing 
 Low. 
 
 And then one day some untoward incident had 
 disturbed the peaceful tenor of James Chick 
 66 
 
BOW SING LOW AND THE TWO THIEVES 
 
 Donnelly's existence. At six o'clock he came into 
 the Chop Suey fuming, his face awry with rage, 
 his eyes burning dully. He jostled Pete Kelly, the 
 Herald Square con man, who was going out at 
 the door. He lurched down between the tables 
 and seated himself with a crash. 
 
 "One of you yellow-faced warts," he shouted, 
 "bring me some eats, and bring them quick. Do 
 you get me ? " 
 
 Mon Wah Lee, thin, skeleton-like, lugubrious of 
 visage, hurried to the kitchen and returned in an 
 incredibly short time with a bowl of steaming meat 
 and a pot of simmering tea. 
 
 "All right. All here," he smiled friend-like at 
 Chick. 
 
 Chick surveyed him for a brief instant between 
 slit eyes. 
 
 "Shut your yellow mouth," he snarled. 
 
 There was a sharp crack and Mon Wah Lee 
 spun backward against a table. A little trickle 
 of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. He 
 retired to the end of the room with slow, shuffling 
 steps. Chick ate ravenously, with his acid eyes 
 roving in all directions. 
 
 From his little grating Bow Sing Low had 
 watched Chick enter and had seen Mon Wah Lee 
 reel back from his crashing right. His eyes dis- 
 tended a fraction and his brows knitted lightly. 
 Chick sat in his place inhaling great whiffs of acrid 
 cigarette-smoke. 
 
 He raised his eyes for a moment and caught the 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 half- contemptuous, half-inimical glance of Hoy 
 Mon behind the cash-desk. He rose and swung 
 over. 
 
 " Who 're you looking at?" he demanded. 
 
 "Lookee no one no time," the cashier replied 
 blandly. 
 
 "Yes, y'are, you chink bum. You were looking 
 at me." He reached out his heavy prize-fighter's 
 hand, laid it on the Chinaman's face, and pushed 
 it sharply backward. "You keep your yellow lamps 
 to yourself or you'll get all that's coming to you. Do 
 you get that?" 
 
 He walked half-way across the floor. He stopped 
 suddenly and turned around. 
 
 "I'll teach you chink hoboes how to treat a white 
 man," he snarled, and sat down. 
 
 Bow Sing Low pondered deep and long in his 
 mind as to what he should do. If he were to 
 enlist the aid of Hennessy on peg post outside, 
 Chick would be arrested and would reside, for a 
 long or a short time, according to his record in the 
 hands of the police, in the healthy but confined 
 precinct of Blackwell's Island. But the Gophers 
 are a dangerous folk, and as sure as Chick Donnelly 
 was arrested, so surely would the dining-room of 
 Bow Sing Low become, one morning, a scene of 
 shattered wood and broken marble, of torn hangings 
 and smashed panes and broken dishes a calamity 
 for which Bow Sing Low would have no redress. 
 So once again Bow Sing Low heard understanding 
 put forth her voice, and he decided to wait. 
 68 
 
BOW SING LOW AND THE TWO THIEVES 
 
 People trickled in and out of the restaurant 
 prize-fighters, crooks, thieves, gangsters, actresses, 
 chorus men, show-girls. Some of them grinned 
 at Chick's manifest ill-humour; some of them grew 
 afraid and went out again. There was little chat- 
 tering. There was little laughter. About eight 
 a tall, thin boy came in, dressed in a suit that 
 betokened a country tailor. He looked about the 
 place with wide, surprised eyes. Evidently he was 
 visiting New York for perhaps the first time, and 
 was having a taste of the underworld. With mani- 
 fest embarrassment he ordered a dish of chop suey 
 and tea. 
 
 Wung Hu, the fat Cantonese, brought it to 
 him. The boy put his hand into his trouser- 
 pocket to pay. There was the tinkle of coins on 
 the floor. There was the gilded flash of a five- 
 dollar gold-piece as it rolled across to Chick's 
 table. Chick bent down and scooped it up with 
 a grunt. He held it for a moment between finger 
 and thumb. 
 
 "Gee," he laughed, "that's a soft way of getting 
 money." 
 
 The door opened with a bang, and the Dutch 
 Kid entered. He surveyed the room with an easy, 
 nonchalant smile. 
 
 "The quickness of the hand deceives the eye," 
 he quoted. 
 
 The boy walked over to Chick's table. There 
 was a look of embarrassment on his face. He held 
 out his hand. 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 "Guess my fingers are all toes," he stammered. 
 "Thanks for picking it up." 
 
 "Picking what up?" Chick demanded. 
 
 "The five dollars." The boy was a little red 
 in the face. "The five-dollar gold-piece." 
 
 Chick looked at the coin in his hand. He placed 
 it with an easy movement in his vest-pocket. 
 
 "You're off your nut, kid," he said. "I ain't got 
 any five-spot of yours." 
 
 "But you picked it up. I saw you put it in your 
 pocket." 
 
 Chick rose. His jaw protruded. The muscles 
 about his shoulders hunched. 
 
 "What do you mean, five dollars?" he demanded 
 truculently. "What are you trying to pull off? Do 
 you want it in the face " 
 
 "Good stuff. Good stuff," murmured the Dutch 
 Kid. 
 
 Bow Sing Low crossed the room with rapid, 
 nervous steps. There was a crumpled green bill in 
 his fingers. 
 
 "You makee mistake. I have one-piece money 
 alleesame," he purred. He conducted the boy back 
 to his seat. "Everything alleelight." He pressed 
 the five-dollar bill in the boy's hand. "You no pay 
 chop suey." 
 
 And with his rapid, shuffling step he prepared to 
 go back to the study. The Dutch Kid intercepted 
 him with a cynical laugh. 
 
 "Gee," he murmured, "Chick's certainly one 
 tough little guy. Hard luck on you, Charley." 
 70 
 
BOW SING LOW AND THE TWO THIEVES 
 
 " Me no likee," commented Bow Sing Low. 
 
 "Well, what are you going to do about it?" the 
 Kid laughed. 
 
 Bow Sing Low looked at the gunman with eyes 
 closed until they resembled black slits. 
 
 "Everything all light. Some day fight. Maybeso 
 Chick killed." He spread out his hands blandly. 
 His eyes became narrower still. "Maybeso you kill 
 Chick. You take Chick's place." He waited for 
 a moment, and smiled good-humouredly. "Then 
 you get ten dollars a week. You get chop suey. 
 You have one piece good time." 
 
 The Kid turned on him with a look of distrust. 
 He gazed at the Chinaman with an expression of 
 annoyance. 
 
 "Ah, quit your kiddin'," he snapped. "Me stop 
 Chick having his fun? Why, Chick's a good friend 
 of mine. Besides, he ain't doing any harm. What 
 are you kicking about?" 
 
 "Oh, nothing, nothing," said Bow Sing Low, 
 and he smiled genially on the gangster. "Me 
 make one piece joke. You havee one piece 
 dlink?" 
 
 But the heart of Bow Sing Low was far from 
 duplicating the smile on his lips. A second and 
 equally deadly hatred was added to his one against 
 Chick Donnelly. He had rescued the thug from 
 Ninth Avenue from the hands of the police with 
 the hope of using him, and now he had found that 
 his work had gone for nothing. He motioned to 
 the lean waiter. 
 
 71 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 "Mon Wah Lee," he directed in his fluting 
 Cantonese, "you will bring a flask of rice wine, of 
 the potent liquor of the Three Rivers to the guests. 
 You will say to the guest Donnelly that I hope that 
 disappointment and disgust will pass from him while 
 drinking it, and that for him all shall be harmony 
 as before." 
 
 And then, with a soft padding of felt slippers, 
 with the rapidity of a conjuring trick, he whisked 
 into the sitting-room. From the tables in front, 
 through the little grille in the wall, he could hear 
 the chut-chut of conversation, the light tinkle of 
 crockery, the muffled or explosive or repeating 
 laughter of the diners, the boisterous voice of the 
 Dutch Kid greeting Chick Donnelly, the laconic 
 but gratified tones of Chick in reply. He took 
 down the long, thin sheets of manuscript with their 
 startlingly black, weird letters. To-night the work 
 would be done, and to-morrow he might go. Hoy 
 Mon, the thin, cynical cashier, son of a Manchu 
 prince and a peasant woman of Yang-tse, would 
 buy the shop from him. His jet eyes sparkled with 
 pleasure as he thought of the conferences with the 
 learned ones in Canton, night-long discussions over 
 the poetry of Chung Zu, the T'ang poet, or Li-Po, 
 the Drinker of Wine. And then his eyes hardened 
 suddenly, for there was still something to do. 
 
 He took out the last sheet and read it: 
 
 Do you remember how I knocked at the jade portals 
 when the thin moon rose ? And you came to me 
 
 72 
 
BOW SING LOW AND THE TWO THIEVES 
 
 swathed in a veil of silver. Your voice as you greeted 
 me was like the voice of a dove at mating time. Do 
 you remember the burden I laid at your feet that night ? 
 Pearls from the Outer Sea, and peach blossoms from 
 the hidden gardens of Chee-Poo, and poems that had 
 come to me with the dawn. Do you remember, ah 
 Little Golden One, do you remember ? 
 
 From the dining-room he could hear the sonorous 
 baritone of Chick Donnelly boom out like a bass 
 drum: 
 
 " ' There's a little spark of love still burning and yearning 
 
 down in my heart for you. 
 There's a longing for your returning. I love you. I do.'" 
 
 The voice of the Dutch Kid broke in raucously : 
 
 " ' Come, come to my heart again; 
 Come, come, set that spark aflame.' ' 
 
 Then both rang out in unsteady unison: 
 
 * For there's a little spark of love still burning and 
 yearning for you.' " 
 
 Their voices ended off in a weak treble. Then 
 came a gurgling, inane laugh. The potent liquor 
 of the Three Rivers was doing its work. 
 
 He poised his brush over the paper for a moment 
 and then wrote in a steady, confident hand: 
 
 The hair of the musicians is grey and silver. Cold 
 settles on the blue and white tiles. 
 
 73 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 There was less chatter in the room. From a 
 church-steeple ten strokes rang out, resonant, con- 
 certed, like a bar on a 'cello. There would be 
 nobody in the restaurant now but the two gangsters. 
 The dinner custom was past. The after-supper rush 
 was not due for an hour yet. 
 
 Bow Sing Low looked hard at a water-colour of 
 Wa Hei's on the wall opposite. Words were not 
 coming easily to him. He heard the raucous tones 
 of Chick Donnelly's voice raised in drunken reminis- 
 cence. 
 
 " . . . says I, and feints with the left. He ducks 
 and then, bingo! I gets him with the right in the 
 jaw. Kid, you ought to have seen that guy fall. 
 He . . ." 
 
 There was another long silence. The Kid's voice 
 lisped maudlins: 
 
 11 ' Your lips were like julep, when you wore a tulip, and 
 I wore ' 
 
 "Ah, what the hell did I wear?" And then 
 another silence. 
 
 The door opened noiselessly; the lean, cadaverous 
 face of Mon Lee appeared. 
 
 "They are both drunkenly asleep, most Excellent 
 One," he said, "and there is no one in the Jasmine 
 Garden." 
 
 "Get your whistle, Mon Wah Lee," said Bow 
 Sing Low. 
 
 They went into the dining-room. At the farthest 
 
 74 
 
BOW SING LOW AND THE TWO THIEVES 
 
 corner Bow Sing Low could see the forms of the two 
 gunmen, huddled in drunken sleep over the marble- 
 topped table. His eyes glistened. There was Chick 
 Donnelly, to whom he had paid hard-earned tribute 
 for eighteen months, in consideration of nothing 
 but the right to live and make a living. There was 
 the Dutch Kid, whom he had once saved from the 
 horrible harness of the electric chair, and who had 
 gone back on him. He shuffled silently up to them. 
 Chick was sitting hunched forward, his head wagging, 
 his shoulders moving slightly. His cap was on one 
 side of his head, disclosing one flattened ear in all 
 its scarred horror. 
 
 The Dutch Kid slept with his head on his arm, 
 the high, shaven neck showing whiter against the 
 black of his close-cropped hair. His coat on the 
 right side hung to the ground. Bow Sing Low 
 put his hand in his pocket and took out a black, 
 vicious automatic, with a massive haft and hypnotic 
 muzzle. He leaned his forearm on the table. Chick 
 looked up, swayed in his chair, and laughed 
 maudlinly. 
 
 "Hands up," Chick gurgled. "Here's a nickel." 
 Bow Sing Low trained the muzzle right between 
 his eyes. There was a sharp, hollow explosion, like 
 the bursting of an inflated paper bag. There was 
 a flick of red flame, like the lighting of a Bengal 
 match. There was the acrid tang of burned black 
 powder. Chick Donnelly toppled back to the floor 
 with a crash as if he had received a smashing blow 
 in the face. The Kid looked up vacantly. Bow 
 
 75 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 Sing Low laid the automatic beside him, and walked 
 back to the sitting-room. 
 
 From the window came the sharp, fluting call 
 of the police whistle. Bow Sing Low looked back. 
 The Dutch Kid was holding on to the table, swing- 
 ing the automatic in his right hand, a look of surprised 
 horror on his face. 
 
 "Hey, Chick," he was shouting, "what, what?" 
 He walked around the table and bent down. " Chick, 
 
 Chick," he shouted again. "What the hell ?" 
 
 he gasped. "Chick's stiff. What do you know 
 about that?" 
 
 Bow Sing Low walked into his sitting-room. He 
 listened for a moment as he took up his manuscript. 
 Police whistles answered one another like the sirens 
 of steamers. There was the hollow tattoo of night- 
 sticks on the kerb. There was the thunder of feet 
 on the stairs. 
 
 When fireflies flit through the hall, I sit in silent 
 grief. 
 
 He poised the brush in mid-air. He was dis- 
 satisfied with the sentence. He changed it. 
 
 The red sunset turns to yellow. I sit silent, brooding. 
 
 The thunder on the stairs became louder. There 
 were the hoarse, rasping voices of patrolmen; the 
 sound of a table being pushed aside; the guttural 
 tones of Mon Wah Lee. 
 
 "I don't remember. I don't remember," the 
 Dutch Kid was whining. 
 
BOW SING LOW AND THE TWO THIEVES 
 
 Handcuffs clicked like the catch of a door. 
 
 "Come on, Kid," Bow Sing Low could hear the 
 satisfied voice of a policeman command. "It's the 
 chair for you this time." 
 
 A burst of inspiration came on Bow Sing Low. 
 His hand flashed over the paper. 
 
 Slowly pass the watches. The nights are now too 
 long. 
 
 Never once does her spirit come to colour my dream- 
 ing. 
 
 77 
 
DONOGHU'S HOUR 
 
 "You WILL take fifty of your Senegalese. You 
 will take a machine gun. You will be out of the 
 camp in ten minutes." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "You know the oasis at Bir Nara? Yes? You 
 will be there at daybreak." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "You will hoist the colours at the line due south 
 if you are there first. If a British detachment is 
 there before you, you will take the position and 
 then hoist the colours." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "You will then hold the position until the battalion 
 arrives. You will do everything possible to get 
 there first. If you are there first no hostilities will 
 occur. You understand what to do if you arrive 
 second. That's all, I think. Good luck! Good- 
 bye! And, oh, Captain Donoghu!" 
 
 "Yes, Colonel." 
 
 "Report by runner, will you?" 
 
 "All right, sir." 
 
 The old colonel was always brusque when any- 
 thing untoward happened. He usually carried the 
 
 78 
 
DONOGHU'S HOUR 
 
 suavity of his days in the Ecole St. Cyr on all occa- 
 sions, exactly as he never changed the cut of his 
 Napoleon. Donoghu knew that to get to the ques- 
 tioned frontier before the advance guard of the 
 British column, his Senegalese would have to march 
 quick time nearly all the thirty miles. They had 
 already done eighteen that day. 
 
 The Senegalese were already being lined up by 
 the young Dahomey sergeant; the machine gun 
 men were raising the tripods. Their long, vicious 
 Lebel rifles were shouldered. Swarthy Kabyles and 
 Berbers of the Turco companies raised their hook 
 noses and spat at the negroes in disgust. A group 
 of Foreign Legion men grumbled at ceding the 
 advance guard to the Senegalese. 
 
 The battalion raised a cheer as the quarter- 
 company started off. The Legion men gave a 
 delighted shout of" Ce bon Irlandais ! " The officers 
 whispered " Remember Fashoda " as Donoghu swung 
 past. He nodded. 
 
 Then they stepped out into the desert. The men 
 were all delighted Donoghu could see that. They 
 had had no real fighting for years, beyond an occa- 
 sional punitive expedition against remote Kabyle 
 tribes, or hunting down slavers along the frontier 
 of the Belgian Congo. They were off to fight 
 organised troops, as the Zouaves went to the Crimea. 
 The little corporal who was carrying the colours 
 in their oilskin case forgot discipline for a moment 
 and grinned delightedly at the captain. The young 
 Dahomey sergeant had thrown back his shoulders 
 
 79 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 until his blue Zouave jacket was near to bursting. 
 He whistled "The Marseillaise" viciously between 
 his clenched teeth. 
 
 Donoghu knew every man of his troop. His 
 sergeant he had captured from an Arab slave trader 
 when he was a sous-lieutenant of Turcos. He had 
 trained him until he was the best sergeant of the 
 native regiments. His little corporal he had saved 
 from the stake at the hands of Ugandese raiders. 
 Nearly every one of the men had come into the 
 fortress a naked savage, and been transformed under 
 his eye into an efficient infantryman in baggy blue 
 pants and red cummerbund and Chechia. And they 
 looked on the tall, hawk-nosed, grizzled Irish officer 
 as nothing short of a deity. 
 
 The column had moved on from Abecher on 
 instructions from the Quai d'Orsay. One of the 
 periodical frontier problems of the hinterland of 
 the Sahara had arisen, and a battalion had been 
 dispatched to hold the line. Hostilities would pre- 
 cipitate an international conflict that might develop 
 into a Continental shambles. If Donoghu won his 
 race against the advance guard of the English force 
 that had left Khartum on the same errand, he would 
 obviate most of the difficulties. Smooth-shaven, 
 shifty men would parley in the chancelleries of 
 Europe, and settle the question according to the 
 dictates of diplomacy. If he arrived too late, his 
 orders were explicit: he was to attack. Messages 
 would rip and crackle along thousands of miles of 
 telegraph wire, and within a day troops would be 
 80 
 
DONOGHU'S HOUR 
 
 mobilising along the Breton dunes, and squat grey 
 cruisers would hurry from the slips of Portsmouth. 
 
 The camp was lost behind the waves of white 
 sand. The troop tramped forward with the rapid, 
 nervous step of the African of the desert. The 
 long midday rest had refreshed the men, and they 
 were as strong as though they had just left their 
 barracks. Donoghu could see that they wanted fight. 
 They would strain every nerve to win, but they 
 hoped to arrive too late. Their footfalls sounded 
 in unison, with the dull thud of a mallet beating 
 clothes. 
 
 "Attention. Rout step." 
 
 They could get along faster now. Their captain 
 would utilise their native instinct of hunting. That 
 would help in reaching the oasis first. The men 
 broke the formation with a shuffling sound as of 
 dancers on a sanded floor. They spread out like a 
 pack of hunting wolves. 
 
 They were barely twenty minutes out of camp, 
 but they had gone nearly two miles. The sun would 
 go down in another forty minutes. It hung in a 
 vague scarlet blotch behind them, and coloured the 
 white sand yellow before them. It was as though 
 they were dashing through a limitless field of ripen- 
 ing wheat. The desert rose in waves as far as they 
 could see, and in little hills and in gullies and chasms. 
 There was a long, clear rift where a sandstorm had 
 passed. Heat struck upward. 
 
 At sundown the men would stop for evening 
 prayer, and for their quarter-hour rest after the 
 
 81 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 hour's march. Then Donoghu planned another 
 hour's burst before nightfall. 
 
 "Attention. Quick time." 
 
 The shuffle grew faster. They bent forward like 
 hounds straining at a leash. They closed up into a 
 blur of blue. In the middle of the troop the black 
 cover of the standard rose like the mast of a ship. 
 There was no hard breathing. There was no sound 
 at all beyond the soft, crumbling pad of the hundred 
 white- clad feet and the flap of the bayonets against 
 the men's thighs. 
 
 The young sergeant was several yards in advance 
 of the troop. Occasionally he would break into a 
 lope and gain on the men, and then slow up until 
 they were just behind him. Then he would lean 
 forward and begin his lope again. He had taken 
 his rifle from his shoulder and was carrying it in his 
 hand. 
 
 Donoghu looked back at the sun. Only half of 
 it was above the violet horizon line. The yellow was 
 changing to pink along the sand hills. Muezzins 
 would now be chanting from the minarets of Algiers. 
 It was time for prayer. 
 
 "Halt. Fall out." 
 
 The line broke its step, wavered and stopped. 
 The Senegalese split up into groups and knelt with 
 their faces eastward. A tall private chanted the 
 verses. 
 
 Donoghu turned and looked back at the sun. He 
 always felt an intruder at the prayers of the troops, 
 though they never seemed to feel it. He had become 
 82 
 
DONOGHU'S HOUR 
 
 so much a part and parcel of his company and they 
 of him that it seemed as if he should join in. He 
 took off his kepi. 
 
 To-night they were reciting the verses on battle. 
 It struck him for a moment that, in spite of every 
 effort they would make, they knew they were going 
 to fight in the morning. The prayer rose in a 
 sonorous, triumphant murmur. He wondered what 
 really would happen. 
 
 They had broken up now, and were sitting cross- 
 legged, talking in subdued murmurs. They were 
 debating the prospects of meeting the British. He 
 saw the tall private who had acted as muezzin in- 
 flaming their Mohammedanism. 
 
 God, if these Senegalese were unloosed against 
 an enemy, they would tear them limb from limb ! 
 He had seen twenty-five of them once attack two 
 hundred armed Kabyles, and remembered how no 
 Kabyle captives were taken and no Kabyle com- 
 batants escaped. What chance would the debilitated 
 Hausas have against troops of whom even the Foreign 
 Legion was envious? What chance would an 
 English detachment have against those savages with 
 the promise of the Prophet rising like a flame within 
 them? 
 
 Darkness was creeping up now. He would make 
 another dash before night broke, and then rest until 
 moonrise. He gave the order to fall in. The ser- 
 geant repeated it with a snap like a snarl. 
 
 Shadows were closing around. The men moved 
 as in a huge spot of light that would contract little 
 
 83 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 by little. Darkness crept on like a cloak of soft 
 black velvet. Donoghu could merely feel it fall 
 about them. The men moved onward in a blot of 
 dark colour. They changed rifles from one hand to 
 the other with a soft click as barrel struck against 
 palm. They resembled a huge insect crawling 
 forward. The Dahomey sergeant was still in 
 advance. The staff of the standard towered up from 
 the mass like some grotesque weapon. There was 
 the soft glug of water in canteens. 
 
 The prospect of action in the morning affected 
 Donoghu with a wild feeling of elation. Queer 
 spasmodic shivers ran through him. He had a 
 desire to sing. The crumbling sand sprang under 
 his feet like elastic. 
 
 His fifteen years in Africa had shown him much 
 fighting: sharp night attacks against Moorish tribes, 
 stealthy jungle stalking for raiders, and occasional 
 campaigns into the desert; but, like his men, he 
 had had no hostile contact with foreign troops. 
 
 Fifteen years before, he had arrived at the head- 
 quarters of the Foreign Legion in Algiers, had been 
 cursorily examined and thrown a uniform. To the 
 glowering old sergeant who received him, he was 
 just more meat for the Moors, like any pickpocket 
 from Whitechapel or remittance man from Europe. 
 For his five years of service his daily five centimes 
 pay went for pipe clay. He got his promotion to 
 non-commission rank in his first enlistment. In his 
 second term he got his sub-lieutenancy of Turcos, 
 and later his lieutenancy and transfer with the grade 
 
DONOGHU'S HOUR 
 
 of captain to the native regiment all, as the regula- 
 tion for foreigners demands, pour fails de guerre. 
 
 The fifteen years had changed him. When he 
 came to Algiers he was a chubby youngster of 
 twenty- three, ruddy in the face, with a small mou- 
 stache. Now he was as lean and bronzed and lithe 
 as an Arab cavalryman. The hair was grey about 
 the temples and beginning to thin. He had a ready 
 smile, but seldom spoke. 
 
 They liked him in the African service. His com- 
 mission as chef de bataillon was in a pigeon-hole 
 of the governor-general's desk. He might reason- 
 ably expect his colonelcy within ten years. In the 
 old days of McMahon, rot d'Irlande, he would have 
 gone to Paris later, and might even eventually have 
 fingered a marshal's baton. 
 
 He was satisfied, though. They knew that his 
 enlistment in the Legion was not due to any offence 
 or shady affair at home. What gave him more 
 satisfaction was that his record was in the British 
 war office as one of the most dangerous men in the 
 African service. 
 
 He was known in Trinity, Dublin, as Patrick 
 Sarsfield O'Connell Donoghu Donoghu without 
 an "e." His father had held a majority in the 
 Enniskillen Dragoons, and he was intended for an 
 infantry or artillery regiment. He failed in every 
 examination in every subject but mathematics, and 
 left for Aldershot without a degree. 
 
 But he left for Aldershot with the good will and 
 good wishes of every man, professor and scout in 
 
 8s 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 the university. Even the worm-eaten old lecturer 
 in Greek history left his rooms to give Donoghu a 
 mouldy monograph on the campaigns of Alexander 
 on the day of his departure. 
 
 His father was retired then, and had a little country 
 place near Sligo. He used to play golf with the 
 then attorney-general, whom he would beat regularly. 
 He rode to hounds with a member of the Cabinet, 
 who used to visit the town. Between the golfing 
 and the fox hunting and the old man's faith in his 
 son, Donoghu was one day apprised that a com- 
 mission was open for him in a Guards regiment. 
 
 At the most he had hoped for the Connaught 
 Rangers or the garrison artillery. To belong to 
 one of those magnificent regiments, whose officers 
 wear bearskins and scarlet and gold sashes, seemed 
 a wild dream. It was some time before it assumed 
 the proportions of reality. 
 
 In Ireland they were overjoyed. They never 
 doubted for an instant that his career was made. 
 They expected him to follow in the path of Wel- 
 lington, Roberts and Kitchener, and Dillon, who 
 led the Irish Brigade in France, and O'Higgins, 
 captain-general of Chile. 
 
 And against the purple sand dunes of the Sahara 
 he saw the little grey, rambling house that had been 
 battered by the Atlantic storms for three hundred 
 years. He saw himself, striding out to show his 
 brave Guards' uniform to the fox-hunting parson 
 at the end of the village. And he could hear the 
 cackle of the old housekeeper: 
 86 
 
DONOGHU'S HOUR 
 
 "A great pity it is, him to be going with the bloody 
 English when he should be drillin' by the riverside 
 in the moonlight, with his pike in his hand and in his 
 jacket green." 
 
 His friends somehow gave him the same im- 
 pression. While it seemed all right to go into an 
 Irish regiment, it struck him as something like 
 arrant treachery to be in one that was entirely 
 English. Even the major of the Enniskillens felt 
 that. 
 
 But all qualms vanished under the glamour of 
 the sash and bearskin. The boys in Dublin ex- 
 amined him as if he were a prehistoric exhibit. They 
 appeared surprised that he could move and walk, 
 and even speak, in his new finery. 
 
 His feelings were of complete elation. He noticed 
 how the passengers on the mail boat had gazed 
 at him in awed admiration on his way back to London. 
 One man seemed surprised at his own temerity in 
 asking for a match. 
 
 He was rather taken aback at his reception at 
 barracks. There didn't seem to be any hearty 
 welcome for him. The old colonel had a look of 
 icy coldness that surprised him. But he thought 
 this must be the reception of every subaltern. 
 
 The frigidity continued through mess that night 
 and in the morning when his captain brought 
 him the rounds of the company. It continued for 
 several days. He tried to engage his brother officers 
 in conversation, but they were coldly and peremp- 
 torily polite. 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 It was only after a couple of weeks that he got 
 his inkling of how matters stood. The company 
 was falling out. He said something to the first 
 lieutenant. He received a scant answer. 
 
 "Oh, by the way, Mr. Donoghu " that "Mr." 
 was like gall "haven't you got some Irish regi- 
 ments over there, militia and yeomanry and things 
 like that?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, a lot," he answered. "Why do you 
 ask?" 
 
 "Oh, merely curious," the second lieutenant 
 replied, "merely curious." 
 
 He didn't understand him for a minute. Then 
 it broke in on him. The bearskin felt like a ton 
 of iron on his head. The red tunic swelled under 
 his chest. His cheeks flamed like fire. The 
 lieutenant was walking off. He felt he wanted to 
 run after him and plunge his sword into his neck. 
 A corporal standing near laughed. He turned 
 around suddenly and the laugh broke off. 
 
 Whenever he thought of the incident he grew 
 as red as he was that day on the drill ground. 
 His long discipline in the desert could not master 
 that. He would stop in the middle of his stride 
 and grasp his sabre. His eyebrows would con- 
 tract. He would curse long and viciously under 
 his breath. 
 
 He was thinking of it now as he strode along 
 by the troop. His chin had fallen on his breast. 
 He marched mechanically. The moon had risen, 
 and he was making out the course by compass. 
 
 88 
 
 
 
 . 
 
DONOGHU'S HOUR 
 
 The troop was swinging forward in step. The 
 moonlight gave the dunes a white, leprous look. 
 The men had the appearance of giants in the 
 Thousand and One Nights. They threw gigantic 
 shadows behind them. The standard pole cast a 
 long black line that ended in a faint thread fifty 
 feet behind. The moonbeams drew little glints of 
 silver from the barrels of the rifles. They struck 
 flashes from the Maxim that was being carried on 
 its tripod in the rear, like some horrible, squat 
 serpent, borne by priests in a barbaric processional. 
 
 A faint breeze had risen and was stirring the 
 fine sand with a noise like the rustle of dry leaves. 
 A little sand owl hooted derisively in the distance. 
 Now and again the machine gun carriers gave grunts 
 of effort. 
 
 From a clump of palm trees in front a mara- 
 bout bird, that had strayed far inland from the 
 marshes, rose with a raucous caw. They could see 
 its long bill in the moonlight. It threw back its 
 legs and flapped off eastward. It seemed to be 
 flying straight into the white disk of the moon. 
 
 Donoghu's kepi was pulled forward. He was 
 holding his sabre by the middle. He was going 
 over every little detail of his life in the Guards. 
 
 He had endeavoured to conquer the antipathy 
 towards him by dint of work. Beyond the neces- 
 sary presences at drill and mess he meddled no 
 longer in the regiment's affairs. He was slowly and 
 surely being pushed to the wall. 
 
 He brought the colonel what he thought was a 
 
 8 9 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 perfectly new idea for a company advance under 
 fire. The colonel heard him to the end. 
 
 "As tactics," he had said, "as tactics, Mr. 
 Donoghu, your proposal might be looked on with 
 favour by a horde of Fenians with bludgeons, or 
 by the irregulars of His Majesty of Abyssinia. Why 
 not forward it to the headquarters of either?*' 
 
 That ended that course of action. 
 
 If it had not been for his father, who was tell- 
 ing every one who would listen to him of the 
 magnificent career his son was making for himself, 
 and for the boys, to whom he had given photo- 
 graphs of himself in full dress uniform, he would 
 have asked for a transfer to another regiment. 
 But there had been too many dreams woven about 
 him. 
 
 The atmosphere of it all stifled him. The salutes 
 of the lumbering Cornwall men and the cockney 
 prize fighters seemed to veil jeering insolence. 
 The men had noticed their officers' attitude, and 
 were coming as close to actual insult as they 
 dared. 
 
 Even in spite of all, he would have stuck it out 
 and tried to conquer. But there was the episode 
 of Edith Grierson. That was the part of it that 
 made Donoghu spit gall. 
 
 It was asinine, purely asinine. But Donoghu was 
 twenty- three. He met her at a couple of dances. 
 She was fair and tall and caustic. 
 
 Donoghu was in need of sympathy. He didn't 
 tell her his troubles. He would tell her afterwards. 
 90 
 
DONOGHU'S HOUR 
 
 The more difficult his position became, the more 
 serious grew his attachment. Normally it would 
 have been a passing psychological phase. In Ireland 
 the mess would have discovered it, and bantered 
 him good-naturedly until the affair had passed 
 over. 
 
 They met again at a dance. They danced. They 
 went out to the conservatory. They talked for a 
 few minutes. There was a flutter at his throat. 
 He attempted to take her hand. 
 
 She drew back and eyed him. There was a 
 mean, hard laugh in her eyes. 
 
 "How you Irish do love to flirt!" she said, and 
 moved off. 
 
 He got hot and red, and then very cold. He 
 went out into the garden and cursed her and him- 
 self and the regiment and the day he entered it. 
 
 Within a day his resignation was in. Within a 
 week it was accepted. No one said good-bye to 
 him. He felt that they all knew about the Miss 
 Grierson incident, and would laugh over it that 
 night at mess. 
 
 Next day he was in Havre. Two days later he 
 was in Marseilles, under the care of a corpulent 
 sergeant of Zouaves. Five days later he was in 
 the quarters of the Foreign Legion at Torrens, 
 being licked into shape by a cadaverous corporal 
 with a voice like sulphuric acid. 
 
 The only regret he ever had was for his father, 
 to whom he had never written and from whom he 
 had never received a line. The old soldier's heart 
 
 D 91 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 he knew, must have been broken. He wondered 
 how he played golf and went fox hunting after. 
 
 Over in Algiers they liked him from the day of 
 his arrival. The cadaverous corporal, who had 
 threatened to boot him at his first drill, nursed 
 him for days when he was down with sunstroke. 
 The Spahis and Zouaves had always a chair for 
 him at their tables in the cafes. Even the saturnine 
 Kabyles met him with a grunt of welcome when 
 he strolled through their tents. 
 
 He liked the life there: the colour and glamour 
 in the barracks, and the fierce, reckless spirit of 
 the men. He enjoyed himself, except when he 
 went out into the sand dunes and thought of the 
 four months he was in his Guards regiment and 
 wore his bearskin and his sash of scarlet and gold. 
 
 It was midnight now. The men had come fifteen 
 miles. That made thirty-three that day. They 
 were shuffling on in a rapid trot. The Dahomey 
 sergeant still kept ahead of the troop, like the bell- 
 wether of a herd of sheep. Only the frequent 
 shifts at the machine gun and the standard showed 
 that the troop was tired. They were near a group 
 of stunted palm trees and a little spring. 
 
 Donoghu gave the order to fall out and bivouac. 
 They were due two hours' sleep now. Then they 
 would have to be up and on the march if they were 
 to keep in the race. 
 
 Arms were stacked with a clashing rattle. The 
 troop sat down and munched the rations from their 
 haversacks. The six sentries took up their posts. 
 92 
 
DONOGHU'S HOUR 
 
 The sergeant made his rounds. Somewhere a pair 
 of jackals howled. 
 
 The moon was high now. Against the black of 
 the sky stars stood out like patches of white fire. 
 Faint silver twinklings came from the dusty leaves 
 of the palm trees. Water rose from the spring in 
 a soft bubble. It flowed out in a little silver river 
 that grew fainter and fainter and finally disappeared 
 in the sand. 
 
 Donoghu wondered how the English detachment 
 was getting along. He knew now how a cat felt 
 while it waited for a mouse. 
 
 The men had unrolled their blankets and lain 
 down on their faces. In their centre were the 
 machine gun and the stack of rifles. At intervals 
 the sentries stood bolt upright, with their fingers 
 on their triggers. 
 
 Donoghu hollowed himself a place in the sand 
 and settled himself in it. He could not sleep. He 
 felt that the next day was too big. He remembered 
 he felt like that going over on the mail boat to 
 the Guards' barracks. He wanted to save himself 
 as much as he could. He crushed his kepi down 
 over his eyes and lay still. 
 
 And then forms and faces rose before him. 
 There was the old colonel of Guards, sitting stiffly 
 before his desk, and a first lieutenant of Guards. 
 And there was Edith Grierson. And there was an 
 old fox-hunting major of Enniskillen Dragoons, and 
 a group of Trinity students, and an old lecturer 
 in Greek with a stained monograph in his hand. 
 
 93 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 And there was a thin line of khaki troopers, 
 centred about a marabout's tomb with a few stunted 
 date palms and a brackish stream. 
 
 Occasionally he heard a soft thud as the sentries 
 grounded arms against the sand, and a few stifled 
 yawns and a shuffle as the guard changed. 
 
