E. Hoffmann Price's War and Western Action

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Something was happening, and not accidentally.

  Ahmat, drinking back, began to see Zeynab’s fine touch. He hurried down, and got to the level shortly after the dogs had come out, sniffing and snarling. He hailed the strangers, called them by names he hoped they would like, and inquired after the health of Uncle Abbas and Uncle Amru.

  Mr. Hagawa came out.

  Ahmat explained, “Distant relatives, they leave a village short of rice, and come to work with us, their families will be here later.”

  This bit of foolery offered Ahmat a chance to settle the Jan van Stappen menace.

  After leading the second pair of newcomers to the terraces, Ahmat went boldly along the ridge, and toward the head of the ravine, and when he came near van Stappen’s grotto, called, “O Man! A dozen friends and kinsmen have come to the village, there are now many strange faces. Come down, this is your chance, before that son of many pigs can make his count. And there is no help for this thing, either come out and eat, or stay and starve!”

  The invisible Dutchman chuckled. “Very well. Doubtless you have some half-caste relatives. And maybe what I have to do can be better done this way.”

  Without further parley, Ahmat picked his way down the tricky jumble. If the Jap had suspected, and presently investigated, he’d either find nothing, or else he’d find van Stappen. One way or another, something would happen. The suspense had been drawn from the future to present. The relief of cutting it short was intoxicating.

  “It must be,” he told himself, “like going amok. The event is immediate, and in the hands of Allah, and whatever happens, it is good!”

  Presently, the women came from the market, Zeynab among them.

  He said to his wife, “Those kinsmen you sent, there will be one more than you counted on, the hidden man is coming out, and who will think him more strange than the others?”

  “That is what I intended, but I was afraid to tell you before they came.”

  “That was well done, sitti! Yea, it is as if I had done it myself, and it is on my head. And now, I will deal with this madman! I’ll make him work till he is glad to leave us!”

  Then Mr. Hagawa came to distribute the new Korans. The beating of a gong, and the running of schoolboys from door to door, summoned the villagers to the plaza. Four carried a rattan hamper which they set where Mr. Hagawa stood.

  The Jap dished out the little books as casually as though peeling dirty bills from a fat roll. The schoolboys said, “Arigata,” and added the appropriate foreign honorifics, but the grown men and the elders were sullen and hard eyed. To receive from the unclean hands of an infidel “That Which Is to Be Recited” was cause for rioting, and murder.

  Ahmat felt the bitter gaze of the men who gave him precedence. That he could not do anything about it did not absolve him; that this would have happened, even though he had not gone to welcome the invaders, in no wise helped him. He took the black book, and begged pardon of Allah. Those who followed him did the same. And then he saw that van Stappen had placed himself at the head of the newcomers. When he got his copy, he stood there, instead of passing on, and he said, after opening the book, “This is not fitting! This is printed in Japanese, and it is not lawful to write the word of Allah in anything but the language of Allah!”

  Hagawa’s face froze. “What name?”

  “Abdul Mumineen, the Servant of the Faithful! And the cousin of the mayor.”

  He dropped the book, kicked it aside, and folded his arms. The Jap was without words for a moment. So was Ahmat. Zeynab’s eyes were wide with terror. There was no sound except the cackle and cluck of a busy hen, and in the silence, it was loud as gunfire.

  “What is this?” the Jap finally sputtered. “Not Malay! What is this?”

  “My grandfather was Dutch, but I am Malay, I am the cousin of the mayor. And Allah punishes those who put his word into a language he does not care to speak!”

  The Jap was so shocked that he demanded, “Allah does not understand Nippongo?”

  “He knows all things, even your cackling, but he speaks only Arabic.”

  “Dismissed!” Hagawa croaked. “Go, go away!” He turned on Ahmat. “I hold you responsible, this is sedition! This is treason, this is mutiny!”

  “You are protected,” Ahmat said. “You came unarmed. Go tell the Political Police and say that I did this, and that my people did not do it. Pick out any mayor you want, I am leaving and I go on the highways of Allah, and whatever happens to me, it happens. And God curse the Emperor, God curse the father and the grandfather of whoever does not curse the Emperor!”

