Driftwood Spars: The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who Strangely Met Upon the Sea of LifeWren, Percival Christopher
History
Driftwood Spars: The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life
Wren, Percival Christopher
India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947 -- Fiction
Yes--the bottle must have been thus usefully broken by the hand of the
Supreme Deity himself, prompted by Moussa's own particular and private
_kismet_, to provide Moussa with the means of doing his duty by himself
and his race, in the matter of the dog who had likened a long-haired,
ringletty-haired aquiline-nosed, thin-lipped son of the Somals to a
Woolly One--a black beast of the jungle!
Our young friend had never heard of the historical glass-bladed daggers
of the _bravos_ of Venice, but he saw at a glance, as he rose to his
feet and stared at the bottle, that he could do his business (and that
of the foreman) with the fortunately--shaped fragment, and eke leave the
point of the weapon in the wound for future complications if the blow
failed of immediate fatal effect.
He bided his time....
One black night Moussa Isa sat on the stern of his barge holding to a
rope beneath the high wall of the side of the P. & O. liner, _Persia_,
in shadow and darkness undispelled by the flickering flare of a brazier
of burning fuel, designed to illuminate the path of panting, sweating,
coal-laden coolies up and down narrow bending planks, laid from the
lighter to the gloomy hole in the ship's side.
The hot, still air was thick with coal-dust and the harmless necessary
howls of the hundreds of sons of Ham, toiling at high pressure.
In the centre of a vast, silent circle of mysterious lamp-spangled sea
and shore, and of star-spangled sky, this spot was Inferno, an offence
to the brooding still immensity.
And suddenly Moussa Isa was dimly conscious of his enemy, of him who had
insulted the great Somal race and Moussa Isa. On the broad edge of the
big barge Sulemani stood, before, and a foot below him, in the darkness,
yelling directions, threats, promises and encouragement to his gang. If
only there had been a moon or light by which he could see to strike!
Suddenly the edge of a beam of yellow light from a port-hole struck upon
Sulemani's neck, illuminating it below and behind his ear. Mrs. "Pat"
Dearman, homeward bound, had just entered her cabin and switched on the
electric light. (When last she passed Aden she had been Miss Cleopatra
Diamond Brighte, bound for Gungapur and the bungalow of her brother.)
It was Mrs. Pat Dearman's habit to read a portion of the Scriptures
nightly, ere retiring to rest, for she was a Good Woman and considered
the practice to be not only a mark of, but essential to, goodness.
Doubtless the Powers of Evil smiled sardonically when they noted that
the light which she evoked for her pious exercise lit the hand of Moussa
Isa to murder, providing opportunity. Moussa Isa weighed chances and
considered. He did not want to bungle it and lose his revenge and his
life too. Would he be seen if he struck now? The light fell on the very
spot for the true infallible death-stroke. Should he strike now, here,
in the midst of the yelling mob?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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