 The moon had passed well overhead now. The 
 men had had their two hours' sleep, but Donoghu 
 gave no order. 
 
 He felt the young Dahomey sergeant pat him on 
 the shoulder. 
 
 "Are you asleep, Captain?" he asked. 
 
 "No, I'm not." 
 
 "Shall the men fall in?" 
 
 "Go back and lie down," Donoghu directed. 
 
 Another hour passed. Donoghu looked around. 
 Most of the men were awake. They lay around, 
 squatting on their haunches and lying on their 
 elbows, and waited. 
 
 Donoghu still gave no order. 
 
 Four hours had passed before they were under 
 way again. The air was raw. The horizon was 
 touched with faint splotches of grey. 
 
 The troops moved forward rhythmically in step. 
 The sergeant paced alongside with quick, nervous 
 strides. Donoghu noticed that his bayonet was 
 fixed. A sharp breeze moved westward. From 
 behind a clump of scrub there came the twitter of 
 a sand partridge. 
 
 Donoghu felt calm now. It was as if, after 
 countless ages, a scale that had been jolted had 
 
 94 
 
DONOGHU'S HOUR 
 
 come to perfect balance. He threw his shoulders 
 back and looked straight forward. About his 
 troops was the dignity of men going into battle. 
 
 Tints of rose and grey and emerald were filling 
 the sky. A flock of starlings passed high over 
 their heads. They could hear the rapid pit-a-pat 
 of wings. In the east the sun rose in a crimson 
 blotch. Clouds took the shape of heavy artillery 
 and of massed regiments. They hovered to and 
 fro like smoke from heavy ordnance. Then they 
 suddenly parted and the sun flashed out like a huge 
 crimson balloon. 
 
 They lost sense of time and space. Distance 
 became so many steps to be taken, until they met 
 a thin khaki line. 
 
 The troop routed step and scattered. The ser- 
 geant ran forward with nervous steps and whined 
 like a bloodhound. The machine gun was dropped 
 every quarter of an hour by its bearers, and others 
 rushed to it and carried it forward. Every quarter 
 of an hour the pole would be wrenched from the 
 hands of the standard bearer. 
 
 Donoghu glanced at his troop from time to time. 
 Their faces were set and rigid. Teeth were clenched. 
 Furrows ran down glistening black jaws. Huge 
 white eyeballs rolled. 
 
 He himself felt as if his fists grasped thunder-bolts. 
 He was an irresistible power, hastening down the 
 alleyways of the world to avenge woeful centuries. 
 
 The corporal at his left was gibbering in Arabic. 
 He was reciting verses from the Koran that told 
 
 95 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 of the conquest of the Feringhee and of the victory 
 of Islam. 
 
 Occasionally they rested mechanically. Then 
 they stood rigid and looked eastward. No one 
 spoke. 
 
 Hammers seemed to clank in Donoghu's brain. 
 There was a singing in his ears. Above all he 
 could distinguish a well-modulated voice drawling: 
 "How you Irish do love to flirt!" 
 
 Then they saw the khaki line. 
 
 The black sergeant raised his voice and howled 
 like a wolf. 
 
 The troop was running now. Three more helped 
 to rush the gun. They took the standard on their 
 shoulders. 
 
 Donoghu halted them and drove them into rank. 
 He knew they needed a rest. They stood tense and 
 quivering, with teeth bared. 
 
 He was near enough now to distinguish the 
 British advance guard. They had scattered out 
 over two hundred yards. A trim, slight officer was 
 walking up and down. He could see that it was an 
 English, not a native, detachment. He wondered 
 how they would face these black fighters, whose 
 bulk and uniform made them look like old-time 
 djinn. 
 
 He marched them forward in quick time. The 
 line grew more distinct. He could see the khaki 
 caps. They were the type whose salute had seemed 
 insults. He had no redress then. He was going 
 to have it now. 
 
DONOGHU'S HOUR 
 
 The khaki line had dropped on their stomachs 
 and were fingering their Lee-Enfields. They were 
 taking no chances. 
 
 If Donoghu did not attack, he could imagine 
 his reception. The young officer would come for- 
 ward with a smile. "Sorry, old man. Here first, 
 you see. Fortune of war!" The khaki troops 
 would examine his Senegalese curiously and then 
 draw aside with a snicker. 
 
 The line was lost to view behind a sand ridge. 
 In a minute they would top it. The defence would 
 not be more than one hundred and fifty yards 
 away. 
 
 The Senegalese were drawn up in a quivering 
 line. The teeth of the little corporal were chatter- 
 ing in frenzy. One or two of the men were frothing 
 at the lips. They fixed their chechias and tightened 
 cummerbunds. 
 
 Beyond the ridge they could hear the young officer 
 and his sergeant deliver quick orders. Donoghu 
 wasn't listening to them. He was listening to the 
 voice of a young woman in a conservatory at a 
 ball fifteen years ago. 
 
 The Senegalese were waiting impatiently, their 
 eyes focused upon him. 
 
 "Fix bayonets," he rasped. His throat seemed 
 to have gone dry. 
 
 There was a swish as the blades left the scab- 
 bards and a succession of sharp clicks as they were 
 locked on the rifle barrels. 
 
 97 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 The young Dahomey sergeant was poised on the 
 balls of his feet. His bayonet was at the charge. 
 He swayed backward and forward. He looked at 
 Donoghu. Donoghu nodded. 
 
 They topped the ridge and raced downward. 
 
VI 
 
 AN AFRICAN EPIC 
 
 THROUGH the open door of the dressing-room the 
 shouting at the ringside could be heard distinctly. 
 The preliminaries had been excellent. The middle- 
 weight bout had been a marked success. At that 
 moment the lightweight champion of Bloemfontein 
 and the Enniskillen Dragoon were battling the 
 eighth round of a spite fight, and the hyper- 
 critical audience of diamond merchants, soldiers 
 and miners were shrieking themselves hoarse at 
 a rally. 
 
 It was by far the best card that had ever been 
 staged in Africa, but the titbit of the evening was 
 still forthcoming. Frank Selby, the big negro who 
 had risen like a comet in the Cape Town ring, 
 had challenged Jim Muller for the heavyweight 
 championship of the continent, and the men were 
 to go twenty rounds that night. 
 
 Muller sat in his dressing-room, listening to the 
 advice of his trainer. As yet the negro was too 
 much of an unknown quantity to occasion Muller 
 and his training stable any serious qualms. But 
 they had been pretty careful. The champion, with 
 Dutch caution, had trained to a hair. Besides, it 
 
 99 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 was the first time in his ring career he had ever 
 met a black fighter. 
 
 Until now he had always drawn a rigid colour 
 line. The blood of the old Dutch pioneers, who 
 had hurled the Matabele and the Mashona back 
 from Table Mountain, rebelled at the thought of 
 matching brawn and skill with blacks. But things 
 had grown dull in the fight game. An astute 
 manager had traded on the sensational value of a 
 black and white match, and offered the biggest 
 purse in African ring history, and Jim Muller and 
 his manager had accepted. After all, knocking out 
 a black could only make him the more popular in 
 Kimberley. 
 
 But here in the dressing-room, as his hands were 
 being bandaged, the matter did not appear so 
 simple at all. The old Dutch trekkers, whose life 
 had been one struggle against the black spearmen 
 from the North, and who had learned their dia- 
 bolical cunning and had shot the blacks on sight, 
 woke up in him and, for the first time in his life, 
 he began to have misgivings as to the outcome of 
 a match. 
 
 It was ridiculous, of course. Here was he, Jim 
 Muller, six feet two, one hundred and ninety pounds, 
 in the pink of condition; the champion of Africa, 
 one of the cleverest boxers in the empire, sur- 
 rounded by skilled seconds. Somewhere in the 
 back of the club, this fetid black was undressing, 
 surrounded by filthy helpers, hangers-on in dives, 
 wharfingers, God-knows-what scum. Fellows of 
 100 
 
 
AN AFRICAN EPIC 
 
 the type of his opponent removed his shoes, pulled 
 his rickshaw, did all menial services for him. A 
 moment's spar, a feint, a right hook and the bout 
 would be over. 
 
 Still and all, he'd rather he hadn't taken it 
 on. 
 
 Outside, the dragoon and the pride of the Free 
 State were making the most of the minute's respite 
 between rounds. The comments of the spectators 
 were like the buzzing of an enormous swarm of 
 bees. Above it could be heard the raucous cues 
 of peanut sellers and the voice of the announcer 
 calling the round. 
 
 Then silence for a moment, and thunderous 
 shouting. Muller knew what had happened. One 
 of the men had gone weak, and the other was 
 finishing him. Another spell of silence and the 
 timekeeper began counting. A second slipped out 
 of the room and came back. "The Enniskillen's 
 out," he said. "We're next." 
 
 The crowd outside was satisfied. The fight had 
 gone twelve rounds, with action in every second. 
 And the home man had won. The star bout was 
 on next. Apart from its championship attraction, 
 it was between black and white heavyweights, and 
 one of the contestants was their own Jim Muller, 
 of Kimberley. Black and white boxers had clashed 
 frequently before the club, but never such important 
 figures in the fancy as to-night. And certainly 
 until to-night no negro in Africa had aspired to the 
 championship. 
 
 101 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 Up and down the aisles were peanut sellers, sand- 
 wich boys, paper boys and men with soda-water 
 baskets, all calling their wares. One of the club 
 stewards climbed into the ring and began covering 
 the bloodstains with sawdust. Another shook resin 
 at the corners. From the gallery and pit came the 
 monotonous chant of the bookmakers. The odds 
 were three to one against the black. 
 
 As Muller appeared, on his way to the ring, the 
 packed hall rose to its feet and cheered as one man. 
 The shout was taken up by the thousands standing 
 outside the club in the drizzling rain, and was re- 
 echoed through Kimberley. It was the champion's 
 first appearance in the ring since he had put away 
 Tom Jennings, the Australian heavyweight, seven 
 months before, and the thirteen rounds of that 
 terrific, gruelling mill were still fresh in the spectators' 
 minds. 
 
 Overhead the big incandescent arc light spluttered 
 and flared. All the old fight followers of Kimberley 
 were present. At the ringside he could distinguish 
 mining magnates, Colonial officials, boxers and their 
 managers. There was old General Baines, who had 
 never missed a fight in forty years, with double 
 glasses on his nose, propped up by cushions in his 
 seat. There was the civil governor and the colonel 
 of the Rifles. Even from the jaded Press table there 
 came a volley of clapping. It was certainly Muller's 
 house. 
 
 But in spite of all, there was no feeling of elation 
 in him in response to the welcome. He had been 
 102 
 
 
AN AFRICAN EPIC 
 
 overtrained, he thought. Yes, that was it. He had 
 been overtrained. He turned on his seconds with 
 a snarl. 
 
 Picking their way down the aisle came the 
 negro fighter and his seconds. The flaring hues 
 of his dressing gown were distinguishable even far 
 beyond the circle of the arc light's glare. There 
 was no clapping for him, no cheering, no welcome. 
 The crowd was not even inimical to him. They 
 had the same dispassionate feeling as they would 
 have had for a covey of birds beaten up for the 
 guns. 
 
 There was no choice of corners or gloves for him. 
 His seconds took what they got. Had Muller felt 
 like fighting with bare knuckles, they wouldn't 
 have dared dispute. They were a quiet, workman- 
 like, undemonstrative quartet, grouped around the 
 impassive bulk of the huge challenger in the 
 corner. 
 
 Bandages had been examined. Gloves were 
 tugged on. The pursy Scotch doctor, with his 
 stethoscope, had clambered in and out of the ring. 
 The club announcer was shouting the length and 
 conditions of the fight and introducing challengers. 
 Occasionally a burst of handclapping would break 
 out like the crackle of rifles. White-sweatered 
 seconds flitted around the posts, arranging smelling 
 salts, water, sponges and towels. 
 
 And in Jim Muller 's mind the scene took on the 
 proportions of an ancient masque. There was no 
 more of the sordid details of the prize ring. There 
 
 103 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 was a jousting of humanity. It was no longer a 
 twenty-round bout between hired pugs. It was 
 no longer even a championship at stake. It was a 
 struggle of strength between the attacking white 
 and the resisting black, between the hordes who had 
 come journeying over the sea and the natives to 
 whom they grudged even the wilderness. 
 
 Had Muller been the scum of the dive, the fighter 
 of the pothouse, the low-browed, dull-witted, 
 atavistic plug-ugly, fighting with brute strength and 
 low cunning, this phase would never have occurred 
 to him. But he was a son of the veldt, tanned 
 by the breezes of Africa, a descendant of the old 
 Amsterdam burghers, who had fought their way 
 inwards, inch by inch, into the country, against 
 the battling Zulus. They had relied on bullets 
 and powder and strategy for their success, but 
 their descendant must defend himself to-night with 
 elemental brawn. 
 
 And it filtered into~ Muller 's mind, thought by 
 thought, that it was a battle of races and of con- 
 tinents he must fight. He stood for the race that 
 filled the hall and the town, and that was eternally 
 inspanning on the trail northwards, and for forgotten 
 graves on the veldt, and for brave dead companies 
 ambushed by Zulu impis. 
 
 And the battle he would fight to-night, in a 
 twenty- foot ring with gloves, should have been 
 fought by armies of hundreds of thousands, and 
 iron behemoths on the high seas, and batteries 
 shooting from hill to hill. 
 104 
 
AN AFRICAN EPIC 
 
 The last of the challengers had been introduced, 
 and the referee was clambering through the ropes. 
 He was the editor of a famous sporting weekly, and 
 his black frock coat, bowed back, white moustache 
 and benevolent features looked out of place in the 
 prize ring. He looked like the officiating priest at 
 the ceremony of an antique religion. 
 
 The men had come together into the middle of 
 the ring for the final instructions. The black fighter 
 had thrown aside his dressing-gown and stood up, 
 a huge, swift- moving figure, with shaven head and 
 a bull neck. Under the champion's bathrobe the 
 crowd caught white flashes of skin. He had 
 little healthy hollows on his tanned cheeks and 
 his hair was beginning to thin prematurely at the 
 temples. 
 
 The crowd was too interested to talk. They 
 craned forward towards the black fighter and the 
 white-moustached referee and the tall, lithe figure 
 of the champion. The hush was broken only by 
 the clatter of telegraph keys. 
 
 Muller had underrated his man. He knew it. 
 He noticed the enormous barrel of chest, the deep 
 welt of muscle on the shoulders. He noticed the 
 soft look of the biceps that promised to send home 
 punches like darts of lightning, and the slender, 
 well-knit legs that could move like a flash. 
 
 And, moreover, he noticed the negro's eye. It 
 was keen as a kukri knife. There was none of the 
 shiftiness that marked the debased Kafirs. It was 
 an eye that had looked over rolling hills and followed 
 
 105 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 the flight of hawks. This was none of the degenerate 
 hangers-on of the "coke" dives of Capetown. 
 This was the type that fought Leopold's men on 
 the Congo, until the oily Belgians had enlisted in 
 their aid the Maxim and the Hotchkiss and the river 
 gunboat. And then that type retired to the un- 
 blazed forests of the interior, and were waiting there 
 patiently for a day to come. 
 
 More and more convinced Muller became that 
 this was a tournament of races, and he felt that only 
 his superior knowledge of the game would pull him 
 through. 
 
 The referee had finished his monotonous instruc- 
 tions and the men had retired to their corners. The 
 bookmakers raised their voices in a frenzy to make 
 the most of the last minute before the fight began. 
 The negro was sitting im ^assive as ever in his corner. 
 Muller waxed his shoes carefully on the resin board. 
 
 The seconds were ordered from the ring. There 
 was a sort of surge over the house as the spectators 
 settled themselves in their seats. The gong gave 
 out a reverberant brazen trill, and the fight was on. 
 
 Muller had somehow expected his opponent to 
 rush from his corner at the bell and try to sweep 
 him from his feet with a storm of hooks and swings. 
 Instead, he was circling around with a barely per- 
 ceptible movement, slightly crouched forward, the 
 brown gloves at the end of the glistening forearms 
 sawing the air, or flickering in and out in a feint, 
 or ready to block the smashing left lead that Muller 
 would sooner or later let go. 
 106 
 
AN AFRICAN EPIC 
 
 But the point of the black chin was never left 
 unguarded a moment, and the black arm flitted to 
 and fro over the ribs, where Muller would follow 
 up with his murderous right-hand drive. 
 
 For a tenth of a second the champion got his 
 opening. He jumped in with vicious right and left 
 swings from the hips. The negro covered up and 
 clinched, and the ropes creaked under the impact 
 of the wrestling bodies. 
 
 But in that brief lead and clinch Muller knew he 
 had met a consummate ring general. Then the bell 
 clanged. 
 
 The spectators had no angle on the fight from 
 the first round. That spring of Muller 's had failed 
 to crumple up his opponent, and they felt more 
 than relieved. Jim had a habit of finishing his man 
 in a round or two, of which they heartily approved, 
 but which they didn't very much enjoy. They liked 
 a good smashing fight, with a little claret on tap. 
 They liked to see a tottering man last the round 
 out. They liked to be brought to their feet by a 
 slashing rally. They liked to see a clean coup-de- 
 grdce administered to the staggering loser. A knock- 
 out was timely from the seventeenth round onwards, 
 but fifteen shillings was too much for a moment's 
 spar, a left lead, a right uppercut and a huddled 
 figure on the canvas. 
 
 As Muller rose for the second round, his jaw was 
 tucked a little closer to his shoulder and his left 
 hand was thrust forward a little more carefully. 
 The ducking and blocking of his swings in the first 
 
 107 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 round had taught him that he wasn't in for a sparring 
 exhibition, but a fight in which he had to bring 
 forth all his cunning and caution, and husband every 
 ounce of strength for the last rounds. 
 
 A brief fence, a flutter of flying gloves, a clinch, 
 and the man broke away. A few light passes to 
 the head and face, and the champion drove home 
 with the right. It caught the black clean under the 
 ribs. A quick feint, a left hook, and the champion's 
 right went out again. This time it didn't go home. 
 
 Rapid lefts and rights in the third round. A few 
 hooks and swings ducked and blocked. The men 
 were warming up. The boards creaked under the 
 shuffling feet. The gloves met with little explosive 
 noises. Punches went home with sharp, resonant 
 cracks. The ringside was leaning forward with 
 necks craned. Breaths were taken in over the house 
 with a sound like the hissing of a small furnace. 
 
 Muller didn't like the frequency with which that 
 left hand was shooting into his face. And he didn't 
 like the weight of the black fighter in the clinches, 
 or the sharp tattoo of the kidney punch, or the ease 
 with which he was swung around when their arms 
 locked. 
 
 He knew the black was playing a waiting game, 
 playing to cut him up and tire and weaken him. 
 But he thought of a white lager in the up-country, 
 and the patient waiting of ambushed blacks through 
 the daytime, and through the evening, and into the 
 night, and he pictured the irresistible, victorious 
 rush just before dawn. 
 1 08 
 
AN AFRICAN EPIC 
 
 There was a little lump under his right eye, where 
 that shooting left had gone home, and his lips were 
 beginning to swell, and there was an angry red 
 blotch on his back and side where the kidney 
 punch was doing its work. His seconds glanced 
 curiously at him when he walked to his corner at 
 the bell. 
 
 In the eighth round he rushed in, swinging both 
 hands heavily. The black rammed home a vicious 
 right uppercut as he came. For a second the hall 
 became an unmeasurable black void and the blazing 
 arc light a tiny glimmer in the darkness. He 
 managed to clinch and hold on until his head cleared, 
 and, by clever footwork and a long left jab, saved 
 himself until the gong called the end of the round. 
 
 Between the rounds the house was now a babel. 
 It hummed like a nest of hornets. The men at the 
 ringside sat very still and white-faced. In Muller's 
 corner the seconds worked like fiends. The towels 
 flapped like gunshots in the hands of the helpers. 
 Water splashed from the corner on to the shirt 
 fronts of the spectators. And the spectators made 
 no grumble. 
 
 The canvas was now spattered with blood, red 
 with the drops from this bout and brown where 
 the sawdust had been kicked away from the old 
 stains. Muller's eye was beginning to close under 
 the blue lump, and his mouth was swollen purple. 
 A cut on the left shoulder was numbing the arm; 
 bit by bit. His knees had begun to sag ever so 
 little. 
 
 109 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 How the black was he couldn't tell. No bruises 
 appeared under that glistening skin. Muller was 
 depending on swinging, circular blows, hooks, jolts 
 and swings, punches that might connect with nerve 
 centres and end the fight then and there. The 
 negro relied upon the repeated jabbing that cut and 
 bruised, and that brought weakness and stupor in 
 the end. 
 
 The house was shrieking to the champion to rush 
 in and fight, to risk all in one smashing attack, but 
 Muller remembered the uppercut in the eighth 
 round, and knew the mettle of the man against him. 
 His strength and skill were his in trust, and he must 
 conserve them. He was fighting Armageddon, and 
 every blow must count. 
 
 The house didn't know yet. They thought their 
 champion was off colour, was not in the vein. It 
 never occurred to them for a moment that he might 
 be beaten. They felt he must win in the long run, 
 but they changed their viewpoint about the length 
 of the bout, and wondered why he took so long to 
 finish it. They were beginning to be somewhat 
 disappointed in Jim Muller. 
 
 The bookmakers were in a frenzy. Right and left 
 they were offering even money. The news trickled 
 down to the ringside and into Muller's corner. He 
 had forgotten about the prize money that was his, 
 win or lose. He had forgotten his side stakes. He 
 forgot all but the huge iron figure he must beat for 
 the sake of his own people. 
 
 The long-range, flicking lefts were less frequent 
 no 
 
AN AFRICAN EPIC 
 
 now. The black was handing out quick, swinging 
 hooks and jarring uppercuts. He was taking more 
 of a chance. But never for a moment did he grow 
 reckless. At any instant the champion's hand might 
 cross to his jaw with that crashing trip-hammer punch 
 that had ended the ring career of Frank "Pug" 
 Murphy, and of Cyclone Kennedy, and had taken 
 his title from the old champion in the twentieth 
 round. 
 
 But Muller could never send over that punch 
 now. The spring that would put his whole body 
 behind the blow had gone out of his legs. His arms 
 were growing heavier. His breath came and went 
 in quick gasps. It was only the long discipline of 
 ring punishment that kept him up under the never 
 ceasing volley of rights and lefts; only the hard 
 road training kept his legs from faltering under 
 him, and the routine of the punching bag guided 
 his hands. 
 
 In the twelfth round he led with a swing for 
 the head and missed. He fumbled for the ropes 
 and held on to them to steady himself for an 
 instant. And in that instant the house knew he 
 was a beaten man. 
 
 They sat very still at first, very still and stricken. 
 It looked like an absurd joke, a prank a child 
 might play. Then it broke in on them, and the 
 house went mad. Jim Muller was being cut to 
 pieces before their eyes. 
 
 The champion was very tired now. He heard 
 the wild shouting, but what could he do? Couldn't 
 
 in 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 they understand that he was doing his best? He 
 knew he was beaten, but there was always a chance. 
 The bookmakers were offering odds against him. 
 That was all that roused him. And he thought of 
 the life that thirty pieces of silver bought, and 
 of the chafferers who changed money in the 
 Temple. 
 
 To-morrow the news would be all over Africa. 
 The sweating Kroo-boy in the mines would add 
 up his account against the white overseer. The 
 tale would go to the hawks' nest in the Congo 
 swamps, to the Matabele who sharpened assegais 
 by stealth in the Matoppo hills, and the white- 
 burnoused figures who hid behind rocks in the 
 desert and waited for the brown-faced, singing 
 Zouaves. 
 
 To-morrow the Egyptian fellaheen would read 
 words of hope from the Koran when the trim 
 British boy officer's back was to them. And to- 
 morrow swarthy, green-turbaned priests would 
 preach in angry whispers in the mosques of 
 Khartum. 
 
 The quick, jarring taps the black drove to the 
 base of the skull in the clinches were taking effect. 
 He could hardly understand he was fighting. There 
 was a white mist swirling around his knees and 
 stretching for miles in every direction. Little red 
 lights flickered and went out. Above him towered 
 a wall of black marble, at which he struck with 
 puny, futile blows. Somewhere was the bellowing 
 of a mob in frenzy. 
 112 
 
AN AFRICAN EPIC 
 
 Through his head ran the song of stiff, huddled 
 figures on lost fields, and of champions stricken 
 in the lists, and of captains dying. 
 
 The angry shouting stopped, and a great silence 
 fell about him. He knew he was on his hands 
 and knees. 
 
 And from someone at the ringside came the 
 sound of hard, dry sobbing. 
 
VII 
 A MAN'S GAME 
 
 THEY might have kept their eight thousand 
 dollars, Doran thought bitterly, as he went back 
 to his corner after the first round; they might have 
 kept their eight thousand in their pockets. If he 
 hadn't agreed to lie down in the twelfth round, 
 he would have been put out in the eighth. Good 
 heavens! Couldn't they have left him at home in 
 peace, and not have brought him back to shame 
 and humiliation to-night? 
 
 The house settled down to a humming criticism 
 of the round. There had been nothing in it but 
 slow, shuffling footwork, careful sparring, and a 
 few light taps to head and chest. That was the 
 way good fights began, they said; and this ought 
 to be a good one, if the length they had waited 
 for it were anything to go by. They had seen 
 young Nelson, the Swede, rise from preliminary to 
 star bout, and to-night he was getting his chance 
 at the world's championship. But old Dan Doran 
 how hard it had been to get him back into action ! 
 Here they were at last. Nelson was getting his 
 chance at the title, and it looked as if it were going 
 to be a corking good fight. 
 114 
 
A MAN'S GAME 
 
 From his corner Doran was taking in every detail 
 of the setting with a feeling of curious satisfaction. 
 It was two years since he had fought, and put out 
 Humphreys, the slogging New Zealander, in the 
 eighteenth round of a terrific battle. He remem- 
 bered how the house had staggered to its feet at 
 the last slashing rally, and how they had held their 
 breaths when he had finished the fight with a 
 smashing right across to the jaw. And here to- 
 night was the same white canvas floor beneath 
 him, and stout hempen ropes about him, and good 
 oak planking that gave to his feet like a spring- 
 board. And overhead was the gigantic arc light 
 that hissed and sputtered like an engine. And on 
 all four sides of him lay the sea of white faces, 
 stretching into the distance like blurs of linen cloth. 
 Old memories of forgotten fights welled up in him. 
 There was the familiar, hoarse shouting of peanut 
 men and lemonade boys and programme sellers. 
 There were the tense, expectant faces of the news- 
 paper reporters, and the cheery smiles of old 
 devotees of the ring, who had seen him win his 
 title and fight for and hold it time and time again. 
 He felt as if he were coming home after a long 
 journey, and that little landmarks were recalling 
 themselves to him and welcoming him among them 
 again. 
 
 There was a sharp-barked order from the referee. 
 The seconds clambered out of the ring. There 
 was a long shudder and shuffle as the audience 
 settled themselves back in their chairs. Clouds of 
 
 "5 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 blue tobacco smoke eddied and swirled towards 
 the ceiling. The gong rang out like the bell of 
 a church, and the second round was on. 
 
 As Doran rose and walked forward, the pleasure 
 of the old surroundings faded off, and he felt bit- 
 terly that this was his last fight and that he was 
 faking it. Old champions must go and new cham- 
 pions come, he knew; but this lad might have 
 had the title for all he cared. When he put out 
 Humphreys he had sworn it would be his last fight, 
 but they wouldn't leave him alone in his New 
 Jersey farm. They had to drag him out to satisfy 
 the public that Nelson was the better man. And, 
 not content with that, and knowing he was hard- 
 pushed for money, they had bought the honour 
 of his ring career as a pedlar buys old clothes. 
 
 They were sparring now. Doran noticed, with 
 a tinge of envy, the huge shoulders and tapering 
 waist of the challenger. How easily his arms 
 moved, he thought like a piece of well-oiled 
 mechanism! There wasn't much brain behind the 
 bulldog face and closely cropped forehead, but 
 the man could move as lightly on his feet as a 
 dancer, and there was the rosy tinge to his skin 
 that told of youth and unspent energy, and of huge 
 reserves of strength. He remembered the glimpse 
 of himself he had caught in the weighing-in room 
 that morning, the bulging, knotted muscles that 
 years in the ring had set and stiffened, the great 
 veins standing out on his forearm that showed he 
 was past his prime, the deep-set eyes that should 
 116 
 
A MAN'S GAME 
 
 have been reading a farm journal instead of probing 
 the mind of a ring opponent, the little hollows in 
 his cheeks, the hair beginning to grizzle and thin 
 at the temples. 
 
 The Swede's right went out in a quick feint, 
 and Doran dropped his head to avoid the smashing 
 left lead that followed. There was a blow along 
 his ribs like the stroke of a giant hammer. His 
 right snapped home a short uppercut to the body, 
 and they reeled to the ropes in a clinch. 
 
 He ought to have blocked that right-hander, he 
 said to himself, with a quick flush of shame. He 
 wasn't thinking fast enough he was stale. They 
 might have kept that eight thousand dollars. 
 
 The house had half-risen to its feet at Nelson's 
 rush. They had seen that before. That had 
 finished the ring career of Sapper Murphey, and 
 of Frank Boyd, and of Battling Hughie Madden 
 that vicious left drive to the jaw and right swing 
 to the ribs. They hadn't expected to see Danny 
 Doran go under to it, but they couldn't sit still 
 while it was being tried. They were relieved to 
 see Danny pushing against his man in the clinch. 
 They settled down again. This was going to be 
 a fight. 
 
 The referee pried the men apart, grunting with 
 the effort. The Swede was grinning behind his 
 guard. If he could put out the old fighter before 
 his time, why, so much more credit for him. If 
 he couldn't, there was the agreement that the 
 champion would lie down in the twelfth round. 
 
 117 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 At any rate, he was safe. The title was his. But 
 he had felt his right go home to the ribs true and 
 heavy. He would put out this old champion, he 
 felt, whom the world's best men had battered at 
 and left standing for seven years, while they had 
 succumbed to his ring generalship and craft one 
 by one; he would show them that the fighting 
 Swede was all that his backers said of him. 
 
 Doran wished he could put it all out of his head. 
 He wanted to concentrate on the flicking, flying 
 brown gloves in front of him. He wanted to keep 
 his eye on the point of jaw that peeked in and out 
 of the challenger's left shoulder, and on the chal- 
 lenger's ribs, and on the little knot of muscle below 
 his breast-bone. He must put up some kind of 
 a fight, even though he was to lie down. 
 
 The Swede's long left lashed out like the kick 
 of a horse. The champion caught it on his right 
 wrist and countered heavily on the mouth. A 
 couple of muffled hooks and jabs at close quarters, 
 and they were in a clinch again. The boards 
 groaned beneath their wrestling steps, and the hemp 
 ropes strained and creaked. There was the gruff 
 command of the referee to break away, and the 
 gong clanged the end of the round. 
 
 Even Dave Rogers would hardly speak to him 
 "Red" Dave, who had trained him for a hun- 
 dred fights. He remembered every fight when 
 Dave had knelt by his side in the corner, advising, 
 directing, telling him the weak points of an oppo- 
 nent, explaining to him the secret of a guard, or 
 118 
 
A MAN'S GAME 
 
 how to lure his man on to the pile-driving right 
 cross that had won him so many battles. Dave 
 was waving a towel in front of him to-night, but 
 there was no advice or encouragement or praise 
 from him. He was afraid to look up and see what 
 was in Dave's eyes. 
 
 What the devil had he ever done it for? he asked 
 himself savagely. Why had he ever been tempted ? 
 He remembered the Sunday they had crowded into 
 the farm parlour, big and burly and prosperous 
 looking Brogan, the sly theatrical man; Collier, 
 who owned the boxing club and Barton, the Swede's 
 manager. 
 
 "Give the lad a square deal, Danny," they had 
 said; "let him fight you for it. Don't let it be 
 said you threw him the title for charity. 'The 
 Charity Champion' they're calling him already. Be 
 a sport, Danny. You were always square. Be it 
 now." 
 
 And that was the way they had got him to fight 
 again. If he had only stuck to that! 
 
 The announcer called the third round. There 
 was a moment's pause, and the referee ordered the 
 seconds out. The gong broke into a reverberant 
 trill, and the men shuffled forward to the centre 
 of the ring. There would be no action for a few 
 rounds yet, the house agreed; they hadn't felt each 
 other out sufficiently. When the real fighting came, 
 it would be a story to go down in ring history. It 
 would be the story of the old champion, with his 
 craft and his caution and his science, calculating 
 
 119 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 time and distance to the slightest fraction, con- 
 serving every ounce of energy against this turbulent, 
 bull-necked fighter, throwing away strength and 
 stamina riotously, boring and rushing and taking 
 his punishment, and relying on brute strength and 
 punch to win. 
 
 The men shuffled around the ring in the opening 
 spar, the old champion crouching well forward, his 
 hands open and hardly moving; the challenger 
 upright, his left well out, and fiddling with both 
 gloves, as if they were operated by a set of wires. 
 The house rose to its feet with a shout. Doran's 
 left had snapped home clean and straight to the 
 challenger's head, flicked out again, and driven it 
 back between his shoulders a second time. A fierce 
 rush from the Swede, and the champion had rushed 
 home an uppercut to the jaw and slid into a clinch. 
 The house roared with applause as his right glove 
 cracked twice into the kidneys before they broke 
 away. 
 
 A short, rapid spar. A vision of four brown 
 gloves cutting through the air like the lashes of 
 whips. Light leads and counters muffled and 
 blocked. The monotonous shuffle of the men on 
 the resined floor. The clatter of telegraph keys 
 reporting the round over thousands of miles of wire 
 and cable. An ineffectual clinch or two in which 
 the boxers swayed to and fro and the boards groaned 
 and the ropes creaked. A grunt as a right went 
 home, and the bell ended the third round. 
 
 That wasn't so bad, Doran thought; he could 
 120 
 
A MAN'S GAME 
 
 still box. The old timing and science that had kept 
 him his title were his yet. 
 
 "Good old Danny!" somebody shouted from the 
 ringside. "You've got him going." 
 
 Then despondency fell on him like a pall. He 
 had no right to praise or encouragement. He was 
 cheating all these people. He was faking the fight. 
 What the devil ever prompted him to come back? 
 The boy could have got along without the money. 
 
 It was for the boy he had wanted it. He was 
 to get the chance Danny never had. In a few 
 years he would be through at high school, and 
 would go up to college to study law. The meagre 
 thousands Danny had saved wouldn't go far when 
 the five years' course was paid for, and there was 
 still the interim to be taken care of between the 
 time he got his degree and the time he collected 
 a practice. 
 
 It was this that had weighed with Danny when 
 the promoters came to lure him back for the fight, 
 and it was this that had weighed with him when 
 the Swede's scout had slipped into his training 
 quarters, with a shifty glance in his eye and an 
 evil smile on his twisted face. 
 
 The training had been going badly. The punch- 
 ing bag would not dance and drum under his hands 
 as it had done two years before. His step was 
 not so springy when he set out for the morning 
 trot. He tired too quickly under the medicine ball, 
 and his sparring partners complained that his 
 punch had not the snap and sting that had made 
 
 121 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 their job such a hard one when he was training 
 for Humphreys. 
 
 The scout had been thrown out on his head the 
 first and second times, and then Danny had listened 
 to him, and he was thrown out again. And then 
 Danny had agreed to it. Eight thousand dollars 
 and a chance for the boy on lower Broadway! 
 
 He couldn't win; he knew that. The old fire 
 had gone. And why, he argued to himself and he 
 knew he was wrong shouldn't this young fellow 
 pay well for it if he wanted so badly to be champion 
 of the world ? It was worth something in these days 
 of vaudeville exhibitions and theatrical circuits. 
 
 He had told Dave, the trainer, of it shamefacedly 
 the day before the match. 
 
 "I never thought you'd do it, Danny," the trainer 
 had said; "I never thought it was in you." 
 
 Dave had hardly spoken two words to him since. 
 Only the memory of the very old days, when the 
 champion had fought ten rounds for a five- dollar 
 bill, brought the trainer to the ring to-night. 
 
 His seconds pulled the stool from under him, 
 and he dropped into his crouch, barely in time to 
 avoid the challenger's thundering rush. Hooks and 
 jabs pelted home on his ribs like rain. He was 
 giving ground. He tried to cover up and fall into 
 a clinch. A right hook went home to his neck with 
 a force that jarred him from head to heel. A left 
 swing blocked, and he was holding on. The house 
 gripped its chairs in wild excitement. This new 
 challenger was a terror; even Danny Doran couldn't 
 
 122 
 
A MAN'S GAME 
 
 stand punishment like that. There was a humming 
 buzz of comment as the men broke away. 
 
