Part 7

The prowess or the piety of this ardent devotee proved extraordinarily contagious. First one and then another of his brethren caught the afflatus and followed his example. In a few moments every part of the mosque was the scene of some novel and horrible rite of self-mutilation, performed by a fresh aspirant to the favour of Allah. Some of these feats did not rise above the level of the curious but explicable performances which are sometimes seen upon English stages; _e.g._, of the men who swallow swords, and carry enormous weights suspended from their jaws; achievements which are in no sense a trick or a deception, but are to be attributed to abnormal physical powers or structure developed by long and often perilous practice. In the Aissaiouian counterpart of these displays there was nothing specially remarkable, but there were others less commonplace and more difficult of explanation.

At length, several long iron spits or prongs were produced and distributed; these formidable implements were about two and a half feet in length and sharply pointed, and they terminated at the handle in a circular wooden knob about the size of a large orange. There was great competition for these instruments of torture, which were used as follows: Poising one in the air, an Aissioui would suddenly force the point into the flesh of his own shoulder in front just below the shoulder blade. Thus transfixed, and holding the weapon aloft, he strode swiftly up and down. Suddenly, at a signal, he fell on his knees, still forcing the point into his body, and keeping the wooden head uppermost. Then there started up another disciple armed with a big wooden mallet, and he, after a few preliminary taps, rising high on tip-toe with uplifted weapon would, with an ear-splitting yell, bring it down with all his force upon the wooden knob, driving the point home through the shoulder of his comrade. Blow succeeded blow, the victim wincing beneath the stroke, but uttering no sound, and fixing his eyes with a look of ineffable delight upon his torturer, till the point was driven right through the shoulder and projected at the back. Then the patient marched backwards and forwards with the air and the gait of a conquering hero. At one moment there were four of these semi-naked maniacs within a yard of my feet, transfixed and trembling, but beatified and triumphant. Amid the cries and the swelter, there never ceased for one second the sullen and menacing vociferation of the drums.

Another man seized an iron skewer, and, placing the point within his open jaws, forced it steadily through his cheek until it protruded a couple of inches on the outside. He barked savagely like a dog, and foamed at the lips.

Others, afflicted with exquisite spasms of hunger, knelt down before the chief, whimpering like children for food, and turning upon him imploring glances from their glazed and bloodshot eyes. His control over his following was supreme. Some he gratified, others he forbade. At a touch from him, they were silent and relaxed into quiescence. One maddened wretch who, fancying himself some wild beast, plunged to and fro, roaring horribly, and biting and tearing with his teeth at whomever he met, was advancing, as I thought, with somewhat truculent intent in my direction, when he was arrested by his superior and sent back, cringing and cowed.

For those whose ravenous appetites he was content to humour the most singular repast was prepared. A plate was brought in, covered with huge jagged pieces of broken glass, as thick as a shattered soda-water bottle. With greedy chuckles and gurglings of delight, one of the hungry ones dashed at it, crammed a handful into his mouth, and crunched it up as though it were some exquisite dainty, a fellow-disciple calmly stroking the exterior of his throat, with intent, I suppose, to lubricate the descent of the unwonted morsels. A little child held up a snake or a sand-worm by the tail, placing the head between his teeth, and gulped it gleefully down. Several acolytes came in, carrying a big stem of the prickly pear, or _fico d’India_, whose leaves are as thick as a one-inch plank, and are armed with huge projecting thorns. This was ambrosia to the starving saints. They rushed at it with passionate emulation, tearing at the solid slabs with their teeth, and gnawing and munching the coarse fibers, regardless of the thorns which pierced their tongues and cheeks as they swallowed them down.

The most singular feature of all, and the one that almost defies belief, though it is none the less true, was this—that in no case did one drop of blood emerge from scar, or gash, or wound. This fact I observed most carefully, the _mokaddem_ standing at my side, and each patient in turn coming to him when his self-imposed torture had been accomplished, and the cataleptic frenzy had spent its force. It was the chief who cunningly withdrew the blade from cheek or shoulder or body, rubbing over the spot what appeared to me to be the saliva of his own mouth; then he whispered an absolution in the ear of the disciple, and kissed him on the forehead, whereupon the patient, but a moment before writhing in maniacal transports, retired tranquilly and took his seat upon the floor. He seemed none the worse for his recent paroxysm, and the wound was marked only by a livid blotch or a hectic flush.