  He darted under the house, and came out with the gleaming kris. “O Men! This man is your protected, his life is on your heads. As for me, who knows where I go, or why I go?”

  He thrust the sheathed kris into his sash, and without looking back, he headed straight for the path which led to the hills, and the winding game trails and the jungle. But he had scarcely put the first thicket between him and his people when he heard a sound behind him, and he saw that the Dutchman, “the Slave of True Believers,” had followed him, and was carrying a bundle tied up in an old scarf.

  Ahmat whipped out his kris.

  Van Stappen halted, smiling. “You are not angry. You thank Allah for the return of your honor. I did what I had to do, seeing that you did not do as you should have done.”

  The gleaming point dropped, and then Ahmat slid it slowly into its wooden sheath. “Thou hast spoken, brother. But you, why do you do this? He might have shot you as you stood! For all you knew of it, he could have been armed! You were a stranger among strangers, and now—”

  Van Stappen rubbed his palms together, and nodded contentedly. “I needed a comrade to work with me, doing what is to be done, and here you are, an outlaw now like myself.”

  CHAPTER V

  As he followed van Stappen along the narrow trail, a thorn armed darkness which finally led toward the sea, Ahmat told himself that Hagawa would surely wait until sunrise to report to the political police in Kota Raja, for as long as the school teacher remained in the karri pong, he was protected; once he ventured beyond the village limits, he faced the risk of being krissed by some hothead. Ahmat hoped that the Jap would have sense enough to stay put until the villagers relapsed into their habitual calm and indolent resignation, for as long as no harm came to him, they would be safe enough from reprisal.

  But already, it was a lonely business, following a Dutchman to an unknown destination. True, he had many times gone even as far as the island three miles off the coast. He had gone upstream a number of miles beyond Kota Raja, to visit kinsmen; yet his world centered about his own village, and the thought of exile horrified and appalled him.

  Over the centuries, Malays had spread from Palembang, the cradle of their race, into Java, and to Singapore, to the very edge of Burma, and others had crossed the seas to Macassar and to the Philippines, and to the coastal fringe of Borneo: but by clans and groups of clans. Only the outlaw, the damned, and the renegade, ever went alone or left his people, or wanted ever to leave them, for leaving one’s people was like being torn from one’s proper earth, since the Malay is like the rice which gives him life.

  The cutting of the stalk of rice must be done politely and ceremoniously; and thus with leaving home.

  The smell and the sound of the sea were both strong when van Stappen halted.

  “From here, it will be dangerous. So I go alone.”

  “I am not afraid.” Then, with childlike candor, “Except of being by myself at night in the jungle. What do you do?”

  “We go to the island, Pulu Weh, to Sabang Town.”

  “Why?”

  “There are some men to kill, only a few. Me, I’ll be too busy carrying things. So I need someone to help me.”

  “With carrying things?”

  “Oh, no, I can carry things easily myself.”


  Ahmat smiled for the first time. “I think Allah will make this pleasing to me,” he said, and did not even ask what size or color the several men would be.

  Ahmat was too busy learning things, such as, that there was a very small outrigger prahu hidden in the brush, well up from the beach; also, a box of things, presumably those which van Stappen was going to carry.

  “I hid them,” he said, “before we were driven from Kota Raja.”

  “You lived there?”

  “In a way, yes. I was a soldier there.”

  “Ordinary, or a tuan-besar soldier?”

  “The last. A captain of militia. I was wounded. I got away, very far from any Jap. Then I came back.”

  “Alone?”

  “Alone. I jumped from a plane.”

  “God, by the One God, by the One True God! Is that possible?”

  “The Japs did it at Palembang, it is easy when you know how and your parachute opens in time.”