 Doran felt strangely out of it. It was as if 
 he were at a preliminary where an inexperienced 
 novice was being cut to pieces. There was a 
 time when he could have met a rush like that 
 with stinging rights and lefts to the face that would 
 have taught his man to keep his distance. A half 
 dozen more rushes like that, he felt, and he would 
 be out. 
 
 The Swede was sparring now, his huge bulk 
 thrown slightly backward, his massive left arm 
 moving in and out like the crank of a piston. His 
 feet tapped the floor like drumsticks. His right 
 glove, close to his ribs, suggested a coiled-up spring. 
 His shoulders jutted backward and forward in 
 nervous, threatening feints. He was working Doran 
 into a corner, where he could volley down on him 
 with another terrific rush. 
 
 What was Doran doing? the audience wondered. 
 He wasn't fighting, that was sure. Why, there was 
 the Swede on him again, carrying him towards the 
 ropes, pelting him with a shower of hooks and jabs. 
 And Danny was covering up and looking for a 
 clinch. 
 
 "Fight him, Danny!" somebody yelled. "Wake 
 up ! You're asleep." Somewhere back in the hall 
 a boy hooted. He tried a feeble lead as they broke 
 away, and the bell ended the round. 
 
 He couldn't fight. Somehow he hadn't the heart 
 
 in him. There was something wrong. It was as if 
 
 E 123 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 he had come into the ring with his hands tied, to 
 be knocked out, to have nothing to do but to lose. 
 He was just a piece of machinery by which the Swede 
 was to become champion of the world; just some- 
 thing necessary to the battle, like the panting seconds, 
 or the timekeeper's bell. 
 
 When he entered the club that night, he had 
 thought of his return home to the farm with a feeling 
 of warm satisfaction. His wife would be there 
 waiting for him, and the boy. He pictured them 
 sitting in suspense in the parlour; his wife, big, 
 capable, brown-haired, brown-eyed, firm-mouthed, 
 silent; the boy lank, loosely built, red-haired, 
 excited. How often she had waited up to welcome 
 him back in her warm, silent way, and to dress the 
 big blue bruises and the angry red cuts! This 
 would be the first time he had come home beaten 
 in ten years. There would be a warmer welcome 
 for him than if he had won, but the boy would be 
 broken-hearted. But the price of his championship 
 would be in his pocket, and the price of the boy's 
 chance. At home they didn't know. 
 
 He wasn't so sure of the satisfaction now. He 
 felt he would be more ashamed to meet their glances 
 than to meet the eyes of Dave. If ever they got to 
 know about it Good God! If ever they got 
 to know about it ! 
 
 He felt a wave of heartsickness sweep over him 
 as he got up for the fifth round. His pink- skinned, 
 swaying opponent took on the aspect of an execu- 
 tioner about to mete out justice to his criminal self 
 124 
 
A MAN'S GAME 
 
 The roped ring reminded him of a picture he once 
 saw of the gallows of a guillotine. The timekeeper 
 and the referee were presiding officers of the law. 
 The tense, white-faced audience were citizens come 
 to see justice consummated. 
 
 His head was rocked backward and sideways 
 with long-range, welting swings. A mass of pulsing, 
 irresistible rock bore down on him. His neck and 
 sides seemed to quiver under the strokes of a Nas- 
 myth hammer. Unspeakably racking blows smashed 
 home to his jaw and head. People were shouting 
 in an immense, swelling volume of sound. The 
 floor of the ring swayed like the deck of a boat; 
 the flaming, flashing arc light became a lone star 
 in a black sky. He was plunging forward into dark 
 space, and then grasping and holding on to some- 
 thing as a swimmer grips a piece of driftwood. 
 Consciousness came back to him little by little, and 
 he noticed, in a dull, surprised way, that he was 
 holding his man off by long left jabs and mechanical 
 footwork. The bell rang in a faint, distant murmur, 
 and he staggered towards his seconds. 
 
 The crowd was strangely silent. A sort of heavy 
 gloom seemed to have fallen over them. They were 
 seeing a champion passing; they were witnesses at 
 the beating of the old ring general, who for ten years 
 had beaten the best men the world could produce. 
 There was something terribly big about it, some- 
 thing infinitely pathetic. 
 
 "Poor old Danny!" he heard someone at the 
 ringside say. "He's done for." 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 The flap of the waving towels rang out like gun- 
 shots. He could feel the cold comfort of the sponge 
 passing over his face, and the slice of lemon between 
 his lips. Somehow he felt that the crowd were 
 sorry for him, that their sympathy had passed from 
 the turbulent Swede, adventuring for a champion- 
 ship, to the tired old boxer defending it. If they 
 knew what he was doing they would hail him with 
 hisses and catcalls and execrations ; they would 
 have nothing for him but anger and contempt. 
 
 Back in the hall he could hear the hoarse, mono- 
 tonous chant of the bookmakers : 
 
 "Two to one against Doran! We'll give two to 
 one against Doran! Two to one! Two to one! 
 Two to one!" 
 
 A wild panic seized him. People were betting on 
 him old ring followers, boxers, and sportsmen. 
 He felt suddenly like a thief. He wanted to get up 
 and shout to them that they were losing their money. 
 He couldn't win. It was as much as he could do 
 to last to the twelfth round for the price of his 
 championship. 
 
 There was a commotion behind him. He heard 
 a faint cheer and a volley of handclapping. Davy, 
 the trainer, looked away. He heard his name called : 
 
 4 'Hey, Danny! Danny Doran!" 
 
 He looked down. Peering up at him from 
 the corner, he saw a broad, tanned face, with a 
 broad, kindly mouth, shrewd blue eyes, and a nose 
 slightly twisted to one side. There was a closely 
 cropped head that was going bald and grey at 
 126 
 
A MAN'S GAME 
 
 the temples. There were two ears battered out of 
 recognition. 
 
 4 'What's wrong with you, Danny, man? What's 
 happened to you to-night ? " 
 
 Doran could hardly believe his eyes. It was Tom 
 Squires, Tom Squires from whom he had won the 
 title ten years ago " honest Tom Squires" they 
 called him then. It was like seeing someone from 
 a dead world. Why, Tom had disappeared five 
 years ago, no one knew where. They said he was 
 down and out, that he had no money, that he was 
 earning a few dollars coaching schoolboys. 
 
 "Here, let me up in that corner! Hold this coat, 
 will you?" 
 
 Danny saw him clamber into the ring. There 
 was something uncanny about him. It was like a 
 ghost walking into a warm, lighted room. Danny 
 saw him take the sponge and smelling salts from a 
 white-sweatered second, and bend over him. The 
 house was roaring itself hoarse with excitement. 
 Some of the older patrons had seen Squires lurch, 
 reel, catch the ropes, and slip to the canvas in the 
 thirty- fifth round against Doran, more than ten 
 years ago. By God! they said to themselves; there 
 were fighters in those days; they were no vaudeville 
 boxers. 
 
 Danny could hear the old fighter purring away 
 as he held the salts to his nose: 
 
 "Why, Danny, you ought to put him out in a 
 round. Get into it! Show them how we used to 
 box. I came a hundred miles to see you fight 
 
 127 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 to-night. Wait a minute! I was forgetting some- 
 thing. I want to do a little betting." 
 
 He dug his left hand into his trousers pocket. 
 A roll of small bills came out. Danny could 
 see that they were pitifully few. There could 
 hardly have been more than fifteen dollars there; 
 perhaps not that much. Squires turned to a 
 second. 
 
 "Put that on Danny for me," he said, "and see 
 that you get good odds, young fellow!" 
 
 The gong clanged out, clamorous, vibrant, im- 
 perious. Doran saw the huge bulk of the challenger 
 rise slowly from his stool. He felt Squires slap him 
 smartly on the shoulder. 
 
 "Go in and win, old champion!" he was saying. 
 "Go in and win!" 
 
 The house thundered applause as Doran rose. 
 He saw figures rising at the ringside and cheering 
 wildly. There were men he recognised, old backers, 
 old fighters, old followers of the ring. There were 
 Colonel Knox, who had helped him when the boy 
 was born, and Jim Mann, who had backed him 
 against The Kangaroo, and Gentleman John Brady, 
 tvhose ring career he had finished seven years before, 
 and Tony Lavigne and Cyclone Kenny, and other 
 old, forgotten faces. They were cheering the 
 rafters off the club. 
 
 The Swede feinted with the left glove. In a 
 moment he would feint with the right and come 
 rushing in, swinging both hands. The right feint 
 came. Doran braced himself and lashed out with 
 128 
 
A MAN'S GAME 
 
 right and left. He ducked the flailing swings, and 
 drove a hook to the stomach. 
 
 "That's the stuff, Danny!" someone shouted. 
 "Keep it up!" 
 
 They sparred a few moments. Doran could see 
 two red spots on the challenger's cheek bones, where 
 the stinging hooks had caught him. He was excited 
 and annoyed. The easy, contemptuous smile had 
 gone from his face. There was a hard, flashing 
 glitter in his eyes. Doran saw him bend slightly 
 at the knees. He was getting ready to spring. The 
 champion shot out his left. 
 
 Then again the trip-hammers smashing down his 
 guard and ripping it up from below, the thrusting 
 of the rock-like, fighting machine against body and 
 head and jaw, the merciless crushing of the massive 
 arms, the sharp, nervous jar of the kidney punch, 
 a sharp blow from the Swede's shoulder to his 
 mouth. 
 
 The referee slapped them on the backs. 
 
 "Break away, there!" he cautioned. "Break 
 away! Take care, Nelson; this is a boxing match, 
 not a free for all!" 
 
 They sparred again. Doran could not get out of 
 his head the figure of old Tom Squires clambering 
 into his corner, and the cheering, friendly faces at 
 the ringside. There were thousands present to- 
 night who had cheered him to victory in the old 
 days, who were trusting him, who were laying money 
 on him. And he was going to lie down. He felt 
 dull and dazed. 
 
 129 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 What did they want him to do? he asked. Did 
 they want him to win? He couldn't do that. His 
 science and craft were nothing without the snap 
 that sent a punch home like a rifle bullet, and the 
 stamina that would freshen up in the minute's rest 
 after three minutes' slogging punishment. He 
 couldn't do anything without them, and they were 
 gone. 
 
 The challenger's left caught him lightly on the 
 temple, and he slid to the right in time to avoid the 
 murderous drive to the ribs. Old Tom Squires at 
 the ringside had brightened him up. The old tricky 
 footwork was coming back to him. Mechanically 
 his eye saw an opening, and mechanically his left 
 shot out to take advantage. There were a few 
 snappy jabs to jaw and neck, a few swings ducked, 
 uppercuts missed and hooks muffled, and he was in 
 his corner again. 
 
 What did they want him to do, if he couldn't 
 win? he asked himself. He looked at Dave flapping 
 the towel in front of him, and at Squires whispering 
 unheeded advice into his ear, and suddenly the 
 answer electrified him: To fight, if only to lose; 
 to fight, as doomed defenders of a fortress fight; 
 to fall, as soldiers on a forlorn hope fall; to go 
 down as a champion should, fighting; to play 
 a man's part in a man's game, and to lose like 
 a man. 
 
 To the devil with their eight thousand dollars! 
 To the devil with themselves for sneaking, evil- 
 minded, trafficking thieves! He was fighting his 
 130 
 
A MAN'S GAME 
 
 last fight, and he'd fight it square. He would play 
 the game, the big game, a man's game. 
 
 He motioned Dave down with his gloved right 
 hand. The scarred, badger-like trainer leaned 
 towards him. 
 
 "What is it, Danny?" 
 
 "I'm going to fight, Dave." He didn't know 
 how to put it. "This lying-down business is off." 
 
 "Why is it off, Danny? Do you think you can 
 win?" Dave's eyes were as hard and steely as 
 before. 
 
 "No, I don't think I can win. I'm going to lose, 
 but I'm going to lose fair." 
 
 Dave was down by his side like a flash. Squires 
 caught his towel and began cracking it like the lash 
 of a whip. 
 
 "Get down lower!" Dave was directing. "Keep 
 down, and he can't get you with that left swing!" 
 Oh, it was good, Doran felt, to have him kneeling 
 there in the corner, advising and nursing him as he 
 had done in every fight until now. 
 
 As he rose at the bell, it seemed to him that the 
 thousands of closely packed, dim figures in the hall 
 were men supporting him in the fight; that Dave 
 and Squires in the corner were lieutenants of his; 
 that the timekeeper's bell and the spluttering arc 
 light were standards of battle. By Heaven! he'd 
 show him; he'd show this peddling boxer how 
 champions lose! 
 
 The house had grown still and tense the great 
 fight they had expected was in full swing, the fight 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 between the crafty old ring general and the hurtling 
 challenger. The waxed shoes of the boxers slid 
 over the canvas like the rustle of silk. The referee's 
 feet pattered as he sprang aside from the feinting, 
 shifting fighters. The staccato rattle of the tele- 
 graph keys rang out like the beating of hammers. 
 The pulsing, hissing breath of the audience sug- 
 gested the winging of birds. 
 
 Again the swinging, thundering rush. Doran 
 struck out savagely with both hands, and covered 
 up. They swung around the ring in a clinch. 
 Over the Swede's shoulder, Doran could see the 
 figures in his corner leaping with excitement. 
 Squires was sparring viciously at an imaginary 
 opponent, his eyes blazing, his grim, rugged jaw 
 thrust forward. Dave was signalling to uppercut. 
 He worked his right arm free cautiously, and lashed 
 upwards. There was a sharp, resonant crack as 
 the punch went home. 
 
 "That's the style, Danny!" Squires was yelling. 
 "Send them in! Send them in!" 
 
 The voice of Squires raised a cold fury in him. 
 He remembered in a flash the little roll of shabby 
 dollar bills. So they were to cheat old Tom out 
 of that! He was to go home to his wife and boy 
 with eight thousand dollars, and Tom was to go 
 home without his last fifteen! His left thudded 
 home on the face, and his right thundered over on 
 the temple like a trip hammer. 
 
 They were struggling in a clinch. The Swede 
 was snarling in his ear: 
 132 
 
A MAN'S GAME 
 
 " What's this? The double cross?" 
 
 Danny wanted to answer. He groped for words. 
 
 "No!" he gasped. "No! It's the square deal. 
 That's what it is." 
 
 The referee wrenched them apart. The Swede 
 was balancing himself on his toes and swaying his 
 shoulders threateningly. 
 
 "All right, you faker!" he shouted. "Just wait!" 
 
 Then it seemed to Doran as if great waves lifted 
 him and smashed him up against the ropes. Giant 
 drumsticks were beating a tattoo on his head and 
 shoulders. He fought back gamely with right and 
 left. 
 
 The end was near, he felt. All right, he would 
 meet it as a man should. The thought of the boy 
 at home ticked into his mind like a message. He 
 had been wrong. The boy should fight his own 
 battle. That was what he would have wanted him- 
 self. He would fight as his father was fighting 
 now. He would win if he had the stamina and 
 strength and skill; if he hadn't, he should lose 
 like a man. There should be no shameful secret 
 conferences behind locked doors, no passing of soiled 
 money between furtive hands a clean ring, and the 
 prize to the winner, and might the best man win! 
 
 Rounds and rests were lost for him. He dimly 
 heard the gong, and went to his corner, and rose 
 when the gong crashed again. He was no longer 
 conscious of the even voice of Dave, of the pres- 
 ence of Squires, of the panting, sweating seconds. 
 He was at times sparring; at times leading snappy, 
 
 133 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 smashing blows to head and jaw and body; at 
 times clinching; at times reeling from the impact 
 of jarring, deadening swings and hooks, and sending 
 home counters like sword thrusts. 
 
 The house was too tense for shouting now. This 
 was too great a fight to be true. Surely, they 
 thought, no man could withstand those hurtling, 
 cyclonic rushes of the giant Swede, with his arms 
 swishing home like flails, and his great body behind 
 them, giving murderous force to every blow. And 
 still there was the old champion crouching stealthily 
 about the ring, his jaw and stomach well covered, 
 his great, gnarled arms shooting out now and again 
 like the paw of a cat, and sending home those 
 stinging, lightning punches that had made him so 
 terrible in the old days. Neither of them could 
 stand the pace long. Already the challenger's 
 mouth was beginning to sag from the champion's 
 flashing leads. And old Danny's ribs were angry 
 and red from the crashing force of the kidney 
 punch. There was a scarlet weal on his cheek 
 bone, where an old gash had opened, and his stomach 
 and chest were purple from the Swede's short, 
 in -fighting uppercuts. 
 
 Back in the hall the bookmakers were shouting 
 in a frenzy. Doran heard them faintly, as through 
 a wall: 
 
 "Even money! We'll give even money! We'll 
 give even money!" 
 
 He felt a warm glow through him. He had been 
 fighting, then, and fighting well. When he did 
 
 134 
 
A MAN'S GAME 
 
 go down, they couldn't blame him. He had done 
 his best. He had played the game. 
 
 The seconds dashed water at him as he stag- 
 gered to the corner. Things cleared as the sponge 
 passed over his forehead. The air from the flap- 
 ping towels gushed into his lungs as from a blast 
 pipe. In the opposite corner he could see the 
 Swede's seconds working like fiends. They were 
 slapping and pummelling the challenger's legs. 
 The Swede must be feeling the pace, too, he thought. 
 That was all right. 
 
 " What's the round?" he asked. 
 
 "The twelfth," a second whispered. 
 
 He felt himself go taut like a rope. This was 
 the round in which he was to have lain down. He 
 felt a great impatience while he waited for the bell 
 to ring. This was the round he would probably 
 be knocked out in, but this was the round he must 
 fight above all others. He waxed his shoes care- 
 fully on the resin board. 
 
 And then suddenly he was sparring, his eyes 
 focused on the blazing grey eyes of the challenger. 
 He forgot the brown gloves and the swinging 
 arms and the pulsing, iron body. To keep his 
 eyes on his man and to go down fighting, that 
 was what he must do to go down fighting, like 
 the old heroes of the ring, as old John L. had 
 gone down, and Peter Jackson, and the fighting 
 "Fitz." One last rally, and then defeat! And to 
 have played the game, the big game, a man's 
 game! 
 
 '35 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 He met the rush with a rain of jabs, and then 
 the ropes cut into his back. He was being swung 
 around and pushed mercilessly towards a corner. 
 There was a jarring smash to his head. He shook 
 it off like an insect and flailed back. 
 
 The house was on its feet. He could hear them 
 shouting like the beating of great surf on rocks. 
 The sound seemed to quiver and vibrate. The 
 ring beneath his feet trembled like a springboard. 
 He lashed out blindly again and again. He knew 
 nothing but that he was fighting the last round 
 of his last fight. His knees were sagging. Huge 
 waves of crimson seemed to roll in, curl, and break 
 before his eyes. His arms went out in great, titanic 
 blows. There was a shock in his shoulders as his 
 gloves struck home. The yelling of the audience 
 crashed in his ears like volleys of thunder. 
 
 There was a heavy thud, and the ring seemed 
 to rock beneath his feet. His right hand lashed 
 through empty air. He caught the ropes, and stag- 
 gered around again. 
 
 The referee was pushing him back. 
 
 "Stand away, Danny! Stand back! One! 
 Two " 
 
 Where was Nelson? He looked around stupidly. 
 Why wasn't he fighting? What had happened? 
 He caught sight of a huge, huddled figure, lying 
 crumpled on the canvas, as through a haze of smoke. 
 The thunderous shouting had ceased. In the dead 
 silence he heard the voice of the referee count, like 
 the slow ticking of a clock: 
 
 136 
 
A MAN'S GAME 
 
 "Five! Six! Seven " 
 
 He couldn't understand it. He should have been 
 knocked out. And there was the Swede sprawling 
 on the floor of the ring, and the count nearing the 
 close. 
 
 "Nine! Ten! Out!" 
 
 Dave's arms were around him, he felt dully. 
 They were leading him to his corner. The audience 
 seemed to have suddenly become a horde of shriek- 
 ing madmen. People were swarming into the ring 
 and grasping his hand. He tried to pull himself 
 together. 
 
 Now they were bathing his face; now they were 
 taking his gloves off; they were helping him down 
 from the ring and towards the dressing-room. They 
 were in the dressing-room now, Dave and Squires 
 and he. They were cutting the bandages from his 
 hands. He could hear Dave grunt as he bent over 
 them. Squires was talking to himself quietly, in 
 low, rambling tones. 
 
 There were the voices of seconds in the corridor 
 outside. They were raised for a moment in high- 
 pitched argument: 
 
 "Well, I got the tip that Danny was going to 
 lie down, I tell you!" 
 
 "For Heaven's sake, don't make a fool of your- 
 self! Danny Doran lie down? Why, man, you're 
 mad! You ought " 
 
 The tension inside him seemed to snap like a 
 string, and to leave him weak and helpless. His 
 head fell forward on his chest. There was a choke 
 
 137 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 in his throat, and a warm trickle from his eyes that 
 reached the cuts on his cheek bones and set them 
 smarting furiously. 
 
 Dave looked up at him. 
 
 "Ah, don't, Danny!" he said. "Ah, don't!" 
 
 The choke became a sob. The warm trickle 
 on his cheeks a stream. Dave began patting one 
 shoulder, Squires the other. 
 
 "Ah, Danny, boy!" Dave was saying. "Ah, 
 Danny!" 
 
 He couldn't stop the sobbing; he didn't want to. 
 It seemed to him that all evening lean, sinewy 
 fingers had been clutching his throat, and were 
 now loosing hold. He felt somehow that he was 
 being relieved, that the tears running into the open 
 gashes on his cheek bones were healing waters, 
 and the patting of the trainer's hands the touch 
 of a kindly physician. 
 
 138 
 
VIII 
 JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 Now, WHEN Captain Patrick Burgoyne returned 
 from the heart of Africa to New York, after a two- 
 year hunting trip, he found a not unusual situation 
 confronting him. He found his fiancee, Edith 
 Anderson, engaged to one John R. Collins, broker, 
 of something Broad Street. Whereupon Captain 
 Patrick Burgoyne followed a not unusual course. 
 He promptly went to the dogs for three months. 
 
 You would have liked Patrick Burgoyne. He 
 stood six feet in his socks and tipped the scale at 
 one hundred and seventy pounds. There was 
 something about him that suggested an ocelot 
 lean, lithe muscles slipping underneath a satin skin. 
 His face was strongly marked and bronzed like a 
 Malay's. His hair was straight and black, and was 
 brushed clean back from the temples. His black 
 eyes looked at you with an air of interested intensity. 
 His chin curved forward with determination, not 
 with truculence. His mouth was firm-lipped and 
 had a sort of triangle about it. The head rested 
 on a neck that resembled a pillar of warm stone. 
 But what was most remarkable about him was a 
 wonderful vibration of baritone voice, a sort of 
 
 139 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 humming like the string of a 'cello, like the throb 
 of a drum. He moved with unstudied deliberation, 
 without an atom of energy wasted, yet with the 
 flashing quickness of a wild animal. 
 
 There was a great deal of the wild animal about 
 Burgoyne, of the wild animal of the jungle, not 
 that of a citizen's imagination the animal that 
 flings itself in melodramatic fury against the bars 
 of a circus, and rends great gobbets of raw meat. 
 And when you come to think of it, that he should 
 resemble something of the jungle was only natural, 
 for man tends to absorb the colour of his sur- 
 roundings, in the manner of the chameleon. The 
 cowherd's face becomes bovine. The eyes of the 
 master mechanic look at you with the metallic 
 expression of a steam gauge. The bearing and 
 being of the big game hunter resemble those 
 of the great wild, free things whose trail he 
 follows. 
 
 Which explains in no small part the going to 
 the dogs of Captain Patrick Burgoyne. You can 
 tame a wild animal and make it care for you. You 
 can tame a Sahara lioness Bonavita has done it. 
 You can tame and make an intimate of a Punjab 
 tiger, as Suade has done. But you can't then turn 
 on it, and without rhyme or reason, for nothing 
 but your own whim, lash it across the muzzle, and 
 drive it from you. The wild animal has a sense 
 of justice and a sense of dignity to which not even 
 Solomon the King ever rose. And that was what 
 Edith Anderson did to Burgoyne. 
 140 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 Aflalo, the veteran shikari, foresaw this when 
 he heard of the engagement two years ago in 
 Somaliland. Aflalo, not wiser than the Hebrew 
 poet, could not understand the way of a man with 
 a maid, but, worldly enough, he understood the 
 of a maid with a man. 
 
 "It's just an infatuation of this girl's," he had 
 said, "and it will pass, but it will be rough on 
 Burgoyne. What the devil does a big game hunter 
 want with a wife? If he must marry, why doesn't 
 he take some plump, comfortable, little widow, 
 who can run the place when he's away? When 
 the jungle gets into your blood and the trail's 
 always calling you, what you want is a good gun, 
 and not a snivelling bride." 
 
 And all the shikari camp, from Fernando Po to 
 the Gulf of Aden, and from Cairo to Capetown, 
 agreed with him emphatically. 
 
 You will find fifty Edith Andersons on Fifth 
 Avenue between Forty-second and Fifty-ninth 
 streets any afternoon between three o'clock and 
 five. She was tall; she was fair; she was graceful. 
 There is no denying that she was a beautiful 
 woman, which was sufficient excuse for Burgoyne, 
 for after many years among the worthy but 
 uncomely daughters of Africa, and the dwarfed, 
 suspicious-eyed wives of Hindu villagers, and the 
 incredibly hideous women of Borneo and Sumatra, 
 beauty of white women bursts on one with the 
 force of an obsession. Edith Anderson's face was 
 oval, and her cheeks were like tinted ivory. Edith 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 Anderson's eyes were blue, with the blue of a Pacific 
 lagoon and the sun shining on it. Her mouth 
 somehow suggested ripe strawberries. There was 
 something about the line of her figure and her 
 graceful movement that brought to mind a stream 
 curving and twisting down a mountain-side. Her 
 voice was low and soft, like that of Cordelia, the 
 daughter of Lear. 
 
 She had gone, at the request of a Bryn Mawr 
 cousin, who seemed unnecessarily excited at the 
 prospect, to hear Burgoyne speak one afternoon at 
 an Institute of Letters and Sciences. She hadn't 
 wanted to go and she hadn't the least interest in 
 Africa. Her mind was running on fox-trots and 
 cotillion favours, and the respective merits of French 
 and American automobiles. Africa was nothing to 
 her but a multi-coloured blot on the map of the 
 world, and big game recalled to her mind the intel- 
 ligent antics of certain lions and elephants she had 
 seen in a mammoth circus many years ago. But 
 the Bryn Mawr cousin had attacked her enthu- 
 siastically, and would hear of no reasonable excuse. 
 So she went. 
 
 She saw a tall, lean, bronzed man, who looked 
 hot and angry and resentful in correct morning 
 clothes, who spoke in staccato accents and didn't 
 seem to know what to do with a pair of muscular 
 brown hands. She was inclined to be amused 
 slightly, and, for lack of something better to do, 
 began to listen. Then the throb of the wonderful 
 baritone voice attacked her, fought her, compelled 
 142 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 her. And as she sat back in her chair the staccato 
 words began to take form and colour, and she saw 
 Africa. She saw its great, black-green forests, its 
 brown, rolling veldts, its queer, hidden villages 
 with huts like beehives, its great rivers, its winds, 
 its suns and its moons, its jungle people and its 
 people of the plains, its huge beasts flitting 
 about like shadows in the night time, or lying 
 concealed in the green lush during the day. And 
 through it all she saw the lean, bronzed man walk 
 like a giant, and the continent answering him as 
 the strings of the violin answer the bow of the 
 player. 
 
 She met him after the lecture, and she was pleased 
 when she saw the shock of pleasure that passed 
 over his face as he looked at her. They met again 
 at a dance, whither some scheming, lion-hunting 
 matron had enticed him, and she took pity on his 
 evident discomfort and ignorance of dancing and 
 sat out with him. She went again to hear him 
 lecture. She met him at another dance. She 
 watched him as he looked at her, and she knew 
 that he was in love. 
 
 It sent a great thrill of pride through her. There 
 was something gigantic about this man, something 
 that pictured the son of Cush, the mighty hunter 
 before the Lord. She thought of him in the jungle, 
 following lone trails, and daring deeds that no 
 other but he could do, and through her veins went 
 the exultation of a captain who has taken an 
 impregnable fortress. 
 
 H3 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 The end came quickly. It came one evening 
 at a dance in Sherry's. They were standing in a 
 conservatory, chatting. Outside, in the ballroom, 
 dancers glided and whirled to the thumping rattle 
 of a fox- trot. He was looking at her with vague, 
 troubled eyes. 
 
 "My dear," he said suddenly, "I love you. Will 
 you come to me?" 
 
 And she, not knowing why, but thrilled by that 
 wonderful voice, allowed herself to be folded in 
 his sinewy arms, as by the wings of a bird. 
 
 He was clumsy in his love-making. He was 
 silent. He was self-conscious. He seemed to 
 regard her as something inexpressibly fragile, of 
 inexpressible value, that a wisp of spring wind had 
 wafted to him from heaven. He could not express 
 his love for her in any other way than to tell of 
 the things that were nearest to his heart. It is the 
 way of big men. It was Othello's way. 
 
 He told of the animals he knew, queer little 
 intimate histories that only the man whose heart 
 is in them can see and understand. He depicted 
 for her their tender love scenes, their quarrels, their 
 jealousies, their courtships. He told of the stately 
 giraffe and his mate moving through the grey dawn 
 to the drinking pool, their muzzles touching in 
 fondness; of the lion's courtly deference to the 
 lioness, and his assiduous care for her ; of the hippo- 
 potamus and his mate and cub playing boisterously 
 together in a pool, like human infants. And all 
 the time in his heart he saw visions and dreamed 
 144 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 dreams. He saw himself and Edith Anderson to- 
 gether, with the blue hazy glamour of Africa about 
 them, and the romance of the trail ahead. He 
 saw them together in the vast sea of the Sahara, 
 striking southward for the Walled City. He saw 
 them in the barbaric colour of Cairo, on the banks 
 of Nyassa, amid the primitive splendour of Zanzibar. 
 He would show her life as she had never seen it, 
 dreamed it, before. In his mind's eye Africa 
 became one small desert island of intense charm, 
 peopled only by them two. 
 
 Things ran smoothly with them, which is not 
 the course of true love. They were affianced, and 
 various sob sisters and Sunday newspaper specialists 
 revelled in the story of their romance. The mighty 
 hunter before the Lord was to go on a two-year 
 trip to Africa in an effort to locate the pygmy tribes 
 of Nyassa, and when he returned he was to marry 
 the Madison Avenue beauty. To this old man 
 Anderson, who sat in an office in Wall Street and 
 manoeuvred with railroads as a chief of staff man- 
 oeuvres with regiments, seemed to have no objec- 
 tion to offer. 
 
 "It will pass," he told himself in the privacy 
 of his Wall Street office, "so what's the use of 
 worrying. Edith's no fool." 
 
 For six months he left her to herself, and to 
 her dreams of the son of Cush. There was little 
 in the way of correspondence to feed her fancy, 
 for runners to carry messages are hard to find in 
 the vast alluvial forests of the Congo. Burgoyne 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 soon became a vague, gigantic figure, a legend, a 
 god who walked the earth in old forgotten days. 
 
 The eye of old man Anderson was always open, 
 which explains to some extent his international 
 success. It saw everything. It saw Burgoyne be- 
 coming blurred on the screen of his daughter's 
 mind. He sent for John R. Collins, a young man 
 who had had previous conversations with him, and 
 whose cool brain and business ability had impressed 
 the magnate mightily. 
 
 "Go to it, son," he said. 
 
 John R. Collins went to it. We will not go 
 into detail about him, for he merely flits into the 
 story and out of it again. It will suffice to des- 
 cribe him as a young man, prematurely bald, with 
 a cold eye, a certain comeliness, and a that-may- 
 do-for- a- sucker -but- it -don't -get -over -me manner, 
 which was generally true. 
 
 "Now listen to me, little girl," he began, and 
 she listened. 
 
 The fool's eyes are on the ends of the earth, 
 which proved that Edith Anderson was not one. 
 For Collins found little difficulty in diverting her 
 gaze from the blue heat-haze of Africa and a suit 
 of hunting khaki, and in focusing it on the keen 
 glitter of Fifth Avenue, with its jewellers' and 
 modistes' shops, on country clubs and opera nights, 
 and Palm Beach. In virtue of which, when Captain 
 Patrick Burgoyne sighted the Scotchland Light- 
 ship, and the pilot came aboard with mail, he found 
 among his parcel a neatly engraved notice expres- 
 146 
 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 sing the pleasure of Mr. and Mrs. Anderson in 
 announcing the engagement of their daughter Edith 
 to John R. Collins. Burgoyne, with his hunter's 
 intuition, sensed what had occurred. He accepted 
 the matter calmly, with the fatalism of the Yellow 
 Lands. He turned over the animals he had brought 
 back with him to the curator of the Bronx Zoo- 
 logical Gardens, presented his trophies to the 
 Harvard club, and dropped out of the society of 
 his kind like a stone out of a window. 
 
 In going to the dogs in New York, you begin 
 on Fifth Avenue. You can do it very successfully 
 between Fifty-ninth street and Forty-second. Then 
 you move over to Broadway. It will take some 
 time to exhaust Broadway, but eventually you will. 
 Then you move over to Seventh Avenue, and then 
 to Eighth. In some queer way you return on your 
 tracks and wind up at Third. Third will occupy 
 the normal attention for some weeks. Then Second 
 claims it. If Aflalo had been told the facts of the 
 case he would have looked for Burgoyne on Second, 
 but Aflalo never heard. 
 
 No one is ever recognised in New York. It 
 would seem as if everyone wore a sort of Solomon's 
 ring, which confers invisibility. No one recog- 
 nised Burgoyne. Few knew him by sight, and the 
 usual newspaper pictures of him which had been 
 published were, as newspaper pictures usually are, 
 like any tall, dark- haired man except Burgoyne. 
 His friends and acquaintances accounted for his 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 disappearance by saying that, taking the jilting very 
 much to heart, he had gone off on another expedition. 
 He had gone hunting with cheetahs in Kurdistan, 
 or was in Tibet tracking the snow leopard. He 
 was known to be interested in both projects. He 
 had once said something about going to Patagonia 
 after jaguar. They were accustomed to his mys- 
 terious disappearances. He was all right. 
 
 "Burgoyne," they said, "he's a queer fish. Now, 
 I remember at Harvard . . . " 
 
 Burgoyne was quite near them, nevertheless. 
 Burgoyne had reached Second Avenue, his nerves 
 shot with every variety of liquor to be found in 
 New York, from the samshu of Chinatown to the 
 mescal of Pearl Street. In his journey to the dogs 
 Burgoyne used no other vehicle but drink. Light 
 women disgusted his clean hunter's soul, and his 
 clear hunter's brain could see nothing but absurdity 
 in gambling. But he drank thoroughly. He sampled 
 the acrid tang of Scotch whiskey, and the murky 
 odour of Irish, and the insidious taste of rye. He 
 caused to be compounded for him an enormous series 
 of explosive cocktails, inventing, as his experience 
 in them increased, new ones of unheard-of virulence 
 and effect. He sampled the imported vintages of 
 Fifth Avenue and the rot-gut of the wharves. He 
 called for and obtained vodka, and white, insipid 
 Amsterdam gin. In the French quarter he dallied 
 over dripped absinthe. In intervals he drank many 
 and vile wines in Italian cafes, and honest beer in 
 German ones. He drank golden sake in chop sueys, 
 148 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 and on Second Avenue he made the acquaintance of 
 plum brandy. Hennessy, a bar-keeper of St. Mark's 
 Place, watched his progress with troubled eyes. 
 
 " Get wise, kid, and cut it out," he advised. " Can 
 it, or the bug-house for yours." 
 
 But Burgoyne only laughed and ordered them 
 set up again. 
 
 To the city man it may seem an exceedingly 
 puerile thing to become protractedly drunk when 
 a woman jilts you. The city man's life is a complex 
 one, and a thousand small factors divert his mind 
 from a main issue. He has lost the habit of long 
 and concentrated thought and feeling. Soldiers and 
 sailor men and hunters are simple people. There 
 are no complex reactions in their minds. They see 
 things in a straight line, as a Chinaman does. For 
 two long years Burgoyne had thought of nothing 
 but Edith Anderson. She had been everything to 
 him. The two years had been an endless succession 
 of days in which he chafed to get back to New York 
 and to her. There had been days when he faced 
 life with avidity and he saw in it a sparkling, effer- 
 vescing thing, and he saw the face of Edith Anderson 
 as the sun of the world. And there were other days 
 when he tackled life with a cheery, sound philosophy, 
 glorying in the strength her caring gave him. And 
 then to have it all shut off suddenly by that horrible, 
 heartless, dumb announcement. There were no 
 complex factors to draw his attention from what 
 had happened to him. He thought of it all the 
 time. He was like a man undergoing an operation 
 
 149 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 of intense pain demanding chloroform. Hennessy, 
 the honest bar- keep, saw the brooding in his eyes. 
 