This was the scene that for more than an hour went on without pause or intermission before my eyes. The building might have been tenanted by the Harpies or Laestrygones of Homer, or by some inhuman monsters of legendary myth. Amid the dust and sweat and insufferable heat the naked bodies of the actors shone with a ghastly pallor and exhaled a sickening smell. The atmosphere reeked with heavy and intoxicating fumes. Above the despairing chant of the singers rang the frenzied yells of the possessed, the shrieks of the hammerer, and the inarticulate cries, the snarling and growling, the bellowing and miauling of the self-imagined beasts. And ever behind and through all re-echoed the perpetual and pitiless imprecation of the drums.

As I witnessed the disgusting spectacle and listened to the pandemonium of sounds, my head swam, my eyes became dim, my senses reeled, and I believed that in a few moments I must have fainted, had not one of my friends touched me on the shoulder, and, whispering that the _mokaddem_ was desirous that I should leave, escorted me hurriedly to the door. As I walked back to my quarters, and long after through the still night, the beat of the tambours continued, and I heard the distant hum of voices, broken at intervals by an isolated and piercing cry. Perhaps yet further and more revolting orgies were celebrated after I had left. I had not seen, as other travellers have done, the chewing and swallowing of red-hot cinders,[1] or the harmless handling and walking upon live coals. I had been spared that which others have described as the climax of the gluttonous debauch, _viz._, the introduction of a live sheep, which then and there is savagely torn to pieces and devoured raw by these unnatural banqueters. But I had seen enough, and as I sank to sleep my agitated fancy pursued a thousand avenues of thought, confounding in one grim medley all the carnivorous horrors of fact and fable and fiction. Loud above the din and discord the tale of the false prophets of Carmel, awakened by the train of association, rang in my ears, till I seemed to hear intoned with remorseless repetition the words: “They cried aloud and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them”; and in the ever-receding distance of dreamland, faint and yet fainter, there throbbed the inexorable and unfaltering delirium of the drums.

[1] For an account of this exploit, _vide_ Lane’s _Modern Egyptians_, cap. xxv.; and compare the description of Richardson, the famous fire-eater, in Evelyn’s _Memoirs_ for October 8, 1672.

A LIFE—A BOWL OF RICE

By L. DE BRA

Bow Sam stood in the doorway by his sugar-cane stand and watched with narrowed eyes an old man who shuffled uncertainly down the alley towards him.

“_Hoo la ma!_” cried Bow Sam, in surprised Cantonese as the old man drew near. “Hello, there! I scarcely knew you, venerable Fa’ng!”

Fa’ng, the hatchetman, straightened his bent shoulders and looked up. There was a gleam in his deep bronze eyes that was hardly in keeping with his withered frame.

“_Hoo la ma_, Bow Sam,” he said, his voice strangely deep and vibrant.

“You have grown very thin,” remarked Bow Sam with friendly interest.

“_Hi low_; that is true. But why carry around flesh that is not food?”

The sugar-cane vendor eyed the other shrewdly. What was the gossip he had heard concerning Fa’ng, the famous old hatchetman? Was it not that the old man was always hungry? Yes, that was it! Fa’ng, whose long knife and swift arm had been the most feared thing in all Chinatown, was starving—too proud to beg, too honest to steal.

“You have eaten well, venerable Fa’ng?” The inquiry was in a casual tone, respectful.

“_Aih_, I have eaten well,” replied the old hatchetman, averting his face.

“How unfortunate for me! I have not yet eaten my rice; for when one must dine alone, one goes slowly to table. Is it not written that a bowl of rice shared is doubly enjoyed? Would you not at least have a cup of tea while I eat my mean fare?”

“I shall be honoured to sip tea with you, estimable Bow Sam,” replied the hatchetman with poorly disguised eagerness.

“Then condescend to enter my poor house! Ah, one does not often have the pleasure of your company in these days!”

Bow Sam preceded his guest to the wretched hovel that was the sugar-cane vendor’s only home. There he quickly removed all trace of the bowl of rice he had eaten but a moment before.

