This eBook was transcribed by Les Bowler
THE
CRESCENT MOON
BY
FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG
AUTHOR OF “MARCHING ONTANGA”
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
p. iiCopyright,1918,
BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
All Rights Reserved
First printing . . . . .January, 1919
Second printing . . . . .March, 1919
Third printing . . . . .March, 1920
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
p. 1CHAPTERI
I
When I stepped on to the platformat Nairobi I hadn’t the very least idea of what I was infor. The train for which we were waiting was due fromKisumu, bringing with it a number of Indian sepoys, captured atTanga and Jasin, whom the Belgian advance on Taborah hadfreed. It was my job to see them into the ambulances andsend them off to hospital. But when I got to the station Ifound the platform swarming with clerical hats and women wholooked religious, all of whom couldn’t very well have beenswept into this degree of congregation for the sake of an oddsepoy’s soul. These mean and ill-dressed people keptup a chatter like starlings under the station roof. It wasa hot day in November, and the rains were due. Even sixthousand feet of altitude won’t stimulate you then. It had all the atmosphere of a sticky school treat in August athome. . . . Baptists on an August Bank Holiday. Thatwas how it struck me.
And anyway it was a nuisance: I couldn’t get myambulances on to the platform. “You see, sir, itisn’t p.2a norspital train,” said the military policeman,“only a nordinary passenger train from the lake.”
I asked him what all the crowd was about.
“They say,” he replied cautiously, “as themissionaries is coming down. Them that was Germanprisoners.”
So that was it. And a few minutes later the clumsy traingroaned in, and the engine stood panting as though it were out ofbreath, as do all the wood-fuel engines of the UgandaRailway. The shabby people on the platform sent up anattempt at a cheer. I suppose they were missionariestoo. My wounded sepoys had to wait until these martyrs weredisgorged.
Poor devils. . . . They were a sad-looking crowd. I don’t suppose Taborah in war-time had been a bed ofroses: and yet . . . and yet one couldn’t help feeling thatthese strange-looking creatures invited persecution. Themen, I mean. Oh yes, I was properly ashamed of myself thenext moment: but there’s something about long-neckedhumility in clerical clothes that stirs up the savage in one,particularly when it moves slowly and with weak knees. Nowto the cheers tears were added. They wept, these goodpeople, and were very fluttered and hysterical: and theprisoners, poor souls, looked as if they didn’t know wherethey were. It wasn’t they who did the crying. Idare say, after all, they were qui