 "Why don't you beat it into the fresh air, and fix 
 up whatever's eating you?" he exhorted. "There 
 ain't anything to this booze-fighting game. Cut it 
 out, or you'll find yourself in the ice-box. Surest 
 thing you know." 
 
 Burgoyne had thought of that, but the open spaces 
 appeared to him as great defenceless plains, where 
 thoughts would come attacking a man, and there 
 was nothing to protect him. 
 
 And so things went on for two months, and for 
 three months. The madhouse or the hospital didn't 
 claim him, to the intense surprise of Hennessy, but 
 it was only his iron constitution, and the training 
 of years in the open air that saved him. It waited 
 for him surely around the corner, but he was saved 
 from it. 
 
 He had picked up on Front Street with a pair of 
 interesting characters, one of whom looked like a 
 prizefighter and the other a sea-faring man. They 
 had several drinks, in a sailors' saloon, to the musical 
 accompaniment of chanteys from a Banks fisherman 
 down in New York looking for a coasting berth. 
 Then Burgoyne dozed off. 
 
 He woke up several hours later. He was sleeping 
 over a table in the rear of the saloon. Dawn was 
 coming murkily through the window panes, and the 
 proprietor was shaking him by the shoulder. 
 
 "Get up and get out," the proprietor was shout- 
 ing. "What do you think this is ? a lodging house ? " 
 150 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 Burgoyne rose unsteadily. He stretched himself. 
 He put his hand in his pocket and his watch wasn't 
 there. He put his hand in another and his wallet 
 was gone. 
 
 "Where's my watch?" he asked. "And my 
 money ? " 
 
 "I haven't got it," the saloon keeper replied 
 wearily. "Are you going to get out?" 
 
 "But I've lost four hundred dollars." 
 
 "Well, if you go around with a pair of crimps 
 like ' Bull ' Kelly and ' Seattle ' Jim, you don't expect 
 to find it, do you?" 
 
 Burgoyne looked at the proprietor between the 
 eyes. Again his intuition served him. The pro- 
 prietor had had no part in it. 
 
 "I suppose you're right," he answered, and he 
 went out. 
 
 You would hardly have given a second glance to 
 Patrick Burgoyne as he emerged into the cold April 
 dawn on Front Street. You would have labelled 
 him as a drunken fool, whom the police should have 
 gathered into their night net many hours before. 
 His walk had lost the light, lithe spring, and his 
 shoulders drooped. His face was that revolting 
 drunkard's colour between pink and grey. Alcohol 
 had put fat, flabby, unhealthy fat, on his shoulders 
 and waistband and neck. His eyes had no longer 
 that long range look that saw the trail for a mile 
 ahead. They sought the ground, and there was the 
 promise of trouble in them, trouble for "Bull" 
 Kelly and for "Seattle" Jim. 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 At ten o'clock that morning he found "Bull'* 
 Kelly. The " Bull " was in the back room of a saloon, 
 relating to an interested barman with manifest gusto 
 how last night he had caught a come-on, got him 
 tanked up, slipped K.O. into his booze and nicked 
 his roll. 
 
 "There was nothing to it, doctor," he com- 
 mented. "Easiest bunch of kale I ever laid mitts 
 on!" 
 
 Burgoyne walked into the room glidingly. He 
 walked forward to the " Bull." The " Bull" rose and 
 his shoulders hunched. 
 
 "I can forgive a mistake, my friend," he began. 
 "I can even understand a joke. This is neither. 
 Kindly hand over my watch and my money." 
 
 "What do you mean? Your watch and your 
 money?" queried "Bull" Kelly. 
 
 "I want that watch and that money you took 
 from me after you drugged me." 
 
 The innocent, aggrieved manner of the crimp 
 gave way to a torrent of vicious vituperation. 
 
 "Why, you big souse!" he began, "you whiskey- 
 soaked bum, I ain't got your watch and money. 
 Go and sleep it off." 
 
 "If you don't stop your talk and hand over those 
 things," Burgoyne urged icily, "I'll give you the 
 worst beating you ever got in your worthless life." 
 
 Burgoyne meant what he said, but it was not a 
 tactful remark. Before he had embraced the ancient 
 and lucrative profession of crimp, "Bull" Kelly 
 had hopes, and well-founded hopes, of being called 
 
 152 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 the middleweight champion of the world. His 
 hopes were blasted in the nineteenth round of a 
 terrific battle, but it was agreed that Kelly was in 
 the star class of middle weights. Barren years in 
 the fight game and an added fifteen pounds of flesh 
 had terminated the ring career of the near champion, 
 but for a short fight his skill, speed, and hitting 
 power were as good as in the days men cheered 
 themselves hoarse as he slashed his way to victory 
 in a twenty-round mill. Burgoyne knew nothing 
 of this. Even if he had, his intentions and speech 
 would have been the same. 
 
 "Come outside here," said the "Bull." 
 They went out to the little cobblestone yard 
 behind the saloon, and they faced one another. 
 Burgoyne noticed, as he got ready to rush, how the 
 " Bull " dropped into fighting pose with the ease of 
 long custom. The crimp's broken-nosed, bullet 
 head disappeared behind the reach of his long left 
 arm. The crimp's right hand hovered over his jaw. 
 The crimp crouched like a panther about to spring. 
 There was a moment's spar, a rapid feint of the 
 pug's right fist, and Burgoyne felt something strike 
 his neck with the force of a horse's kick. He rushed 
 in, lashing out blindly. Both hands struck empty 
 air. There was the crash of a fist to his jaw. The 
 yard wobbled, reeled, and grew black suddenly, and 
 there was the jar of his fall. 
 
 He came to hazily. In the back room of the 
 saloon he could hear the crimp address the bar- 
 man. 
 
 153 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 "Throw a bucket of water over that mutt and 
 pitch him into the gutter, Pete." A door slammed. 
 
 He picked his way out to the street without the 
 proposed first aid of the barkeeper, and made his 
 way towards a dock opposite. A dirty white fruit 
 boat was unloading bananas at the wharf, and a 
 hundred men of fifty nationalities and a dozen shades 
 of colour were scurrying like ants. He passed 
 through them unnoticed and made his way through 
 the dark tunnel of the pier, and out upon the foot 
 of wooden ledge beyond it. Before him lay the 
 opaque pond of the East River, with its three giant 
 bridges spanning it, looking fragile as children's 
 toys. Tugs passed up and down, racing like sprin- 
 ters. Shapeless ferry-boats moved awkwardly about. 
 Schooners under stretches of dun, patched canvas 
 tacked to the right and left as they fought their way 
 up-river. A trim steam yacht flashed past, its 
 spotless white and knife-like lines giving it an un- 
 accountably patrician air, and around the lee of 
 Governor's Island a liner hove majestically. A little 
 breeze came up from the bay and stirred the hair 
 about Burgoyne's temples. 
 
 A tempest suddenly broke in the soul of Patrick 
 Burgoyne, and self- disgust swept over him, like 
 torrential rain. The words of the crimp bit into 
 him as acid bites into an engraver's plate. Souse! 
 Whiskey-soaked bum! What had happened to him, 
 he asked fiercely, that he should become like this? 
 A waster! A drunkard! The prey of the wharf 
 hawks. What had become of his fitness and muscles 
 
 154 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 to be knocked out by the first blow of a sailor's 
 bully? Throw a bucket of water on his head and 
 kick him into the gutter, Pete! Good God! Was 
 it possible! Had he sunk as low as that? A great 
 flood of shame overwhelmed him. Waves of crimson 
 suffused his face. He crouched as though to hide 
 himself from a looker-on. He felt somehow like a 
 tiger whose splendid coat of black and gold has been 
 bedaubed by mud and mire. 
 
 And all because a woman had jilted him, he 
 muttered viciously, damn it! All because a woman 
 had jilted him ! 
 
 Well, what was there to do? he asked himself. 
 Look at the matter squarely. He had lost his 
 physique. He had lost his self-respect. He had 
 lost everything. He was a windrow, a derelict. 
 
 Suddenly a great yearning took him. He would 
 go up and look at his old friends of the swamp and 
 the jungle. Something drew him towards them in 
 his crisis. It was somehow like a lover returning 
 heart-broken to his first sweetheart after placing 
 and losing his faith in another woman. He left 
 the dock and picked his way intricately through the 
 crazy-quilt of the down-town streets to Park Row. 
 He descended into the mouth of the subway cavern 
 and bought his ticket. The ticket seller looked 
 suspiciously at his blood-shot eyes and the red bruise 
 on his jaw as he walked towards the up-town 
 trains. 
 
 "Highballs," the ticket seller told himself, "high- 
 balls and loose living, they ruin a fellow." 
 
 * 155 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 In what is affectionately termed the Bronx Zoo, 
 there is, a mile from the gateway, a rectangular high 
 building of stone given over to the largest herbivora. 
 Two elephants, a vicious old Indian tusker and an 
 irresponsible youngster from Africa, return placidly 
 the interested gaze of the visitors. At the bottom 
 of his tank, a hippopotamus conceals himself, with 
 a supreme contempt for human curiosity. Beside 
 him his cousin and neighbour, the Liberian pygmy, 
 sleeps peacefully in a straw- filled cage, while nearby 
 the tapir ambles around on his ungainly limbs, to 
 the unrestrained merriment of children and their 
 nurses. 
 
 In one cage of the building, a card informs you, is 
 "The Mahdi," a two-horned rhinoceros, six years 
 old, taken in Mashonaland. The card furnishes 
 several lines of recondite zoological information, and 
 finishes by curtly acknowledging the Mahdi to be 
 the gift of Captain Patrick Burgoyne. 
 
 The Mahdi, for all his meagre years, stands six 
 feet high at his shoulder blade, and from his three- 
 toed pads to the double horn on his snout is as 
 perfect a specimen as there is to be found in the 
 White Nile country. There is something peculiarly 
 human-looking about the Mahdi. From the side 
 his head suggests to you the head of an enormous 
 negro, and his small black eye is the eye of a child, 
 of an entirely good-natured but utterly mischievous 
 child. Brown, his keeper, whom Aberdeen claims 
 for her very own, has to be agile when the Mahdi 
 is feeling sprightly. The Mahdi, with an erroneous 
 
 156 
 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 idea of what will amuse James Brown, launches his 
 manifold hundred- weights of bone and black muscle 
 across the cage after him in a playful game of tag. 
 It cannot understand the keeper 's reluctance to join 
 in. 
 
 "He's a braw wee beastie," James Brown tells 
 himself every time he leaves the Mahdi's cage, 
 "but some o' these fine days, he'll be the daith 
 o' me." 
 
 There was little fear for the death of James Brown, 
 however. If anyone knew all there was to be known 
 about the temperament and habits of the great 
 jungle beasts, it was the Scots keeper. He had 
 served a long and arduous apprenticeship to his 
 craft with Hagenbeck and Hamburg, which is the 
 doctorate of animal-keeping. He had taken post- 
 graduate courses with Suade and Bonavita. The 
 Scotsman's long, lanky body, his sandy hair, his face 
 cut into rigid angles, his air of watchful righteous- 
 ness, had aroused in all of his masters a feeling of 
 affectionate merriment, but the beasts had taken his 
 appearance more seriously. They found him good 
 to look upon, and photographed his image in grateful 
 hearts. 
 
 If you were to ask Hagenbeck or Bonavita, snap, 
 whom they considered the most careful keeper they 
 had ever met, they would answer, snap, that it was 
 James Brown, and if they had the time to expatiate 
 on his qualities, they would tell you that the only 
 thought that ever entered the canny Scots skull 
 of the keeper was that of the animals under his care. 
 
 '57 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 They would further tell you that they believed his 
 days-off to be spent in rounds of menageries, zoos, 
 circuses, botanical gardens, and other places where 
 animals are held in captivity. He had been seen 
 reading reports of zoological societies in the public 
 library. Such was James Brown. 
 
 But for once James Brown had been untrue to 
 his gigantic loves. Her name he did not know. She 
 was a French nursemaid, dark-haired, chic, with 
 the warm colouring of the Midi women, and there 
 was something in her voice like the note of a bird. 
 For two days every week, for several weeks, she 
 had accompanied a pair of small children to the 
 Park, and had shared their thrills and merriment at 
 the sight of the animals. To answer the manifold 
 questions addressed her by her charges, she had to 
 enlist James Brown, and as he helped her, James 
 Brown thought he had caught something in her 
 eye, something appreciative and inviting, which 
 betokened that advances by the keeper would not 
 be resented. 
 
 James Brown may have been mistaken or he may 
 not. He was probably not, for a man of his cautious 
 race looks long and often before he leaps. The 
 little French nursemaid may have been merely 
 practising her hobby of breaking hearts, or there 
 may have been some mysterious attraction for her 
 in his unrelieved ugliness. Beautiful women have 
 been known to mate with inconceivably uncomely 
 men. She may have been infatuated with his 
 prowess, for she had one day seen him slap a too 
 
 158 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 attentive elephant sharply on the trunk, and another 
 catch a stubborn hippopotamus along the ribs with 
 a stave. But at any rate the heart of James Brown 
 answered the glance of the nursemaid's eye as one 
 tuning fork answers another. 
 
 It was a warm April afternoon and a breeze was 
 stirring. The sun came gently in a golden shower. 
 One o'clock had just struck and the Park was practic- 
 ally deserted. James Brown had put fresh straw in 
 the open enclosure attached to the Mahdi's cage. 
 He had filled the Mahdi's well with water, when, 
 suddenly, walking in the direction of the lion-house, 
 he saw a trim black figure with a small boy on either 
 side of it. It was spring time, and James Brown 
 was still of the years when one's fancy pirouettes. 
 He had been thinking of domesticity latterly, since 
 the advent of the French nursemaid, and there was 
 a project in his mind for spending his next day-off 
 which embraced dinner with her and a visit to a 
 playhouse. James Brown became suddenly excited. 
 He walked towards the opening in the enclosure 
 and unlocked the gate. He remembered that he 
 had not opened the door between the Mahdi's cage 
 and the enclosure. He walked towards it and 
 opened it quickly, keeping an eye all the time in 
 the direction of the lion-house. He crossed the 
 enclosure and opened the gate. He pulled it behind 
 him as he stepped out, heard the clang, and hurried 
 off. By right the gate should have been closed 
 automatically. This time it didn't. It swung half- 
 open. 
 
 159 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 It was one o'clock in the gardens, and there were 
 few people. Somewhere in the bird-house a cock- 
 atoo screamed raucously. Somewhere a lioness 
 roared in a deep bass rumble. There was a whirr of 
 wings as a China duck passed overhead in a streak 
 of silken blue. 
 
 Slowly and ponderously the Mahdi pushed open 
 the door of his cage and entered the enclosure. He 
 looked out into the sunshine and blinked lazily, 
 took a turn in the enclosure, and nibbled the straw. 
 He walked about the hedge of iron bars slowly, 
 until he came to the half-open gate. He stopped for 
 a moment. Then something like the twinkle of a 
 mischievous child's came into his small black eyes. 
 He pushed the gate fully open with a heave of 
 shoulder. Cautiously he passed through it. He 
 stood outside on the asphalt walk for a moment, 
 sniffed the air daintily and began to move, slowly, 
 and then with ungainly rapidity. He swung away 
 from the granite buildings and down the path to 
 the gates, his pads striking the roadway with the 
 sound of a mallet beating clothes. As he went he 
 suggested, somehow, the passing of an armoured 
 train along a peaceful countryside. 
 
 When she started out from Madison Avenue, 
 Edith Anderson had no intention of visiting the 
 Bronx Zoological Gardens. She had ordered the 
 chauffeur to go in the general direction of the Bronx 
 merely because she had exhausted the scenic possi- 
 bilities of every other route about New York City. 
 When they passed the terminal of the "L" station 
 1 60 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 and the rolling hill of the Park started up abruptly 
 before them, she whimsically had the car stopped, got 
 out and entered the gate. The remembrance that 
 there were animals there brought to her mind the 
 image of Captain Patrick Burgoyne. She was to 
 be married in four days, and the motor ride was a 
 brief recess from the bustle of getting ready for it. 
 The thought of Burgoyne came into her head like 
 the return of a passage of poetry remembered after 
 many years, something pleasantly romantic to dream 
 over, but the enjoyment of which must be kept to 
 one's self, for fear of the cynical laughter of one's 
 friends and associates. She went into the gardens 
 that she might savour the memory to the utmost. 
 
 What had become of him, she asked herself, as 
 she swung up the hill? She had expected him to 
 return and make a dreadful scene when the news of 
 her engagement had reached him, but his silence 
 and disappearance had puzzled her. She had been 
 afraid of what would happen when he came back, 
 afraid of Heaven knows what. She had fancied 
 him administering a drubbing to John R. Collins, 
 even of beating herself. Nothing had happened, 
 and, she confessed to herself, she was feeling dis- 
 appointed. He was out now in the jungle, tracking 
 the lion and the tiger and the elephant to their lairs, 
 and eating his heart out for hopeless love of her. 
 He had grown cynical, she imagined, and spoke 
 viciously about the faithlessness of women, but in 
 the depths of his soul he still carried her memory. 
 The thought gave her a shameful sense of pleasure. 
 
 161 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 As she walked along, trim in grey, and with a 
 warm glow to her cheeks and a glint in her eyes, 
 Hayes, the policeman on patrol at the Bronx Road 
 entrance, looked after her with grudging admiration. 
 
 "There's a dame knows what she's about," said 
 Hayes. 
 
 Hayes was an amateur of personality, in spite 
 of his twenty-seven years. To look at his well-set- 
 up form, his tanned face, his humorous grey eyes, 
 his tow-coloured hair, one would hardly imagine 
 that anything interested him beyond the routine of 
 his police work and possibly athletics. But a police- 
 man's work is the most monotonous work in the 
 world. They cannot read on duty, and few people 
 speak to them, so they are reduced for amusement 
 to the examination and gauging of every passer-by 
 who catches their eye. It is an engrossing game, 
 when once you become accustomed to it. And 
 Hayes reckoned his day dull when few people with 
 possibilities went by. He recognised possibilities 
 in Edith Anderson. She had common sense and 
 beauty, and Hayes in his heart paid homage to 
 her. ' 
 
 It was an interesting morning for Hayes. Not 
 fifteen minutes before, another figure had passed 
 along the same path who had intrigued Hayes greatly. 
 The first holder of Hayes' interest was tall, dark, 
 sinewy, with signs of a recent debauch. 
 
 "Outdoor man," Hayes diagnosed. "Money 
 enough for himself; brains; nerve. Been hitting 
 the high spots. Trying to get hold of himself." 
 162 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 It was a hobby of Hayes' to watch people coming 
 into the park to get a grip on themselves, and to 
 watch them going out again with a look of firm 
 strength on their faces or of settled despair. The 
 Bronx Park is a favourite place for people with a 
 problem. People with problems want the open air. 
 
 Hayes looked at his watch, started, and moved 
 up the path. Men and women may come and go at 
 random, but there is a certain ground which police- 
 men must tread at certain times, and there was a 
 half-mile in front of Hayes. In front of him the 
 wide path ambled as if it were on a holiday. To 
 his left, across the road through the grille of the 
 palings, the grim windows of a block of flats rose 
 tier on tier like cells in a prison. To his right, a 
 hill swelled like a giant fortification, and inside an 
 enclosure a brace of Rocky Mountain sheep roamed 
 aimlessly, pecking at the grass. A Tibetan yak 
 stood immobile as a stone thing. In the distance 
 a herd of buffaloes lay, huge, ungainly, grotesque 
 things, suggesting great brown shrubs. A fresh 
 spring breeze played over the park, like a shower of 
 fine rain. There was a faint blue tinge to the grass 
 and trees, and the sun came down pleasantly. 
 
 Hayes passed the lady in grey as he walked ahead. 
 She was leaning on the iron rail, looking into the 
 enclosure, and there was that appearance of rigidity 
 about her pose that betokened her mind was far 
 from the place of her body. Far ahead of him, 
 Hayes could see, sitting relaxed on a bench, the 
 figure of the man who had passed that way fifteen 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 minutes before. His eyes were on the ground, and 
 his elbows were on his knees. 
 
 There was something ineffably peaceful about the 
 whole scene, Hayes felt. A squirrel skipped across 
 his path, with its tail in the air like the mast of a 
 ship. He made a playful pass at it with his billy. 
 A sort of April youthfulness was creeping into his 
 veins. He began singing lightly: 
 
 "Good-bye! I'm on my way 
 To dear old Dublin bay. 
 That's why I'm feeling gay 
 Because I know " 
 
 The song broke off in mid-air and Hayes stiffened 
 like a hunting dog. Ahead of him, slipping down a 
 by-path, and through a screen of trees one hundred 
 yards away, was some black mass that the sun 
 seemed to flash on. What it was Hayes had no idea, 
 but that such a thing should happen was not as it 
 should be. Instinct quickened his steps. 
 
 The black mass emerged from the screen of trees, 
 swung to the right, and came down the path. It 
 was massive, ungainly, of apocalyptic breadth. It 
 trotted like a dog returning home. There was a 
 faint, rhythmical patter, like the sound of a step 
 dancer on a wooden floor. Hayes gazed at it stupidly, 
 as if at something in a play in a strange language in 
 a strange theatre. As the mass came along, it tossed 
 its head playfully, a triangular head, with two horns 
 on the snout of it, like grotesque additions to a 
 child's toy. 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 "By God!" Hayes gasped. He hesitated. It 
 seemed to him that he was about to utter something 
 patently incredible. "By God! It's a rhinoceros!" 
 
 Automatically Hayes broke into a run forward. 
 Panic seized upon him. What was he to do ? If it 
 were a murderer let loose, or a runaway horse, there 
 would be some distinct course to follow. But what 
 was one to do with a wild beast bearing down the 
 path at large? He lugged out his revolver and 
 began firing as he ran. The shots rang out dull and 
 explosive, like the bursting of automobile tyres. 
 Somewhere down the path a woman's shriek cut 
 into the air like a knife. The huge animal still kept 
 up its swinging trot. The bullets had gone wide. 
 
 The noise of the plumping shots roused Burgoyne, 
 where he sat on his bench with his head on his hands. 
 He looked down the path. A policeman was racing 
 up it, with a smoking revolver in his hand. As he 
 ran, he shouted something that the wind carried 
 away, and he gesticulated wildly with his unarmed 
 fist. Half a mile farther down a woman scudded 
 along the road in a streak of grey. Burgoyne was 
 puzzled. Somewhere near at hand there was the 
 rhythm of giant pads. He turned about and saw 
 the black mass ambling along. 
 
 "Why why why " he babbled. "Why, it's 
 
 theMahdi! What the devil!" 
 
 He looked down the road again. The policeman 
 had stopped in his tracks and was kneeling in the 
 roadway. Something gleamed brightly in the crook 
 of an upheld arm. Burgoyne suddenly understood. 
 
 165 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 "Put up that gun, you fool!*' he shouted. "Put 
 it up, do you hear?" 
 
 There was a red pin-point, another plumping 
 crack, and a little cloud over the policeman's arm 
 like an exhalation of cigarette smoke. The Mahdi 
 stumbled in his pacing, stopped, threw his head up. 
 A rumble came from his throat like the roar of a 
 distant train. 
 
 "Now he's done it," Burgoyne muttered, "the 
 damned ass ! " 
 
 The Mahdi bellowed again. He lowered the 
 great triangular head, like the head of a swimmer 
 about to dive. He began to move slowly at first, 
 like a boat moving into a river from its dock, then 
 gathered speed, like an advancing train. His pads 
 struck the asphalt with the sound of gigantic drum- 
 sticks beating a giant drum. He flashed up to the 
 bench and passed it. Burgoyne broke into a quick 
 run alongside. Burgoyne 's voice rang out like a 
 great bass chord. 
 
 "Oh, el Mahdi," he chanted, "ah, el Mahdi!" 
 
 The policeman in front stood as if paralysed. 
 He raised his revolver, and his finger pulled ner- 
 vously at the trigger. He flung it away in petulant 
 disgust. 
 
 "Jump," Burgoyne shouted. "Jump. Jump." 
 
 Hayes suddenly understood. He took the iron 
 bars like a hurdle. 
 
 They flashed down the road at a thunderous clip, 
 Burgoyne edging nearer as they ran, his voice purring 
 in a great baritone volume of sound. Burgoyne 's 
 1 66 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 brain was working like a telegrapher's instrument. 
 The Mahdi must have recognised him and his voice 
 or he would have been turned on and tossed in the 
 air and trampled in the gust of the animal's rage. 
 Ahead of them the flying figure in grey, now barely 
 five hundred yards off, was beginning to falter in 
 its stride. Short, spasmodic bellows of rage came 
 from the Mahdi 's mouth, like the warnings of a 
 locomotive. 
 
 "Easy, boy," Burgoyne's voice came throbbingly, 
 like a musical instrument, "easy, lad. A-loa-a-loa- 
 a-loa-a-loa, el Mahdi." 
 
 They were flashing down the brow of the incline 
 now, like athletes on skis. The sound of the Mahdi 's 
 gallop struck Burgoyne's ear-drums with the force 
 of an artillery discharge. A sharp, hot pain streaked 
 across his chest from the terrific pace. 
 
 " A-loa-a-loa, boy," he kept repeating, "easy there, 
 now. Ease up." 
 
 They were gaining on the figure in grey with every 
 stride. She was weary, Burgoyne could see, but she 
 was putting up a good fight. If he couldn't divert 
 the Mahdi 's rage before they reached her, the figure 
 in grey would soon be hurtling, a bruised, inert thing, 
 through the air like a tossed ball. 
 
 He put forward another spurt. The ache across 
 his chest seared him like a hot iron. His hand went 
 out. Gently, as though he were appreciating the 
 quality of silk, he laid it on the massive leathern 
 back. His voice came in vibrant gasps. 
 
 "Easy. Easy there, lad." 
 
 167 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 As he ran he laid the hand more heavily. He 
 lunged into the air as if charging something, and 
 gained a couple of feet. The hand rested on the 
 neck. The figure was not more than thirty yards 
 ahead. Towards the gate of the park he could see 
 blue-coated men running, with bright steel flashing 
 in their right hands. The angry bellowing of the 
 great bull had ceased, but he still kept up his tem- 
 pestuous charge. 
 
 "El Mahdi," Burgoyne 's voice still pleaded. 
 "Easy, lad." 
 
 The thud of the Mahdi 's pads seemed to strike 
 the ground with less violence, Burgoyne thought, 
 and the stride was slowing up. He decided to play 
 his last card. His own feet were stumbling, and 
 crimson waves were undulating before his eyes. 
 He brought his right hand to his left shoulder as 
 he ran. 
 
 "Hip ho!" he shouted. His voice rang clear and 
 compelling, like a bugle. "War joga! Stop!" 
 His hand came home sharply on the great barrel of 
 a chest. The palm smarted as it struck. 
 
 There was a falter. 
 
 "War joga!" he snapped again. 
 
 The great black mass seemed to slither, like a 
 racing car with the brake jammed home. It trotted 
 heavily for a couple of yards and stopped short, 
 trembling. Burgoyne found that his knees were 
 knocking together, and that a cold sweat was break- 
 ing out on his brow. He leaned forward on the 
 massive chest, and began to laugh. It came first in 
 1 68 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 choking sobs, as if he were fighting for breath, then 
 it became clearer until it rang full and true, like the 
 note of a great bell. He ran his hand down the 
 Mahdi's sloping head. 
 
 "Good old boy!" he said. "Good old lad!" 
 
 The figure in grey was standing ten yards ahead, 
 holding on to the massive iron railings of the park. 
 Her face was white, and her bosom rose and fell 
 violently, like a tumultuous wave. Her eyes watched 
 the hunter and the great beast with a queer, 
 scared look in them a look that was blended 
 of terror, and of admiration, and of suppressed 
 eagerness. 
 
 Men had rushed up from all quarters, blue-coated 
 policemen and keepers. A squad ran down the hill 
 with long, thick, hempen cables. The Mahdi stood 
 trembling while they bound him up. An attendant 
 raced away for straw to entice him back to the cage. 
 Burgoyne bent over the wounded knee. He straight- 
 ened up. 
 
 "It's only a flesh wound," he announced. "It 
 will be all right in a week. It won't even leave a 
 scar." He patted the huge river-bull on the muzzle. 
 "You'll be all right, lad." 
 
 The crowd fell back suddenly. He felt a hand 
 laid on his sleeve. 
 
 "Patrick." 
 
 Burgoyne whirled about suddenly, and stiffened 
 like a statue. A wave of red swept over his face, 
 and his eyes narrowed. 
 
 "Patrick." 
 
 169 
 
\ 
 
 STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 She advanced a step nearer. Her eyes fell. Her 
 voice faltered. 
 
 "Patrick," she began, "you saved my life 
 
 "I'm awfully glad," Burgoyne's tones came even 
 and cold, "but I can't take much credit for that. 
 I was thinking only of the Mahdi's. His life is a 
 very valuable one." 
 
 As Burgoyne watched her a great sense of surprise 
 swept over him. It was as if he had met a total 
 stranger. What had become of the girl he had 
 wanted to marry ? This was an exact replica of her, 
 but the light and soul he had put into the girl he 
 wanted were lacking here. Two years and four 
 months ago he had been content to gaze on her face. 
 To-day his eyes peered through hers into the place 
 where her soul should have been, and the place of 
 it, it seemed to him, was empty. 
 
 "Patrick," she broke in nervously, "I want to talk 
 to you. There's something I want to explain 
 
 "I'm sorry," Burgoyne apologised. "It's too bad. 
 But I'm leaving for Africa to-morrow and I haven't 
 got a free moment to-day. Kit and all kinds of 
 things, you know." He turned to the Mahdi and 
 smiled as if at a friend. "Yes. Off to-morrow, 
 lad." 
 
 He looked at her keenly, through eyes focused 
 into slits like the eyes of a great jungle cat. No, 
 there was nothing much to her. Had she been true 
 to him, and met him on the pier with a lover's 
 welcome, he might never have seen, he might have 
 looked at her for ever with the blind orbs of infatua- 
 170 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 tion, but the four months of dissipation had set 
 them wide apart, and he could see her from an 
 unbiased angle. His brain was working, keen and 
 trenchant, as a man's brain is after some terrific 
 physical ordeal. He could see the shallowness of 
 her, the unfaithful quality, the huckster strain. 
 Why, even now, blinded by the sight of his taming 
 the furious river beast, she would throw over the 
 man who had won her with money and prospect 
 of comfort. This was no woman for a man of spirit, 
 a free man and a man's man. Explain? There 
 was no explanation for unfaithfulness. Even the 
 wild beasts of the jungle had remained faithful to 
 him, while she A great feeling of relief seized 
 on him, that even through fire and degradation he 
 had come to see her as she really was, before it had 
 been too late. 
 
 "Patrick." There was a new note to her voice, 
 something coy, something seductive. Her left hand 
 went up to her cheek. Burgoyne followed it uncon- 
 sciously. There was no ring on it. She was not 
 married yet. A fit of rage burst in on him. He 
 understood the gesture was made to signal a message. 
 
 "My car's at the gate," she said. Her head tilted 
 slightly to one side, and a little smile came into 
 her eyes. 
 
 Burgoyne turned around. Her chauffeur stood 
 at a little distance off. Beside him was Hayes the 
 policeman, with an empty revolver in his hand. 
 Burgoyne motioned the patrolman over. 
 
 "Put up that gun," he snapped. "You've done 
 
 171 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 enough harm with it already. And see this lady 
 to her car. Her nerves are all shot up." He turned 
 to her. "You'll pardon me, I hope. I'm afraid 
 I'll have to say good-bye right here." 
 
 "Good-bye," she said. She looked at him for 
 a moment. A mist came into her eyes. She turned 
 slowly and walked down the hill. 
 
 The keepers began taking the Mahdi back to his 
 cage. He went slowly, with drooping head and 
 slow, shuffling step. 
 
 Burgoyne swung around to go out. A thin, lanky 
 man in the uniform of a keeper rushed after him. 
 Burgoyne stopped in his tracks. The keeper over- 
 took him. 
 
 "Captain Bur " the keeper stuttered in sur- 
 prise. 
 
 "Mr. Smith, if you don't mind, Brown," 
 Burgoyne smiled in recognition. "By the way, you 
 were the Mahdi's keeper, weren't you?" 
 
 The Scotsman shifted guiltily under his look. 
 
 "Yes, sir," he confessed. 
 
 "Well, if I know anything about this place, you'll 
 be out of a job to-night, Brown. I'm off to Africa 
 in the morning and you might as well come along. 
 Yes? All right. Report at the Knickerbocker at 
 six this evening." 
 
 Burgoyne stopped a moment before starting off. 
 In the road a chocolate- coloured limousine was 
 turning about, preparing to return to New York. 
 Burgoyne looked after it with a queer inward look 
 in his eyes. 
 172 
 
JUNGLE BULLS 
 
 "Thank God ! " he muttered cryptically. "Thank 
 God!" 
 
 He walked down the hill with his shoulders 
 thrown back, his head high. The memory of Edith 
 Anderson had left him like the remembrance of a 
 casual word. As he walked a vision rose before 
 him. He could see the African night, a great 
 stretch of black sky like an ocean with a moon that 
 suggested an immense silver coin. On all sides the 
 forest flowed, bluish-black. The night noises of 
 Africa came to him. There was the bass rumble 
 of a lioness. There was the hoarse trumpeting of 
 elephants. Monkeys chirruped like birds. Jackals 
 barked. Hidden things slipped through the under- 
 growth with a rustle. There was a warm scent 
 to the air. A breeze swept in from Asia and the 
 tree-tops murmured. And it seemed to him that he 
 was stepping into this vast freedom out of an iron 
 cage. 
 
 173 
 
IX 
 THE WAKE 
 
 AT TIMES the muffled conversation in the kitchen 
 resembled the resonant humming of bees, and again, 
 when it became animated, it sounded like the dis- 
 tant cackling of geese. Then there would come a 
 pause; and it would begin again with sibilant whis- 
 pers, and end in a chorus of dry laughter that 
 somehow suggested the crackling of burning logs. 
 
 Occasionally a figure would open the bedroom 
 door, pass the. old man as he sat huddled in his 
 chair, never throwing a glance at him, and go and 
 kneel by the side of the bed where the body was. 
 They usually prayed for two or three minutes, then 
 rose and walked on tiptoe to the kitchen, where 
 they joined the company. Sometimes they came 
 in twos, less often in threes, but they did precisely 
 the same thing prayed for precisely the same time, 
 and left the room on tiptoe with the same creak 
 of shoe and rustle of clothes that sounded so in- 
 tensely loud throughout the room. They might 
 have been following instructions laid down in a 
 ritual. 
 
 The old man wished to heaven they would stay 
 away. He had been sitting in his chair for hours, 
 
THE WAKE 
 
 thinking, until his head was in a whirl. He wanted 
 to concentrate his thoughts, but somehow he felt 
 that the mourners were preventing him. 
 
 The five candles at the head of the bed distracted 
 him. He was glad when the figure of one of the 
 mourners shut off the glare for a few minutes. He 
 was also distracted by the five chairs standing 
 around the room like sentries on post, and the 
 little table by the window with its crucifix and 
 holy- water font. He wanted to keep thinking of 
 "herself," as he called her, lost in the immensity 
 of the oaken bed. He had been looking at the 
 pinched face, with its faint suspicion of blue, since 
 early that morning. He was very much awed by 
 the nun's hood that concealed the back of the head, 
 and the stiffly posed arms and the small hands in 
 their white cotton gloves moved him to a deep pity. 
 
 Somebody touched him on the shoulder. 
 "Michael James." 
 
 It was big Dan Murray, a gaunt, red farmer, 
 who had been best man at his wedding. 
 
 "Michael James." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "I hear young Kennedy's in the village." 
 
 "What of that?" 
 
 "I thought it was best for you to know." 
 
 Murray waited a moment, then he went out, on 
 tiptoe, as everybody did, his movements resem- 
 bling the stilted gestures of a mechanical toy. 
 
 Down the drive Michael heard steps coming. 
 Then a struggle and a shrill giggle. Some young 
 
 175 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 people were coming to the wake, and he knew a 
 boy had tried to kiss a girl in the dark. He felt 
 a dull surge of resentment. 
 
