The Silent Ones
Fitzpatrick, J. F. J.
THE SILENT ONES By J. F. J. FITZPATRICK TN NIGERIA, which is in the White Man's Grave country, •*¦ there was a native secret society, the society of the Silent Ones. In the days of its...
...The soldiers had expected to find the mission just smoking ruins, and Jervis thought himself the sport of a false alarm when the two Fathers came out to greet him...
...Go...
...The prospect was not a bright one, even so, but if the Fathers stayed, then murder would be the portion of all, infallibly...
...I beg your pardon...
...He used in those days to tell his visitors that there were only three completely unprofitable things on the mission, viz: himself, the revolver, and the watch, which took a dislike to west Africa soon after its arrival and never worked again...
...I spit upon you...
...He addressed him shortly, and went himself back to bed again...
...There might yet be time, he said, for them to reach the settlement across the river...
...And he isn't a soldier, anyhow...
...Fourth, and last, Father Moulain towards the end of his days found himself head of a large and flourishing mission on the very scene of his rencontre with the Silent Ones...
...You are rats...
...In his own indomitable soul there was nothing of fear, and he advanced towards them till he stood clear of the shadow of the house...
...The house they built and lived in was near a big native town, whence there ran a trade road forty good miles down to the Niger River...
...The Padre watched the last of them depart and went back into the mission where, after searching, he discovered his young colleague hiding under a bed...
...Arrived within a yard or two of the front rank he stopped, and in their own language courteously saluted them...
...Late in the following afternoon, dusty, hot, tired beyond words, there arrived Captain Jervis with a small column, pounding up in all haste from the settlement...
...You did not send me word and nothing has been got ready, but I will tell my boys, and soon they will bring food for the great ones amongst you...
...Christianity was beginning to go there...
...Men, women and children, terror-stricken, mad with fear, left home and farm and rushed to hide in the friendly jungle...
...One afternoon the chief of the town came running to the mission...
...In the days of its flourishing it numbered scores of thousands on the members' roll, and periodically large parties of them went on the warpath...
...Come, come, now," said Jervis...
...He prayed the Fathers to leave at once...
...And the poor, miserable wretch groveled and sobbed in his agony of fright...
...he thundered...
...News that the Silent Ones were out was enough to depopulate the whole countryside...
...No man answered...
...Father Moulain comforted him as well as he could, but sympathy did the man no good at all, and the Father took a different line...
...It is night, and your father, the devil, has given you all the courage you can hold, apes that you are...
...The man was all gone to pieces...
...And he paused, vainly, for reply...
...You call together a great band, and secretly, by night, you skulk in the shadows till the devil gives you courage to fall upon a sleeping man...
...Men turn in early on the mission, and the Fathers had been asleep some hours when, about midnight, a boy rushed into Moulain's room, screaming...
...It is not the custom for honest men to come, unannounced, with arms, in the middle of the night, to see their friend...
...He continued: "It is the custom here, when my friends come to see me, that they send beforehand to tell me they are coming...
...Stand up...
...More than two years I have lived here," he said, "and you know me not...
...people were murdered...
...It is not for me to run away...
...Then I prepare food for them, that they may eat and rest after their journey...
...But you, no doubt, have good reason...
...One, Moulain, was a middleaged man, many years in west Africa, who spoke fluently several native languages...
...That's very hard on him...
...He was too scared even to run away...
...The terror they made for the ordinary native is indescribable...
...He spat again, and then with a gesture of contempt continued: "You fear to touch me...
...You curs...
...These excursions were very horrible affairs: towns were looted and burned...
...And the stout little Padre, growling, stamped back into the mission...
...you fly before a child with a stick, in the sunlight...
...The White Man's Grave is a horseless country...
...I shall stay here...
...Come, then, and kill me...
...Bloodstained, smoking ruins and wasted farmlands marked the path of the Silent Ones...
...They moved at night, secrecy shrouded their doings, and they went in silence, speaking not at all...
...And still from the Silent Ones there came no sign nor sound...
...There is the road back to the jungle...
...Moulain reported that the Silent Ones had been, and gone, making not much of the affair...
...For one week he is a boy...
...The other was a young priest newly arrived and quite without experience...
...Normally an intelligent, reasonable fellow, fear had turned him into a driveling, gibbering incompetent...