“Will you take this poor stool, venerable Fa’ng?” said Bow, setting out the only stool he possessed, and placing it so that the hatchetman’s back would be to the stove.

Wearily, Fa’ng sat down. Bow put out two small cups, each worn and badly chipped, and filled them with hot tea. Then, while the hatchetman sipped his tea, Bow uncovered the rice kettle. There was but one bowl of rice left. Bow Sam had intended to keep it for his evening meal; for until he sold some sugar-cane, he had no way of obtaining more food.

Behind Fa’ng’s back, Bow took two rice bowls and set them on the stove. One bowl he heaped full for the hatchetman. In the other he put an upturned tea bowl and sprinkled over it his last few grains of rice.

“Let us give thanks to the gods of the kitchen that we have food and teeth and appetite,” chuckled Bow Sam, seating himself on a sugar-cane box opposite Fa’ng.

“Well spoken,” returned the old hatchetman, quickly filling his mouth with the nourishing rice. “_Aih_, there is much in life to make one content.”

With his chop-sticks Bow Sam deftly took up a few grains of rice, taking care lest he uncover the upturned tea bowl. He was deeply grateful that he had a few teeth left, that he quite often had enough rice, and sometimes had meat as often as once a month; but to hear the proud old hatchetman express such sentiments on an empty stomach filled him with admiration.

“What a virtue to be content with one’s lot!” he exclaimed, refilling the hatchetman’s tea bowl. “Yet the younger generation are always fretting because they think they have not enough; while, as anyone knows, they have much more than we who first came to this land of the white foreign devil.”

“They are young,” spoke Fa’ng, nodding his head slowly. “For us the days have fled, the years have not tarried. And we have learned that if one has but a bowl of rice for food and a bent arm for pillow, one can be content.”

“_Haie!_ How can you speak so softly of the younger generation when it is they who have robbed you of your livelihood? I know the gossip. You, the most famous killer in Chinatown, find yourself cast out like a worn-out broom by these young upstarts who have no respect for their elders. Is it not true?”

With his left hand the old hatchetman made an eloquent gesture, peculiarly Chinese, much as one quickly throws open a fan.

“Of what value are words, my friend? They cannot change that which is changeless. A word cannot temper the wind, nor a phrase procure food for a hungry stomach.”

“Nevertheless, I do not like such things,” persisted Sam. “I love the old ways. You were an honourable and fearless killer. When you were hired to slay one’s enemy you went boldly to your victim and told him your business. Then, swiftly, even before the doomed one could open his lips, you struck—cleaned your blade and walked your way.

“The modern killers!” Bow Sam spewed the words out as one does sour rice. “They are too cowardly to use the knife. They hide on roofs, fire on their victims, then throw away their guns and flee like thieves. _Aih_, what have we come to in these days!

“It was but yesterday after mid-day rice that I had speech with Gar Ling, a gunman of the Sin Wah tong. He stopped to buy sugar-cane, and I told him that had I the money I would hire him. There is one of the younger generation, the pock-marked son of Quong, the dealer in jade, who has greatly wronged me and my honourable family name, and my distinguished ancestors. As you very well know, one cannot soil one’s own hands with the blood of vengeance. Moreover, I have no weapon, not even a dull cleaver. Neither can I afford to hire a fighting man.

“I was telling all this to Gar Ling,” went on Bow, straining the last drop of tea into Fa’ng’s bowl, “and he told me he would settle my quarrel, but it would cost one thousand dollars. When I told him I had not even a thousand copper _cash_, he became angry and abusive. As he walked his way, quickly, like a foreign devil, he spat in my direction and called me an unspeakable name.”

“_Ts, ts!_ You should have wrung his neck. Repeat to me his unspeakable words.”

“He said,” cried Bow Sam, his face twisted in fury, “that I am the son of a turtle!”

“_Aih-yah!_ How insulting! As anyone knows, in all our language there is no epithet more vile!”

“That is true. But what is even worse, I did not remember until after he had gone that he had not paid me for the piece of sugar-cane. Such is the way of the younger generation; and we, who have been long in the land, can do nothing.”