 She was nineteen when he married her; he was 
 sixty-three. Because he had over two hundred 
 acres of land and many heads of milch and grazing 
 cattle and a huge house that rambled like a bar- 
 rack, her father had given her to him; and young 
 Kennedy, who had been her father's steward for 
 years, and had been saving to buy a house for her, 
 was thrown over like a bale of mildewed hay. 
 
 Kennedy had made several violent scenes. 
 Michael James remembered the morning of the 
 wedding. Kennedy waylaid the bridal-party coming 
 out of the church. He was drunk. 
 
 "Mark me," he had said, very quietly, for a 
 drunken man "mark me. If anything ever hap- 
 pens to that girl at your side, Michael James, I'll 
 murder you. I'll murder you in cold blood. Do 
 you understand?" 
 
 Michael James could be forgiving that morning. 
 "Run away and sober up, lad," he had said, "and 
 come up to the house and dance." 
 
 Kennedy had gone around the countryside for 
 weeks, drunk every night, making threats against 
 the strong farmer. And then a wily sergeant of 
 the Connaught Rangers had trapped him and taken 
 him oif to Aldershot. 
 
 Now he was home on furlough, and something 
 had happened to her, and he was coming up to 
 make good his threat. 
 
THE WAKE 
 
 What had happened to her? Michael James 
 didn't understand. He had given her everything 
 he could. She had taken it all with a demure 
 thanks, but he had never had anything of her but 
 apathy. She had gone around the house apathetic- 
 ally, growing a little thinner every day, and then 
 a few days ago she had lain down, and last night 
 she had died, apathetically. 
 
 And young Kennedy was coming up for an 
 accounting to-night. "Well," thought Michael 
 James, "let him come!" 
 
 Silence suddenly fell over the company in the 
 kitchen. Then a loud scraping as they stood up, 
 and a harsher grating as chairs were pushed back. 
 The door of the bedroom opened, and the red 
 flare from the fire and lamps of the kitchen 
 blended into the sickly yellow candlelight of the 
 bedroom. 
 
 The parish priest walked in. His closely-cropped 
 white hair, strong, ruddy face, and erect back gave 
 him more the appearance of a soldier than a clergy- 
 man. He looked at the bed a moment, and then 
 at Michael James. 
 
 "Oh, you mustn't take it like that, man," he 
 said. "You mustn't take it like that. You must 
 bear up." He was the only one who spoke in 
 his natural voice. 
 
 He turned to a lumbering farmer's wife who 
 had followed him in, and asked about the hour of 
 the funeral. She answered in a hoarse whisper, 
 dropping a curtsy. 
 
 177 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 "You ought to go and take a walk," he told 
 Michael James. "You oughtn't to stay in here all 
 the time." And he left the room. 
 
 Michael James paid no attention. His mind was 
 wandering to strange fantasies he could not keep 
 out of his head. Pictures crept in and out of his 
 brain, joined as by some thin filament. He thought 
 somehow of her soul, and then wondered what a 
 soul was like. And then he thought of a dove, 
 and then of a bat fluttering through the dark, and 
 then of a bird lost at twilight. He thought of it 
 as some lonely, flying thing, with a long journey 
 before it and no place to rest. He could imagine 
 it uttering the vibrant, plaintive cry of a peewit. 
 And then it struck him with a great sense of pity 
 that the night was cold. 
 
 In the kitchen they were having tea. The rattle 
 of the crockery sounded very distinctly. He could 
 distinguish the sharp, staccato ring when a cup was 
 laid in a saucer, and the nervous rattle when cup 
 and saucer were passed from one hand to the other. 
 Spoons struck china with a faint metallic tinkle. 
 He felt as if all the sounds were made at the back of 
 his neck, and the crash seemed to burst in his head. 
 
 Dan Murray creaked into the room. "Michael 
 James," he whispered, "you ought to take some- 
 thing. Have a bite to eat. Take a cup of tea. 
 I'll bring it in to you." 
 
 "Oh, let me alone, Daniel," he answered. He 
 felt he would like to kick him and curse him while 
 doing so. 
 
 
THE WAKE 
 
 ''You must take something." Murray's voice 
 rose from a whisper to a low, argumentative sing- 
 song. "You know it's not natural. You've got to 
 eat." 
 
 "No, thank you, Daniel," he answered. It was 
 as if he were talking to a boy who was good-natured 
 but tiresome. "I don't feel like eating. Maybe 
 afterwards I will." 
 
 "Michael James," Murray continued. 
 
 "Well, what is it, Daniel?" 
 
 "Don't you think I'd better go down and see 
 young Kennedy, and tell him how foolish it would 
 be of him to come up here and start fighting? 
 You know it isn't right. Hadn't I better go down? 
 He's at home now." 
 
 " Let that alone, Daniel, I tell you." The thought 
 of Murray breaking into the matter that was between 
 himself and the young man filled him with a sense 
 of injured delicacy. 
 
 "I know he's going to make trouble." 
 
 "Let me handle that, like a good fellow, and 
 leave me by myself, Daniel, if you don't mind." 
 
 "Ah well, sure. You know best." And Murray 
 crept out of the room. 
 
 As the door opened Michael could hear someone 
 singing in a subdued voice and many feet tapping 
 like drums in time with the music. They had to 
 pass the night outside, and it was the custom, but 
 the singing irritated him. He could fancy heads 
 nodding and bodies swaying from side to side with 
 the rhythm. He recognised the tune and it began 
 
 179 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 to run through his head, and he could not put it 
 out of it. The lilt of it captured him, and sud- 
 denly he began thinking of the wonderful brain 
 that musicians must have to compose music. And 
 then his thoughts switched to a picture he had 
 seen of a man in a garret with a fiddle beneath his 
 chin. 
 
 He straightened himself up a little, for sitting 
 crouched forward as he was put a strain on his back, 
 and he unconsciously sat upright to ease himself. 
 And as he sat up he caught a glimpse of the cotton 
 gloves on the bed, and it burst in on him that the 
 first time he had seen her she was walking along 
 the road with young Kennedy one Sunday afternoon, 
 and they were holding hands. When they saw him 
 they let go suddenly, and grew very red, giggling 
 in a half-hearted way to hide their embarrassment. 
 And he remembered that he had passed them by 
 without saying anything, but with a good-humoured, 
 sly smile on his face, and a mellow feeling within 
 him, and a sage reflection to himself that young folks 
 will be young folks, and what harm was there in 
 courting a little on a Sunday afternoon when the 
 week's work had been done? 
 
 And he remembered other days on which he had 
 met her and Kennedy ; and then how the conviction 
 had come into his mind that here was a girl for him 
 to marry; and then how, quietly and equably, he 
 had gone about getting her and marrying her, as he 
 would go about buying a team of horses or making 
 arrangements for cutting the hay. 
 1 80 
 
THE WAKE 
 
 Until the day he married her he felt as a driver 
 feels who has his team under perfect control, and 
 who knows every bend and curve of the road he is 
 taking. But since that day he had been thinking 
 about her and worrying, and wondering exactly 
 where he stood, until everything in the day was just 
 the puzzle of her, and he was like a driver with a 
 restive pair of horses who knows his way no farther 
 than the next bend. And then he knew she was the 
 biggest thing in his life. 
 
 All there was left of her now was a pair of white 
 cotton gloves, resting stiffly on a bedspread, with 
 ten cramped, blue ringers inside of them. 
 
 The situation as it appeared to him he had worked 
 out with difficulty, for he was not a thinking man. 
 What thinking he did dealt with the price of harvest 
 machinery, and the best time of the year for buying 
 and selling. He worked it out this way: here was 
 this girl dead, whom he had married, and who should 
 have married another man who was coming to-night 
 to kill him. To-night sometime the world would 
 stop for him. He felt no longer a personal entity 
 he was merely part of a situation. It was as if he 
 were a piece in a chess problem any moment the 
 player might move and solve the play by taking a 
 pawn. 
 
 Realities had taken on a dim, unearthly quality. 
 Occasionally a sound from the kitchen would strike 
 him like an unexpected note in a harmony; the 
 whiteness of the bed would flash out like a piece of 
 colour in a subdued painting. 
 
 181 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 There was a shuffling in the kitchen and the 
 sound of feet going towards the door. The latch 
 lifted with a rasp. He could hear the hoarse, deep 
 tones of a few boys, and the high-pitched, singsong 
 intonations of girls. He knew they were going for 
 a few miles* walk along the roads. He went over 
 and raised the blind on the window. Overhead 
 the moon showed like a spot of bright saffron. 
 A sort of misty haze seemed to cling around the 
 bushes and trees. The outhouses stood out 
 white, like buildings in a mysterious city. Some- 
 where there was the metallic whirr of a grass- 
 hopper, and in the distance a loon boomed again 
 and again. 
 
 The little company passed down the yard. There 
 was the sound of a smothered titter, then a playful, 
 resounding slap, and a gurgling laugh from one of 
 the boys. 
 
 As he stood by the window he heard someone 
 open the door and stand on the threshold. 
 
 "Are you coming, Alice?" someone asked. 
 
 Michael James listened for the answer. He was 
 taking in eagerly all outside things. He wanted 
 something to pass the time of waiting, as a traveller 
 in a railway station reads trivial notices carefully 
 while waiting for a train that may take him to the 
 ends of the earth. 
 
 "Alice, are you coming?" was asked again. 
 
 There was no answer. 
 
 "Well, you needn't if you don't want to," he heard 
 in an irritated tone, and the speaker tramped down 
 182 
 
THE WAKE 
 
 towards the road in a dudgeon. He recognised the 
 figure of Flanagan, the football player, who was 
 always having little spats with the girl he was going 
 to marry. He discovered with a sort of shock that 
 he was slightly amused at this incident. 
 
 From the road there came the shrill scream of 
 one of the girls who had gone out, and then a chorus 
 of laughter. And against the background of the 
 figure behind him and of young Kennedy he began 
 wondering at the relationship of man and woman. 
 He had no word for it, for "love" was a term he 
 thought should be confined to story-books, a word 
 to be suspicious of as sounding affected ; a word to 
 be scoffed at. But of this relationship he had a 
 vague understanding. He thought of it as a criss- 
 cross of threads, binding one person to the other, 
 or as a web which might be light and easily broken, 
 or which might have the strength of steel cables, 
 and which might work into knots here and there, 
 and become a tangle that could crush those caught 
 in it. 
 
 It puzzled him how a thing of indefinable grace, 
 of soft words on June nights, of vague stirrings 
 under moonlight, of embarrassing hand-clasps and 
 fearful glances, might become, as it had become in 
 the case of himself, Kennedy and what was behind 
 him a thing of blind, malevolent force, a thing of 
 sinister silence, a shadow that crushed. 
 
 And then it struck him with a sense of guilt that 
 his mind was wandering from her, and he turned 
 away from the window. He thought how much 
 
 183 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 more peaceful it would be for a body to lie out in 
 the moonlight than in a shadowy room with 
 yellow, guttering candlelight, with a sombre oak 
 bedstead, and five solemn-looking chairs. And he 
 thought again how strange it was that on a night 
 like this Kennedy should come as an avenger 
 seeking to kill rather than as a lover with high hope 
 in his breast. 
 
 Murray slipped into the room again. There was 
 a frown on his face and his tone was aggressive. 
 
 "I tell you, Michael James, we'll have to do 
 something about it." There was a truculent note 
 in his whisper. 
 
 The farmer did not answer. 
 
 "Will you let me go down for the police? A few 
 words to the sergeant will keep him quiet.'* 
 
 Michael James felt a pity for Murray. The idea 
 of pitting a sergeant of police against the tragedy 
 that was coming seemed ludicrous to him. It was 
 like pitting a schoolboy against a hurricane. 
 
 "Listen to me, Dan," he replied. "How do you 
 know Kennedy is coming up at all ? " 
 
 "Flanagan, the football player, met him and 
 talked to him. He said that Kennedy was clean 
 mad." 
 
 "Do they know about it in the kitchen?" 
 
 "Not a word." There was a pause. 
 
 "Well, listen here, now. Go right back there 
 and don't say a word about it. Wouldn't it be 
 foolish if you went down to the police and he didn't 
 come at all? And if he does come I can manage 
 184 
 
THE WAKE 
 
 him. And if I can't I'll call you. Does that satisfy 
 you?" And he sent Murray out, grumbling. 
 
 As the door closed he felt that the last refuge had 
 been abandoned. He was to wrestle with destiny 
 alone. He had no doubt that Kennedy would make 
 good his vow, and he felt a sort of curiosity as to 
 how it would be done. Would it be with hands, 
 or with a gun, or some other weapon? He hoped 
 it would be the gun. The idea of coming to 
 handigrips with the boy filled him with a strange 
 terror. 
 
 The thought that within ten minutes or a half- 
 hour or an hour he would be dead did not come home 
 to him. It was the physical act that frightened 
 him. He felt as if he were terribly alone, and a cold 
 wind were blowing about him and penetrating every 
 pore of his body. There was a contraction around 
 his breast bone and a shiver in his shoulders. 
 
 His idea of death was that he would pitch head- 
 long, as from a high tower, into a bottomless dark 
 space. 
 
 He went over to the window again and looked 
 out towards the barn. From a chink in one of the 
 shutters there was a thread of yellow candlelight. 
 He knew there were men there playing cards to 
 pass the time. 
 
 Then the terror came on him. The noise in the 
 kitchen was subdued. Most of the mourners had 
 gone home, and those who were staying the night 
 were drowsy and were dozing over the fire. He 
 felt he wanted to rush among them and to cry to 
 
 185 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 them to protect him, and to cower behind them and 
 to close them around him in a solid circle. He felt 
 that eyes were upon him, looking at his back from 
 the bed, and he was afraid to turn around because 
 he might look into the eyes. 
 
 She had always respected him, he remembered, 
 and he did not want to lose her respect now; and 
 the fear that he would lose it set his shoulders 
 back and steadied the grip of his feet on the 
 floor. 
 
 He could not remember what Kennedy looked 
 like. His fancy distorted his enemy's countenance 
 into a thin, grim-lipped face. There was a horrible 
 unreality about him, as about a djinn in the Thousand 
 and One Nights. 
 
 And then there flashed before him the thought 
 of people who kill, of lines of soldiery rushing on 
 trenches, of a stealthy, cowering man who slips 
 through a jail door at dawn, and of a figure he had 
 read of in books a sinister figure with an axe and 
 a red cloak. 
 
 The moon was well to the westward now. There 
 was still the white, blinding look about the out- 
 houses. They threw heavy, angular shadows. Trees 
 appeared as if etched in black on the ground. There 
 was a chill in the air. 
 
 As he looked down the yard he saw a figure 
 turn in at the gate and come towards the house. 
 It seemed to walk slowly and heavily, as if tired. 
 He knew it was Kennedy. 
 
 He turned and walked to the door. As he 
 186 
 
THE WAKE 
 
 walked he felt he was being watched from behind. 
 In the kitchen someone was speaking slowly and 
 emphatically, as if driving home a point. He 
 opened the kitchen door and slipped outside. 
 
 The figure coming up the pathway seemed to 
 swim towards him. Then it would blur and dis- 
 appear, and then appear again vaguely. The beating 
 of his heart was like the regular sound of a ticking 
 clock. Space narrowed until he felt he could not 
 breathe. He went forward a few paces. The light 
 from the bedroom window streamed forward in a 
 broad, yellow beam. He stepped into it as into 
 a river. 
 
 " She's dead," he heard himself saying. "She's 
 dead." And then he knew that Kennedy was 
 standing in front of him. 
 
 The flap of the boy's hat threw a heavy shadow 
 over his face, his shoulders were braced, and his 
 right hand, the farmer could see, was thrust deeply 
 into his coat pocket. 
 
 "Ay, she's dead," Michael James repeated. 
 "You knew that, didn't you?" It was all he could 
 think of saying. "You'll come in and see her, 
 won't you?" He had forgotten what Kennedy had 
 come for. He was dazed. He didn't know what 
 to say. 
 
 Kennedy moved a little. The light from the 
 window struck him full in the face, and Michael 
 James realised with a shock that it was as grim 
 and thin-lipped as he had pictured it. A prayer 
 rose in his throat, and then fear seemed to leave 
 G 187 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 him all at once. He raised his head. The right 
 hand had left the pocket now. And then suddenly 
 he saw that Kennedy was looking into the room, 
 and he knew he could see, through the little panes 
 of glass, the huge bedstead and the body on it. 
 And he felt a desire to throw himself between 
 Kennedy and it, as he might jump between a child 
 and something that would hurt it. 
 
 He turned away his head, instinctively why, he 
 could not understand, but he felt that he should 
 not look at Kennedy's face. 
 
 Over in the barn voices rose suddenly. They 
 were disputing over the cards. There was some- 
 one complaining feverishly and someone arguing 
 truculently, and another voice striving to make 
 peace. They died away in a dull hum, and Michael 
 James heard the boy sobbing. 
 
 "You mustn't do that," he said. "You mustn't 
 do that." And he patted him on the shoulders. 
 He felt as if something unspeakably tense had 
 relaxed, and as if life were swinging back into 
 balance. His voice shook and he continued patting. 
 "You'll come in now, and I'll leave you alone 
 there." He took him under the arm. 
 
 He felt the pity he had for the body on the bed 
 envelop Kennedy, too, and a sense of peace come 
 over him. It was as though a son of his had been 
 hurt and had come to him for comfort, and that 
 he was going to comfort him. In some vague way 
 he thought of Easter-time. 
 
 He stopped at the door for a moment. 
 188 
 
THE WAKE 
 
 "It's all right, laddie," he said. "It's all right," 
 and he lifted the latch. 
 
 As they went in he felt somehow as if high walls 
 had crumbled and the three of them had stepped 
 into the light of day. 
 
 189 
 
X 
 
 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 THERE was something incongruous about the old 
 rabbi, Lahada puzzled. His grey donkey fitted in 
 with the Syrian night, and his aquiline nose, piercing 
 eyes, and white, patriarchal beard seemed to embody 
 the spirit of the East; but there was some note 
 jarring. And in a flash he discovered it. It was 
 the coat and trousers of clerical black. Put him in 
 a burnous, he thought, and the picture was perfect. 
 
 The caravan of Hebrew colonists had left Beirut 
 ten days before on its way to the Mesopotamian 
 settlements. For two miles behind him and one in 
 front 'Lahada could see the long line of camels, pack 
 dromedaries, donkeys, and mule- drawn wagons wind 
 through the desert like a river. All around him, 
 like the playing of a muted orchestra, he could hear 
 the tinkle of innumerable camel bells, the soft crunch 
 of dromedaries' pads in the sand, and the rumble 
 and whine of cart wheels. Away in the distance 
 there was the vibrant growl of a lioness, which began 
 in a deep bass and ended in a shrill treble. The 
 moon hung westward in a flaming white disk. 
 
 Lahada knew the trail well. Seven years before, 
 when he was still a student in Barcelona, he had 
 190 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 gone to Damascus and Baalbek as secretary to the 
 Spanish archaeologist Carada. In that brief six 
 months the barren desert country had stolen into 
 his blood like a fever. And in the night time, 
 when he sat around the red camp fires of the 
 Bedouins, he had dreamed of grey tents and of 
 grazing herds and of land under pasture, as there 
 had been three thousand years ago, when his 
 own people had journeyed out of Egypt into 
 the wilderness, and from the wilderness to the 
 Jordan. 
 
 Then he would wake up from his dreaming with 
 a shamefaced laugh. It was too impossible ! he said 
 to himself. And here he was to-night, leading three 
 thousand of them back, as thirty centuries ago the 
 host had been led by Moses ! 
 
 When the call of the Zionist leaders had swept 
 from temple to temple, urging the people to put 
 from them their rows of figures and dingy shops 
 and flashing needles and pedlars' packs, and to 
 return whence they came, he felt his spirit stir within 
 him as he had never felt it before. When his applica- 
 tion to lead one of the caravans to the Euphrates 
 country had been accepted, he had gone around 
 dazedly, hardly daring to believe it was true. To 
 the central committee he was merely a young, 
 enthusiastic Jewish student, who knew the trail and 
 spoke Arabic. But in himself he felt that his ex- 
 pedition with Carada and his dreams by the black 
 Bedouin tents were a fore-ordained preparation for 
 the work. 
 
 191 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 The caravan had gathered in Beirut, and he felt 
 for the first time that the dream of a new Zion was 
 perhaps a futility. There were men from New 
 York there, shrewd, crafty-looking fellows with 
 mean eyes; men from Russia, with a hopeless, 
 apathetic expression on their sluggish faces; pasty, 
 white-cheeked tradespeople from England; stolid 
 and corpulent Germans; sharp, alert men from 
 Paris, who looked as if they would be quite at home 
 on the Boulevard des Italiens and not at all on the 
 Damascus trail. The Spanish Jews, tall, swarthy, 
 and hook-nosed, seemed as if they were living a 
 poem, and in himself he fought the fear that they 
 would be disillusioned. But in the eyes of the 
 women, he noticed, the sight of the swelling Lebanon 
 hills seemed to renew the promise of Daniel. 
 
 Surely, he said to himself, these were no desert 
 men, this was no people to refound a nation and 
 to rebuild ancient cities, and to battle with wind and 
 weather for their bread. It would have been better, 
 he felt, to have left them to their streets, and to 
 their buying and selling, and to their moving picture 
 houses and dance halls. The burden of the Ghetto 
 had lain too heavily on them. 
 
 They had started from Beirut with their platoon 
 of red-fezzed, beetle-browed, contemptuous Turkish 
 cavalry on each side of them, and, Lahada noticed, 
 a look of shamefaced apprehension. The snarling 
 protest of the camels, the flashing colours of the 
 Syrian town, and the grim, grey outline of the desert 
 they were to cross seemed to scare them. Their 
 192 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 faces blanched when they spoke of the roaming 
 Kurds and Arabs, against whom the black-uniformed 
 Bashi-Bazouk guard with their short, workmanlike 
 rifles were to protect them. 
 
 But out in the desert they plucked up courage, 
 where Lahada had feared they would break up and 
 plead to be sent back to Essen and Warsaw and 
 New York and Marseilles. They examined the 
 desert silently, as prospectors might do, and looked 
 at the stretch of grey sand and greenish grey rocks 
 and stumps of brush with wide, inquisitive eyes. 
 At first they whispered to one another, like intruders, 
 and stepped back fearfully when a chameleon 
 scuttled up a rock or a lizard flashed beneath their 
 feet in a streak of silver. They watched Lahada 
 on his big bay mare as school children watch the 
 leader of their outing, and Lahada watched them 
 more closely still, and little by little he saw their 
 strides grow longer, and heard their voices rise from 
 whispers to a drone of conversation, and then to 
 cheery, encouraging shouts to one another, and he 
 noticed their eyes fixed confidently on the horizon, 
 where one morning the terraced Mesopotamian 
 valleys would rise green and lush before them. 
 
 He rode up the line on the first morning's march, 
 and stopped in front of little Miriam Schultz, who 
 had left an East Side sweatshop for the promise of 
 the rolling green fields. 
 
 " What do you think of it?" he asked, and pointed 
 to the circle of desert that was turning white under 
 the morning sun. 
 
 193 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 "I don't know," she answered, "I don't know." 
 She looked at him suddenly with full, black eyes. 
 "You'll laugh at me," she faltered, "but it doesn't 
 seem so strange. I feel as if I had seen it all before. 
 I wonder if I could have dreamt it?" 
 
 "Perhaps you did," he answered lightly; but he 
 felt his heart bound within him, for his vision was 
 coming true. 
 
 How utterly simple it was, after all! Here was 
 this tract of fertile land wanting colonists, and here 
 were the people who owned and tilled it when the 
 world was young returning to own and till it again. 
 Why couldn't they have done so before now ? Why 
 should they have slaved and suffered and been 
 outcasts and pariahs for centuries when they had 
 only to come back? Why should they have been 
 scarred and hacked in the advance westward when 
 they could have been secure and prosperous in 
 retreat ? Why should old Borsky have gone through 
 the horrors of Kishenev, and Carcassonne been spat 
 on by his fellow conscripts in Algiers, and Oppen- 
 heim taken the insults of coarse German students? 
 They were forced to: they had to live. But why 
 not have come back before now? And suddenly 
 he remembered the long years of bondage in Egypt 
 while the Promised Land lay across the waters 
 before them, and they had been delayed in going 
 forth. He questioned himself no further. 
 
 Well, they were on their way at last, thank God! 
 This was the vanguard of them. It might take years 
 and tens of years and perhaps centuries before they 
 194 
 

 
 OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 could all foregather; but it had begun. That was 
 the main thing. Already the shrewd, trafficking 
 look in their eyes had turned into the keen, observant 
 gaze of scouts. Pasty faces were becoming a healthy 
 olive. Bowed backs were straightening by inches. 
 Lahada noticed with surprise how like the Arabs 
 and the Bedouins of the desert the colonists looked 
 the same hooked nose, the same swarthy colouring, 
 the same deep-set, keen black eye! Surely they 
 were on their own ground at last! 
 
 But what of the Kurds and Arabs and the nomad 
 tribes? What if they should attack them? That 
 was the question that had been eating into his mind 
 like a maggot since they left Beirut. The con- 
 temptuous, inimical Bashi-Bazouks might turn treach- 
 erous, and leave them to the mercy of the tribesmen. 
 What would they do then? 
 
 He had talked about it to Adams, the thin, angular 
 New England consul at Beirut. The consul had 
 looked grave. 
 
 "Yes," he had said, "the Porte wants your people 
 back; but the Turkish soldier and the Arab do not. 
 In short, they have always hated you, and always 
 will. And they will do everything they can to 
 prevent your settling in the country.'* He began 
 drumming on his desk. His mouth puckered into 
 a puzzled, thin line. "I shouldn't be surprised," 
 he continued, "if a party of Arabs ambushed the 
 caravan. I'll be frank with you you may as well 
 face it. I'll be surprised if they don't. And, as 
 you say, the patrol may withdraw out of range." 
 
 195 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 "Then what are we going to do?" 
 
 "You have all got rifles?" Adams asked. 
 
 "Yes; but " 
 
 "But nothing!" The consul swung round, and 
 his eyes snapped. "You've got to fight that or go 
 back! Take your choice!" 
 
 That or go back ! If it were only himself, Lahada 
 laughed grimly, there would be no question of going 
 back. But would his people fight? For centuries 
 they had been the under dog, oppressed and trodden 
 on; they had been traders, living by their wits and 
 brains rather than by their hands. And the few 
 who had worked by their hands had been cooped 
 in sweatshops until the nerve and the spirit and the 
 heart's blood had been ground out of them. Was the 
 race that had been imprisoned in the foul-smelling 
 Ghettos of Europe and America, waging its wars 
 across counters and in board rooms and law offices, 
 fit to cope with these wild men of the desert, who 
 cut their teeth on rifle barrels? 
 
 In two days they should reach the edge of the 
 desert and strike into the fertile lands. Would they 
 get through unchallenged, he wondered? And if 
 they were attacked, what would happen? Would 
 the Bashi-Bazouks protect them, or would they 
 retreat and the caravan become a shrieking, panic- 
 stricken shambles, with the young men shot down 
 before his eyes, and the old men clubbed brutally 
 to death at the least resistance, and the women 
 screaming as they were dragged into the desert? 
 Or would and here he gave up puzzling in sheer 
 196 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 weariness. He had been fearing and hoping and 
 wondering for ten days, and had got no answer. 
 
 Day was coming up. The moon had turned from 
 silver to yellow against the western horizon. The 
 sharp, black silhouette of the caravan took on vague, 
 unreal lines. The sand that had glistened white 
 under the moon became a sea of dark grey mist, 
 broken at intervals by the crests of great rocks that 
 looked like crests of great waves, and by little islands 
 of green brush and scrub. Desert life was waking. 
 Not a hundred yards away a gazelle raced past in 
 a streak of brown, its head stretched forward and 
 its legs curving upward like a galloping horse. 
 Farther on a desert dog squatted on his haunches 
 and barked viciously at the caravan. Somewhere a 
 pair of rock pigeons twittered and cooed. 
 
 Ahead of them Lahada could see a black splotch 
 against the grey. That, he knew, was Kefir-Ghosn, 
 the first stop on the day's march. It was a patch 
 of grey rock, as far as he could remember it, with a 
 mosque and a green oasis and a marabout's tomb. 
 There should be a travellers' khan there too, and a 
 fetid Mohammedan bazaar. They would stop there 
 for two hours and then push on, until the heat of 
 the day forced them to camp. 
 
 They were making good headway. By to-morrow 
 night they would be on the edge of the desert, and 
 the valley of the Euphrates would lie before them. 
 After Kefir-Ghosn there was only Shashak, and 
 after Shashak they were safe. 
 
 Then a sort of panic seemed to grip him in the 
 
 197 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 breast. The caravan had wavered and halted. 
 Along the line he could hear the voices of men 
 calling on mules and camels to stop. Somehow 
 he felt he should get at once to the head of 
 the column, where the truculent Anatolian major 
 was. He clapped his heels to his horse and raced 
 forward. 
 
 The major was talking to his adjutant in low- 
 pitched, guttural Kurd. A captain and two sergeants 
 stood by. They stopped talking when Lahada came 
 up, and turned suspiciously to him. None of them 
 spoke. 
 
 "Is anything wrong?" he asked quietly. 
 
 "No. What would be wrong?" the major an- 
 swered. 
 
 Lahada felt suddenly suspicious of him. He 
 could see a corner of the khan glimmer faintly a 
 quarter of a mile away. Between the head of the 
 caravan and the village the road dropped suddenly 
 and ran through a defile of high rock, which turned 
 sharply at an obtuse angle and hid the mosque and 
 the oasis and the marabout's tomb. In the half- 
 light of the dawn it suggested the blackness of a 
 tunnel. Lahada thought for a moment that he could 
 catch a glimpse of white against the rocks. 
 
 "Well, why don't you go on?" he asked. 
 
 The major didn't answer. Lahada suddenly felt 
 that there was something here he should be careful 
 of. He looked back. Along the sides of the caravan 
 the cavalrymen seemed to have thinned. The 
 captain and the sergeants turned their horses quietly 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 and trotted down the line. An idea came into 
 Lahada's head. He turned to the major. 
 
 "Send a scouting party down that road," he 
 commanded. 
 
 "Why should I?" he heard the major reply. 
 
 "If there are Arabs on the trail, the scouts would 
 warn us." 
 
 "If there are Arabs on the trail," the soldier 
 replied coolly, "the scouting party will never return. 
 If you are afraid, why don't you turn your caravan 
 back?" 
 
 Lahada could hear the rattle of hoofs in the 
 distance. They grew fainter and fainter. He could 
 see no cavalrymen now. On the crest of rocks he 
 again thought he saw a flash of white. He caught 
 at the major's bridle. 
 
 "Are there tribesmen on those rocks?" his voice 
 rose involuntarily. "Tell me at once!" 
 
 "How should I know, Effendi?" 
 
 Good God! the man was maddening. "If there 
 are, will you stand by us?" he demanded fiercely. 
 He felt he wanted to take the major by the throat 
 and strangle him. 
 
 "I have only a platoon, Effendi. If there are 
 many Arabs, I can do nothing. I can't be expected 
 to fight five or six hundred of them. I can only 
 order you to retire. If you don't, I must bring my 
 own men out of action. I can't sacrifice them." 
 
 Lahada felt sure now they were to be ambushed. 
 The Bashi-Bazouk wheeled his horse and waited. 
 There was no fear on his face, Lahada could see 
 
 199 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 that; his big white teeth showed in a saturnine 
 smile. Under the red fez his black eyes twinkled 
 in amused contempt. His adjutant, a stocky Al- 
 banian, with the face of a Cossack, glowered at 
 Lahada viciously. 
 
 A group of men had gathered round. Lahada 
 noticed Sassoo from Barcelona at his elbow, and 
 Carcassonne and Lajeunesse. They could be de- 
 pended on to fight: they had served in the African 
 provinces. Others who had been conscripts were 
 there too, he saw Oppenheim, who had been in 
 the Uhlans, and Philipsthal, who had been a non- 
 commissioned officer in the Bavarian Rifles. And 
 there were Nachiminoff and Czernauer, who had 
 served in the artillery at Libau they would stand 
 by him. 
 
 But these, he felt, were only a few. And if there 
 were five or six hundred Arabs, as the escort com- 
 mander had mentioned, what chance of success was 
 there ? How many of the others could be depended 
 on? He looked down the line. The caravan had 
 broken its trail formation and was gathering in little 
 groups. He could hear the flutter of conversation. 
 They were already becoming alarmed. Would they 
 stand by? he wondered. He would take the chance. 
 He beckoned to Lajeunesse. 
 
 "Have the rifles and clips handed out," he ordered. 
 "Keep the women back there, and bring up the men 
 and camels. Hurry! There's no time to lose." 
 
 Lajeunesse slipped off quietly. Lahada saw Car- 
 cassonne and Sassoo follow him. 
 200 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 The major was getting impatient. "Well, I 
 suppose you're for going back. Don't you think 
 you'd better hurry and get moving?" 
 
 Somebody brushed in front of Lahada's mare 
 and stood in front of him. "You dog!" he heard. 
 "You dog!" 
 
 He looked down. The old Rabbi Ben Israel from 
 Saragossa, whose clothes of western black struck 
 Lahada as so incongruous, was facing the Bashi- 
 Bazouk. In the dim, thin light of the dawn, his 
 height appeared enormous. His long, white beard 
 quivered. His lean hand was stretched out towards 
 the Turkish soldier. 
 
 The group around Lahada had dismounted. Their 
 faces were becoming more distinct. Towards the 
 east the sickly yellow of the sky was turning to bright 
 mauves and purples. Lahada felt there was no time 
 to lose. So long as the major and his adjutant were 
 with them they were safe, he felt. Once they had 
 gone out of range, the attack would begin. He 
 dismounted. 
 
 "Stretch out your camels in a row," he said to 
 the group. "Face them towards the village and 
 make them kneel down." 
 
 The men began leading the beasts away, Lahada 
 could see. There had been no questions or objec- 
 tions thank Heaven for that! He listened for a 
 moment to the quivering tinkle of the animals' bells 
 as they were led forward, and to the fierce-breathed 
 oaths of the men as they forced them forward or to 
 their knees, and to the sharp, staccato crack of the 
 
 201 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 whips on their leathern flanks. Above it all the 
 voice of the old rabbi rang out like a gong. 
 
 "Go back, you traitor and son of traitors! Go 
 back, you cowards, if you want to! We are going 
 forward. And what stands in our way shall go out 
 of it. Even you and your men, if they attempt to 
 withstand us!" 
 
 Carcassonne and Lajeunesse were handing out the 
 rifles now. The men were taking them mechanically. 
 Back on the trail he could hear the steady rumble 
 of carts retreating. He pushed forward to where 
 the major was, with the old rabbi confronting him 
 like an accusing prophet. The smile and the sneer 
 had gone from the soldier's eyes. His voice snapped 
 as he turned to Lahada. 
 
 "I order you to go back!" he barked. 
 
 The old rabbi turned to Lahada. "We are going 
 to fight, my son," he said calmly, and Lahada 
 wondered at the quiet confidence in his voice. 
 
 The Bashi-Bazouk gathered up his reins. "I 
 disclaim all responsibility," he shouted. "I've 
 warned you. If you insist on staying, it's not my 
 fault." 
 
 He dug his spurs into his horse and clattered 
 down the line. The adjutant followed at a canter. 
 Lahada looked around him. The camels had been 
 forced down in a semicircle, and Sassoo and Car- 
 cassonne were urging the men to lie down behind 
 them. In the grey of the dawn the line of crouching 
 camels suggested somehow great dun birds that had 
 flown to the earth to rest. The rocks in front 
 202 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 towered up black and forbidding, like a gully in a 
 sea cliff. The caravan rumbled and crashed as it 
 galloped into safety. Between the camels andjthe 
 village every inch of the way seemed silent and tense. 
 From the retreating caravan black figures were 
 stealing up towards the circle. Some of them, 
 Lahada could see, were running, and others were 
 crouching steadily, and still others were lagging and 
 had to be urged along. 
 
 Lajeunesse pushed a rifle and cartridge belt into 
 his hands, and he walked forward mechanically and 
 dropped behind one of the massive pack dromedaries. 
 Before him the gorge rose up black and forbidding. 
 What if there were no one there after all ? he thought. 
 What if all this panic and preparation had been for 
 nothing ? 
 
 He could hear the distant rattle of the officers' 
 horses down the trail. And as he listened something 
 whined above his head. One of the black figures 
 behind him lurched and staggered. There was a 
 sound like the crack of a whip. A camel nearby 
 rose on its haunches. 
 