  They set to work getting the little prahu to the water, and then while Ahmat fixed the outriggers in place, van Stappen went back to get the box of things he considered so important. It took him an unusually long time; so long that Ahmat was done, and beginning to worry, for evil spirits walked by night. To offset them, he recited, “I fly for refuge unto the Lord of the Daybreak and from the evils of those things which He hath created, and from the evils of the night when it darkeneth, and from the spells of wizards when they mumble, and from the envy of the envier when he envieth.”

  He was actually glad when his companion returned, carrying a small wooden box, and as though it were delicate and precious.

  Van Stappen wore a wrist watch with a luminous dial.

  “How long to get to Pulu Well?”

  “It depends on the tide. Four cigarettes, possibly.”

  Van Stappen translated that into time. “Good, no hurry.”

  He opened the box. It contained fuse and primers and dynamite.

  “You have been in Pulu Weh?”

  “No, only near it, with fishermen.”

  “You know the petrol tanks, the big ones?”

  “Ay wah! They looked like silver. Some were round like balls.”

  “Mmmm—and guarded by soldiers. No moon tonight—”

  “What good will this thing do?”

  “Who knows? Possibly none at all. But we are outlaws.”

  “You made me one.”

  “I had to. And I came to you because you waved the flags when the Japs landed.”

  “You saw?”

  “No, but I heard, and I know of your village.”

  “And came to me, the friends of the enemy?”

  “I knew you would be the first to hate them. Your face would be black for welcoming them. Your people would blame you, even though it was not your fault.”

  “You knew these things would happen?”

  Van Stappen looked at the watch. “In the long run, yes. I didn’t know of the Korans at all. They just helped. I did know that the moon would be dark, and that I had to do something, and your kinfolk coming made it easier for me, and so did the Jap.”

  Ahmat pondered for a moment. “You, a Dutchman and a True Believer. Have you really some Malay blood?”

  Van Stappen sighed. “I don’t know. For three hundred years, my family has lived in Djawa and Sumatra. Many Dutch-men have some Malay blood. Many of us are your kinsmen.”

  “Hard hearted ones!”

  Van Stappen did not evade the issue. “In the years past, hard and unjust. But so were the old sultans of Djawa. But what was the belief of your ancestors before Islam became the faith of your people?”

  “We were pagans, children of the fire! We lived in error.”

  “Just as the Dutch in the old days. The Malay abandoned his error, so are we trying to abandon ours.”

  “I had never thought of it in that way. What you say sounds true. But it was not Dutch rule that made me welcome the Japs. It is because we do not think it proper and manly to be ruled by a woman.”

  “Tonight we do more than serve the Dutch Sultana.”

  “El Islam?”

  It was so dark that the two men could not see each other, except as shadowy blots, yet it was as if they were looking each other in the eye. Finally van Stappen said, “We are going to a place from which we may not come back. So there must not be any lie between us. I am not a Moslem.” Silence, almost like a blow.

  Ahmat said, gropingly, “But you spoke the testimony, and you know more of our faith than anyone but old Saoud.”

  “I said, there is no God but God. That is true, and I believe it. The Jap says the Emperor is a god, and that is false. I said that Mohammad is the apostle of Allah. That is true, since he taught good things, and made his people a better people than before. And the fatha which Moslems recite has the same meaning as the prayer which Christians recite. So I told no lie, I merely honored a truth in another form.”

  The bewildered Malay gaped in the gloom, and then stuttered, “But then you are a Moslem!”

  “I give no alms, I do not pray, I do things forbidden to True Believers.”

  “You are a very poor Moslem, a sinful one, doubtless, but still, no infidel! Let us do what is to be done.”

  CHAPTER VI

  Pulu Weh was blacked out. Neither buoys nor lights marked the approaches to the harbor. The Japs, though having every reason for feeling secure, kept good guard. If the tiny prahu had made a phosphorescent wake, it had not been observed by any sentry. Once ashore, Ahmat and van Stappen crept along the waterfront, and toward the harbor where by starlight they could just distinguish the lean, low shapes of Japanese destroyers, and the dark wallowing bulk of tankers.