“Yet it is by such things that one learns the lesson of enduring tranquillity,” remarked Fa’ng, smacking his lips and moving back from the table.

For about the time, then, that it takes one to make nine bows before the household gods, neither man made speech. Then Fa’ng arose.

“An excellent bowl of rice, my good friend.”

“_Aih_, it shames me to have to give you such mean fare.”

“And the tea was most fragrant.”

“_Ts_, it was only the cheapest Black Dragon.”

The two old men went to the door.

“_Ho hang la_,” said the hatchetman.

“_Ho hang la_,” echoed the sugar-cane vendor. “I hope you have a safe walk.”

Fa’ng, the hatchetman, made his way down the alley to the rear entrance of a pawnshop. There he spoke a few words with the proprietor.

“I know you are honest, old man,” said the pawnbroker. “But instead of bringing it back, I hope, for your own sake, you will be able to pay what you owe me.”

Then from a safe he took a knife with long, slender blade and a handle of ebony in which had been carved an unbelievable number of notches. Fa’ng took the knife, handling it as one does an object of precious memories, concealed it beneath his tattered blouse, and went his way.

Near the entrance of a gambling house in Canton Alley the old hatchetman met the pock-marked son of Quong, the dealer in jade.

“For the wrong you have done Bow Sam, his family name, and his distinguished ancestors,” said Fa’ng quietly; and before the other could open his lips the long blade was through his heart.

In front of a cigar store in Shanghai Place, Fa’ng found Gar Ling, the gunman. “I have business of moment with you, Gar Ling,” said the hatchetman. “Come.”

Gar Ling hesitated. He stood in great fear of the old killer, yet he dared not show that fear before his young friends. So with his left hand he gave a peculiar signal. A boy standing near with a basket of _lichee_ nuts on his arm turned quickly and followed the two men down the alley. Drawing near his employer, the boy held up the basket as though soliciting the gunman to buy. Gar’s hand darted swiftly into the basket, beneath the lichee nuts, and came out with a heavy automatic pistol which he quickly concealed beneath his blouse.

The old hatchetman knew all the tricks of the young gunman, but he pretended he had not seen. As they turned a dark corner, he paused.

“For the insulting words you spoke to Bow Sam,” he said calmly, and the long blade glided between the gunman’s ribs.

As Fa’ng drew the steel away, Gar Ling staggered, fired once, then collapsed.

Bow Sam stood in the doorway by his sugar-cane stand and watched with narrowed eyes an old man who shuffled uncertainly down the alley toward him.

“_Hoo la ma!_” he cried, as the old man drew near. “I did not expect to see you again so soon.”

The old hatchetman did not raise his head nor reply. Staggering, he crossed the threshold and fell on his face on the littered floor.

With a throaty cry Bow Sam slammed the door shut. He bent over Fa’ng.

“This knife,” said the hatchetman; “take it—to Wong the pawnbroker. Tell him—all. Worth—more—than I owe.”

“But what’s——”

“For the wrong that the pock-marked one did you, for the insult Gar Ling spoke to you, I slew them,” said Fa’ng, with sudden strength. “My debt is paid. _Tsau kom lok._”

“_Haie!_ You did that! Why did you do that? I could never pay you! And look! _Aih-yah_, oh, how piteous! You are dying!”

With awkward fingers, the vendor of sugar-cane tried to staunch the flow of blood where Gar Ling’s bullet had struck with deadly effect.

“Pay me?” breathed Fa’ng the hatchetman. “Did you—not—feed me? Can one—put a value—on food—when the stomach—is empty? _Aih_, what—matters it? A life,”—his eyelids fluttered and closed—“a life—a bowl of rice....”

HODGE

By ELINOR MORDAUNT.

People are accustomed to think of Somerset as a country of deep, bosky bays, sunny coves, woods, moorlands, but Hemerton was in itself sufficient to blur this bland illusion. It lay a mile and a half back from the sea, counting it all full tide; at low tide the sly, smooth waters, unbroken by a single rock, slipped away for another mile or more across a dreary ooze of black mud.

The village lay pasted flat upon the marsh, with no trees worthy of the name in sight: a few twisted black-thorn bushes, a few split willows, one wreck of a giant blighted ash in the Rectory gardens, and that was all.