 "Kill the camels!" he heard Carcassonne shout- 
 ing. "Shoot them through the head!" 
 
 Lahada put his rifle to the head of the dromedary 
 and pulled the trigger. The rifle leaped in his 
 hand. The report seemed to strike him at the back 
 of the neck. 
 
 All about him there was a sharp crackling like 
 burning wood, and then it doubled and redoubled. 
 The rocks ahead of him flashed out in pin-points 
 
 203 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 of flame. Lahada felt dazed and sick. He didn't 
 know what to do. He pointed his rifle vaguely 
 towards the rocks and began pulling the trigger. 
 The firing became like the tearing of innumerable 
 pieces of paper. The yellow pin-points in front of 
 him flickered and disappeared like the flashing of 
 electric torches. There was a smell of powder in 
 the air. 
 
 He felt disgusted with himself. Here was he, 
 leader of the caravan, and didn't know what to 
 do! A great surge of impatience shook him from 
 head to foot. He was afraid suddenly that he was 
 afraid. 
 
 And if he was afraid, he asked, what of the others, 
 who had not the intensity of the vision he had to 
 steel their souls would they stand firm? God 
 help him ! would he stand firm himself ? 
 
 The firing stopped for a few moments. He looked 
 ahead. It was becoming lighter now. There were 
 still the dark shadows and the black gulf of the 
 gorge. The edge of the khan in the distance took 
 on a dim, ghostly appearance. In front of him, on 
 the horizon, where the sun would come up, there 
 were massed clouds in gigantic pearl-coloured layers 
 and puffs. A ray of sunlight shot upward between 
 them like a shaft of yellow flame. It looked, Lahada 
 thought, like a pillar of fire connecting earth and 
 heaven, and as he looked a shiver went through him, 
 and he felt he should lower his head. 
 
 He heard someone grunt beside him. Sabin, who 
 had been in the marines on the Minnesota, was lying 
 204 
 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 on his stomach, squinting carefully down the barrel 
 of his rifle. 
 
 "Three hundred yards no, three hundred and 
 twenty-five three hundred and fifty," Lahada 
 heard him murmur. 
 
 He changed the sights of his rifle and brought it 
 to his shoulder again. On the crest of the rocks a 
 white figure had half risen. Lahada could see the 
 torso of a burnoused Arab. There was a dull crash 
 from Sabin's rifle. The Arab clutched the edge of 
 the rock, fell forward on it, slid over it, and plunged 
 into the gorge like a diver into a pool. 
 
 Then above the crackling of the rifle fire a fierce 
 shouting struck on Lahada's ears. A white figure 
 flashed out of the gorge, and then three others, and 
 then a group of them, and then a score. He looked 
 at them dully. They rushed forward, waving long, 
 glistening barrels. They seemed to scream like women. 
 
 The figure that ran in front hypnotised him. He 
 wanted to see what it was going to do, whether it 
 was going to stop or whether it would go on. He 
 forgot the rifle in his hands and kept looking at the 
 figure. He heard the click of a tongue against 
 palate beside him. Sabin was cuddling his rifle to 
 his cheek. There was a little yellow spat from the 
 muzzle, and the racing figure stopped short, spun 
 like a teetotum, and pitched forward on its hands 
 and knees. 
 
 He heard Carcassonne's voice volley as from a 
 megaphone. " Give it to them ! " he shouted. " Give 
 it to them now ! " 
 
 205 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 A panic seized him. He must do something with 
 his rifle. On each side the crack of guns rang out 
 like the chatter of a giant drill. He levelled and 
 fired insanely, and levelled and fired again, and 
 pushed clips into his magazine with trembling 
 fingers. 
 
 The group of rushing ghosts wavered and stood 
 still for a moment. They dropped prone to the 
 ground. Lahada could see behind them here and 
 there a figure curled up or sprawling. The group 
 began firing carefully. A bullet struck the 
 dromedary with a plump, and then another and 
 another. 
 
 He looked around him. Day was long coming up, 
 he thought. The shadows were still there, long and 
 gaunt, and short and squat. The black mouth of 
 the gorge was as black as before. He looked towards 
 the rising sun. 
 
 The beam of light was still there. It had changed 
 from golden to flaming scarlet, and thickened until 
 it stood like an immense bar against the clouds. He 
 felt a shiver run along his neck, and the blood 
 pounding in his veins like hammers. 
 
 "Ready again!" Carcassonne called. 
 
 A wedge of white flashed from the gorge to re- 
 inforce the group on the sand. The group staggered 
 up, and began rushing again. 
 
 Lahada looked up towards the bar of flame. It 
 was still lighting angrily. He felt himself go taut. 
 There was no indecision now. A sort of cold fury 
 gripped him. 
 206 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 He raised his rifle and began firing. The sharp 
 crashes seemed to stimulate him. He liked the 
 feeling of the hot barrel along his palm. Unconquer- 
 able strength surged through his limbs. 
 
 He remembered speaking to Forrest, the fruit 
 shipper, before leaving Beirut. Forrest had listened 
 to his enthusiasm with a cold, fishy eye. 
 
 "What '11 you do if the Arabs ambush you?" 
 he had asked. 
 
 "We'll fight," Lahada had answered, with his 
 gorge rising against the flabby merchant. 
 
 "Ah, Jews can't fight!" Forrest had said, and 
 moved off, laughing contemptuously. 
 
 Jews couldn't fight! Jews couldn't fight! By 
 Heaven! he'd show them! 
 
 The Arabs in front were advancing by short 
 rushes. Then they would drop to their knees and 
 fire, rush and fire again, and drop to their knees 
 again. They were thinning out. 
 
 They scrambled up and ran forward. Lahada 
 noticed a huge figure taking the lead. It wore the 
 green turban of the hadji and was bellowing fren- 
 ziedly. Lahada fired. 
 
 The bellow died, cut in mid-course. Lahada felt 
 a fierce joy run through him. The line of Arabs 
 broke and ran. 
 
 Jews couldn't fight, couldn't they? That was 
 what the Bashi-Bazouk had thought, that was what 
 the Arabs had. They were learning now! 
 
 There was a minute's respite. Lahada looked 
 towards the east. The streak of flame was still there, 
 
 207 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 flashing angry and red like a comet. Men were 
 stealing up towards the circle from the caravan, 
 cuddling their rifles to their shoulders. Lahada 
 wondered if they too had seen the pillar of fire. 
 
 Carcassonne was shouting wildly. "Stand firm 
 now!" he yelled. "Stand firm!" 
 
 Lahada heard feet pattering like drum-sticks. 
 There were about a hundred of them this time. 
 There was no yelling now. They drove towards the 
 circle like a flock of birds. Lahada heard a struggle 
 beside him. A man had jumped up and thrown 
 his rifle down and prepared to run. Sabin had 
 sprung to his throat and pulled him down. 
 
 "Shoot or I'll kill you!" he was hissing. 
 
 They were in for it now, Lahada felt. He heaved 
 his rifle up and volleyed into them. The driving 
 white figures scattered, but never stopped. In a 
 few seconds they would be on the circle. 
 
 Lahada looked towards the east again. The flame 
 had changed from red to startling crimson, and 
 seemed to rush upward as from the crater of a 
 volcano. It played in a burning glow on the massed 
 clouds. 
 
 Lahada's magazine was empty. There was no 
 time to reload. He could see the brown, hawk-like 
 features of the Arabs not forty yards away. He 
 wanted to spring from behind his hiding place and 
 rush to meet them. 
 
 Behind him he heard a voice ring out, sonorous 
 and full. He glanced over his shoulder. The old 
 rabbi was standing like a monument, his arms 
 208 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 stretched upward at full length, his head thrown 
 backward. He was chanting the Schma-J -Israel. 
 
 "Help, O God of Israel!" Lahada heard, and 
 then the Arabs were upon him. He brought his 
 rifle butt from his knee up to one brown jaw, and 
 downward on another head. Then it was wrenched 
 from him, and he was fighting with his bare hands. 
 
 Lahada felt a slap on his shoulder. He looked 
 up at Carcassonne. 
 
 "Let him go," Carcassonne was saying. "I want 
 you." 
 
 Lahada looked down. He was clutching the 
 throat of a limp, burnoused figure, a figure that did 
 not move when he let go. He felt suddenly weak, 
 and staggered as Carcassonne helped him back from 
 the line. Lajeunesse was there, and Oppenheim 
 and Czernauer and others. 
 
 They plunged onward down the trail. Lahada 
 wondered if they were running away. He stopped 
 suddenly. Carcassonne caught him by the shoulder. 
 
 "Hurry, man, run!" he shouted. "We've got to 
 get back at once." 
 
 Lahada looked back towards the circle. In the 
 distance he could see the white forms of Arabs flying 
 towards the gorge, and growing fainter and fainter 
 every moment. What did Carcassonne want? he 
 wondered as he raced along beside him. 
 
 They reached a knot of deserted wagons. Two 
 of them had been overturned, and all the mules cut 
 free of their traces. Carcassonne sniffed and whined 
 like a bloodhound. He dived into one of them. 
 
 209 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 "Got it first time!" he shouted. "Give me a 
 hand." 
 
 Lahada wanted to get back. Frenzy gripped him 
 like a fever. He wanted to get back and feel his 
 fingers on another brown throat. 
 
 "Here, take hold!" Carcassonne was saying. 
 
 He felt something cold and heavy pushed into 
 his hand. Carcassonne and another held on, too. 
 Lahada saw something that gleamed and tapered 
 and rested on a tripod. Three others carried a 
 similar one. Behind them a half-dozen men stag- 
 gered under heavy cases. 
 
 "Machine guns," Carcassonne panted, "belong 
 to the Bashi-Bazouks." 
 
 As they stumbled back he began hissing "The 
 Marseillaise" between his teeth. Lahada could hear 
 the ping-pong of firing from the circle, and occasion- 
 ally a bullet tore past them with a zip. 
 
 They staggered up to the circle, and Carcassonne 
 and Oppenheim set up the legs of the tripod. The 
 gun thrust its nose over a camel's back. Carcassonne 
 straddled the seat behind it, and Oppenheim, kneel- 
 ing, took hold of the cartridge tape. Lahada saw 
 Lajeunesse and Czernauer setting the other gun 
 fifty yards farther down. 
 
 "Here they are!" said Carcassonne. 
 
 Good God! The other rush had been nothing 
 to this. There must be three hundred of them 
 this time, Lahada thought. They came forward 
 in a flying square, their rifles gripped steadily 
 in both hands, their heads thrust forward. They 
 210 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 were going to finish the colonists this time if they 
 could. 
 
 He looked down at Carcassonne. He was glancing 
 along the sights of the machine gun and stroking 
 the barrel with his hand. Then he leaned back and 
 began leisurely tapping the ground with his foot. 
 He swung the barrel from right to left on its axis. 
 
 The Arab column came on like a flight of sparrows. 
 Lahada felt that there should be a special noise to 
 its advance, like the whistle and shriek of a whirl- 
 wind, or the sound of a great wheel turning. 
 
 Why didn't Carcassonne begin firing? Was there 
 anything wrong with the gun? But Carcassonne 
 was still idly turning the barrel on its axis and still 
 leaning back in the saddle. 
 
 He looked again towards the east. The great 
 streak of red flame was still there, but growing 
 thinner and less angry, and he noticed that the day 
 had nearly come. The sight of the flame in the sky 
 still roused the battle fever in him. He wanted to 
 rush out and defeat single-handed the charging 
 Arabs who were trying to keep him and his people 
 from their land. He discovered suddenly that he 
 was crouching and snarling like a dog, and that his 
 fingers were dug deep into the dead camel's back. 
 He could already hear the fierce panting of the 
 advancing line. 
 
 "Now!" said Carcassonne. 
 
 The gun began to sputter and hiss and crackle. 
 It swung from one side to the other. Yellow 
 flame stabbed from its muzzle. Up the line Lahada 
 
 211 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 heard the other gun like the patter of rain on a roof. 
 The one beside him sounded like a gigantic blast 
 pipe at work on a flame. 
 
 The flying white wedge before them tumbled and 
 swirled and eddied and fought. He heard hoarse 
 shouting and loud, piercing shrieks. They stumbled 
 backward in a scattered, struggling mass, and as 
 they went they left a white, moaning heap behind 
 them. The guns stabbed and chattered mercilessly. 
 Lahada saw men drop from the flanks of the rout 
 like petals from a blown flower. A score of them 
 reached the gorge. The chatter of the guns ceased. 
 
 "After them!" Carcassonne shouted. " Finish 
 them!" 
 
 Lahada staggered across the camel and towards 
 the gorge. Before his eyes the thin red flame in 
 the sky seemed to rise and give him strength. He 
 picked up a gun as he ran. Others were before 
 him. He passed them, panting fiercely, his head 
 and body bent forward like a hunting dog. His feet 
 struck the hard stones of the gorge. He overtook 
 one flying figure and brought his rifle down, and 
 then another and brought the butt down again, and 
 leaped full in the chest of a third. 
 
 And then suddenly it was broad daylight, and he 
 was standing at the head of the gorge. In front of 
 him the mosque and the oasis and the marabout's 
 tomb slumbered peacefully. Down the gorge there 
 was a trail of white figures, stained with red in 
 spots and stars and blotches, and farther on the 
 line of camels with black figures huddled about 
 
 212 
 
OUT OF EGYPT 
 
 them, lying sprawled or curled up or tense. They 
 were dead, Lahada knew. 
 
 Carcassonne was coming towards him, his face 
 blurred and blackened with the smoke and grime of 
 the gun. Beside him Czernauer walked with his 
 right arm hanging loose and helpless. Oppenheim 
 staggered along with his head wet and stained and 
 the blood running into his eyes. Carcassonne 
 stopped before him. 
 
 "Well," he said, and he was smiling, "we won." 
 
 Lahada felt his weariness drop from him like a 
 cloak. They had won! How much that meant! 
 There would be no more of the tauntings and insults 
 like those of the Beirut merchant! There would 
 be no more sneering like that of the Turkish soldiers ! 
 
 Lahada could imagine how the news of this would 
 tauten the nerves and the spirits of the people. What 
 news this would be for the Ghettos of Moscow and 
 Kief, and for the sweatshops of Manhattan and 
 Chicago, and for the petty Press of Paris and Berlin! 
 
 The Jews had gone forth to their country, and 
 had fought their way to it, and had won! What 
 news this was for the Black Hundred, and the thugs 
 who prey on the little merchants of New York, and 
 for the drill masters and sergeant-majors of Europe ! 
 They had fought and overcome the Philistines and 
 the Amalekites and the Hittites and the mountain 
 people and the people of the plain! He could 
 imagine the news sweeping from city to city and 
 from temple to temple. The Jews had again a 
 country which they had fought for and died for and 
 
 213 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 won. How long would it be now until they came 
 back in their thousands, and in their tens and hun- 
 dreds of thousands? Now might they cease their 
 weeping at the Temple walls, and their sobbing, and 
 their beating of heads. Zion had risen! Zion was 
 triumphant again! 
 
 Someone touched him on the arm. It was the 
 old rabbi, rfis hand went out to the east. 
 
 The glow of the rising sun was turning the horizon 
 to purple and violet. The beam of crimson fire 
 had gone, Lahada saw; but as he looked a cloud 
 rose in the pillar of black vapour and stood out 
 strong and defiant against the sky-line. It seemed 
 to point the way and to command them to follow. 
 
 " . . .a pillar of cloud by day," the rabbi mur- 
 mured, and dropped to his knees. 
 
 And as Lahada looked he seemed to hear in the 
 air above him the pealing trumpets of Jericho and 
 the crash of high walls falling. 
 
 214 
 
XI 
 
 BLACK MEDICINE 
 
 FOR THE first year of his residence in Wadaranga 
 Cosgrave was decidedly not a success. 
 
 When the bulky, shrewd-eyed ex-lieutenant of 
 Tammany Hall stepped gingerly down the gang- 
 plank of the tramp steamer into which he had 
 changed at Freetown, he was received with open 
 arms by the assembled European colony. For there 
 is always the charm of novelty about the clean 
 home-smell of a white man after you have lived for 
 a few years amidst the acrid odours of black Gallas 
 and Kroos. 
 
 But the welcoming joy died away little by little. 
 For to the deep disgust of the German governor, 
 Graf Hellmuth von Barheim, and of the Oxford- 
 trained English consul, Cosgrave had never heard 
 of the Statesman's Year Book, imagined polo to be 
 the latest twist in Castilian dances, and stated openly 
 and offensively to its most ardent devotees that 
 diplomacy was as addition and subtraction compared 
 to the logarithmic intricacy of New York politics. 
 
 Some months before, on the occasion of the 
 regrettably violent demise of a well-known member 
 of the New York gambling fraternity, over a score 
 
 215 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 
 of gentlemen engaged in civic affairs decided that 
 other and perhaps foreign parts would be more 
 soothing to their nervous condition than the hustling 
 Empire State. Among them was Patrick Cosgrave, 
 the iron-jawed leader of the thirteenth ward. 
 
 Something struck into his head like the beam of 
 a searchlight and would not go out again. It was 
 the something that had sent the elder Cosgrave 
 from the hell of the Connaught bogs to the hell of 
 the East Side. 
 
 He approached Hennessy with his plan Hennessy, 
 the captain of: he captains, whose moon face masked 
 an infernal machine. Hennessy wasn't pleased to 
 see the young leader, whom the thirteenth ward 
 answered as the tides answer the moon, go and 
 bury himself in the wilds of the world. 
 
 "Don't be a fool," he snapped; "stay where you 
 are." 
 
 "I'm not a fool," Cosgrave answered, "and I'm 
 going away." 
 
 Hennessy thought it over for a few moments. 
 
 "All right," he announced, and he lifted the 
 telephone receiver. 
 
 And thus Patrick Cosgrave found himself accredited 
 as United States consul to that blending of red-hot 
 desert and miasmic jungle which is German West 
 Africa. Obviously the intention of Hennessy had 
 been to kill Cosgrave, as a warning to the other 
 Tammany men whose feet needed warming up. 
 For in the particular spot in which he was to repre- 
 sent his country, the cemeteries were the only 
 216 
 
BLACK MEDICINE 
 
 thriving white communities. Or perhaps he expected 
 Cosgrave back within six months playing on the 
 thirteenth ward as a musician plays on an instrument. 
 
 But Cosgrave successfully withstood the combined 
 attacks of sleeping sickness, black- water fever, yellow 
 jack, many and various snakes, and poisoned assegais, 
 and showed no intention of ever revisiting Four- 
 teenth Street. His face had fallen in here and there, 
 and his pink and white complexion the only thing 
 the elder Cosgrave had to leave him, had turned 
 into a delicate shade of yellow bronze. There was 
 a merry twinkle in his eye that was entirely lacking 
 when he bartered for men in Manhattan. And he 
 strolled down the one street of Wadaranga more 
 jauntily than he had ever walked Broadway. 
 
 The town of Wadaranga, from which Cosgrave 
 wrote his consular reports, was the usual West 
 Coast atrocity, consisting of a missionary church, a 
 district prison, the governor's palatial corrugated- 
 iron residence, a combination of hotel and cafe kept 
 by a villainous Portuguese named Pedrocillo, a 
 small mountain of broken beer-bottles and burst 
 provision tins, and three dozen crawling and flying 
 horrors. 
 
 Nevertheless, to the utter astonishment of the 
 Europeans in the town. Cosgrave seemed to be 
 quite happy, and to hanker not at all for the flash- 
 ing, swaying cabarets of Times Square. And after 
 a decent period had elapsed, in which the faux pas 
 in regard to the Statesman's Year Book and the noble 
 game of polo had been forgotten and forgiven, the 
 
 217 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 European colony came to like him thoroughly. He 
 had an uncanny knack of handling the blacks of the 
 colony, who seemed to recognise in him a man 
 watched over by a special and very powerful ju-ju. 
 
 In a land like Africa, which is and always will 
 be a Black Man's land; in a land, moreover, which 
 still dreams sinister legends of dark-skinned con- 
 querors, Chakas and Cetewayos and the like, there 
 are often moments of dramatic tension when kraal 
 speaks to kraal across jungle and desert with dull, 
 rhythmic thumpings on wooden drums, when asse- 
 gais are sharpened, stolen telegraph wire hammered 
 into ammunition for elephant guns, and the tips 
 of countless arrows moistened with slow-working 
 poison. 
 
 It was at moments such as these, moments of 
 which neither the Associated Press nor Renter's 
 Agency ever hears the faintest mutterings, that 
 Cosgrave showed the temper of the steely thing 
 which God had given him for a soul. Through 
 uncanny instinct and an almost feminine power of 
 intuition he achieved the very results which neither 
 the German's bullying, the Briton's humanitarianism, 
 nor the French consul's ruthless Latin logic seemed 
 able to accomplish. 
 
 There were times when his insight into the working 
 of the native character was a source of annoyance 
 to the German governor. It is not good that the 
 consul of a foreign power should receive under- 
 ground communications from the hinterland and 
 should consort with ash-smeared and villainous 
 218 
 
BLACK MEDICINE 
 
 medicine-men from across the border. But when 
 the baron tried to expostulate with Cosgrave in 
 a half jocular and half bullying manner, the American 
 would answer in a gentle voice that he was gathering 
 material for a work on West African voodooism 
 and ju-ju. 
 
 But he never took the trouble to mention that 
 the raw material for his book was regularly sent 
 off to Washington, where, in a tiny office connected 
 with the bureau of the Secretary of State, it was 
 carefully studied and filed away under an index 
 marked "Liberia." 
 
 One of the sights of Wadaranga was to see Cosgrave, 
 seated at a table outside Pedrocillo's, or on the 
 verandah of the little iron consulate, talking in 
 coast pidgin to N'Ga, the medicine-man from the 
 Liberian hinterland, a tall, sinister Kroo, with the 
 high-pitched voice and low forehead of his kind. 
 Unknown to speak to a white man before, and 
 mistrusted by all the Europeans, and feared by all 
 the blacks of the hinterland, his friendship with 
 Cosgrave was little short of a miracle. 
 
 If a European passed them Cosgrave would hail 
 him with a bellow. 
 
 "Come over and meet the boss of the Wadaranga 
 ward," he would shout. 
 
 The European would give N'Ga a look in which 
 fear mingled with disgust and suspicion. Cosgrave 
 would roar with laughter, and the huge black would 
 rise to the dignity of his full height and move off 
 with the sensitive footing of the jungle man who 
 
 H 219 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 reckons with inequalities of ground and the sting 
 of poisoned beetles. 
 
 Cosgrave had hardly been in Wadaranga a year 
 when Hester Jackson came there to be governess 
 to Hedwig and Helene, the two little orphan daughters 
 of the German governor, whom he would not 
 send home in spite of the ravings of the whole 
 consular body. Hester Jackson endeared herself 
 immediately to Cosgrave by saying that she pre- 
 ferred the heat and odours of the West Coast to 
 the electric fans of the woman's magazine office 
 in New York where formerly she read copy from 
 nine to five every day, and complained bitterly 
 that all the experiences and adventure worth having 
 were pre-empted by men. 
 
 When she read in an international literary weekly 
 that the governor of German West Africa wanted 
 a governess for his children, she decided to bid 
 good-bye to the copy desk and the electric fan. 
 The magic name of Africa spun a spell around her ; 
 the feudal sound of "Graf Hellmuth von Barheim" 
 attracted her, and her idea of the Oriental magnifi- 
 cence of a colonial potentate captured her imagination 
 entirely. 
 
 "Girls," she said to her fluttering friends, "girls, 
 I'm going to get that job." And she got it. 
 
 Her reception in Wadaranga was overpowering. 
 Red hair, a tilted nose, a clear-cut profile and a 
 boyish figure will work wonders anywhere, but in 
 Wadaranga they achieved miracles. The French 
 consul, crossed in love ten years before and cynical 
 220 
 
BLACK MEDICINE 
 
 ever since, listened with well simulated conviction 
 to her arguments on feminism. The British consul, 
 forgetting for the moment the sorely tried nation 
 he represented, wholly agreed with her on the 
 subject of woman suffrage. The Baron made 
 several efforts to change from a colonial administrator 
 to a human being, and though he failed, he failed 
 nobly. Only Cosgrave appeared regularly with a 
 hard, disapproving look on his face, her passage 
 money to New York in his hand, and advice to 
 return to the magazine office, the fashion copy, 
 and the electric fan. 
 
 "I don't care what you say," he would argue, 
 "this is no place for you. They had no right to 
 bring you, and you had no right to come." 
 
 "And I don't care what you say," she would 
 answer, "I'm going to remain. I don't see how 
 you can dictate to me." 
 
 "There's just this," he would counter, "I've 
 been here over a year with a pair of open eyes 
 particularly wide open. No white man, woman, 
 or child should stay on this continent one second 
 longer than they can help it. Don't monkey with 
 Africa. It will get you." 
 
 But in the end he would go off cursing viciously, 
 and wishing she were a man, so that he could make 
 her see reason through the medium of a right hook 
 to the jaw. 
 
 Days drifted by lazily. There was an occasional 
 mail. Once in a while a freighter or a dirty tramp 
 boat called for cargo, which was always cause for 
 
 221 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 pleasurable excitement. Otherwise there were only 
 the blazing sunlight, the blue heat hazes, the malarial 
 nights when all the insects in Africa seemed to drone 
 and hum and buzz outside her mosquito net. There 
 were the impressionable young English and French 
 consuls who squired her daily. There was the 
 frail, faded wife of the American missionary who 
 offered her admiration and tea. There was Cosgrave 
 going and coming about the town, his powerful 
 figure suggested by loose-fitting khaki. There was 
 the baron who listened to her Vassar culture with 
 the tolerant smile of an old man who has seen much 
 of the world. 
 
 But there came the day when the crucifixion of 
 two peace-loving German subjects by a hinterland 
 tribe had worked on the baron's temper. Hester 
 knew nothing of it. After dinner she talked away 
 gaily. She criticised the German government of 
 the Cameroons. She pointed to what the United 
 States were doing in Cuba and the Philippines. 
 
 "Now take the United States " she continued. 
 
 The baron could stand it no longer. 
 
 "Oh damn the United States!" he exploded. 
 
 Die Woche fell from her knees with a tragic flop. 
 
 "I'll not stay in this place a minute longer," 
 she announced calmly, "unless you apologise 
 immediately." 
 
 The baron was in no humour for apologies. 
 So he said nothing. 
 
 She moved to the door. "All right, I'm off," 
 she said. She opened the door. "And I'm off for 
 222 
 
BLACK MEDICINE 
 
 good," she continued. "Minna can take care of 
 Hedwig and Helene until you find someone else 
 to insult." 
 
 All right the baron thought, she'll be back in 
 the morning. By then he'd have a pretty apology 
 ready. In the meanwhile, was shooting five negroes 
 with self-respecting Mauser rifles any sort of fitting 
 punishment for crucifixion? And if not, as he was 
 convinced, what else was there that a European 
 governor could do? 
 
 The next morning he saw her ensconced opposite 
 Cosgrave in the office of the little iron consulate. 
 She had told him her story, told him she was not 
 going back, and told him she wanted another job 
 and that she depended on him to get it. He had 
 striven to send her back to the baron. She would 
 not go. 
 
 "Can you give me one good reason for staying 
 here, just one sensible reason?" he demanded. 
 
 "Well, I like the place," she said. "There's a 
 sort of charm in the yellow beach, and the coco- 
 nut trees, and the green jungle behind it." 
 
 "Don't pull that magic of Africa stuff on me. 
 It doesn't go. You don't want to go back and 
 have the women in your office snigger and think 
 you fell down on your job. Oh, don't say that's 
 not it. I know. If you were a man, I'd shanghai 
 you. Well, if there's anything going, I'll let you 
 know." 
 
 A few days later Cosgrave fulfilled his promise. 
 For a moving picture company came to Wadaranga 
 
 223 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 from far-away Chicago, bringing the usual letters 
 from senators and congressmen, asking the American 
 consul to do something in return for the princely 
 wages he received, and to feed, clothe, lodge, and 
 help in every possible and impossible way the 
 star-spangled citizen mentioned in the introduction. 
 
 Walters, the manager of the company, told 
 Cosgrave it was his intention to go Paul Rainey 
 one better, to steer clear of such minor game as 
 lion and rhinoceros and dik-dik and warthog, and 
 to give to the tired business man at home a thrilling 
 series of pictures of the real savage animal, the 
 real big game of the Dark Continent, namely, of 
 the negroes themselves. Cosgrave listened good- 
 humouredly; but when the Chicagoan proclaimed 
 his intention of going into the interior and of photo- 
 graphing choice bits of black ju-ju worship and of 
 simon-pure African voodooism, including human 
 sacrifice, ghost dances and similar atrocities, he 
 lost his temper and flared out. 
 
 "Look here," he said, "the first moment I find 
 you and your company meddling with this ju-ju 
 business, I'll have every man-jack of you arrested 
 and deported on the first steamer." And then he 
 proceeded to tell him why. 
 
 When Walters left, Cosgrave thought he had 
 cured him of any desire to meddle with the Black 
 Man's mysteries, and that the company would 
 confine itself to turning the town topsy-turvy and 
 to trampling the yellow beach. And so, when the 
 camera operator fell sick with coast fever, he remem- 
 224 
 
BLACK MEDICINE 
 
 bered that Hester Jackson was an excellent photo- 
 grapher, far above the rank of amateurs, and he 
 sent for her. 
 
 When she received Cosgrave 's message, she 
 walked into the office as jauntily as ever. The 
 missionaries had consented to keep her as long as 
 she wanted to stay, on the understanding that she 
 would help with the mission work, and she was 
 proud to be able to show the consul that she could 
 shift for herself. 
 
 She found Cosgrave seated at his desk in his 
 shirt sleeves. There were also present Walters, a 
 dark, corpulent, shrewd man, with an eternally 
 suspicious look in his eyes; his leading man, a tall, 
 regular-featured blond; and his leading lady, a 
 dark-haired, little woman, who would have been 
 more at home shelling peas on a back porch in 
 Yonkers than acting melodrama in an African jungle. 
 
 Cosgrave turned around to her as she came in. 
 
 "Miss Jackson," he announced, "this is Mr. 
 Walters." 
 
 He then dilated on her accomplishments as a 
 photographer, her nerve, her knowledge of the dis- 
 trict and the natives; decided on her salary, her 
 hours of working, and other details; pushed the 
 whole party out of the office and sat down to his 
 consular report. 
 
 Hester was dazed with the rapidity with which 
 he settled the matter. She did not know whether 
 or not she wanted the position. Then the glamour 
 of it took her, as a year ago the glamour of Africa 
 
 225 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 had called to her at her polished oaken desk in 
 Manhattan. 
 
 "We'll go down and talk this over at the hotel," 
 said Walters. 
 
 The hotel was the ramshackle white building 
 kept by the villainous Pedrocillo, who was suspected 
 of acting as fence for all the thieves of the hinterland. 
 
 They sat down in the dining-room about a chipped, 
 glass-marked table. Walters screwed up his eyes 
 and looked at her. 
 
 "I'm not so keen on the machine end of it," 
 he began; "we can teach you that in a few hours, 
 and you know enough about light and developing, 
 I guess. What I want to hear about is that nerve 
 of yours our consul up there was talking about." 
 
 She didn't know what to say. 
 
 "Pedrocillo tells me there's going to be a regular 
 ju-ju show to-night and that he can find a guide 
 for us. Now I want a reel of that." 
 
 He lit a cigarette carefully and went on. 
 
 "Cosgrave up there is a decent fellow. He's 
 helped us out a lot, but I don't believe a word 
 of it when he says it can't be done. He's been 
 sitting at that desk of his in this God-forsaken hole 
 until he's forgotten how to tackle live things. I'm 
 going there to-night with a magnesium candle, a 
 half-dozen white men, and a dozen automatics. 
 Are you going to work that camera?" 
 
 She thought of Cosgrave, cool, calm, and cautious. 
 She remembered the serious tone of his voice when 
 he spoke of voodoo mysteries, and his story of men 
 226 
 
BLACK MEDICINE 
 
 who had gone into the jungle against his advice 
 and who had never come back. Then she noticed 
 a smile on the face of the moving picture director. 
 The smile broke into a contemptuous snort and he 
 stood up. 
 
 "I guess I'll work that machine myself," he said. 
 
 " No, you won't," she snapped out, " I'm coming." 
 
 And so the matter was settled. 
 
 She knew she had done wrong, and she thought 
 for a moment with a shiver of apprehension of 
 what Cosgrave would say if he knew of it. But 
 the words had been out of her mouth before she 
 could stop herself, and she could not bear the sneer 
 on the face of the movie-man from Chicago. 
 
 They took her out to the yard and showed her 
 how to operate the shining, black mechanism on 
 its tripod, and in childish excitement at the turning 
 of the little crank that rotated the film she forgot 
 the anxious face of the hard -jawed, fighting consul, 
 who feared neither man nor beast, but who lay 
 awake on the nights the black lodge celebrated its 
 mysteries behind the banks of blue mist that hedged 
 the forest. 
 
 Towards nightfall she slipped back to the mis- 
 sion house and changed into a riding coat and short 
 skirt of khaki, and into stout puttees. She did 
 not tell the missionary or his white-faced, fussy, 
 little wife of the adventure before her, but said 
 something about a melodramatic moving picture film 
 to be staged on the verge of the forest. But she 
 felt as if something were trying to hold her back 
 
 227 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 from going down to the hotel, where the enterprising 
 director and his attendants were getting ready to 
 take pictures for hundreds of thousands of theatre- 
 goers of what few white men had seen and come 
 back alive. 
 
 They were standing in front of the hotel in a 
 little khaki-clad group when she joined them. The 
 director was going about giving instructions. 
 The leading man, a blond college boy, whose regular 
 features and athletic build had endeared him to a 
 million female movie fans, was walking around 
 excitedly, eager to be off on a real adventure. A 
 little apart from them was the tall, sinister black 
 figure that was to lead them through the jungle. 
 
 "We're waiting for you," Walters hailed; "feeling 
 all right?" 
 
 "All right," she answered. At any rate, she was 
 going ahead with it, and would put on a bold front. 
 
 "Everybody ready?" Walters asked. "Go 
 ahead," he shouted to the waiting Kroo. 
 
 They passed up the street of the town and out 
 into the forest. The black in front seemed to glide. 
 Hester walked beside Walters, who was humming 
 a vaudeville favourite beneath his breath and calcu- 
 lating the profits on the first run of the film. 
 
 The twilight blotted out with the suddenness of 
 African nights. In front of them, half over the 
 tops of the trees, the moon hung in a bloated, 
 yellow blotch. As they broke into the depths of the 
 jungle, the light seemed to filter through the trees 
 in a pale, unhealthy green. Here and there was 
 228 
 
BLACK MEDICINE 
 
 an open space into which a shaft of light struck 
 down, and then would come a dark space in which 
 they staggered on uneven ground, and stumbled 
 over the trunks of fallen trees. Occasionally there 
 was a rustle in the grass, and now and again in 
 the distance something broke through the under- 
 growth with a crash. A bird flopped by overhead 
 on heavy, lazy wings. 
 
 The group behind had been talking animatedly 
 when they left the town. They had been laughing 
 and joking at the prospect of what the night held 
 for them. Then the conversation had dropped into 
 the nervous, laconic remarks of over- wrought men. 
 There was just the sound of heavy panting, and 
 an occasional curse as a man stumbled in his 
 stride. 
 
 The black in front kept up his silent, rapid trot. 
 Now and again the moonlight caught his skin 
 and played on it for a moment with an iridescent 
 glitter. Beneath the interlaced branches of the 
 enormous trees he looked like the native spirit of 
 the jungle. 
 
 The man with the camera stopped. 
 
 "I've had enough of this," he said. "I'm going 
 back." 
 
 Walters wheeled around like a flash. 
 
 "You're going back, are you?" he snarled. 
 "What do you think you are out on? A picnic? 
 You put that camera back on your shoulder and 
 come right along. I'm out for business and I'm 
 going to get it. Do you get me?" 
 
 229 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 The man shouldered his machine and the party 
 went forward again. 
 
 No one spoke any more. They trudged forward 
 sullenly. As they walked they moved in more 
 closely together, until they were in a dense, grey 
 group. 
 
 Hester's feet were hurting her. Her coat and 
 skirt seemed to cling to her in sodden folds. Step 
 by step a nameless terror was coming over her. 
 She felt as if on both sides of the trail hidden, 
 unclean things were waiting for the moment to 
 spring out. Once something dropped on her from 
 overhead, and she had to bite her lips to keep from 
 screaming. When she remembered she had known 
 the men she was with only a few hours, she felt 
 utterly alone and helpless. 
 