...You were not my friend then, remember...
...The small missionary told them off in this strain for another ten minutes...
...You are many, and in your hands I see spears and knives and axes...
...See, I have no stick...
...Second, Jervis and his officers subscribed and bought for Father Moulain the very latest pattern of revolver, with hundreds and hundreds of cartridges...
...No man moved...
...to them the wretched fugitives would go for protection...
...You are murderers...
...Ending, he said: "When you see the other Father waiting at table, assisting the boys, please take no notice...
...Did I fear when first I came amongst you...
...The chief had been well informed ; the Silent Ones had arrived...
...in many cases the murderers devoured their bodies...
...You are no men...
...By the clear light of the full African moon the little, thick-set priest saw that the naked savages before him were armed, and that many of them were daubed with white mud...
...And the little, lonely priest, black-bearded, white-cassocked, standing there in the cool, mellow moonlight, felt he could understand something of the awe they might inspire...
...Afterwards it was different...
...On the far side of the river stood a settlement garrisoned by a detachment of the Chartered Company's troops...
...You are cowards...
...You bushmen...
...And he spat...
...in his parlance it means ape.] My friend, you mistake me...
...Follow it...
...Moulain slipped into the white cassock that is the badge of all the Mission Fathers, and went out into the moonlight...
...There was no response from the Silent Ones...
...As a rule the Silent Ones went wide of those places, but there were cases in which the white trader and his people were massacred, the store looted and the whole place reduced to ashes...
...His address finished, he paused for some moments...
...And your people helped me not at all: they threatened me, tried to drive me away...
...Third, the governing body of the company at home who had the reputation of, well, pessimism in expenditure, fired by Jervis's report, bought the handsomest gold watch, paid for a most eloquent and elegant inscription that completely covered its back, and sent it out with orders to the greatest of their servants to make a special journey ad hoc and present it to the Father with all possible ceremony...
...A wonderful spectacle met his eyes...
...I called you hyenas...
...The Fathers soon made a fine farm, and as they managed to grow—on land abandoned as finished—bigger yams and more yams than the townspeople were getting off selected land, their presence and efforts were approved by their neighbors, with whom they were indeed very friendly...
...The boy cowered in a corner, moaning and weeping, quite beside himself...
...He gasped out that news of the coming of the Silent Ones had just reached him...
...I beg your pardon," said Moulain, very gravely...
...Bushman is the least pleasant label that can be applied to any native...
...And you, go you back to your house...
...Perfectly still, utterly silent, infinitely sinister, the Silent Ones sat, thousands of them...
...he roared, with imperious gesture in the direction, and he stamped his foot...
...He said the story went that they were coming because the town had welcomed and was harboring the Fathers...
...I flattered you...
...Certainly it wasn't very sporting of him to hide under the bed, but he's very young, he's fresh to the country, and it is not given to many men to be brave at two o'clock in the morning...
...The mass, moving native fashion in single file, slunk off...
...This was filled by an army of men sitting down...
...Upcountry trading stations were fortified and the traders armed...
...In a district which the Silent Ones had ravaged pretty regularly there established itself a mission...
...First, the power and prestige of the Silent Ones were for ever destroyed in that district, and they went raiding there never again...
...The personnel consisted of two French Fathers...
...They started to their feet...
...Like the hyena you slink about in the dark places by day...
...That is where I met him...
...Ha...
...Now today you come telling me to run away from the mission and leave it to a horde of bushmen whom I have never seen...
...Then, since you won't tell me, I'll tell you," and his voice took on another tone...
...What is it...
...Not a sound rose from the vast assembly...
...He was of an eloquence, this Moulain...
...The Silent Ones shall not harm you, no, nor your people either...
...Between the mission and the town wall was a great open space...
...I am but one, unarmed...
...For his own part, perhaps if the Silent Ones found them gone they would content themselves with looting and destroying the mission, plus a fine from the town...
...You think I fear...
...You have come to murder me...
...They escorted him and his three white officers on to the veranda, gave to each a chair and a long, cold drink, and then the younger Padre withdrew...
...There resulted from the episode four things...
...In all of you there is not so much pluck as in one small dog...
...But in the beginning, you know how close to death at your hands I stood...
Vol. 12 • August 1930 • No. 17
