The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-04-04
The Emperor Of the Soudan
BY R. C. Pitzer.

stirred in him a desperate. despairing
energy, had put a sword in his hand,
fire in his heart and blood on his brow.
1.-The Napoleon of the Soudan,'' they
called him IN European lands, yet in
his native country it was sometimes
rumored that the blood of the Emperor
had flowed for ages down the Anglo
saxon sea. Islam yelled him, his black
armies hung cloudlike between him and
all of Christianity, and before the trea-
ty of Alboran his name had been a
terror Like an invineible simeon had
he and his fanatics sprung to being in
swirling anger among mirage haunted
sands, and that simeon, dread and re-
sistless, had swirled to the Tiris coast,
had grown into a roaring father of
hurricanes, until from Senegal to Khar-
toum, and from Morocco to the mouth
of the Niger, the Christians were ex-
terminated, and he, the inserutable
prophet, Emperor of the Soudan, was
shouted by thousands of muezzins.
while black myrmidons answered his
nod. And now civilization had extend
led her hand to him, all courts had
recognized his reign, and his vast ter
ritories were terrorized into a hushed
and Worshipful peace. Yet he was
man who never forgot.
Sitting alone in his state apartment
in the hotel of his native town, the
Emperor unused. Was it thirty years
before? Thirty, or forty, or perhaps
but twenty, in his hurricane life the
years could not be measured. Yes, it
was thirty years before that he had
left this small American city, defeated,
cast out, prey to bitterness and sor-
row unimaginable. Well, he was back
again, a guest of the nation, a sover.
eign power, with newspapers heralding
his approach, soldiers and statesmen to
do him honor, and the gaping multitude
swarming to glimpse this imperial ad-
venturer. And inevitably, straight as
jungle spear flung by some naked,
oiled negro of his army, he had thrown
himself forward upon his native town,
where no one yet knew he was aught
but the Emperor. Not even She knew.
She, as all women do, worshiped
strength and power and gold. Now his
strength could crush her, his power
ruin her, his gold buy her. Strange
were the ways of 1slamf
The Emperor was dressed in Ameri
can clothing, selected with wise care
by his confidential minister of police:
clothing that would suggest its wearer
to be some clerical person who had seen
more prosperous years; and when the
Emperor examined himself in the mir
ror he could not but confess that in his
white, heavy face, with its stubble of
beard, in his dim eyes, hollow and
black, his haggard cheeks and yellow
sickly countenance, he saw an extreme
example of the art of disguise. In a
moment the door would open and the
minister of police, faithful Mesrur,
would enter, cosmopolitan and alert, to
accompany his master in this romantic
journey back to youth-a journey in
search of Her. Meantime the great
man dreamed
Fanciful, indeed, were the images
that fitted in chaotic state through his
mind Memories came hurriedly, though
their march was infinitely slow and
solemn; it was more like some fear
haunted opium dream than vague recol-
lections of the past, yet none could
know better than the Emperor the
dreadful reality of it all. Thoughts OF
his early adventurous years in African
tents mingled with boyhood themes
glimpses of high school days and nights
of youthful courtship, struggles of more
than mortal intensity with his loneliness
and love, dreams of wars and battles
and the horrors of the jungle Mingled
with American landscapes were
thoughts of arid and sandy wastes, of
trembling horizons, level steppes and
hi
iungles and rivers innumerable, lands
filed with monstrous things, beasts of
prey and hippopotami, crocodiles and
hyenas, pelieans, birds of nightmare
beauties and nightmare forms, and ev-
erywhere humanity, naked and black.
There were villages lost in luxuriant
wildernesses or in binding sands,
armies of dead men and of dying VIC
tors Yorubas and Berbers and Fulahs
in myriads it seemed, Haussas, musical
of speech, and Dahoman amazons,
Ashantees, Soudanese and Nilotic
negroes-how many lives he had taken
to build up this empire of day! In
Dahomey, the kings sleeping chamber
had been paved with the skulls of his
enemies; such skulls seemed to pave
this American hotel. There the palace
was succeed with bones; here, too
were the bones of the dead, if he could
but see them The walls of his gran
itic palace and porphyry villa at home
in the Soudan flowed red, as phos-
phorescent lights flow over putreseen'
thing. And never-never, even in the
anarchy of battle slaughter-had he fol
moment forgotten that he wished te
forget 1t was all this one wordless
thought She, She, She, She haunted
him, her face was an incubus, her name
was at his tongue end, he yearnet
for her. mind and body and soul crav
| ed her presence; and always he knew
i that she had pitied or despised ane
rejected him. Yet now he had come
back with power and gold, not to woo
| but to search, and to show her that h
was great.
| A fanciful romance it seemed. Pen
| niless and dazed from long weeks o
drunkenness wherein he had sought tt
wash out all recollection of this idea
+! woman. he had been taken aboard
| ship and made to work himself bacl
| to humanity At Tangier he had de
serted. andJafter desperate life anon.
/ nomadie tribes. he found himself,
bearded Mohammedan, in the heart o
the Sahara There the example of Ma
| poleon fred him. Ignorant fanatic