 Then, while still walking, she seemed to lose 
 consciousness. She knew that at times they rested 
 and then trudged on again. The figure of the giant 
 Kroo slipping through the shadows seemed to 
 hypnotise her. 
 
 Suddenly she knew they were standing still. 
 
 In the distance there was a medley of strange 
 sounds. There was a high-pitched shouting, and 
 a hooting as of innumerable owls, and a dull 
 thumping that suggested drums. 
 
 Walters turned on his men, mopping his fore- 
 head: 
 
 "What the devil are you standing there for, like 
 a lot of fools? Can't you come on?" There was 
 a quaver in his voice. 
 230 
 
BLACK MEDICINE 
 
 Again they trudged onward sullenly. The sounds 
 grew more distinct. On all sides of them things 
 seemed to move with a rustle. They ducked as 
 a bat flew blindly by. 
 
 They plunged through a dark growth of thorny 
 brush, and then through the trees, a hundred yards 
 ahead of them, they saw the red flare of torches. 
 
 Walters turned around. 
 
 "No noise, now! Do you hear? No noise," he 
 whispered hoarsely. 
 
 "Are you all right?" he asked Hester. "Feeling 
 game ? " 
 
 She nodded. He took the camera from the 
 bearer. 
 
 They crept forward stealthily. Their guide had 
 disappeared. They could see that the torches were 
 in a glade. All about them were gigantic trees, 
 choked by huge, writhing creepers. There were 
 enormous fallen trunks, covered with thick moss 
 and bloated, multi-coloured toad-stools. Around 
 them innumerable insects droned. 
 
 They slipped forward on their hands and knees, 
 Walters carrying the camera on his shoulder. The 
 men behind ranged themselves in a close line. 
 The scene in front grew clearer. 
 
 There seemed to be over a hundred of them, 
 all Kroos, thin-lipped and heavy-shouldered. They 
 squatted on their haunches in a wide circle of 
 which the centre was a hut that looked like an 
 enormous beehive. Here and there men held 
 torches that struck gleams from oily skins and the 
 
 231 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 leaf-shaped blades of assegais, and from the barrels 
 of a few flintlocks and elephant guns. The drum- 
 mers in the circle beat their instruments with dull, 
 rhythmic thumps. Over all there hung the massive 
 shadow of the giant trees. 
 
 Walters drew closer and closer. It seemed as 
 if he were about to step into the circle. He stopped 
 beside one of the enormous palms and set up the 
 camera on its tripod. He nodded to the girl. All 
 nervousness seemed to have gone from him. He 
 was once more the hunter on the track of his quarry. 
 
 "All right?" he whispered. 
 
 Her tongue was cleaving to the roof of her mouth. 
 She felt a horrible weakness in her knees, and 
 nausea was sweeping over her. She thought of 
 the iron consulate and the iron consul of Wada- 
 ranga, and felt as if they were her only refuge on 
 earth, and as if she were a thousand miles away 
 from them. 
 
 "Keep cool," Walters was whispering. She could 
 hardly hear him for the hoarse throbbing of the 
 drums. "Wait till I flash the candle, and then 
 begin cranking her up. Take it easily. We're 
 going to get one bully film." 
 
 From the hut there came the loud, shrill hoot 
 of a screech-owl. The circle of Kroos seemed to 
 shiver. The torches wavered in the hands of their 
 bearers. The thumping of the wooden war- drums 
 ceased. A heavy, terrible silence fell upon the glade. 
 
 Through the door of the hut N'Ga, the medi- 
 cine-man, was coming. He crawled through with 
 232 
 
BLACK MEDICINE 
 
 the slow writhing of a snake. Hester felt she wanted 
 to catch Walters and hold on to him tightly. 
 
 N'Ga stood up. He was naked but for the 
 copper wires studded with human teeth that encircled 
 his ankles, and the huge, green devil mask on his 
 face. He sidled forward and addressed the negroes 
 in high-pitched, clicking Kroo. 
 
 4 'Men of the tribe which is of the Owl, the great 
 red ju-ju has passed into the body of N'Ga, and 
 to-night he speaks through the mouth of N'Ga." 
 Here he stepped nearer the clan, and a shiver and 
 moan passed through the serried ranks. His voice 
 rose. "The great ju-ju is angry with the tribe of 
 the Owl. Thus are your fields burnt, your cattle 
 is dying of the plague which comes from the south, 
 and your fruit trees die. And the ju-ju who speaks 
 through the lips of N'Ga says there is one among 
 you who has done the grey deed which is forbidden 
 by the rule of the secret lodge. The ju-ju says 
 that he will seek out the man who is guilty" . . . 
 the line of negroes wavered and trembled . . . 
 "that he may be sacrificed on an altar of much 
 pain. And then again the tribe which is the Owl 
 shall have peace and plenty. The fields shall bear 
 rich green crops; the trees shall bend their heads 
 under heavy loads of golden fruit, the women shall 
 bear healthy men-children, and the cattle shall have 
 many calves. Also shall rain come and much edible 
 game be sent." 
 
 He motioned to the drum-beaters. There was 
 a soft rumbling, and he began to move in the mazes 
 
 233 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 of the ghost dance. He made the round of the 
 circle with slow, mincing steps, clapping his hands 
 softly to the rhythm of the drums. Then he moved 
 faster, his body swaying up and down. Someone 
 behind choked down a sob, and Walters turned 
 around with a snarl. 
 
 Hester felt a sort of numbness creeping over 
 her. She wondered if she were going to slip to 
 her knees. 
 
 She suddenly noticed two giant Kroos, armed 
 with long, heavy knives, standing inside the circle 
 and a little to one side. N'Ga was racing around 
 the circle. The drums were beating in a wild 
 frenzy. He sniffed and whined like a bloodhound. 
 The negroes were ashen beneath their black. 
 
 The medicine-man stopped suddenly and touched 
 a Kroo on the shoulder. The men with the knives 
 sprang forward and dragged him into the circle. 
 
 "Let her go," Walters yelled. He lit the flash. 
 "Crank her up, you, girl," he shouted. 
 
 The light flashed out in a blinding white flare. 
 Hester began turning the crank mechanically. The 
 circle of negroes stood paralysed. In the dead 
 silence, the clicking of the camera rang out with 
 the distinctness of a machine gun. 
 
 She kept turning the handle of the roller. Then 
 she heard a savage shouting, and the negroes surged 
 forward in a black wave. There was a sharp crack- 
 ing of automatics, and she felt herself seized by 
 Walters and the blond leading man and pulled back- 
 wards. 
 
 -34 
 
BLACK MEDICINE 
 
 There was the sharp swish of an assegai, and the 
 leading man crumpled up with a choking sob. 
 
 "Come over here, one of you," she could hear 
 Walters shouting. "Give me a hand with the girl." 
 
 Behind her she could distinguish the mad yelling 
 of the blacks, held in check momentarily by the 
 automatics. But above it there came the shrill, 
 squeaking voice of N'Ga addressing the negroes in 
 Kroo: 
 
 " Hold back, hold back," he was screaming. 
 
 The line wavered and stood still. 
 
 "Let them go! The ju-ju will punish!" 
 
 The yelling died in a dull hum. 
 
 Then it seemed to her that she was dying. She 
 felt herself being dragged along through the bush, 
 and she fell asleep. At times she would wake for 
 a moment and understand in a dazed way that two 
 persons were carrying her, and then again it was 
 one person, and again she was being pulled by the 
 shoulders. 
 
 When she awoke again she was lying in forest 
 grass. About her was the greenish-yellow light of 
 tropical morning dawn. There was the twittering 
 of innumerable birds. A quarter of a mile away 
 Wadaranga lay like a blot on a picture. Walters 
 and the camera bearer were standing above her. 
 There was a dull red stain on Walters' chest. 
 
 Walters was looking at her in a curious, scared 
 way. She felt terribly weak and tired. There was 
 a twitching in her right shoulder. 
 
 "Help me up," she asked. 
 
 235 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 She tried to put her hands to her head. She 
 touched her temple with her left. The right would 
 not move. Walters turned away. 
 
 She looked at it in a puzzled sort of way. Then 
 she laughed. It was going around with a circular 
 movement as if turning a crank. 
 
 "Why, what's the matter with it?" she asked. 
 
 The movie man kept his back turned. 
 
 She felt the twitching in her right shoulder grow 
 sharper. It was as if the muscles were being torn 
 out. The hand moved around with a steady turning 
 motion. She tried to control it. 
 
 "My God!" she screamed. "What's wrong with 
 my hand?" 
 
 Walters turned around. "Just listen, girl," he 
 began. 
 
 "My hand! My God! My hand!" 
 
 She broke away and staggered towards the town. 
 She stumbled and fell, and stumbled and fell 
 again. 
 
 The only thought in her mind was to get to the 
 little house at the end of the street, where the consul 
 lived. She had a vague idea that if she showed her 
 hand to him, he could cure it. She tried not to 
 scream when going down the street, but she couldn't 
 keep her eyes from it, and terror would burst from 
 her lips in wild shrieks. 
 
 She rushed up the verandah steps with the horrible, 
 cutting cry of an animal in pain. Cosgrave, who was 
 sleeping the light sleep of the tropics, thought at 
 first it was a cry of which he had dreamt, and so 
 236 
 
BLACK MEDICINE 
 
 he turned over. Then he heard it again. He 
 tumbled out of bed and ran to the verandah. 
 
 And there, its face and hands scratched and cut 
 and bleeding, its clothes stained and torn into shreds, 
 he found a wailing, half-crazy Thing which a few 
 hours before had been a grey-eyed, red-haired, 
 healthy girl. 
 
 It must be put on record that Cosgrave swore 
 horribly and very profanely as he picked up the 
 miserable heap and carried it to his string bed. 
 And then he saw the right hand moving, moving, 
 with a horrible, rhythmic, mechanical motion, and 
 his eyes blazed and his lips narrowed into a thin 
 line. 
 
 It was hours before she could stammer forth her 
 tale. And then Cosgrave swore again and clapped 
 his hands. His head-boy came. The consul spoke 
 to him through clenched teeth: 
 
 "Go, Kili, and bring me the medicine-man 
 N'Ga." 
 
 The boy stood on the threshold of the room, 
 undecided, frightened, nervous. 
 
 "There is great medicine to-night in the tribe 
 of the Owl. N'Ga is making magic. ... I 
 cannot. . . ." 
 
 Cosgrave turned and raised his heavy fist in a 
 threatening gesture: 
 
 "Go," he repeated, "find N'Ga. Tell him Cos- 
 grave wants him. Just that and nothing more. 
 Do you understand? Cosgrave wants him." 
 
 Cosgrave will never forget the next hour . . . 
 
 237 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 the moaning bundle in the corner and the little 
 hand turning the invisible crank. 
 
 He heard the shuffle of footsteps and a pit-a-pat 
 on the verandah. He put his hand under the bed 
 pillow and took out a short, squat revolver, N'Ga 
 pushed open the door. 
 
 The girl burst into a frenzy of shrieking. 
 
 "It's all right." Cosgrave patted her on the 
 shoulder. "We'll fix you up in a minute." 
 
 "Come over here," he said quietly to N'Ga. 
 "This is some of your work." 
 
 N'Ga grinned sardonically. The squat grey gun 
 moved slowly, until it was in a line with the medicine- 
 man's head. 
 
 "You've got exactly ten seconds to . . ." his 
 voice broke . . . "to stop that ..." and he 
 pointed to the girl. 
 
 The medicine-man opened his hands. 
 
 "Why choose me, Inkoos ? You are joking. This 
 is black medicine, black medicine sent by the ju-ju. 
 I know nothing about it. I can do nothing." 
 
 "Wait a moment, N'Ga. Black medicine, is it?" 
 He took up the slack of the trigger. "I've got some 
 grey medicine in my hand that will beat that black 
 dope every time." 
 
 N'Ga thought quickly. 
 
 "Leave us, Inkoos," he clicked. 
 
 Cosgrave walked over to the girl. 
 
 "Listen now, I'm going out of the room for a 
 moment." She clung to him in a wild frenzy. 
 "Listen. I'm going out. I'll be right near you, 
 238 
 
BLACK MEDICINE 
 
 just outside the door. When I come back, you'll 
 be all right. Don't be afraid. I've fixed it." 
 
 He walked through the door and closed it softly. 
 
 "Damned little fool of a bully little kid," he said 
 over and over to himself in the corridor. 
 
 N'Ga opened the door and grunted. The consul 
 came in. 
 
 He walked over to the girl in the corner. She 
 was sitting up quietly with her hands in her lap. 
 He turned around to N'Ga, but the medicine-man 
 was gone. He heard the stealthy shuffle of his bare 
 feet up the street. 
 
 He laid his hand on the girl's shoulder tenderly. 
 There was just the ghost of a smile on his face. 
 
 "Well, young 'un," he said, "Africa nearly got 
 you." He paused. "Don't you think you'd better 
 take my advice and go back?" 
 
 She waited a moment before answering. 
 
 "Are you going back?" she asked. 
 
 He rose and went to the window. The sun was 
 coming up, and just in front of it, he noticed, was 
 a little black cloud like a football, that seemed as 
 if embedded in its surface. He wondered if the 
 sun could cast it off. And then, as he looked at it, 
 the cloud took on the shape of a house with squat 
 pillars, the grim, sinister House in Fourteenth Street. 
 He threw back his shoulders. 
 
 "I'm going back," he answered slowly, "when 
 I've finished a fight I have on with myself you 
 don't know anything about it. It started years ago 
 in New York. I was losing there, losing every 
 
 239 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 minute. Here I'm winning. It may take years to 
 finish it. But when I've won I'll go back." 
 
 The cloud was losing its hold. It seemed to 
 waver and slip aside. He put his hands in his 
 pockets and held them there tightly clenched. 
 
 "And when I go back," he continued, "I'm going 
 to marry you if you'll let me." 
 
 It seemed to him that every nerve and muscle 
 of him were listening and had been listening for 
 hours. 
 
 "Oh, I'll let you," she whispered. He sensed 
 rather than heard her speak. 
 
 And as he turned to go to her, he noticed that 
 the cloud had slipped off into space and that the 
 sun was gilding the forest with an iridescent shimmer. 
 
 240 
 
XII 
 PANIC 
 
 WHEN, for the second time within the week, 
 Squint Lacy's bullet head, cauliflower ear, and 
 high-shaven neck stood, as he went out, in the door 
 of the grocery as in a picture- frame, and then dis- 
 appeared, Giuseppe Pagino had all he could do to 
 keep from breaking into hard, dry sobs. His face 
 was blanched, the corners of his mouth were slack, 
 and he looked after the vanishing gunman with 
 tragic, accusing eyes. 
 
 A week ago they had put him in charge of the 
 little grocery-store at Eleventh Street and Third 
 Avenue a weird cubby-hole, filled with gigantic, 
 pale cheeses in muslin swathing, figs on a string like 
 a rosary, long, corpulent lengths of polenta, and 
 tins and jars and bottles of olive oil, green like Tokay. 
 On one wall they had hung a glaring lithograph of 
 Victor Emmanuel; on the other a no less glaring 
 one of George Washington. They had put his name 
 Giuseppe Pagino in gold letters on the window; 
 hung cardboard and tin and paper calendars and 
 advertisements on the walls; filled the till with 
 twenty dollars' worth of change, and told him that 
 the collector would call regularly every Wednesday 
 and Saturday evening. 
 
 241 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 Then they left him gruffly. 
 
 His hair was fair and his face was chubby, and 
 his eyes were blue like shallow water. There are 
 many of his type in Venice and many in Lombardy, 
 but there are none anywhere else in Italy. There 
 was always a smile on his face, a very childish smile 
 that compelled you to smile also. His apron was 
 very large and very white, and he was obviously 
 pleased and obviously anxious to please. 
 
 You would have liked Giuseppe Pagino. He was 
 on Third Avenue for only three months, and that is 
 two years ago, but they remember him still. And 
 on Third Avenue, where life moves with the rapidity 
 of a motion picture, that is the highest compliment 
 that can be paid. 
 
 "Pagino?" they say when you ask them. "The 
 little guinea with a grin? Sure, we remember 
 him." 
 
 In Milan he had owned a little grocery; nothing 
 so ornate as the one on Third Avenue, but sufficient 
 to keep body and soul together. Every year, when 
 the first breath of spring was wafted in from the fat 
 Lombard plains, he had felt a vast and compelling 
 desire to go roving, and every year he had beaten 
 it back as a man beats back an enemy. Then, one 
 fine May morning, he succumbed to the desire that 
 had sent Caesar into Gaul, and Caligula among the 
 Teutons. He came westward to conquer. 
 
 "Why? Why do you ask me why?" he said 
 to his friends. He looked as profound as his mild 
 and childlike features would permit him. "One 
 242 
 
 
PANIC 
 
 must not live like a rabbit in a burrow," he con- 
 cluded grandiloquently. 
 
 So the rabbit ventured from the security of the 
 green pastures and the yellow furze to the edge of 
 the jungle. 
 
 The banker, whose agent in Milan had sold Pagino 
 his passage and who was not above accepting com- 
 missions for placing labour, had him examined by 
 the agent of the ring that operates stores through the 
 whole of Little Italy. The agent was pleased with 
 his find and impressed with Giuseppe's record 
 and appearance. So within the week Giuseppe 
 found himself in his little shop with his name 
 upon the door, having agreed that everything he 
 took in should be given over to a collector on 
 Wednesday and Saturday evenings. On Saturday 
 evening the collector would hand him back twelve 
 dollars. 
 
 "America," he wrote to his mother in Milan 
 a thin, spectacled, brown woman, with the shrivelled- 
 up appearance of a mummy and a passion for saying 
 prayers "America is a great country, greater than 
 Italy, greater than Europe, greatest in the world. 
 I am making money I, your son Giuseppe much 
 money, just like Carnegie, just like Rothschild." 
 
 He was very happy there, was Giuseppe Pagino, 
 and his features showed it. The lines about his 
 mouth curled upward to his eyes, and his eyes 
 sparkled with a blue flash like electricity. It was 
 not alone the money he was making though twelve 
 dollars in New York was riches compared with what 
 
 243 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 he made in Milan but the eternal panorama of life 
 that passed his door that rendered him happy. He 
 had the ecstatic and fearful delight of a child at the 
 circus. Everything was new to him, mysterious, 
 compelling. Overhead the Elevated crashed in mid- 
 air, a hurtling thing of steel. Along the surface of 
 the street trim trolleys glided like gondolas; and 
 motors shifted, feinted, and dodged. Occasionally 
 a fire engine tore along like a hurricane, the horses' 
 legs curving, the driver's arms distended, the whole 
 machine like some infernal chariot on which Pluto 
 might have ridden. Great, lumbering juggernauts 
 of delivery wagons would be charging heavily past, 
 and frequently an ambulance would clang out its 
 brazen call. 
 
 But it was not alone these inanimate things that 
 interested the Italian grocer. The ever-current 
 stream of race and nationality and calling held him 
 as if in hypnosis. Sleek, swarthy men of his own 
 race passed by, with ear-rings of gold and kerchiefs 
 of red and saffron; huge, lumbering negroes, whose 
 appearance recalled to his mind the genii of the 
 Thousand and One Nights ; and slim, agile Greeks 
 with incredibly handsome faces and incredibly small 
 feet. Occasionally a Turk slid by with the glamour 
 of the East in his bronzed face and silk moustache, 
 and now and then a Chinaman might shuffle along 
 with his black, soft hat and his black- quilted coat 
 and his black felt slippers, and all the impassivity 
 and resignation of the Yellow Lands cut in his 
 changeless features as if by a die. 
 244 
 
PANIC 
 
 And then another tribe went by, distinct from all 
 these, recruited of all races. This tribe was well 
 dressed, affecting clothes cut loosely to the body, 
 caps, four-in-hand ties, silk socks, tan shoes. They 
 moved noiselessly, gracefully, with their eyes shifting 
 in every direction. They sometimes vanished seem- 
 ingly into thin air. 
 
 There was something hard about their faces and 
 something wise about their eyes that frightened 
 Giuseppe. They had that fearless, suspicious and 
 inimical glance that a wolf has, and their coats bulged 
 a little over their hip pockets, or under the left 
 armpit or at the right side. 
 
 Giuseppe once pointed out a member of the tribe 
 to Michele, who owned the "Coal, Ice, Wood" 
 cavern beneath the store. 
 
 "What is he?" Giuseppe asked. 
 
 "That's a gunman, a gangster, a tough guy," 
 Michele translated with difficulty. 
 
 And Michele, with the gusto of a priest initiating 
 a neophyte, explained to the grocer that these gun- 
 men preyed on the city as wolves prey on a sheepfold. 
 He drew lurid and dramatic accounts of the death 
 of a notorious gambler, and of the more recent end 
 of a Long Island marketman. He told him how 
 Frank Murphy and Dutch Louie and the Chinese 
 Kid held the city as in a strangle hold how they 
 ruled with the rod of Caesar and exacted tribute like 
 border barons. 
 
 He told of the blackmail exacted from the ice- 
 cream vendor, from the fruit-stand man, from the 
 
 245 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 newspaper seller, from the dance-hall owner, from 
 the saloon-keeper and the boot-black. 
 
 "But this is impossible," Giuseppe gasped, his 
 face blanched, his hands outspread in a wide, vague 
 gesture of incredulity. 
 
 Michele he also called himself "Mike" on the 
 coal and wood sign sent his arms up like sema- 
 phores. The horrible, malignant smile of the 
 Calabrian overspread his features. 
 
 "Wait and see," he advised grimly. 
 
 Whereupon Giuseppe, on whose mind it had early 
 been impressed that a soft word turneth away wrath, 
 smiled genially that warm and glorious Lombard 
 smile of his when one of those blood brothers of fate 
 swung past. 
 
 Some of them smiled back in return, glad to find 
 anyone outside their profession honestly pleased at 
 the sight of them. Some of them scowled; deep, 
 malignant scowls. Some of them merely turned the 
 blank, silent eyes of the opium smoker on him with 
 a sort of weary wonder. 
 
 And then Squint Lacy had come along, Squint 
 Lacy with the truculent bullet head, the shallow, 
 blue cross-eyes, and the gap-toothed grin that 
 suggested a cynical bulldog. In his day Squint had 
 been a prominent middle-weight fighter, and his 
 split and swollen ears were souvenirs of the time 
 when Frawley had not been heard of and the fight 
 game knew no law. He depended now for offence 
 and defence on the trustworthy quality of a .44 
 automatic that hung by a shoulder strap under his 
 246 
 
PANIC 
 
 left arm. Squint was dressed badly. He wore 
 invariably a suit of blue serge and a broken blue 
 serge cap, and his clothes had never been seen when 
 new. But then Squint could afford to dress badly, 
 as a great nobleman or a man of high achievement 
 can. Squint's reputation was too well known to 
 require any advertisement of success. 
 
 Squint had surveyed the grocer's beaming smile 
 with an air of agreeable surprise. Finally, his wide 
 mouth had opened in a grin that disclosed his yellow 
 and brown fangs. 
 
 "Lo, kid," he had greeted and walked on. 
 
 The smile of Giuseppe Pagino, which had been 
 somewhat dulled by the tales of Mike, the coal- 
 and-wood man, appeared again in all its effulgent 
 glory. For by the smile and gracious greeting of 
 Squint Lacy he felt he had become friends with 
 these notorious banditti to whom the Black Hand 
 was children's play and the Mafia a boisterous 
 game. 
 
 He had heard enough of Squint to know him for 
 a master gunman. He had been told of how the 
 gangster, riding at full speed on the running board 
 of an automobile, had shot and killed "Oyster Mike " 
 Daly in broad midday in Second Avenue. He had 
 been told of how Squint had rescued a prisoner 
 from the sheriff's guard on their way to Sing Sing. 
 And Giuseppe's soul grew calm within him, for he 
 thought he had a friend. 
 
 Which was all very well and very comforting to 
 the Lombard, until the day when Squint, passing 
 
 247 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 by, stopped, pondered, shrugged his shoulders and 
 lunged into the shop. 
 
 He leaned over the newly varnished counter and 
 surveyed Giuseppe with his horrible smile. 
 
 "Kid," he announced, "I want ten." 
 
 "Ten?" queried Giuseppe, with a little tightening 
 of the throat as if dust had got into it and irritated it. 
 
 "Yeh," Squint continued, "ten bones, ten iron 
 men. Up against it; got to have them." 
 
 Giuseppe looked at him with a ghastly little smile. 
 
 "Ten bones," the gunman continued. "Died 
 dollari get me? Come on, kid; kick in." 
 
 As he leaned forward, the gunman's coat opened 
 accidentally. Underneath his left arm Giuseppe 
 could catch the blue, metallic sheen of an automatic 
 and see its massive butt. 
 
 "Sure," he agreed; "sure." He went to the till 
 and counted it over. 
 
 The little blackish-green roll disappeared into 
 Squint's trousers-pocket. His right eye played over 
 the grocer with something akin to benevolence. 
 
 "You're all right," he growled, and he vanished. 
 
 And with him vanished the peace of Giuseppe 
 Pagino. With him went the little Lombard's happi- 
 ness and dreams and ambitions. Third Avenue was 
 no longer a vast bazaar in a city as Oriental as 
 Samarkand or Ispahan. It became a wolf- trail and 
 a desert. Suspicion and gloom fell upon him like a 
 disease and tinctured the food he ate and jaundiced 
 the light of day. He felt like a prisoner who had 
 been arrested but not yet sentenced; who does not 
 248 
 
PANIC 
 
 know what is in store for him whether discharge, 
 or the cold walls of a prison, or the horrible steel 
 and leather of the electric chair. 
 
 To Mike, "Coal, Wood, and Ice," he confided 
 the incident. He waited for the Calabrian's 
 decision with the air of a patient consulting a 
 specialist. 
 
 "What did I tell you?" Mike intoned with a note 
 of pride. 
 
 "Perhaps," Giuseppe hazarded, "in cases of this 
 kind one should inform an agent of police." 
 
 Mike regarded him with a horrible, evil smile 
 the smile of a Calabrian. 
 
 "Tell the police!" he exclaimed, "and get shot 
 in the head. Don't pay; get shot in the head, too. 
 Do what you like." He shrugged his shoulders 
 and prepared to retire to his cavern. 
 
 "But I haven't ten dollars to pay," Giuseppe 
 protested. " Dio mio, I haven't any money." 
 
 "Well, I should worry," Mike concluded finally. 
 He slid into his cave as a mole disappears into his 
 burrow. 
 
 And even less comfort did the collector afford 
 on Wednesday night, when he called for his semi- 
 weekly takings. To the collector Giuseppe explained 
 the occurrence with a look of sincerity and a logic 
 of detail that would have convinced a supreme court 
 judge. 
 
 The collector, however a hard-bitten, swarthy, 
 undersized Neapolitan, with disillusioned eyes, lis- 
 tened to the story with an expression of cynicism. 
 
 249 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 "There's art to it," he admitted "there's art to 
 it and it sounds well, but it don't get over. Come 
 across, kid, come across. If you want to pinch a 
 ten-spot, frame up something better. You're green 
 to the game, but you'll get wise all right." 
 
 "But it did happen," Giuseppe protested with 
 outstretched hands. 
 
 "Well, then," he grinned, "you're out ten bones; 
 we're not. Get that?" He waited while Giuseppe 
 handed out the ten dollars he had saved from his 
 three week's work. "I'll bet a she-bill," he added 
 with an acid smile, "that it don't happen again." 
 
 As he went up to his room above the store that 
 night Giuseppe felt the grip of fear about him. 
 Wild, melodramatic dreams came to trouble him. 
 He could see himself scuttle from the outstretched 
 gun of Squint like a frightened rabbit. He looked 
 for protection to the collector. The collector threw 
 him off laughing. He appealed for help to a colossal 
 policeman standing dignifiedly on peg post. Squint's 
 bullet caught him before he reached the friendly 
 blue figure. 
 
 And all the time Mike, the coal-and-wood man, 
 looked on with his horrible, malignant smile the 
 smile of a Calabrian. 
 
 Morning dawned. The Elevated overhead crashed 
 and thundered; automobiles grumbled, purred, and 
 coughed past his store. All the motley population 
 of Third Avenue went by: Irishman, Italian, negro, 
 Chinaman, and Slav. He felt no more interest 
 in these things; he felt only fear. He imagined 
 250 
 
PANIC 
 
 the city as a gigantic mortar in which crystals like 
 himself were ground to powder. Already he could 
 feel himself disintegrating under the thump of the 
 pestle. 
 
 He saw Mike through the window as he rose 
 out of his black lair, a dusty, grimy, Caliban-like 
 vision in baggy trousers and flannel shirt. He went 
 out to talk on his all-absorbing topic. 
 
 "Do you think he'll come back?" Giuseppe asked 
 timidly. 
 
 "Oh, sure every week," the coal man answered. 
 
 "Do you think he'll want ten dollars every time?" 
 
 "Oh, sure sometimes fifteen." 
 
 A sort of frenzy gripped the Lombard grocer. 
 His voice vibrated, his hands went out in intensity. 
 
 "I ask you," he pleaded, "I ask you in the name 
 of God, where can I get it, what can I do ? " 
 
 "Ebben\ how do I know?" Mike smiled as he 
 answered, a wanton, inconceivable smile the smile 
 of a Calabrian. "You better get it somewhere." 
 
 The little grocer sat down to reason it out behind 
 the brand-new coffee mill that reared itself from 
 the counter like a Chinese pagoda. From every 
 side strange, aromatic spices came to him like 
 incense in a temple. As he sat there in his ample 
 white apron, his hands folded in his lap, his eyes 
 downcast, he suggested a priest of some strange 
 rite in contemplation. 
 
 Squint wanted money, and he had to give it to 
 
 him. That was incontestable. If he didn't give 
 
 it he would be shot. That was a logical deduction. 
 
 i 251 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 The money would have to come from the till 
 The company would not stand for the shortage 
 and they did not even believe him. So he woulc 
 have to make it up himself. If he told the police 
 he would get shot, too. It was plainly incumbent 
 on him to find the money. If out of his own 
 twelve dollars he had to pay ten, how could he 
 live? Even a Milanese cannot live a whole week 
 on two dollars. If Squint wanted fifteen here he 
 threw up his hands in a gesture of impotence. 
 
 "Ma che!" he babbled. "Dio mio! ma che!" 
 
 There still remained a faint hope, a hope so 
 faintly vague that he was foolish to think of it. 
 Squint might not demand ten dollars a week. He 
 might be content with five. 
 
 Giuseppe could live comfortably on seven, but 
 to pay ten was out of the question. If he could 
 only speak English, he said. If he could only make 
 Squint understand. Surely the man would not| 
 demand impossibilities. 
 
 And so for three days the little grocer hugged' 
 to himself the faint, dim hope, as the blackened 
 sinner hugs the hope of salvation. He prepared 
 long, incoherent speeches in English, to be spoken 
 to Squint. He made little auguries for himself, 
 to decide whether or not Squint would accept a 
 smaller blackmail tossing coins in the air and 
 turning up the red and black of cards. For long 
 barren hours at night he lay awake, imagining 
 interviews with the gunman in which, by virtue oi 
 eloquence and by explaining that he did not owr 
 252 
 
PANIC 
 
 the shop, but was merely an employe, he overcame 
 the gangster's greed and escaped from tribute. 
 
 On Monday the gunman entered the shop with 
 his peculiar, waddling gait. His agate eyes were 
 bloodshot and his bulldog's mouth was twisted 
 into its evilly benignant smile. He leaned across 
 the counter. 
 
 "You got to kick in again, kid," he announced 
 easily. "You got to come across with another 
 ten." 
 
 Giuseppe felt his heart stick in his throat like 
 a lump of unmasticated food. There was no tension 
 to the muscles of his knees, and it seemed to him 
 that at any moment he might fall on them. He 
 gripped the counter to steady himself. Again he 
 caught the blue sheen of the automatic and the 
 blue sheen of the gunman's eye. 
 
 "Come on, kid, be a sport," he could hear Squint 
 say. "Shoot over the cash. Get a move on!" 
 
 With shaking fingers he extracted two five- dollar 
 bills from the till. His carefully prepared speech 
 he had forgotten. He wished wildly that he might 
 have the courage to strike Squint with the huge 
 carving knife on the counter, but he gave up the 
 thought with a sort of sardonic mental laugh. What 
 could he, a rabbit, do against this tiger of the East 
 Side? He pushed the bills across. The gunman 
 pocketed them. 
 
 "Much obliged," Squint acknowledged. "You're 
 certainly one good little sport." He turned to go. 
 Something occurred to him. 
 
 253 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 "You ain't looking well, Tony," he advised. 
 "You ought to see a doc." 
 
 He walked to the door and wheeled round for 
 an instant. 
 
 "I'll be in on Wednesday see?" He tapped his 
 pocket. "Wednesday Mercoledi ; get me?" 
 
 Shadows crept along the avenue. Lamps stood 
 out murkily yellow in the twilight, and later, white 
 and iridescent in the dark. Trains hurtled by 
 threateningly overhead. People whisked to and 
 fro along the sidewalk like flights of sparrows. 
 Giuseppe Pagino took no notice of these things. 
 He stood still and numb beside his counter, cower- 
 ing when any person came into the store. Panic 
 overwhelmed him like a sheet of icy water. 
 
 An old Neapolitan woman came in for a pint 
 of oil. His hand shook as he measured it. 
 
 "What is the matter with you ? What is wrong ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 "A touch of headache," he answered. 
 
 She went out. On the sidewalk she stopped. 
 
 "It is the mind-ache and the heart-ache and the 
 ache of the soul," she muttered. " Ecco. I, who 
 am old, know." 
 
 He looked at the fittings and contents of the 
 little shop pathetically, at the shining canisters and 
 the gleaming glass and the great butter vats in the 
 back, and the queer, glaring lithographs on the 
 walls. He gazed for a moment at the shimmering 
 cash register with Giuseppe Pagino cut deeply in 
 black letters on it. A mist came into his eyes. 
 
 254 
 
PANIC 
 
 "Ah, il brevo tempo" he said, "the short, short 
 time!" 
 
 He went to the door of the shop and gazed with 
 haggard eyes at the blue-coated vision of the police- 
 man on peg post standing like a colossus at Astor 
 Place. If he only dared to tell him, he thought. 
 But the memory of the gangster's shining weapon 
 gripped him about the heart with icy fingers, 
 and he shivered. If he was to die, he would 
 attend to it himself. There was a dock at the East 
 River 
 
 A great homesickness suddenly came on him. 
 He remembered the dingy little shop in Milan 
 where he had been happy, as a ship in a hurricane 
 remembers the snug harbour she lay in before 
 taking proudly to the seven seas. There was light 
 there and song and company, and strong, brown, 
 little children playing on the kerb. Men were 
 friends to you, and women liked you, and children 
 pleaded for sweets and got them. But here was 
 nothing but terror and tragedy and the hatred of 
 rivals and the crushing of the weak. He remem- 
 bered how proudly he had bade farewell to 
 Milan. 
 
 "Why do I go?" he had said. "One does not 
 live always like a rabbit in a burrow." 
 
 It was better, he knew now, to live like a rabbit 
 in a burrow than to live like a rabbit in the jungle, 
 the prey of wolf and tiger and mongoose, a panicky, 
 white, furry, little thing, with its pink heart in its 
 mouth. 
 
 255 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 From around the corner Mike hove in sight, his 
 powerful, malignant face radiating content and 
 confidence. 
 
 "Colombina, il tenero " he carolled as he 
 
 walked. 
 
 The sound of his warbling voice struck Giuseppe 
 Pagino with a great sense of discord. It seemed 
 hard that anyone should sing when tragedy and 
 death and fear were walking abroad and turning 
 the happy daylight into a thing as gloomy as the 
 tomb. A little moisture came into his eyes, and his 
 under-lip quivered. Mike sauntered up and regarded 
 him with insolent, critical eyes. 
 
 "Well, what's wrong with you now ? " he demanded. 
 
 "Oh, nothing," said Giuseppe Pagino "a cold 
 in the head." 
 
 "A cold in the head!" the coal-and-wood man 
 laughed. "A cold in the feet, that's what you got. 
 That big stiff been around again?" 
 
 The grocer looked at him with the corners of 
 his mouth shaking. He nodded silently. 
 
 "Corpo di Dio " the Calabrian swore viciously. 
 
 "Why don't you go up and paste him in the face? 
 Why don't you give him all that's coming to him ? " 
 
 The little grocer said nothing. His eyes sought 
 the paved sidewalk. He felt ashamed suddenly 
 before the truculent Calabrian. Mike continued his 
 tirade. 
 
 "You're a fine Italian man to let a big bully like 
 that come and take the money away from you. 
 Do you know what I'd do if I were in your store ? " 
 
 256 
 
PANIC 
 
 Giuseppe Pagino shook his head in ignorance. 
 