  The air was reeking with the exhalation of gasoline and of fuel oil. Though the Dutch had destroyed a hundred million dollars worth of petroleum and equipment at Palembang, this island off the very tip of Sumatra’s thousand mile length had become a supply base for the China Sea patrols, the Indian Ocean patrols which controlled the waters all the way to the Andamans, and Aykab in Burma.

  Petroleum which had escaped destruction in the Indies; Burmese oil; aviation gas seized in Singapore and Penang and Malacca—fat booty, and safe from any raid from Ceylon.

  The tanks, aluminum painted, loomed up in the skyglow. Mesh fences were just perceptible. Iron gates jangled softly as the wind shifted. Water lapped, the surf mumbled; phosphorescence crested the combers as they broke, and then distinct from all, Ahmat caught the vague sound of mooring hawsers, going taut, then slacking off.

  He became acutely conscious of these things as he crept after his guide, and for the time, carried the case of explosive, for van Stappen had to pick and feel his way.

  The Dutchman stopped crawling, and twisted enough to reach back and catch Ahmat’s wrist. No need for signal or speech. Already, the footsteps ahead were clear, measured, military; who but a soldier or European would wear hard shoes?

  Huddled, face averted, Ahmat was motionless, and with nothing resembling cover. It took all his faith and all his courage to remain motionless, not trying to improve his posture. Obeying van Stappen’s instructions was the hardest thing he had ever done, for Ahmat was a farmer, and not a hunter in the jungle, nor had his people for two generations stalked human enemies. Dutch peace, come to think of it.

  But Ahmat lived up to his faith in van Stappen, who had thought enough of the Moslem faith to study it as few Malays did. Even in that danger, Ahmat did not lose his sense of wonder and of discovery. Despising the Dutch had been an abstract business, like hating infidels—he’d rarely seen any, and then not long enough for any but second-hand opinions.

  Clump—clump—clump—he wanted desperately now to look up, so that he could dodge if the soldier tired, or lunged with his bayonet. He could smell the eater of unclean food.

  “Maybe the son of a lewd mo
ther can scent me,” Ahmat told himself, and went cold, and had the urge to whip out his kris and settle everything.

  But the breeze, though gentle, was cool against his hot face; it blew the Jap odor toward him.

  Clump—dump—

  The sentry was past.

  Then van Stappen made a wailing, whimpering cry, not quite like an abandoned infant, not quite like a woman all worn out from weeping. The sound was very near, yet hard to place. Gravel crunched as the Jap turned. A step, and he halted. At first startled, he was now curious, and not alarmed.

  It was working as van Stappen had predicted. Ahmat became tense again, and the pounding of his heart made his throat fill, and then of a sudden he became calm. The Dutchman must have devils serving him. Ahmat knew where van Stappen was, yet the sound came from some other spot a few yards distant.

  This puzzled the Jap. Uncertain, he caught his rifle at the balance, no longer holding it at the ready. He stooped as though he was within reach of that which made the whimpering, and Ahmat could hardly believe that nothing was at that spot.

  His eyes were long since accustomed to the gloom.

  He eased the kris from its muffled scabbard, now that the enemy’s back was turned, and his bare feet made no sound. He held his breath and stretched his legs, and he struck.

  There was a gasp; his own, and the Jap’s. Van Stappen, already on the move, caught the rifle before it dropped. Another slash, and a stirring, a wheeze and a bubbling.

  Then only the breathing of the two raiders.

  “Like a commando! Like a commando!” van Stappen whispered.

  They went on for a few yards, and then the Dutchman set to work with heavy wire cutters. He snipped a hole in the mesh. There was a gunny sack in the box. This Ahmat filled with loose earth and gravel. Then, though ignorant of firearms, he squatted outside the barrier while van Stappen laid the dynamite against the big tank of gasoline, and weighted it with the bag of earth.

  It was not plain to Ahmat how van Stappen got a light; there was no flame, merely a flick of sparks, and then a dull glow. Then came a momentary spit of fire, and van Stappen wormed through the hole, tearing his shirt.