For months on end the place swam in vapours. There were wonderful effects of sunrise and sunset, veils of crimson and gold, of every shade of blue and purple. At times the grey sea-lavender was like silver, the wet, black mud gleaming like dark opals; while at high summer there was purple willow-strife spilled thick along the ditches, giving the strange place a transitory air of warm-blooded life; but for the most part it was all as aloof and detached as a sleep-walker.

The birds fitted the place as a verger fits his quiet and dusky church: herons and waders of all kinds; wild-crying curlew; and here and there a hawk, hanging motionless high overhead.

There were scarcely fifty houses in Hemerton, and these were all alike, flat and brown and grey; where there had been plaster it was flaked and ashen. The very church stooped, as though shamed to a sort of poor-relation pose by the immense indifference of the mist-veiled sky—the drooping lids on a scornful face—for even at midday, in mid-summer, the heavens were never quite clear, quite blue, but still veiled and apart.

The Rectory was a two-storied building, low at that, and patched with damp: small, with a narrow-chested air, tiny windows, a thin, grudging doorway, blistered paint, which gave it a leprous air; and just that one tree, with its pale, curled leaves in summer, its jangling keys in winter.

It was amazing to find that any creature so warmly vital as the Rector’s daughter, Rhoda Fane, had been begotten, born, reared in such a place; spent her entire life there, apart from two years of school at Clifton, and six months in Brussels, cut short by her mother’s death.

She was like a beech wood in September: ruddy, crisp, fragrant. Her hair, dark-brown, with copper lights, was so springing with life that it seemed more inclined to grow up than hang down; her face was almost round, her wide, brown eyes frank and eager. She was as good as any man with her leaping-pole: broad-shouldered, deep-breasted, with a soft, deep contralto voice.

Her only brother, Hector, was four years younger than herself. Funds had run low, drained away by their mother’s illness, before it was time for him to go to school; he was too delicate for the second-best, roughing it among lads of a lower class, and so he was kept at home, taught by his father: a thin trickle of distilled classics and wavering mathematics; a good deal of history, no geography.

He, in startling contrast to his sister, was a true child of the marshes: thin light hair, vellum-white, peaked face, pale grey eyes beneath an overhanging brow, large, transparent ears: narrow-chested, long-armed, stooping, so that he seemed almost a hunchback.

In all ways he was the shadow of Rhoda, followed her everywhere; and as there is no shadow without the sun, so it seemed that he could scarcely have existed apart from her. Small as he already was, he almost puled himself out of life while she was away at school; and after a bare week from home she would get back to find him with the best part of his substance peeled from him, white as a willow-wand.

Different as these two were, they were passionately attached to each other. The Rector was a kind father when he drew himself out of the morass of melancholy and disillusion into which he had fallen since his wife died, wilting away with damp and discontent, and sheer loathing of the soil in which it had been his misfortune to plant her. But still, at the best, he was a parent, and so apart, while there were no neighbours, no playfellows.

Once or twice Rhoda’s school-friends came to stay at the Rectory, and for the first day or so it seemed delightful to talk of dress, of a gayer world, possible lovers. But after a very little while they began to pall on her: they understood nothing of what was her one absorbing interest—the natural life of the place in which she lived: were discontented, disdainful of the marshland, hated the mud, feared the fogs, shivered in the damp.

Anyhow, the brother and sister were sufficient to each other, for they shared a never-failing, or even diminishing, interest—and what more can any two people wish for?—a passionate absorption in, a minute knowledge of, the wild life of the marshland; its legends and folklore; its habits and calls; the mating seasons and manners of the birds; the place and habit of every wild flower; the way of the wind with the sky, and all its portents; the changing seasons, seemingly so uneven from year to year, and yet working out so much the same in the end.

They could not have said how they first came to hear of the Forest: they had always talked of it. To Hector, at least, it was so vivid that he seemed to have actually struggled through its immense depths, swung in its hanging creepers, smelt its sickly-sweet orchids, breathed its hot, damp air—so far real to both alike that they would find themselves saying, “Do you remember?” in speaking of paths that they had never traversed.