 "I'd take that carving-knife on the counter and 
 I'd cut him up like ham. I'd teach him to come 
 around panhandling money. Ten dollars! Ten 
 holes in the ribs! That's what he'd get from me. 
 Is he coming back?" 
 
 "He's coming back on Wednesday," Giuseppe 
 answered. 
 
 "Look here," Mike directed; "when he comes 
 back on Wednesday and he asks for money you 
 look at him between the eyes, see? You take hold 
 of the knife, see? And you say, 'You big pig!' 
 you say, 'I give you money? I give you this in 
 the ribs '" 
 
 Giuseppe shook his head sadly. A great sigh 
 of weariness volleyed up through his throat. The 
 coal-and-wood man looked at him with an expression 
 of utter contempt. 
 
 A look of intense resolution swept over his face. 
 He struck a dramatic attitude. With a quick flick 
 of finger he knocked the ash from his cigarette. 
 He blew smoke from his mouth like a volcanic 
 eruption. 
 
 "On Wednesday," he observed calmly, "I meet 
 this swine myself!" 
 
 "You meet " The face of the little grocer 
 
 looked at him blankly. A sort of wonder crept 
 into his eyes. The coal-and-wood man's voice 
 rose. 
 
 "On Wednesday," he roared, "this descendant 
 of many degenerate parents meets Michele Todisco, 
 
 257 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 corporal, of the Bersaglieri. Per Dio, we shall see 
 if he gets ten dollars! We shall see." 
 
 His arms went out in a widespread gesture. His 
 eyes sparkled. His right leg advanced. 
 
 "They think they can rob, steal, bully Italian 
 men. They think they got nothing to do but come 
 in and say, ' Give ten dollars/ and they get it. Hey, 
 tell me Figli di cani. Just because Italian men 
 can't speak English, they say, * You got no right here, 
 wop ; pay ten dollars ! ' " 
 
 A little knot of passers-by stopped, attracted 
 by Mike's volleying sentences. He looked around 
 with the expression Cicero might have worn when 
 addressing the senate. 
 
 "Who discovered America? Tell me who? 
 Cristofer Colombo! He was Italian. And they ask 
 us what right we have here." 
 
 The knot of hearers increased. The little grocer's 
 face lit up as the face of a shipwrecked mariner's 
 lights up at the sight of a rescue vessel. He looked 
 at the coal-and-wood man with awe-stricken eyes. 
 
 "Eccof" he murmured in approbation. 
 
 "Who," continued the coal-and-wood man, 
 "conquered Gaul? Tell me. Who? Giulio 
 Cesare. Italian man. Who put the Turks out of 
 Italy? Who? Tell me. Italian men. Who will 
 chase this son of a pig, this robber of women, of 
 blind men, and little children? Who will put 
 the fear of God and the saints in his utterly 
 loathsome and incredibly degenerate vitals? Tell 
 me. Who?" 
 258 
 
PANIC 
 
 He swept the circle with an eagle eye. His voice 
 rang out like a bugle. 
 
 "Who but Michele Todisco, corporal, of the 
 Bersaglieri ? " 
 
 His tones dropped an octave. 
 
 "An Italian man," he added as Cicero might 
 have said, " Civis Romanus sum." He turned and 
 patted Giuseppe on the shoulder. 
 
 "And so, my friend, you may rest in peace. I 
 shall take your place on Wednesday when this 
 desecrator of churches comes." 
 
 Peace, like a winged dove, settled once more 
 on the shop of Giuseppe Pagino. The sunshine 
 crept into it. And men and women found there 
 the same cheery word, the same glorious Lombard 
 smile that had warmed their hearts for a week. 
 Giuseppe sang. He laughed. He watched Mike, 
 the coal-and-wood man, come and go with a look 
 of near adoration on his chubby face. 
 
 "What a jewel," he reflected in his queer think- 
 ing Lombard way, "is lost to Italy. With what 
 weight would his words be received in the senate ! 
 How armies would follow him!" 
 
 Wednesday afternoon came and found the Cala- 
 brian behind the counter. His grey flannel shirt 
 and corduroy trousers were concealed behind 
 Giuseppe's snowy apron. There was also con- 
 cealed behind it a wicked-looking gun of a .38 
 calibre, to the purchase of which Giuseppe had 
 consented without demur. Near to his hand, on 
 the counter, was the serviceable knife. 
 
 259 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 At three o'clock Squint Lacy slipped in with 
 the ease and grace of a cat. He took a quick glance 
 over his shoulder through the open door. 
 
 "Bring out the other guinea," he demanded 
 quickly. 
 
 "Pagino's day off," growled the coal-and-wood 
 man truculently. "What do you want?" 
 
 The gunman glanced out of the door quickly 
 at a passer-by. "Wonder if that guy's a plain- 
 clothes man," he muttered. "When will your 
 sidekick be back?" 
 
 "I don't know," Mike snapped. "What do you 
 want ? " 
 
 The gunman dragged him back into the shadow 
 of the butter- vats. 
 
 "Look here," he muttered, "I've just croaked 
 a guy in Harlem, and I've got to make my get- 
 away. I wonder if that is a cop ! " 
 
 The coal-and-wood man felt the comforting haft 
 of the gun in his trousers-pocket. 
 
 "I borrowed twenty bones from that little wop, 
 and I want to slip it back to him before I go." 
 He dug down into his trousers-pocket. "One 
 square little guy that guinea; forked it over like 
 a regular sport. You tell him from me when he 
 comes in that he's all right." 
 
 Mike looked down in astonishment. He took 
 the saffron bill tendered him in a sort of dumb 
 wonder. 
 
 "Give him that from me," the gunman directed, 
 "and tell him he's all right." 
 260 
 
PANIC 
 
 He slipped out of the store with the rapidity 
 of a stage magician. 
 
 "It's all right,'* Mike informed the grocer a 
 half-hour afterwards. "This particular species of 
 accursed animal will never trouble you again. I 
 looked at him between the eyes. I slapped him 
 across the face. 
 
 " 'Bah!' I said. 'Sort of swine.' He fell back. 
 He made to leave the store. I followed, knife in 
 one hand, revolver in the other. ' If ever you come 
 to this store again,' I said,. 'and annoy my good 
 friend, Giuseppe Pagino, on the word of Michele 
 Todisco, I shall cut both your ears off and leave 
 your features an unpleasant sight!' He shall never 
 again trouble you, my good Giuseppe, never again." 
 
 He waved the little grocer's fervid thanks aside 
 with a grandiose gesture. 
 
 "Do not speak of it," he said. 
 
 He descended into his cavern with the air of 
 a leading man making his exit from the stage. In 
 the rear of the store he stopped, put his hand into 
 his pocket, produced a saffron bill, and regarded 
 it lovingly. 
 
 A smile overspread his face a cunning, contemp- 
 tuous smile the smile of a Calabrian. 
 
 261 
 
XIII 
 THE STORY OF SULEYMAN BEY 
 
 THE TRIG little Turkish major turned to us briskly. 
 
 "You boys are in luck," he said. "You want 
 to know something of Trebizond. Here's the man 
 for you." 
 
 A tall figure in a burnous floated past the court- 
 yard fountain and towards us. In the distance we 
 could see a stocky, truculent carbine under his arm, 
 and the green turban of the hadji. 
 
 "His name is Suleyman Bey," went on the major. 
 "He arrived in Damascus only last night, on his way 
 home from Mecca. If he will talk to you, he will 
 tell you more about Trebizond in five minutes than 
 the governor-general can in five hours." 
 
 He rose. I noticed the major's heels go together 
 with a click, and his hand flash up to his fez in 
 salute. Evidently Suleyman Bey was a sheik of 
 importance. 
 
 The major and Ginger broke into a torrent of 
 Arabic salutations. I don't meddle much with the 
 language, so I said little, contented myself with 
 examining the sheik. Six feet one, I judged rather 
 tall for an Arab; closely cropped, white hair and 
 beard; huge thighs and shoulders; broad, loose 
 262 
 
THE STORY OF SULEYMAN BEY 
 
 build; face clear-cut as by a chisel; great brown 
 hands and slim feet ; and good heavens ! blue eyes 
 an Arab with blue eyes ! Trebizond ! Probably a 
 descendant of some renegade Crusader, I hazarded. 
 The white Arab kilt and the tunic hung about him 
 like a toga. The burnous fell from his shoulders in 
 long, sweeping folds. I noticed appreciatively the 
 ten-shot .45 in its holster, the workmanlike hunting- 
 knife at his belt, and the Lee-Enfield carbine, with 
 its fine sights and its bulging box-magazine, across 
 his knees. Good taste, I thought, the best possible 
 taste in weapons. 
 
 The major bowed to us impressively. "Suleyman 
 Bey" he spoke the name as he would have that of 
 Omar the Caliph ''Suleyman Bey will be glad to 
 tell you anything you want to know about Trebizond." 
 
 We bowed ourselves away, Ginger pouring out 
 a stream of newly acquired Arabic "Peace be unto 
 you," "May your business prosper," and other 
 equally warm and utterly empty wishes. 
 
 We passed out into the flashing, swaying streets. 
 The hum of Damascus struck us like the hum of 
 a thousand spinning-wheels. Tall desert Arabs 
 floated by in burnous and snow-white tunic. Wily, 
 shrewd-eyed Greeks and oily Syrians passed along 
 on nervous, silent feet. A water-seller jostled 
 against us, his huge skin-bag gurgling and moaning. 
 From the bazaars came the now plaintive, now 
 seductive, now hysterical, chanting of the merchants. 
 A half-clad desert dervish reeled by, muttering to 
 himself like a drunken man. 
 
 263 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 The figure of the tall sheik floated along like a 
 statue in a pageant. I felt somehow as if I were a 
 schoolboy accompanying his teacher on a walk, and 
 the dignity of it was painful to me. We flitted 
 through the Bazaar of the Carpenters, and looked 
 down into the tunnelled Derb el-Mustakim. Ginger 
 hitched his holster back. He reached up and removed 
 his sun helmet, to the delight of a tubby Armenian 
 brat, whom his flaming red locks sent into a torrent 
 of obscene merriment. 
 
 "The Street which is called Straight," he quoted 
 sententiously. "Well, do you know, now, I've seen 
 straighter ? " 
 
 I was becoming a little tired of Ginger's criticisms. 
 " If every street you see," I countered, "isn't modelled 
 after the exact pattern of O'Connell Street, Dublin, 
 it doesn't suit you. Isn't that so?" 
 
 "O'Connell Street, Dublin," he replied, "is the 
 finest street in the finest country in the world. I 
 never saw an Irishman yet that didn't think so, 
 except yourself." 
 
 I thought a little apology was due to Suleyman 
 Bey. I turned around to him. " Effendina " I 
 began, and I stopped short there. The sheik was 
 looking at us with widely distended eyes. His lips 
 were sagging apart. His hand fumbled feebly at 
 the folds of his burnous, at the blouse of his tunic, 
 at the hunting-knife in his belt. 
 
 "My name," he began in English, enunciating 
 his words with the precision of a child "my name 
 is Patrick Sullivan, I come from the county Sligo." 
 264 
 
THE STORY OF SULEYMAN BEY 
 
 We looked at each other stupidly, Ginger and 
 I. It was as if the angel Gabriel had told us he 
 wanted Home Rule. Then Ginger asked him the 
 question I knew he would. 
 
 "Your name is Patrick Sullivan, and you come 
 from the county Sligo. What the devil are you 
 doing here?" 
 
 "My name is Patrick Sullivan," the sheik was 
 repeating, "and I haven't spoken to an Irishman 
 in forty-three years." 
 
 There was an Arab cafe opposite. Through the 
 open door we could see a garden with orange and 
 jasmine trees and little, fragile chairs and tables. 
 Back of it a brook flashed like silver. 
 
 "Come." I touched the sheik on the arm. "Come 
 over there and tell us about it." 
 
 We crossed the pulsing, seething street together. 
 A camel with a reptilian head lunged past us. A 
 black Congoese cleared the way with loud, insistent 
 cries for a native official on horseback. Waves of 
 brown, ochre, and black Orientals surged here and 
 there in eddies. We broke through them like foot- 
 ballers through a scrum. Inside the garden a knot 
 of a half-dozen hard-bitten Arabs sat around a 
 professional story-teller with the eyes of a saint and 
 hands like a hawk's talons. 
 
 "There once lived in Damascus, O dearest hearts," 
 he chanted, "a merchant of merchants, a prince of 
 commerce, an adornment of trade. He had one 
 son, more beautiful than the moon at its fullest and 
 sweeter of voice than clashing cymbals, whose name 
 
 265 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 was Ganem Bin Ayyub, the Distraught One, the 
 Slave of Love." 
 
 We sat down at one of the tables. An Arab boy 
 brought us coffee, and vanished as if swallowed 
 by the earth. A little breeze came up and set the 
 orange and jasmine trees rustling like silk. In the 
 background the brook bubbled like a fountain. 
 Occasionally there would come a word from the 
 sheik, and then an exclamation, and then a sen- 
 tence, and then two or three sentences. Ginger and 
 I sat back and tried hard not to look at him. His 
 left hand lay on the table before him, a live, power- 
 ful thing of sinew and hair and brown skin. His 
 voice boomed out like a stroke on a drum. 
 
 "I am Patrick Sullivan," we heard him say, 
 "from Ballinasloe, in the county of Sligo; a Trinity 
 man. I came here in '71 that's forty-three years 
 ago." 
 
 Ginger and I sat silent. It seemed as if he were 
 getting under way. His enunciation became more 
 distant. Words came more easily to him. 
 
 " I came with Charteris you've heard of Charteris, 
 who came over here to excavate at Bagdad. There 
 were only the two of us and a dragoman. We 
 landed at Yoppa Jaffa, you know and came on 
 the overland trail to Damascus. Somewhere near 
 Nablus a dozen Badawin stopped us and demanded 
 tribute. So we fought. I remember only firing 
 round after round at them from behind my horse, 
 and Charteris doing the same, and that the jump of 
 the chassepot hammered my shoulder into pulp, so 
 266 
 
THE STORY OF SULEYMAN BEY 
 
 when I got tired and weak the butt struck me on the 
 jaw. 
 
 "You know how you feel after you wake up after 
 a thing like that. You wonder why you aren't at 
 home in bed. I couldn't understand very well why 
 Charteris was huddled up in a limp heap, like a 
 man who has fallen from a height and broken his 
 back, and the dragoman lying taut like a piece of 
 rope, and the horses stiff and cold in front of us. 
 There was a full moon above, white, like an electric 
 light. The sand stretched grey and black in patches 
 for miles around us. There was a killing frost out 
 that struck at you in a thousand places. And some- 
 where a pair of hyenas snarled and barked and 
 growled at each other like quarrelling dogs. 
 
 "And then a little flock of Arabs rode up there 
 must have been a score of them, all mounted on 
 restive little stallions, carrying long muzzle-loaders 
 and curved knives. They felt us and looked us 
 over, and gathered me up and carried me away. 
 They left Charteris and the dragoman behind, 
 because Charteris and the dragoman were dead. 
 
 "They took me to their encampment, a mile 
 and a half away a little clump of black sheep- 
 skin tents with a tetherage for horses and a big, 
 flickering, red camp fire, with tribesmen pacing or 
 huddling about it like shadows. They were the 
 Beni Omar, they said, and they cared for me as 
 if I were a sick tribesman. They were on their 
 way north to Aleppo, and from there home to 
 Trebizond, on the Black Sea. I went with them 
 
 267 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 and let them take care of me. I hadn't any plans 
 without Charteris, and I felt dazed and numb. I 
 just went along with them the way, if you've had 
 an accident, you'll go home with the first man you 
 meet. 
 
 " There were about twenty of them, all on horse- 
 back, with three camels for the tents and supplies. 
 The sheik Mehmet Ali, a short, wiry, black man, 
 with a short beard and eyes that blazed at you, 
 rode in front. He was very kind to me, was Mehmet 
 Ali peace be on him! though his manner was 
 brusque and he didn't like unbelievers. And beside 
 him rode his daughter Scheherazade was her name. 
 She was about seventeen, I thought, and she could 
 ride as well as any of the tribesmen. I didn't know 
 then what she was like, because of the face- veil 
 and the hair- veil. But I could see she was lithe 
 and active, and walked with a great, free swing. 
 I came along behind on a well-broken mare, with a 
 couple of tribesmen on either side. They were 
 wonderfully decent they tried to do everything they 
 could for me. I felt terribly out of it, you'll under- 
 stand, with poor Charteris lying dead behind. I 
 thought of him all the time, and of the girl in Dublin 
 he was to have married when he got back, and of 
 what I should say to her. And all the time in the 
 back of my mind I was thinking of the girl on horse- 
 back in front of me, and wondering what her 
 face was like behind the veil. I wanted to kick 
 myself often. I felt it was callous towards poor 
 Charteris. 
 268 
 
THE STORY OF SULEYMAN BEY 
 
 "We passed through Aleppo and struck the 
 caravan trail to Trebizond. I had no desire to get 
 away, and they seemed glad to have me, so I stayed 
 on. The grey of the desert gave way to long and 
 wide stretches of green grass and budding corn. 
 There were great fields of poppies on either side 
 of the way, red like banners, and little clumps of 
 fir-trees and cedars, and all along the roadside there 
 were white flowers with long stalks, and flashing 
 lizards scurrying through the grass. All through 
 the day the sun came down like rain, and there was 
 the moon in the night-time. We met caravans going 
 down to Persia, long strings of dromedaries and 
 camels with tinkling bells, and slim, swarthy mer- 
 chants in long, black coats and high, lambskin hats. 
 And a breeze came down from Russia and set the 
 grass stirring. 
 
 "I was getting stronger all the time. The fight 
 in the desert, and the death of poor Charteris, 
 seemed like things I had read in a book. I felt I 
 was going through the East I had read of in the 
 Thousand and One Nights. There was something 
 delightfully fearful about the lean Arabs on each 
 side, and the broad, swarthy sheik in front, and the 
 slim, supple figure of his daughter on her little 
 Algerian stallion. 
 
 "We camped one night near Behesni, on the 
 brink of a little river called the Kajna, which runs 
 into the Euphrates farther down. I remember 
 getting up the next morning at daybreak and walking 
 over to the river to see what it was like. It came 
 
 269 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 down like water through a funnel, very fast, very 
 noisy. There was a great rock in the middle of it, 
 I remember, where the water swirled like a mill- 
 race. There were little cliffs of black rock on each 
 side, and a band of green grass and rushes between 
 the rocks and the river. It was very cool below, 
 very shady. So I slipped down. 
 
 "I walked along a hundred yards, and then 
 something white fluttered up before me. It was 
 Scheherazade, the sheik's daughter. She had been 
 bathing her face in the river, and her veil was pulled 
 aside, and for the first time I saw her. We looked 
 at each other for a minute, and then she ran off 
 like some animal that has been frightened. The 
 sight of her seemed to stop my breathing, as if I 
 had climbed up the bleak side of a mountain and 
 from the top had unexpectedly seen a great stretch 
 of green, fertile plain. Her hair was down, and it 
 was black and long and dim, the sort of hair that 
 reminds you of twilight. Her face was cut very 
 strongly and very lightly, in long, soft lines. There 
 was a full, sweeping curve to her eyebrows, and she 
 had black eyes that sent out light like lamps. There 
 was a warm brown glow to her skin, like the glow 
 on a fine bronze statue. Her mouth was her mouth 
 her cheek her ears 
 
 The boom went out of his voice, and a whisper 
 took its place. Then he became silent. I knew his 
 head was on his chest, though I didn't look up. I 
 kept my eyes fixed on my puttees and spurs, and 
 trimmed the ash on my cigarette. Somewhere in 
 270 
 
 
THE STORY OF SULEYMAN BEY 
 
 the garden a bird broke into a passion of quivering 
 song. The brook behind us plashed with a faint, 
 swishing sound, like the noise a wind makes among 
 reeds. We could hear the voice of the story-teller 
 chattering to his audience like a magpie: 
 
 "Her eyebrows, O most illustrious ones, were 
 curved like an archer's bow. Her face was like the 
 sheen of the full moon; her mouth like a choice 
 cornelian. White-skinned and of winsomest mien 
 was she, spear-straight and five feet tall. Her form 
 was more graceful than a little branch on the top 
 of a great tree, and her voice more soothing than 
 the summer winds of Ispahan. None could ever 
 tire of gazing on her, and so lovely was she that the 
 most ascetic dervish on seeing her would forget 
 Allah and the holy prophet (on whom peace !) and 
 become her slave. Even as the poet Farid Ullah 
 el-Arabi has most excellently said: 'Strange is the 
 charm '" 
 
 The sheik seemed to have forgotten us. His head 
 had fallen forward on his chest. His great bronze 
 hand lay on the table. I leaned forward and touched 
 him on the arm. " Effendi," I prompted. 
 
 " Ah, yes," he said. " I saw her again that evening, 
 and again next morning, and I could see her eyes 
 smile through the veil. And then once or twice, 
 riding past me, she caught my hand for an instant, 
 and it was as if my hand had touched warm velvet, 
 or as if a rose had been pressed in the palm. When 
 I saw her coming towards me on her little stallion, 
 my heart would begin beating hard, until when she 
 
 271 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 was near me it would be rattling like a drummer's 
 tattoo. And when she came up to me, it was as 
 if a wind from a green garden was blowing across 
 my face. 
 
 "When you are young and you love a woman, 
 your fancy works like a weaver's loom. You think 
 her breath pulsing through her lips is like the soft 
 playing of an orchestra, and that every movement 
 of her is as graceful as a white cloud on a blue sky. 
 Sometimes I thought of Scheherazade as a May 
 wind among the branches, and sometimes as the 
 first spray on a hawthorn tree, and again as a single 
 pearl on a thread of silver. And she was growing 
 fond of me, I knew, and it seemed to me as if all the 
 instruments in the world were playing in harmony. 
 
 "I was young then, passing twenty-four. I was 
 strong. I was good-looking in my way, I suppose. 
 They say the Sullivans of Ballinasloe always are. 
 I don't know if you know them 
 
 "My mother was a Sullivan of Ballinasloe," 
 Ginger broke in, and there was a ring of pride in 
 his voice. 
 
 The old sheik looked at him keenly. 
 
 "God bless you, boy," he said, and he went on: 
 
 "We spoke very little, Scheherazade and I. When 
 we did meet we were satisfied with looking at each 
 other and smiling, and at the occasional touch of 
 hands. The caravan journeyed on. Towering 
 black mountains loomed ahead of us, like gigantic 
 curtains of velvet. The air had the faint salt tang 
 of the sea. The trees were greener on each side of 
 272 
 
THE STORY OF SULEYMAN BEY 
 
 the trail, and great cypress trees jumped up from 
 the earth like monstrous mushrooms. It seemed all 
 like mist and dreams to me. My eyes were fixed 
 all the time on the supple, white figure on the pawing 
 stallion ahead of us. 
 
 " We cleared the tops of the mountains and began 
 the descent. Below us lay Trebizond, a faint blur 
 of grey granite and white marble. There was the 
 green of budding rye and corn around it, and the 
 red of poppy-fields. There were great clumps of 
 trees, like islands in a green lake, and enormous 
 stains of black rock. At the foot of the city the 
 Black Sea laps like faint music. And away in the 
 background the Caucasus looms up like a huge 
 white curtain. 
 
 "You don't know Trebizond? No. Few do. It 
 lies scattered like a sleeping giant on the border 
 of the sea. There are great palaces in it, and the 
 spires of churches and droning bazaars. There are 
 broad streets where no one walks from day to day. 
 It seems to laze and dream of the time when it was 
 an empire, when Manuel, the Great Captain, ruled, 
 and the Crusaders of the North clashed through it 
 in armour. The basil plant grows on its bridges, 
 and grey pigeons coo from morning till night. Great 
 ships from Russia come there, and neat, cutting 
 sloops race in from Constantinople. 
 
 "So we went into Trebizond, going down the 
 mountains as down a stairs. At night, when the 
 camp-fire was lighted, Scheherazade would meet me 
 in the shadows and flutter into my arms like a bird 
 
 273 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 to its nest. And then the peace of it left me, and 
 I wanted to take her with me, to marry her, to have 
 her for myself. We didn't say much, we could 
 understand without speaking. She came into my 
 arms, and at times she felt like a bundle of red roses 
 there, and at other times like a sheaf of white lilies. 
 But as we went on, the sight of her no longer filled 
 me with peace. It spurred me into thinking how 
 to ride off with her how ? how ? 
 
 "And so we came to Trebizond, to the house of 
 Mehmet AH, the sheik. And there in the garden, 
 where the big fountains plashed, and nightin- 
 gales cooed from the orange-trees, and the moon 
 beat down in rays of dazzling silver, and the dogs 
 bayed in the streets of Trebizond, we met while 
 others slept, and Scheherazade said she would go 
 with me. 
 
 "I don't know how I felt. It seemed such a 
 terrifically big thing to bring the White Flower 
 of Trebizond home to the green fields of Sligo. 
 At times it seemed the most natural thing in the 
 world, and at other times I would stop and say 
 to myself, 'Why, people don't do things like that,' 
 and be afraid. I arranged feverishly for flight. 
 There was a vessel going to Odessa, a huge grain 
 boat, and I bribed the captain to take us with him. 
 And from Odessa we would go to Petrograd, and 
 from there home. 
 
 "I felt terror in those days, I may tell you, 
 terror for us both, if we were discovered. There 
 is short shift for the unbeliever who lifts his eyes 
 274 
 
THE STORY OF SULEYMAN BEY 
 
 in love to the daughter of the Prophet's sons, and 
 shorter still for the Moslem woman who has looked 
 on the unbeliever. A little boat shoves off from 
 the quay in the night-time, and there is a splash 
 and a circle of widening eddies in the water. So 
 I felt all those days as if someone were behind 
 me with a dagger in his hand, and that I dared 
 not turn around. And then I would stand palsied 
 with fear at the thought of the danger of Schehera- 
 zade. 
 
 "Night comes fast in the East. There is a red 
 flare in the west, and the drone of homing bees. 
 Birds twitter. There is a splashing of oars in the 
 harbour, and the turn of a Levantine boat-song. 
 And then the night falls like rain soft warmth 
 and the pungent smell of orange-trees. At eight 
 o'clock Scheherazade was to slip out to me, and 
 we would go down through the shadows to the 
 vessel. At six I was waiting for her, while the 
 muezzins chanted from the minarets. I stood 
 waiting, outwardly patient, but a current was run- 
 ing through me like a live flame. People passed 
 by, looking at me askance; dark, kilted Greeks and 
 suave Armenians; Arabs from the desert; fierce, 
 swarthy Kurds, and Jews in gabardines. Eight 
 o'clock came and Scheherazade did not. Some- 
 thing had happened to delay her, I thought, but 
 time was passing quickly, and soon the master of 
 the vessel would weigh anchor, and we should be 
 left behind. A panic seized me. I felt I wanted 
 to go to the house and drag her out. I dared not. 
 
 275 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 Nine o'clock came. There was not more than an 
 hour left. I walked up and down in a frenzy. It 
 was half-past nine. I broke into a run to the house. 
 I hammered at the barred door with both fists. 
 The door opened, and I staggered into the court. 
 
 "I could see the sheik coming towards me, his 
 powerful frame hunched up like a coiled spring, 
 his feet moving softly over the marble tiles like 
 those of a great cat. His hand went to his girdle 
 to where his dagger was. 
 
 "I tried to calm myself. I couldn't. I began 
 babbling : 
 
 '" Where is Scheherazade?' 
 
 "His eyes struck at me like hammers. 'Thou 
 son of a thousand dogs!' he spat. 'Thou scum 
 of Eblis!' 
 
 " 'Where is Scheherazade?' I shouted. 'I must 
 see her! I must see her! Do you hear?' 
 
 "I clutched at his arm. Beneath the sleeve I 
 could feel it set like a piece of steel mechanism. 
 I pawed at him like a drunken man. 
 
 " 'I must see her! I must! I must!' 
 
 "He caught me by the shoulder and half pushed, 
 half dragged, me down the court. I reeled. The 
 white marble floor swayed and rocked beneath me 
 like the deck of a heaving ship. We left the court 
 and went down a passage. The sheik stopped in 
 front of a door and tore the curtain aside. 
 
 " 'You must see her, must you?' he snarled at 
 me. 'Well, you shall. There she is.' He slung 
 me into the room. 
 276 
 
THE STORY OF SULEYMAN BEY 
 
 "There was a couch there with candles burning. 
 There was something white on the couch. I felt 
 suddenly terrified. 
 
 " 'You wanted to see her/ I could hear the sheik 
 bellow. 'She is there. Look well at her.' 
 
 "I staggered forward a few steps. She was 
 there, I could see, in her white, flowing robe, and 
 her red slippers turned piteously upward. Some- 
 how, she suggested a great lily that had been bent 
 in two. The place seemed to go black, and the 
 white figure on the couch became a white stain 
 against a background of ink. The world seemed 
 to empty suddenly, so that there were none in it 
 but myself and the sheik and the figure on the 
 couch. There was a dull hum in my ears, like the 
 distant marching of a great army. Through it I 
 could hear the voice of the sheik volley out like 
 crashing of thunder. 
 
 'I heard of your plans, you dog, and son of 
 dogs ! I myself barred the doors to keep her from 
 you. That didn't suffice. She scaled the wall to 
 escape, and she fell. And there she is now. Her 
 neck is broken. May the blight 
 
 "The noise in my ears became unbearable. It 
 sounded like the beating of a thousand hammers. 
 I felt myself slipping into space. I remember 
 trying to keep up, but I couldn't, and I remember 
 the jar as I fell. 
 
 "And when I woke again I was mad. In place 
 of crying at the foot of the couch, I sat and babbled 
 and sang children's songs. In place of shrinking 
 
 277 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 in terror before the sheik, I smiled at him and 
 called him 'father.' The half-drawn dagger went 
 back into its sheath with a click. For Allah the 
 Most High, the Compassionate, the Merciful 
 had decreed to his Prophet that the afflicted in 
 mind should be treated as the little children on 
 the floor. And for even the unbeliever, and the 
 thief of the tribe's daughter, there was compassion 
 and mercy and care. 
 
 "I remained there in the house of the sheik, 
 with the tribe of the Beni Omar. When they went 
 out to hunt, or forth on a raid, or their caravans 
 travelled down to Persia, I went with them, as a 
 dog trots behind its master. Little by little under- 
 standing and mind came back to me. Still, I 
 couldn't leave them. They seemed to understand 
 and would not send me away. And after a time 
 I became as one of them, using their dress, speaking 
 their language, and professing the True God, the 
 One, the Only, and his blessed Prophet on whom 
 peace ! 
 
 "Your fathers remember Endhem Bey, and the 
 dash into Thessaly, and the raids of the Mad Sheik 
 of Trebizond, and they remember when the wan- 
 dering dervishes preached the Holy War, and the 
 Moslem rode like a flame through the Euxine 
 country and through Bulgaria. The Mad Sheik 
 was there. The Beni Omar came back, a handful 
 of men where before there had been a thousand, and 
 the Mad Captain, who had been the unbeliever, 
 was at their head, and he is at their head now. 
 
THE STORY OF SULEYMAN BEY 
 
 "Time slips by in Trebizond. It flows like a 
 river, thinking neither of hours nor days, nor of 
 the rising of moons, nor of suns' setting. Forty- 
 three years have gone by since Charteris died in 
 the Armenian desert, and it hasn't seemed to me 
 more than one long day. And yet now I am an 
 old man, who will soon enter the Garden of the 
 Eight Gates, and taste of the fruit of the Tree 
 which is Life Eternal, and see the petals of the 
 White Flower of Trebizond unfold in the sun of 
 Heaven. 
 
 "Her grave is outside Trebizond, a square of 
 marble with a high pillar, and a great cypress tree 
 waving over it. There are roses there, white roses, 
 and grey doves flutter in and out of the branches 
 of the tree, and little green and silver lizards play 
 about the grass. I go there every evening, and 
 I can see her rise up to meet me 
 
 "My God!" Ginger blurted out. "What what 
 what do you mean ? " 
 
 I didn't blame him. The hair on my head seemed 
 to lift and a cold wind blow all over me. 
 
 "Sometimes it is a sheen in the air, like light 
 filtering through water, or the play of the sun on 
 silk. Sometimes it is a thin white mist like 
 fine muslin. Sometimes it is a whispering in the 
 leaves of the cypress-tree, and sometimes it is 
 a rustle in the grass. But every time it is 
 Scheherazade, the sheik's daughter, who waits for 
 me and meets me there. And that is why I have 
 stayed." 
 
 279 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 The sheik stopped. The hum and drone of 
 Damascus broke into the garden like a swarm of 
 people. There were the shrill grunting of drome- 
 daries, the shouts of camel- drivers, the snarling of 
 dogs, the loud, insistent cries of the merchants. 
 Somewhere outside a dervish chanted in loud, 
 resonant tones. In his corner of the garden the 
 story-teller dropped luscious phrases to his Arab 
 audience. The sheik began again: 
 
 "Who knows? Allah, the Most High, the Holy 
 One, who sees the bee light on the pomegranate, 
 and watches the stork fly over oceans of great 
 breadth, may have ordained it all in infinite wisdom. 
 Would the flower have bloomed in the fields of 
 Sligo? Might it not have wilted and died, pining 
 for the gardens of Asia, and the chanting muezzins, 
 and the white horsemen of the desert? Inshallah! 
 Let the will of the Most High be done ! 
 
 "Forty-three years! And no man has heard my 
 story until to-day. I have been happy. I am con- 
 tent with the tribe of Omar, and with the tomb 
 and the cypress tree in Trebizond. Sometimes a 
 great want comes over me to see the fields of Sligo, 
 and the mists coming in from the sea, and to see 
 the road hard and black with the night-frost, and 
 the rime on the grass. And to-day, when you 
 talked of O'Connell Street, I could see the carts 
 rattling up to Trinity, and hear the shouts of the 
 drivers, and see the LirTey with its barges slipping 
 down to the Bay. And a great longing came over 
 me to tell the story to someone. I've told it to 
 280 
 
THE STORY OF SULEYMAN BEY 
 
 you now, and I'll go. The caravan waits for me 
 at the Saint Thomas Gate, and the road to Trebizond 
 stretches before me as it did forty-three long years 
 before." 
 
 He rose. Even near three score and ten, his 
 face was as cleanly cut as a cameo, his eyes clear 
 as water, his powerful frame like a statue. It was 
 not hard to understand how Scheherazade of the 
 Beni Omar was prepared to forsake faith and people 
 and country and go with him. His eyes looked 
 clear through us. Ginger, I knew, was crying. I 
 was trying hard not to do it myself. He reached 
 out his lean, brown hand. We took it. We wanted 
 to explain something to him, but we didn't know 
 what it was, and we couldn't. 
 
 "Good-bye, sir," we said. 
 
 "The blessing of God go with you!" His voice 
 rang out clear as a bell. He turned and swung 
 down the garden. 
 
 We watched him go off. We were dull and 
 dazed. It was as if a life-long friend of ours was 
 leaving us for ever. We went out slowly. 
 
 I felt somehow as if the East, which we had 
 been cursing for the most overrated, tuppeny side- 
 show on earth, had reached out and struck us a 
 terrific blow between the eyes. As we passed into 
 the street, we could hear the voice of the story- 
 teller drone like a faint echo: 
 
 "Thus, most eminent ones, finisheth the delect- 
 able history of Ganem, the Slave of Love. What 
 is more choice than rubies, asketh Mustafa el-Wujud, 
 
 281 
 
STORIES WITHOUT WOMEN 
 
 what more sweet than true love? Passion knocketh 
 and it passeth on, but true love abideth till the 
 call of Gabriel. In the Seventh of the Seven 
 Heavens Ganem and the Damsel of Delight walk 
 together on floors of porphyry beneath roofs of 
 live emerald. For there lovers meet whom the 
 world a troublous place, dearest hearts! hath 
 parted. What saith Ja'ar el-Din, the Barmecide, 
 that excellent poet, in this regard? 'Stormy the 
 wind; the waves ' " 
 
 THE END 
 
 
 282 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 DFC > 
 ""^ 4&A jy^ 
 
 REC'D LD 
 
 
 A Pt % "1 < > 
 
 CT 361940R|?, 
 
 Mr t\ 1 4 tiJbu 
 
 OCT 16 1940 M 
 
 
 --LW acFffj ivi 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 LPR 12 1948 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * UApr^jl ' 
 
 
 
 _ .-, k , v -5r,pq p 
 
 
 xi V ' ' i- ^ ^ ^ u 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 LD21-100m-7,'39(402s) 
 
YB 6,^232 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY